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To get this out of the way, there are those who argue that there is a realistic chance that the United States and Iran will into some sort of direct conflict within the next few years, but that discussion is probably best had in the Political Chat subforum. I want to know how such a war would have unfolded in the context of the last decade.

During George W. Bush’s second term in office, I distinctly remember a real fear, especially in certain leftist, libertarian, and paleoconservative circles, that a war with Iran was imminent. Now, this obviously did not happen, but what if it had?

Firstly, what would have been the most likely specific casus belli for such a war in that timeframe? What would the conflict have looked like? Roughly how long would the initial invasion of Iran have taken, and how many casualties would both sides have suffered in both the invasion and subsequent occupation?

What would the reaction to this war have looked like in the United States (assuming that just enough public support was able to be mustered to support the initial invasion, but afterward, things would obviously depend on how the war was going) and elsewhere? How might the conflict have impacted the situation Afghanistan and Iraq, aside from likely diverting American forces from those countries, as well as the War in Terror broadly? How would the wider region have been impacted by this war, especially considering that the Arab Spring was only a few years away? (Yes, I know that Iran is not an Arab country - I am just asking what another significant war in the region might meant for that situation.)

What about the global impact, especially on the economy? Gas prices really started to climb right around that time, and the Great Recession was just around the corner. Might another significant war, which likely would have caused gas prices to further spike, have hastened or worsened the economic meltdown, or worse? If so, what would have been the political impact in the United States and elsewhere? Would the Democrats and Republicans have nominated different candidates for president in 2008?
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