Cyrus said:
The problem is that if Israel did strike (or any other country, for that matter), Iran could shut off 1/3rd of the worlds oil supply and crash the already weak markets.
Indeed, and a few months ago there were actually virtual war games performed at the Pentagon exporing different scenarios. This was reported on CNN, as I recall, in each case Iran won the war. One scenario was that Israel launches a surprise atack on Iran. This turned out to be the worse case scenario for the West. A US led attack was a bit better but Iran ended up winning here too.
The problem is indeed that Iran can easily target the oil and gas installations in the Gulf using short range missiles. They are easy to fire (they work on solid fuel), can easily be hidden in caves. Then if Israel were to strike first, you won't have thousands of aircaft patrolling the Iranian skies for many weeks. So, Iran then finds itself for an open goal. They can then even launch their clumsy liquid fueled mssiles with impunity, deploy their navy etc. etc.
So, that would be total disaster for the West. But even if the US were to launch an attack, Iran can still continue to cause damage to the Saudi oil installations and the gas installations in Qatar without the US being able to put a stop to the Iranian missile launches.
Compare this to Israel vs. Hezbollah. Hezbollah is small force concentrated in a small area in South Lebanon using low quality inaccurate missiles. Israel fought them using a modern air force equipped with state of the art electronics. Yet Israel was not able to put a stop the the Hezbollah missile firings. And those missile firings, despite their lack of accuracy, forced parts of Northern Israel to close down.
The war ended after a UN brokered cease fire, so Israel was not able to win the war in its own terms. Also Israel used the cover of that cease fire to move large number of forces into South Lebanon. During the war, of course, Israel did move forces into Lebanon, but not in large numbers.
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