ASSESSMENTS

The U.S. Gamble With the Iran Deal

Sep 16, 2015 | 09:01 GMT

Aftershocks of the Iran Deal Part 4

(Stratfor)

Summary

Editor's Note: This is the fourth installment of an occasional series on the evolving fortunes of the Middle East that Stratfor will be building upon periodically.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 presented Iran with a rare opportunity to expand its influence: the Iraqi state was in disarray and its military apparatus destroyed. Chaos in Greater Mesopotamia, of which Iraq is a part, has long been a requirement for Iranian expansion. But Tehran's ability to take advantage of such opportunities has inherent geographic limitations. The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s is instructive: Despite the fact that at the time Iran's population was almost three times that of Iraq (some 38 million versus about 13 million), Iran could not achieve anything beyond a stalemate with Iraq. While there were many reasons for this, one of the most salient is that though Iran's Zagros Mountains are an excellent defensive asset, they are a difficult place from which to mount an overwhelming offensive attack. The logistics of supporting an army through the Zagros are complicated and costly, making it nearly impossible to push great numbers of troops through the mountain range.

Washington hopes that limited cooperation with Tehran will be better than the decades of antagonism between the two....

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