Originally posted by West Coast
Perhaps a misinterpretation on your part in regards to the context of my post?

Unlikely.

Airpower alone can and will cripple Irans conventional military.

For one reason or another it did not work in the Second world war, Korea, Vietnam, the first gulf war, or Serbia/Kosovo so i am not so sure it will 'work' against Iran.

In the end, as noted above, enemy SAM fire brought down only two aircraft (both American), thanks to allied reliance on electronic jamming, towed decoys, and countertactics to negate enemy surface-to-air defenses.37 However, NATO never fully succeeded in neutralizing the Serb IADS, and NATO aircraft operating over Serbia and Kosovo were always within the engagement envelopes of enemy SA-3 and SA-6 missiles—envelopes that extended as high as 50,000 feet. Because of that persistent threat, mission planners had to place such high-value surveillance-and-reconnaissance platforms as the U-2 and JSTARS in less-than-ideal orbits to keep them outside the lethal reach of enemy SAMs. Even during the operation’s final week, NATO spokesmen conceded that they could confirm the destruction of only three of Serbia’s approximately 25 known mobile SA-6 batteries.38

In all events, by remaining dispersed and mobile, and by activating their radars only selectively, the Serb IADS operators yielded the short-term tactical initiative in order to pre-sent a longer-term operational and strategic challenge to allied combat sorties. The downside of that inactivity for NATO was that opportunities to employ the classic Wild Weasel tactic of attacking enemy SAM radars with HARMs while SAMs guided on airborne targets were “few and far between.”39 Lt Gen Michael Short, the Allied Force air commander, later indicated that his aircrews were ready for a wall-to-wall SAM threat like the one encountered over Iraq during Desert Storm but that “it just never materialized. And then it began to dawn on us that . . . they were going to try to survive as opposed to being willing to die to shoot down an airplane.”40

www.airpower.au.af.mil...

Despite the heavy bombardment, NATO was surprised to find afterwards that the Serbian armed forces had survived in such good order. Around 50 Serbian aircraft were lost but only 14 tanks, 18 APCs and 20 artillery pieces.[12] Most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys, such as tanks made out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels. Anti-aircraft defences were preserved by the simple expedient of not turning them on, preventing NATO aircraft from detecting them but forcing them to keep above a ceiling of 15,000ft (5,000m), making accurate bombing much more difficult. Towards the end of the war, it was claimed that carpet bombing by B-52 aircraft had caused huge casualties among Serbian troops stationed along the Kosovo–Albania border. Careful searching by NATO investigators found no evidence of any such large-scale casualties.

www.answers.com...

An antiseptic war, fought by pilots flying safely three miles high. It seems almost too good to be true-and it was. In fact-as some critics suspected at the time-the air campaign against the Serb military in Kosovo was largely ineffective. NATO bombs plowed up some fields, blew up hundreds of cars, trucks and decoys, and barely dented Serb artillery and armor. According to a suppressed Air Force report obtained by NEWSWEEK, the number of targets verifiably destroyed was a tiny fraction of those claimed: 14 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450. Out of the 744 "confirmed" strikes by NATO pilots during the war, the Air Force investigators, who spent weeks combing Kosovo by helicopter and by foot, found evidence of just 58.

www.geocities.com...

"WASHINGTON--Data released piecemeal by U.S. and European military authorities are finally painting a well-rounded portrait of NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia--and showing how limited its effects have been.
The figures indicate that while more than five weeks of pounding have badly damaged important parts of the nation's military infrastructure, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic retains many of his field forces and air defenses, and much of his fuel and ammunition. His forces generally can communicate with each other, maneuver and arrange for resupply.
The Yugoslav army still has 80% to 90% of its tanks, 75% of its most sophisticated surface-to-air missiles and 60% of its MIG fighter planes, according to official estimates released during the past week. And although NATO warplanes have blown up the major rail links into Kosovo, five of the province's eight major roads remain at least partially passable, according to British officials.

Despite the damage to many of its best planes, the MIG fighters, the Yugoslav air force still has 380 of its 450 aircraft. Eight of the country's 17 airfields have not been struck, and six more have sustained only moderate or light damage.
Although Clark declared that the Serbs' integrated air defense system is now "ineffective" overall, it remains a powerful defensive weapon: It has kept NATO planes generally at altitudes above 15,000 feet, too high to most effectively hit Milosevic's field forces.

www.aeronautics.ru...

Nato is suffering significant losses. Reliable alternative sources in
Washington have counted up to 38 aircraft crashed or shot down, and an
undisclosed number of American and British special forces killed. This is
suppressed, of course.

www.aeronautics.ru...

It is clear from the amount and quality of intelligence received by this journal from a variety of highly-reputable sources that NATO forces have already suffered significant losses of men, women and materiel. Neither NATO, nor the US, UK or other member governments, have admitted to these losses, other than the single USAF F-117A Stealth fighter which was shown, crashed and burning inside Serbia.

The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had denied, about a month into the bombing, that the US had suffered the additional losses reported to Defense & Foreign Affairs.

By April 20, 1999, NATO losses stood at approximately the following:

* 38 fixed-wing combat aircraft;
* Six helicopters;
* Seven unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs);
* “Many” Cruise Missiles (lost to AAA or SAM fire).

www.aeronautics.ru...

That is what I was getting at. Iraq in the first gulf war had the 4th largest army in the world,

which was heavily armed thanks to the soviets just before the collapse of the CCCP.

Many considered Iraq to be 'little russia' just before the war.

It was not a foe to be taken lightly.

This war showed just how dominant the US conventional military is/was.

The US military is second to none when it comes to conventional warfar Mr. Harl

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced today that Iran had finally reached its stated goal of developing 3,000 centrifuges, but his message seemed more of a challenge to the United States and Europe than it did a statement of a technological breakthrough.

“The West thought the Iranian nation would give in after just a resolution, but now we have taken another step in the nuclear progress and launched more than 3,000 centrifuge machines, installing a new cascade every week,” state television quoted the president as saying.