Why would a war with Iran be much harder for the US military than the Iraq War?
George Bush Jnr actually considered military action against his axis-of-evil-designate-Iran back in 2006, when Iran was mulling to launch an oil bourse priced in Euros. He hesitated to launch an invasion of Iran for fear of a blockade in the Hormuz Straits by Iran.[1]The United States controls seaborne crude oil trade emanating from the Straits of Hormuz , and Iraq is almost landlocked if not for a small opening to the straits of Hormuz, therefore the US does not fear an oil crisis happening from crude oil tankers unable to traverse out of the Hormuz Straits during the invasion of Iraq.Iran, however has its entire Southern coastline franking the Hormuz Straits, and is armed with enough anti-ship missiles to seal off the Hormuz Straits in the event of an emergency, which will cause an unprecedented global oil shock. Furthermore, Iran has the implicit support from Russia and China, and will most likely be inducted into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) come June 2018 during the annual SCO meeting at Qingdao[2] . Once Iran becomes an SCO member, it will have security guarantee from both Russia and China, and will become next to impossible to subjugate, regime-change or dismember.Footnotes[1] Revisiting the 'Axis of Evil' 15 years after George W. Bush coined the term[2] Could the SCO Expand Into the Middle East?
Since Russia has been taking control over Crimea, did the ethnic Ukrainians move out into mainland Ukraine?
There is no clear distinction between ethic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians. It is a continuum, with Western Ukrainians generally having clear distinctions from Russians (i.e. different language, religion, historical perspective) while Eastern and Southern Ukrainians generally having very little if any distinction from ethnic Russians (same language, religion, similar cultural and historical perspective).Crimea particularly was a very heavily Russian region of Ukraine with over 90% of the residents voting for pro-Russian candidates in every Ukrainian election, speaking almost exclusively Russian, with many even considering themselves Russians. I had a friend from Crimea back in the 1990s who said most Crimeans considered themselves Russian even though they lived in a different country.So many Crimeans who self-identified as Ukrainian in the polls prior to 2014 simply switched to now identifying themselves as Russian. For many nothing changed other than the name. There was no mass exodus from Crimea to Ukraine after 2014. Accotding to Ukrainian statistics, 33,000 Crimean residents moved to other regions of Ukraine in the years after 2014. To the contrary, hundreds of thousands of people moved from other regions of Ukraine to Crimea because they disagreed with the politics of the new government and felt threatened for their pro-Russian views. For instance, many people from the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine moved to Crimea due to a very unstable situation as they were attacked by Ukrainian armed forces. Russian statistics place this number at 200,000. Many Crimeans also moved to Russia because there was now no border and it was simple for them to receive Russian passports and citizenship. So many of them decided to seek better fortunes in other regions of Russia which were significantly wealthier than Crimea was after 23 years as part of Ukraine. The population of Crimea generally, with the migrations to and from Crimea included, remained stable since 2014, rising a little bit over the past 4 years.