[walrus01]

There was never a buildup of even 1/50th of the ground forces that would have been required to occupy the major military sites, industrial sites and large cities (nevermind attempt to control the countryside). The buildup to the 2003 Iraq War started 12+ months in advance with thousands of vehicles, cargo containers, equipment and 150,000+ guys collecting in bases in Kuwait.

[Terr_]

Also worth noting that Iran is generally a bigger and richer country than Iraq, whichever timeframe you look at.

To summarize in rough numbers:

* 2x the population (today)

* 3x the land area (today, but also probably back then)

* 7x the relative wealth (compared to Iraq-2002, using US GDP across time as a shared baseline)

I'm sure the US military has a much better statistical analysis... and I'm also sure it was ignored by the commander-in-chief.

[walrus01]

Iran is also considerably more mountainous than Iraq, if one looks at a topo map of Iraq and examines all the generally 'flat, somewhere generally near the Euphrates' area vs a population density map in people per square km. Yeah there's more complicated terrain in the northern part of the country, but nowhere on the size/scale of what exists in Iran.