If you were an Iranian commander, what would you do?

Remember, their ideas of acceptable losses are probably different than yours.

Would you gradually escalate, inflicting enough casualties to cause a withdrawal, or go with a large strike?

I suppose the first thing you could do would be to arm the "insurgents" - but then you'd finally be faced with air strikes, and those aimed not only against military targets but also your infra-structure... water, power, transport...

You'd want to deny air to the enemy, and you'd hit air bases in particular, I suppose that if you were going gradually, you'd use "insurgents" to hit air bases in Iraq first...

You'd target enemy command and control areas, transport areas, medical areas...

For that matter, you'd want to deny the enemy air basing... Now in a large strike you'd hit US naval forces with missile strikes. Of ourse the fleet is deployed, and replacements would be on the way...

So you'd also problably do your best to remove the government of Saudi Arabia, to eliminate the basing, and to gain the arms... think of it as regime change, if you like...

So if you were an Iranian commander, would you plan a gradual response, or a massive one?

ep