Iran's government is trash, but there's 100 governments in the world that are worse.
I'm just going to ignore the attempted similarity connection the other poster tried to make between Nazi Germany and the current Irani government. People will say anything, no matter how crazy, to try and strike emotions in political debates.
If you think the Vietnam War was cool, then you'll like an American led war in Iran. This won't be Iraq where it takes years to reach 1,000 dead American soldiers that will happen every single year we fight it. You think this recession sucks? Wait until you see what happens to our economy if we fight a much larger war than the current sized wars that we can't even afford.
And, just like in Afghanistan/Iraq/Vietnam, this will be another war that we lose. The only way to win a war against Iran is to drop enough nukes to cover every square inch of the ground. The Iranian people are big on independence and they'll fight until the last person takes in their last gasp of air. Plus their military is way better than Iraq's was, hence why they crushed Iraq in the war in the 80's you mentioned. The war where we were giving Saddam chemical weapons, gas, money, other weapons to wage war and kill his own women, children and babies with.
There's nothing stupider (no offense) than wanting war with Iran. We'll gain nothing and lose everything. We can't even win a war against the 3rd poorest 3rd world country (Afghanistan) in 8 years, the Taliban controls more of the country than we do.
I've said as much in other posts, don't get me wrong. I feel the US SHOULD go to war with Iran because, in reality, Iran has been waging war on the US indirectly for decades.
And btw, I also feel the US has done some horrendous things to Iranians since and after 1953. I remember a quote from a senior US official to the UN regarding Saddam's chemical weapons, where he said something along the lines of 'It's a difficult situation. You want Iraq to stop using chemical weapons, but on the other hand... you don't want Iran to win the war!" I mean that is a borderline evil thing to say, and it was the US policy towards Iran.
HOWEVER, I agree that the costs are way too high for this war. I would not support a US or Israeli attack on Iran. My main argument is against people that assume that the attack on Iran would be morally as low as the attack on Iraq. To say so is to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iran.
I agree with what you say about the costs of war, and actually would go further by saying what I've already probably said 10X (and I'm paraphrasing an scholar whose name I can't remember unfortunately): If you were to hold referendums today in the Middle East, every single country with one exception would have a theocratic government like Iran's. The exception is of course Iran itself. If the US were to attack, this reality would change.
But I don't agree with the statement that there are other countries more dangerous than Iran. One, it is in the single most important region of the world, surrounded by allies of the US, controlling or influencing the vast majority of the flow of energy around the world.
Two, it has imperial ambitions. The revolution was from the start meant to be a starting point for the spread of the new Shia empire. On top of that, the rather extreme ethnocentrism and nationalism of Iranians who consider themselves superior to Arabs is just a powderkeg waiting to explode as soon as Iran becomes the single dominant nation in the region. For years Iranians and Russians have been building towards a middle east controlled by Iran and influenced by Russia. It is a very rational consequence of the departure of US influence in the region (and the original reason for US interferance in Iran since thd 1920s).
If North Korea nukes Japan, it would be unbelievably horrendous. But it couldn't damage the entire world economy. If Iran got into a war with its very natural enemy, Saudi Arabia... can you imagine the consequences? The entire world economy would be brought to its knees.
Again, I don't say the US MUST attack. But if we're talking about a country that has to look at its best interests and the interest of its allies in the region (not just Israel), you do have to make the case that the US would not be in the same moral position as it was with Iraq (a country that was not a genuine threat after the first gulf war, and had been tortured through air attacks and sanctions for over a decade).
But Iran has a very advanced ballistic missles industry that, as a military spokesman of the IRI said "manufactures bombs the same way it can manufacture books." It could cause inmense, borderline fatal damage to Israel as well as tens of thousands of bystanding US troops in Southern Iraq. So I understand and generally agree with what you're saying. I'm just not willing to say that it's just another country like Cuba or Lybia, and that the US has no reason to attack.