Not since 1941 has Iran been conquered.
That year saw the armies of Britain and the USSR combine their air, land and sea might to rush the country during the Second World War to defeat the severely under-developed military set up by Iran’s then-ruler, Reza Shah.
Donald Trump appears to be angling to emulate the success of the UK-Russian invasion with his roiling war in the Middle East, as for the first time since the conflict began the US sent 5,000 US Marines to the Middle East.
The US troops will head to the conflict from Japan, as a defiant Trump told press last night that the war would end ‘when I feel it’, while defence secretary Pete Hegseth told CBS that the US is ‘willing to go as far as we need to’.
The deployment of US boots on the ground came despite White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying last week that ground operations were ‘not part of the plan right now’.
But Iran is a notoriously difficult country to invade, thanks to its tough terrain.
The country is home to vast salt flats, dense and swampy marshes, and a series of rocky mountains that create a natural, nationwide fortress, in which countless military and nuclear sites hide.
Iran’s dominance over the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway to its south, means that any enemy vessels in either the Gulf of Oman or the Persian Gulf may become sitting ducks.
Some experts have warned that America could face a worse environment than they encountered in Afghanistan, Iraq and even Vietnam.