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Notes -
I don't deny this, but it's nonetheless an insane risk that risks global consequences. If you presented me a button of "these countries may nuke each other but you can guarantee it will never affect the world outside the middle east", I'd probably press it. But such an eventuality is no more a guarantee than some zealot in Tehran sees the Israeli missiles on the way and goes "fuck it, I'll take Europe/America out with me".
I mention this in another post but I think the prolonged nation-building stuff doesn't work if you don't a. rout the actual supporters (which would include a lot of collateral damage and questionable arrests where Afghanistan was concerned) and b. Don't work with the surviving establishment to make something new. In Iraq, this would have meant letting at least some Ba'ath party members be involved in the reorganization of the party, rather than completely ousting them and making them and all their supporters de facto enemies (hence the insurgency) while propping up a bunch of previously uninvolved Sunnis (hence ISIS). In Afghanistan, this likely never would have worked, because the only existing mass establishment they had was the Taliban. There were no mid level bureaucrats who were going "I'm just in the Taliban to do city planning", the Taliban was it. You can't replace them with tribal, sometimes boy raping farmers, and declare victory.
Point being, as I said in another post, you can just gut a country's military and leave, a la Gulf War 1. There's a reason we had an even easier time rolling over their conventional army in Gulf War 2, which is that they were never able to recover to the level they were at pre-Gulf War 1. I would be fine with the same thing happening to Iran.
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