Iran would be wreckless if it scraps its nuclear program

Iranian political rhetoric still includes classics we’ve been hearing since 1979 – death to America, the great satan. We are all familiar with them from the days of the embassy hostages. Since then, US/Iranian relations became the acrimonious hate-fest we take for granted. (Before that it was peaches and cream with the Shah).

Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocracy that – despite decades of economic and political isolation – remains hostile to what it perceives as US intervention in its affairs (the original charges that sparked the hostage incident). Iran is generally considered to back Hezballah in Lebanon which makes it a mortal enemy to Israel with the infamous Katusha rockets used by militants in Gaza to attack Israeli cities. To add to the tension, the US invasion of Iraq has given Iran a boost of power in the region as it fills part of the vacuum left by the fall of the Saddam regime through its influence on Iraqi Shias.

All the while, Iran finds the US military footprint in the region surrounding it growing and growing.

In 1990, US presence in the region was limited to Turkey, on Iran’s northwestern border, through its membership in NATO. This and the Sixth Fleet, constantly patrolling Iran’s southern coastal border, which the Iranians knew well from their experience in their 10 year war with Saddam. Then at the end of the first Gulf War, Iran finds new US bases established across the Gulf in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. These bases were eventually closed and one central command established in the tiny peninsula nation Qatar. By the end of the decade, the newly independent muslim nations of the former Soviet Union became home to minor US military bases. Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan Manas Air Base in Kyrgyztan have been used to supply US forces on Iran’s eastern border in Afghanistan. Finally, on Iran’s western border is the US occupation force in Iraq.

Iran must be well aware of the bombing of Iraq's nuclear facilities by Israel in the early 80s and the more recent Israeli Air Force attacks in Syria (against which Syria was completely impotent). They had front row seats to the US invasion of Iraq which means they are well aware of what can happen if a current or future US administration wages another pre-emptive war.

But Iran must be equally aware that these fates befell non-nuclear powers. Nuclear powers are not held to the same standards. Are not dealt with in military terms.  What actions are then available to a country facing Iran's current geopolitical situation?