There are a number of assertions here he uses to back up his point that I don't think hold up. First, skyrocketing oil prices may or may not happen, but Iran would not be benefiting from them while we were engaged in hostilities, since we could just threaten to scuttle any tanker they had, outright seize it, or turn it back. If we open up hostilities with them, we can just as easily stop them from funding themselves via oil. So that's a poor argument except against limited or zero action. The 'delay' argument doesn't work, as we've discussed, unless anyone seriously believes that once we'd attacked them once we'd hesitate to do so again for the same reason. Lastly, we do not know and can not guess how opposition will react, but as I mentioned in the other thread, we can not hesitate to attack places based off the idea that we might unify their populace, anymore than we could with our enemies in WWII. We don't know how they will react, some might rally, others might not, and some might engage in a moderate coup if their military's all damaged or tied up from any attempt at a counter-attack.