Deadline#2: Research Topic

Conflict with Iran

I had three ideas for different paths for my research project. Illegal Immigration, Conflict in Iraq, and Conflict with Iran. I decided on Iran for several reasons. First, it's the subject which I know the least about and this gives me an excuse to broaden my knowledge in that area which I have been meaning to do for some time anyway. Second, I'm already in the middle of researching the whole Iraq situation, not for any particular project but just out of my own vested interest, and doing my project on Iran offers a project with a fresh start so I can research the project from the ground up as opposed to doing it on Iraq and having to go through information I've already reviewed for mundane things such as refferences and page numbers. Third, after even a little research into this subject you realize that the growing situation in Iran presents truly disturbing possibilities for the world communities future. Finally, I chose Iran because Iraq is already happening and Iran is an extremely pressing issue. If conflict opens up with Iran it will dramatically increase the amount of troups overseas, amount of money going into the millitary operations, and the stress on the American people. That and, as I've mentioned previously, if major conflicts do occur between the U.S. and Iran I'm likely to end up right in the middle of them so knowledge of the situation is very important to me. Being a marine I like to think of myself as a millitary minded person. I like to know what I'm getting into.

After deciding to do my project on Conflict with Iran I decided that I had two basic narrowed fields; What happens if we go to war with Iran? and What is Likely to Happen? I decided on the latter because it offers a chance to take a broader look at the situation and, as America has learned the hard way, a broader look is necesarry to best understand the situation and probable eventualities. By brainstorming and freewriting I've decided on a few things I need to look at to best understand the situation. First I need to research the Iranian Governement to at least have some Idea of where the power lies, the level of corruption, and the general mindset of the Iranian government. I also ned to research the Iranian millitary to help me understand it's capabilities which will directly influence the government's decisions on how to react to international pressure from the U.S. and U.N. I need to research Irans relationships with it's neighboring countries for the same reason as the millitary and for determining the possibility of a large scale, international war erupting over this issue. I found the easiest method to get these ideas was just to brainstorm on a piece of paper and then look over what I'd written, figuring out what was valid and digging deeper into that. Essentially it was looping.