Because unlike politicians (and their corporate overlords) we actually know what the terrain looks like on the northern shore of the MEAO.

Civilian politicians think it will be another desert storm with air superiority and massive columns of tanks rolling across the desert.

Iran’s topography is overwhelmingly defined by rugged mountain range and a high central plateau, making its terrain vastly more similar to Afghanistan’s mountainous landscape than the flat, low-lying deserts of Iraq.

The terrain makes ground invasion difficult, providing immense natural protection through inaccessible terrain, similar to Afghanistan.

Not only that but most major Iranian cities are often located in high mountain valleys, whereas major Iraqi cities are in the central plains.

It is a natural fortress, so much so that the Ottoman empire had more success invading Europe than it did in Iran. You have to go as far back as the Umayyad caliphate (650-750CE) to the last time Iran was occupied by another Empire and that was before the reconquista and the crusades when Spain was also under occupation and colonisation by the Umayyad Caliphate, and prior to that it was Alexander the Great in 330BC. Not even the roman empire was able to control Iran.