The U.S. military could topple the Iranian government, but it would be costly, said Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times correspondent.
"America has the power to overthrow any government in the world, but what comes next?" he said. "An American attack on Iran would set off a series of events that would devastate American national security."
A panel of speakers talked to about 250 people about a potential conflict between the U.S. and Iran at the UNM Conference Center on Thursday.
Kinzer said many problems in the Middle East stem from U.S. interference.
The U.S. sponsored coups that helped overthrow a democratic government in Iran in 1953 and installed an authoritarian government under the Shah, he said.
"When you violently intervene in the political processes of another country, you're doing something like releasing a wheel at the top of the hill - you let it go, but you have no control over how it's going to bounce or where it's going to end up," he said.
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The U.S. accused Iran of pursuing weapons of mass destruction in 2002 after satellite photos revealed several nuclear power plants under construction in the country, said Justin Logan, a foreign policy analyst for the Cato Institute.
Since then, the Bush administration has refused to take military action off the table as an option to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Logan said.
Attacking Iran to destroy its nuclear reactors would lead to a major health crisis in the region, said Michael McCally, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
"An attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would create immediate casualties and fallout spreading across central Asia that could easily affect millions of people," he said. "It could have a Chernobyl-like effect."
Logan said the threat of a U.S. invasion of Iran has cooled down since a National Intelligence Estimate was released in November 2007, stating Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
But relations between the two countries will not improve until the U.S. pursues a new approach to negotiation and diplomacy, he said.
"There is an extraordinarily backward and disappointing orientation in Washington that views foreign policy making as issuing a list of demands, and if they're not satisfied to the letter, then we go to the war option," he said. "We've fallen into the trap of thinking that's what diplomacy is, but it's not what it has been historically or what it should be, in my mind."
Kinzer said the idea that Iran is a threat to the U.S. comes from the way the country is presented on television news, which focuses on Islamic fundamentalism and the hostage crisis of the early 1980s.
Many Iranians are not Islamic extremists and look up to the many of the freedoms enjoyed in the United States, he said.
But a U.S. military attack on the country would change that, he said.
"Iran is the only country in the Middle East where the majority of the population is pro-American," he said. "That would end in the blink of an eye with a bombing campaign."
