IRAN CONFLICT READS LIKE BAD RERUN

The most frustrating thing that could happen at the start of a new decade is a start of a new war.

Ever since World War II, the actual meaning of war has been complicated by spying, power leverage and nuclear deterrence – then, in 1990 and again in the early 2000s, the U.S. meddled in the Middle East, a decision we are still reaping the consequences for.

To put it in perspective, the American war in Afghanistan is being fought by a generation that wasn’t even alive to see its inception. In the next few years, Iraq will be the same story if we can’t decide on ending occupation by U.S. troops there.  

Now we’re moving on to Iran, a country that has seen Western meddling and regime change since its very beginning. Iran has been in the crosshairsof American neo-conservatives since the Islamic revolution in the late 1970s. That revolution is what took away Western influence in the country: Iran was no longer a regional power that played ball with American foreign policy. Instead, Iran became more fundamental in its Islamic rule which meant that any sort of regime change, or Western interference would be a lot harder to pull off.  

With the foreign policy failures that are the Iraq and Afghan war – as well as the poor handling of the “Arab spring” protests that led to the toppling of the Libyan government and the ongoing Syrian civil war – any sort of clean resolution with Iran was drifting further away.

The Iran nuclear deal, reached in 2015, was the first piece of action that would lead to healthy relations. It was good to see that President Obama and the leader of Iran looked toward a more stable Middle East – and then Donald Trump came. John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, one a former adviser and the other currently U.S. secretary of state, are in the same group that have pushed for a regime change in Iran for decades – and the same group that lied our country into the Iraq War. 

All I see from the U.S. news coverage of Qasem Soleimani, the assassinated Iran military leader, is that he was planning an attack on America and he “was the most dangerous man in the world.” It sounds eerily familiar to the narrative that brought us into the Iraq war – ‘Saddam has weapons of mass destruction” and “he was planning an attack on the U.S.”

In retrospect, the weight of 9/11 was too heavy for us to rationalize peace in Iraq. But, with Iran, there is no 9/11 tragedy to steer us into conflict, only petty aggression from the U.S. and power dynamics that the higher-ups get to dictate.

The media justification for our acts of war, mostly seen on FOX News, is pathetic and no one, especially those who saw this happen less than 20 years ago, is buying into this faux war.