7-17-26 The War in Iran (Parallels to 90s Iraq)
After a 2-month break on current events to discuss Israel and Palestine, we’re back with a short current events post. I originally wrote this on 7/5, and in the interim the MoU between the US and Iran has been “officially" abandoned, but otherwise the remainder of this post is accurate.
As it is now, there is still a lot that is unknown about how things will settle down in the long-term in the Middle East following the joint Israeli-American attack on Iran and Lebanon in February. It has been almost 5 months now since this conflict began. For those who pay attention only to casualty figures and treat war like it’s a video game that can be assessed in terms of “high scores”, (depressingly common amongst the American populace) it may seem like it’s going well.
After all, thousands of Iranians and Lebanese have been killed, including high-ranking members of the Iranian government and military. In exchange, very few Israelis or Americans have been killed, and indeed, a significant proportion of the dead opposite the Iranians are citizens or workers of Gulf Arab states. However, when one looks at what must have been the geopolitical goals of this war, it has been an utter failure for the Israelis and Americans: there is no regime change in Iran, there is no strategy that can be reasonably implemented to definitively prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon if it sets its sights on that, Hezbollah still exists and seems to be much more capable of fighting back this time compared to their decisive defeat in 2024. Instead, Israel, moreso now than ever before, is looked upon with disgust by most of the international community, their occupation of southern Lebanon is likely to prove to be another quagmire they will have a hard time extricating themselves from without losing face, there is more distrust than ever directed at the US for their warmongering against Iran, and the entire international community is furious with the US and Israel given Iran’s successful strategy of disrupting Gulf oil production and trade through the strait of Hormuz, which has had serious negative consequences for the global economy.
So how to get out of this situation that Israel and the US stupidly stumbled into? Negotiations, predictably, have been complicated by the fact that there are multiple factions each with different goals and a differing sense of urgency for ending the conflict:
1. Israel, with a right-wing government that sees continued conflict with its neighbors as a way to galvanize support for itself, is perhaps the party least interested in a cessation of hostilities. While it is clear that it will be unable to meet its goals with regard to Iran, to end its occupation of southern Lebanon without either the destruction or disarmament of Hezbollah would be seen as an unacceptable failure, and it is the Lebanese front that is seen as their last opportunity to realize a concrete achievement that it can hold up to their populace to say that the war they started is worth it.
2. The US on the other hand, seems to be the most desperate to end this conflict. The “Memorandum of Understanding”, signed between the US and Iran on June 17 was a catastrophic document of surrender for the US: paying an astounding sum of money to the Iranian government in reparations, leaving the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control with the understanding that they would permit shipping to resume, agreeing to lift sanctions off of Iran, while otherwise returning things to the status quo prior to the initiation of the war. While this MoU is now in jeopardy due to disagreements over the Lebanon front (and Israel is being particularly aggressive in Lebanon now as a way to sabotage the deal between the US and Iran) and it looks like it’s going to collapse and not be implemented, the fact that the US signed it still demonstrates a strong American desire to disengage. To continue hostilities with Iran by continuing only an air campaign will be ineffectual and lead to continue global resentment against the US for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but to launch a ground campaign to topple the regime will be very costly in terms of money and lives and will be a disaster politically within the US itself.
3. Iran needs the conflict to end because a cessation of hostilities allows them to build back up their own military infrastructure, which they have already done to a greater-than-expected degree since April. Furthermore, the conflict has been devastating for their own ability to export oil, and their economy has taken a heavy hit as a result. On the other hand, they can now rest assured that even if Israel and the US resume their attacks, a ground invasion is essentially out of the question, and an air campaign has been shown to be inadequate to achieve American-Israeli goals. While at the same time, even an intense air campaign will be unable to stop Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz and causing significant damage to the global economy. So while they may be interested in peace, they can negotiate knowing that the US is the more desperate party. They can therefore afford to advocate for their Lebanese proxy during the negotiations.
4. The Lebanese government needs to try to achieve a cessation of Israeli aggression on their country. As it is, a huge proportion of the country’s population has been displaced from their homes, the country’s infrastructure has been damaged, and the economy, already very weak, has continued to deteriorate. Withdrawal of the Israelis from southern Lebanon is likely viewed as a lesser priority for this government, particularly if it is viewed as weakening Hezbollah. There also must be some important figures in the government (as with all of the other factions I mention here, it would be a mistake to think of them as a monolithic entity) who may view the Israeli occupation as an opportunity to pressure Hezbollah into disarming, though I’ve already written in my post on 5/7/26 about how the Lebanese government will be unable to disarm Hezbollah without provoking a civil war (and one they are not likely to win). A recent agreement signed between the Lebanese government and Israel seemed to essentially be a complete capitulation to Israel, with no guarantees made for Israeli withdrawal from territory they are occupying, and while it states that Israel will not bomb areas outside of southern Lebanon, the Israelis have historically not hesitated to violate these agreements.
5. Hezbollah has varying pressures applied to it, but along with the Israelis, they also probably do not mind much if the occupation continues. The occupation of southern Lebanon by Israel is what caused the formation of Hezbollah in the first place, and so long as Israel is able to invade Lebanon and the Lebanese government/military is unwilling to lift a finger to prevent it, Hezbollah can justify the continued need to stay armed. At the same time, the occupation of the south is hurting Lebanese Shia the most, and while many will continue to support Hezbollah, there will also be many who hold them accountable for giving the Israelis an excuse to invade in the first place. There is also the fact that their transition to more decentralized guerrilla tactics since the disaster of 2024 has been effective. There must be many in Hezbollah who hope that continued attacks on Israeli forces can pressure them into withdrawing just like they did in 2000.
6. I will also mention Syria, who are not directly involved in this war. However there has been a lot of talk by the Americans and Israelis about having the Syrian army come in and act as an occupying force in Lebanon that can disarm Hezbollah, since the Lebanese military is too weak to do it, and the Israelis are unwilling to incur the losses necessary to occupy the entire country. I think this is exceedingly unlikely. The government in Syria is viewed as an Islamist government by many, and I find it hard to believe that the Lebanese will tolerate an occupation by those viewed as Sunni extremists. However, there have been some rumors of aid from Turkey or Gulf Arab countries (who would be happy to see an Iranian proxy made irrelevant) being contingent on the Syrians taking action. Syria is still recovering from its civil war and is dependent on foreign aid, much of that coming from Gulf Arab countries, so there is a small possibility that they can be pressured into intervening militarily in Lebanon.
Arriving at a peace settlement that the first 5 of these parties I mentioned would all agree to and not try to undermine/sabotage is a difficult task, and it will be interesting to see in the coming months/years how things settle out between all these groups.
I also wanted to briefly touch on the fact that while the US is very eager for peace now, I think it’s fairly clear that if Iran was not able to pressure them into backing off by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the US would be happy to continue an air campaign indefinitely. It is certainly not due to military expenses, concern for loss of life, or a desire for peace that the US is looking to end hostilities with Iran, and if not for the accident of geography that puts Iran as one of the countries bordering the Strait of Hormuz, it is likely that we would see a situation akin to Iraq in the 1990s.
Following the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq had found itself in dire financial straits and this was one of the major motivating factors for its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In 1991, the US launched an extensive aerial campaign, that was followed by a brief ground invasion of Kuwait to expel the Iraqi occupiers. The aerial bombing campaign leading up to the ground invasion was extremely destructive. There was never an official tally of the dead, but the best estimate put the total Iraqi dead at ~80,000 men, ~40,000 women, and ~32,000 children. Beyond just the death toll however, Iraqi infrastructure was devastated. Sanctions had been put into place in the lead-up to the fighting, but were intensified at the end of the war. The goals of the war had changed: the American-led coalition was willing to use their forces to expel Iraq from Kuwait, but not willing to lead a ground invasion to topple Saddam, so the sanctions were placed as a way to motivate the Iraqi people into rising up and overthrowing him. (we will not go into detail how immediately after the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the US encouraged uprisings, declined to support those uprisings, and stood on the side while Saddam reconstituted his army and then massacred tens of thousands of his own people as a result)
These sanctions were comprehensive, virtually no exports were allowed out of Iraq (including their oil), nor imports allowed into it. In one of the most senselessly cruel examples of how comprehensive these sanctions were, medical journals were not allowed into the country for Iraqi doctors to learn about the latest medical advances. Iraqi infrastructure, without the ability to import materials, could not be repaired. This led to rivers of sewage in the cities, an almost-complete lack of electricity, widespread famine, runaway inflation that collapsed the economy, and a shortage of medical supplies. Rates of childhood leukemia increased 30-fold as a result of burning oil pollution, bombed chemical factories, and use of depleted uranium munitions, and these children virtually all died due to an inability to import the chemotherapy that could have saved them. Unlike a less-developed country, it was also not a matter of simply donating some money to build a water well. Iraq was an advanced, modernized country prior to the war, and the infrastructure facilities (electricity, water, sewage, etc.) were very expensive to fix. All-told, in the 1990s, it is estimated that about 500,000 children died as a result of these sanctions, while the rest of the population lived on the edge of poverty and starvation. Saddam, of course, was not affected by the sanctions and continued to build palaces around the country.
When Saddam expelled the UN nuclear weapons inspectors, accusing them of harboring American intelligence agents laying the groundwork for further air strikes by the Americans, (it would later turn out he was 100% correct, and there were CIA agents in the inspection teams), this precipitated several years of air strikes by the Americans (under the guise of enforcing no-fly zones in Iraq). Air strikes that were ostensibly meant to target the Iraqi military, but resulted in further degradation of Iraqi infrastructure and directly killed many civilians. For years, American maintained this air campaign until it almost became a routine part of life, something that no longer even merited coverage in American news. The event that brought Iraq back into the American consciousness? The 2003 American invasion.
It is clear then, that in the name of attempting to achieve a geopolitical goal: the overthrow of a government hostile to the US, the US would maintain an incredibly inhumane strategy of sanctions and widespread air strikes targeting infrastructure (and civilians) for a decade. Neither the suffering of innocents nor the financial burden of the military’s activity acted as a deterrent in Iraq. If Iran were not able to apply pressure to the global economy through closure of the Strait of Hormuz, it is clear that this likely would have been their fate as well.