What History Teaches Us About the Iran War? The outcome of the war is easily foreseen from the lessons of the past
Tue 11:24 am +00:00, 14 Apr 2026
Source: https://www.unz.com/bhua/what-history-teaches-us-about-the-iran-war/
After my last essay in mid-March where I posited the view Iran has already won, I went on a family trip and didn’t spend much time following the day-to-day events in the Persian Gulf.
It seems there has been a stream of unhinged rhetorics from Trump, the Mafioso thug with a spray tan. Also some underwhelming demo of US military hardware which I plan to dig into in a future piece. But for the most part, the war moved on a predictable trajectory.
During the trip, I read a few old books and watched some archived interviews to research the history of Iran and find answers to the question why the war is shaping up the way it is and how the US regime has failed to learn from its past mistakes.
The books are Iran: 4,000 Years of History (Iran une histoire de 4000 ans) by Houshang Nahavandi (former president of the Shiraz University and University of Tehran) and Yves Bomati (a French scholar of Middle Eastern history);
All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and Roots of Middle Eastern Terror by Stephen Kinzer, an investigative reporter and astute chronicler of CIA and the US deep state. His other books include The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Alan Dulles, and Their Secret World War; Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq; and Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons from Vietnam by Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense for the Vietnam War under JFK and LBJ.
I also reread parts of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Strategic Vision and The Grand Chessboard on his analysis of Iran’s strategic importance and pivotal role in the emerging new world order.
Brzezinski was the former National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter. I wrote about his strategic thinkings on China, Russia, and Iran in an essay a year ago. https://huabinoliver.substack.com/p/zbigniew-brzezinskis-take-on-russia
The archived video is a collection of Charlie Rose interviews during 2005 and 2012 with Brzezinski
The books and video are a lot more helpful to understand the war and its trajectory than the ignorant “talking heads” on western TV or social media.
Nahavandi and Bomati’s Iran: 4,000 Years of History was published in 2019 in French and translated into Chinese.
This is a comprehensive history of Iran that seeks to answer: “Why is Iran what it is today?”
The two authors employ a dual-viewpoint approach that balances Eastern and Western perspectives, creating complementary descriptions of Persian history over the past four millenniums.
The book starts with the formation of the political and cultural region in the Elamite civilization, Aryan migration, the Achaemenid Empire (Cyrus the Great), Alexander’s conquest, the Parthian and Sassanian Empires.
It describes the Clash of Civilizations with Arab invasion and Islamization, Turkic rule, and the Mongol “catastrophe”, followed by the Golden Age of the Safavid dynasty, establishment of the first Shiite state, and governance of Shah Abbas.
The book writes about Iran facing the challenge of modernization during the Qajar dynasty and ends with Reza Shah’s abdication in 1941.
Iran: 4,000 Years of History traces six civilizations that alternated and collided on Iranian soil: the Elamite civilization, the Persian civilization (established by Aryans, founded by Cyrus the Great), the Greek civilization (brought by Alexander’s eastern campaign), the Arab civilization (Islamization), the Turkic civilization (Seljuk and other dynasties), and the Mongol civilization (rule by Genghis Khan’s descendants).
It records Iran’s ancient glory during the rule by Cyrus the Great (6th century BCE), who established the first empire in human history spanning three continents (Europe, Asia, Africa) and the long confrontation with the Roman Empire by the Sassanian Empire. Adrian Goldsworthy’s Rome and Persia: The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry is on my reading list for the future.
Iran’s turning points came in the Medieval time with the 7th century Arab invasion which began Iran’s Islamization and the 13th century Mongol conquest by Hulagu Khan’s western campaign.
The invasion by foreign forces caused massive destruction yet Persian culture was not eradicated—instead, it “Iranianized” Islam and the Mongols.
The Safavid dynasty (16th-18th centuries) established the first Shiite state, reached golden age under Shah Abbas I and made Isfahan the capital. The Qajar dynasty (18th-20th centuries) rebuilt the empire.
The book did not explore the modern transformation of Iran post 1941 and did not cover the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh by the CIA and MI6, the brutal rule of Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, or the 1979 Islamic Revolution that established the theocratic republic that rules today.
That part of Iran’s modern history is covered in Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men, which we’ll turn to shortly.
The central contention of the book Iran: 4,000 Years of History is the tenacity of “Iranianness” and the resilience of the Persian civilization.
Despite multiple conquests by Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols, the Persian people remained the protagonists of history; the conquerors were instead assimilated into Iranian culture.
The book also argues that geography determines destiny. Iran’s location on the “Eurasian land bridge” and “East-West aerial corridor” made it a contested ground since ancient times, shaping a history of both turbulence and resilience.
The book also emphasizes the entanglement of religion and politics is a time-honored feature of Iran. From Zoroastrianism to Shiite Islam, religion has always been a core variable in Iranian politics, as we can see today.
Put in the context of Iran’s 4,000-year history, the US Israel invasion is merely the latest foreign incursion into this geostrategic region.
It is also a strange clash of civilization/religion in modern times, which most of the world thought we have moved past. On one side is the Persian Civilization and Islamic faith; on the other side is the Zionist Judaism and New Evangelical Crusaders (Christian Zionists) embodied by the tattoo-covered US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.
True to history, the Iranians have shown their traditional resilience and fortitude in the battle against foreign invaders.
In fact, Saddam Hussein’s attack on Iran in the 1980s, supported by the US, was far bloodier than the current USrael invasion. In that war, the Iranians held their ground and prevailed after heavy losses.
History is repeating itself.
* A sidenote – when talking about the Iran-Iraq war, Henry Kissinger cynically remarked of the two sides: “It’s a pity they both can’t lose”.
In All the Shah’s Men, Stephen Kinzer chronicles the 1953 CIA-led coup in Iran that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
This pivotal event, orchestrated by the US and UK, ended Iran’s brief experiment with democracy and planted the seeds for future Middle Eastern chaos and the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Today’s war is the fruit of that poisoned tree.
The tension began when Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP), which was then controlled by Britain. The British, refusing to share profits equitably, responded with an economic embargo and successfully persuaded the US that Mossadegh was a pro-communist threat, which he was not. Mossadegh was in fact a classic moderate nationalist like Nasser or Nehru.
Led by agent Kermit Roosevelt, a distant cousin of FDR, the CIA and MI6 launched Operation Ajax that used bribes, staged riots, and propaganda to create chaos, ultimately leading to Mossadegh’s arrest and the restoration of Mohammad Reza Shah to power.
The coup established a 25-year period of repressive rule under the Shah, enforced by his secret police, SAVAK. Kinzer details how this tyranny eventually sparked the 1979 Revolution, turning Iran into a fundamentalist state hostile to the West.
The 1953 coup was described by Kinzer as the “first modern CIA coup,” serving as a blueprint for later US interventions in Guatemala, Chile, Vietnam and elsewhere.
The so-called “color revolutions” that the West sponsors across the world today trace their lineage to the overthrow of Mossadegh. The “color revolutions” are nothing but neo-colonial ploys to establish vassals and clients for western interests.
Kinzer draws a direct line from the destruction of Iranian democracy to modern anti-Americanism, the US hostage crisis, and even the rise of extremist groups like the Taliban.
From these two books, we can surmise the historical roots of Iran’s war strategy against the US and Israel –
1. The “Siege Mentality” and strategic culture
Iran’s approach to conflict is deeply shaped by a “grand strategy of resistance” rooted in historical trauma.
This mentality has two key historical sources: the ancient imperial legacy and the traumatic Iran-Iraq war (1980 – 1988).
As the book Iran: 4,000 Years of History documents, Iran was the center of vast empires (Achaemenid, Parthian, Sassanian) that repeatedly faced invasions from Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Despite conquests, Persian culture assimilated the conquerors, creating a resilient “Iranianness” that persists today.
The eight-year Iran-Iraq conflict, which began immediately after the 1979 Revolution, killed hundreds of thousands and consumed two-thirds of Iran’s national income by 1988. This created a “sacred defense” narrative and institutionalized a military culture focused on endurance and asymmetric warfare.
The result is what Iranian officials described as “calculated and pragmatic” policies aimed at “outlasting and exhausting America” rather than seeking quick victories.
2. The 1979 Revolution and ideological framing
The Islamic Revolution fundamentally transformed Iran’s strategic behavior by introducing an anti-Western ideology.
Khomeini’s revolution replaced a pro-Western monarchy with a theocratic republic that explicitly identified the US as “the Great Satan” and Israel as an illegitimate occupier as a direct reaction to:
- The 1953 CIA-British coup that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh
- US support for the Shah’s authoritarian regime and his brutal secret police (SAVAK)
- The 1979 Hostage Crisis, which severed diplomatic relations and began decades of cold war
3. The “Axis of Resistance” strategy
Iran’s historical experience as a crossroads civilization (the “Eurasian land bridge”) taught it that direct conflict with superior powers is suicidal.
Instead, Iran has built a network of proxies reflecting ancient Persian diplomatic traditions, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite Militias in Iraq/Syria. These proxies provide Iran with buffer space and multiple points of leverage against its opponents.
4. Strategic independence
Iran has long held a “No East, No West” Doctrine. This reflects Iran’s historical position between competing empires (Roman/Parthian, British/Russian, US/Soviet).
Today, Iran maintains ties with Russia and China while maintaining an independent posture, demonstrating continuity with its non-alignment tradition. This pillar of strategy may become less tenable as reconciliation with the West seems out of the question for now.
5. Cultural psychology of conflict
The book Iran: 4,000 Years of History emphasizes that “conquerors were instead assimilated into Iranian culture”. This creates a unique strategic psychology:
- Long-term thinking: Persian civilization measures time in millennia, not election cycles. As one Iranian official noted, they are prepared to “outlast” American hegemony.
- Humiliation and prestige: The 1953 coup and Western support for the Shah created a national narrative of violated sovereignty that fuels anti-Americanism across political factions.
- Martyrdom culture: The Iran-Iraq War institutionalized the cult of martyrdom (shahada), making sacrifice a legitimate strategic tool – visible today in the willingness to absorb heavy casualties.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a grand master of US imperial strategy in the Cold War, put forward some of the most insightful analysis for us to understand the fallacy of Trump’s war of choice on Iran.
In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski identified Iran as one of the “critically important geopolitical pivots” in what he called the “Eurasian Balkans”—a region of power vacuum and power suction stretching from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf.
Brzezinski wrote “Iran dominates the eastern shoreline of the Persian Gulf, while its independence, irrespective of current Iranian hostility toward the United States, acts as a barrier to any long-term Russian threat to American interests in the Persian Gulf region.”
Back in 1997, Iran was simultaneously a threat to US interests and a geopolitical buffer against Russian expansion.
Brzezinski never thought that US policy makers would be so unwise as to push Iran toward Russia that directly contradicts US strategic interest, against any strategic logic.
Of course, he never anticipated Jewish interests would completely hijack US foreign policy to the extent today through bribery (political donations) and blackmail (Epstein Files).
Brzezinski’s most prescient warning appears in The Grand Chessboard, “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘antihegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances… Averting this contingency… will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”
Fast forward 30 years, the current reality is –
- China and Russia have formed a “no limits partnership”
- Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2022
- The three countries conduct regular joint naval exercises in the Persian Gulf
- Iran supplies drones to Russia for the Ukraine war
- China and Russia provide diplomatic, materiel, and intelligence support for Iran in its war against the US and Israel
Brzezinski’s warning has materialized. One high-profile Chinese commentator noted, “Trump’s war against Iran may be the stupidest strategic mistake in American history” because it accelerates this anti-hegemonic coalition.
In a 2012 interview about his book Strategic Vision on the Charlie Rose show, Brzezinski directly addressed Iran’s nuclear program:
“There is nothing in Iranian conduct to suggest that Iran would immediately attempt to commit suicide by launching a nuclear attack on Israel or some other Middle Eastern state… We have adopted such a position regarding Japan and South Korea, in response to a potential nuclear threat from North Korea. We avoided a showdown with China when China was acquiring nuclear weapons, and we managed to maintain stable deterrence in our difficult relationship with the Soviet Union.”
He advocated deterrence over preventive war, arguing that starting a war to prevent nuclear acquisition “will certainly plunge the region into protracted and unpredictable hostilities”.
This contrasts sharply with current Israeli and US strategy of regime change through assassination and unprovoked war – exactly the kind of escalation Brzezinski warned against.
In Strategic Vision, Brzezinski diagnosed the fundamental problem facing the US: “By 2025, the US could lose its position as the world’s dominant power, leading to a more chaotic and conflict-ridden international system”. For all his foresight, he skipped forecasting the US itself would be the source of global chaos and conflicts.
Back in 2012, Brzezinski attributed the potential decline to US militarism (wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), unilateralism (vastly worsened under Trump), the 2008 financial crisis, and polarized domestic politics (also vastly worsened since then).
He noted, “Unless we overcome the currently paralyzing divisions within our own society… the United States will find it difficult to set its house in order and to play a constructive world role”. How prescient…
Ironically, Brzezinski’s greatest failure as National Security Advisor (1977-1981) was Iran itself—the 1979 Revolution and hostage crisis.
This personal history informs Strategic Vision‘s caution. US intelligence failed to predict the 1979 Revolution and the fall of the Shah, relying on the Shah’s security services for information.
In a repeat of history, in 2026, Trump badly judged how the war would progress based on the information fed to him by Mossad. He is most likely also blackmailed by Israel to go into war.
Brzezinski pushed for admitting the Shah to the US for medical treatment, triggering the embassy seizure and the hostage crisis.
Subsequently, the failed rescue mission (Operation Eagle Claw) killed 8 US servicemen, humiliated Carter, and led directly to his losing the election to Ronald Reagan.
These failures taught Brzezinski that military solutions to Iranian problems are usually catastrophic. His later advocacy for engagement and deterrence reflects this hard-won wisdom – wisdom ignored by US policymakers.
In fact, successive US administrations since 2012 have pursued the polar opposite of Brzezinski’s recommendations:
– Instead of deterrence, not preventive war, Biden supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Trump have signed on to Israel’s maximalist war goals and assassination plots
– Rather than preventing China-Russia-Iran alignment, US sanctions and hostilities toward all three have pushed Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran closer, despite the lack of any ideological alignments beyond anti-US hegemony
– Instead of maintaining “geopolitical skill” on all Eurasian fronts, the US has overreached and is provoking a three-front confrontation in Ukraine, Iran, and Taiwan
– Instead of multilateral engagements, the US has pursued an aggressive unilateral “America First” policy and an even deeper “Israel first” posture in its Middle Eastern policies
– Rather than addressing domestic polarization to project strength, the deepening internal political divisions has led to erratic foreign adventures
In the end, Brzezinski’s warnings are unheeded. The current crisis validates his prophecy and suggests that without a course correction, the “strategic vision” of American decline will become self-fulfilling.
One of Brzezinski’s most prophetic concepts in the book is the “global political awakening”.
He argues that for the first time in history, the entire world’s population is politically conscious and reachable through the press and social media.
This means that traditional “imperial” maneuvers (like the 1953 coup in All the Shah’s Men) are no longer possible because the local population will inevitably resist and mobilize against the imperialists and neo-colonialism.
We are seeing this clearly in the Iran war. Despite the mass protests of economic hardship and corruption, the Iranian population has rallied around the flag and resisted capitulation under intense US and Israel bombing rampage.
Brzezinski posited that Iran prefers a balance between East and West. However, by using military force in 2026, the West effectively forced Tehran to abandon that balance and seek a “security guarantee” from Beijing and Moscow, fulfilling Brzezinski’s nightmare of a unified, anti-Western Eurasian bloc.
As the US wages war on Iran, China is following Brzezinski’s predicted script: keeping a low profile while securing long-term energy contracts and security arrangements in the Persian Gulf.
China’s deepening involvement in Iranian oil infrastructure (like the Alborz platform) is the physical manifestation of the “Eurasian integration” Brzezinski was worried about.
China is turning Iran from a “geopolitical pivot” into a “Chinese bridgehead.”
China also gains from American exhaustion. The depletion of US arsenal further weakens its position along China’s shores.
Brzezinski specifically used the year 2025 as the tipping point in his book. He argued that if by this time the U.S. had not revitalized its domestic economy and fixed its “ignorant garrison-state mentality,” it would lose its role as the global arbiter.
Reading this today, the current conflict looks less like a localized war and more like the “post-America scramble” he predicted – a chaotic period where regional powers like Iran and global powers like China test the crumbling foundations of the old world order that favors the US and its vassals.
The history of Western intervention in the Middle East is often read as a series of disconnected geopolitical crises. However, when one overlays the “original sin” of the 1953 Iranian coup (as detailed in Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men) with the late-life confessions of Robert McNamara in In Retrospect, a hauntingly consistent architecture of failure emerges.
McNamara’s 1995 admission of the “terrible mistakes” made during the Vietnam War provides more than just an apology. It offers a diagnostic toolkit for understanding why the “wars of choice” in the Middle East – specifically the escalating conflict with Iran in 2026 – seem destined to follow a tragic, circular path.
McNamara’s most profound lesson was the failure of empathy. In Vietnam, the United States viewed Ho Chi Minh through the rigid lens of the Cold War, seeing him as a pawn of a monolithic Soviet expansion.
They failed to recognize Ho Chi Minh as a nationalist leader whose primary driver was the independence of his people from colonial and foreign rule.
The parallel with Iran is stark. Western narrative frequently categorizes the Islamic Republic as a purely ideological expansionist power.
However, through the lens of All the Shah’s Men, we see a country whose strategic DNA was rewritten by the 1953 CIA-backed overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh.
For Tehran, modern defiance is not merely “terrorism” or “aggression”; it is a “Forward Defense” strategy designed to prevent a repeat of 1953.
By failing to “empathize with the enemy” – a core McNamara learning – Western powers miscalculate how Iran reacts to pressure.
Where Washington sees “deterrence” through sanctions and air strikes, Tehran sees an existential threat to sovereignty that demands escalation rather than submission.
A central theme in McNamara’s career was his reliance on quantitative analysis. As a “Whiz Kid” (a reference about his career at Ford Motors and as a war planner in WW2), McNamara believed that if you could measure the war – through body counts, sortie rates, and tonnage dropped – you could manage it.
He later realized that “you cannot quantify the human spirit” or the political legitimacy of a regime.
In the 2026 conflict with Iran, this “McNamara Fallacy” has returned with a vengeance. The current “war of choice” is often presented through the metrics of “degraded capabilities” by Trump and his acolytes – the number of centrifuges destroyed, the percentage of drone manufacturing sites neutralized, or the number of naval assets sunk.
Yet, as McNamara learned in the jungles of Vietnam, technical efficiency is not a substitute for political victory. Just as the North Vietnamese “will to resist” outlasted American hardware, the Iranian regime’s domestic survival and its network of proxies (the “Axis of Resistance”) operate on a political and religious frequency that is immune to precision-guided munitions.
McNamara admitted that the Johnson administration was “blinded by the Domino Theory” – the belief that the fall of South Vietnam would lead to a communist takeover of all Asia. This oversimplification led the U.S. into a war that was strategically unnecessary for its own survival.
Today, a new Domino Theory governs Middle Eastern policy. It posits that a “regime change” or the total neutralization of Iran will lead to a democratic domino effect across the region, or conversely, that any Iranian influence creates a “Shia Crescent” that will inevitably topple Western allies.
This rigid binary ignores the complex tribal, sectarian, and local grievances that define the Middle East.
By treating Iran as the single “pillar” that must be pulled down, Western strategy risks the “Samson Option” in a metaphorical sense: pulling down the pillars of regional stability and being crushed in the ensuing collapse.
One of McNamara’s most bitter regrets was the lack of an exit strategy and the failure to be honest with the American public.
Vietnam began as a limited advisory mission and ballooned into a half-million-man ground war because the administration refused to admit that the original objectives were unachievable.
The current conflict with Iran shows signs of this same “mission creep.” What began as a campaign to ensure nuclear non-proliferation has, in 2026, expanded into a war aimed at “regime change” and destruction of Iran as a nation state (“back to the Stone Age”).
As objectives shift from nuclear containment to missile defense to proxy dismantling, the timeline for “victory” becomes indefinite.
McNamara notes that once a “war of choice” begins, the political cost of admitting failure becomes higher than the human cost of continuing the conflict.
This leads to what he called “the middle path” – incremental escalation that is enough to stay in the war, but never enough to win it, ensuring a quagmire.
With the failure of the Islamabad negotiations, the chance of a quagmire has increased exponentially. We will very likely witness a renewed hostility and escalation as McNamara warned.
One particularly alarming aspect of the Vietnam war in In Retrospect, McNamara pointed out that the risk of nuclear war during the 1960s was much higher than the public realized.
In the modern Middle East, the interaction between Iran’s pursuit of “strategic depth” and Israel’s “Samson Option” (nuclear war if Israel perceives an existential challenge) creates a hair-trigger environment.
If the US follows the McNamara path of “rational” escalation without cultural empathy, they risk pushing the Iranian regime to a point where it feels it has nothing left to lose.
In such a scenario, the “Samson Option” – the willingness to destroy the temple to take down one’s enemies – moves from a theoretical doctrine to a terrifying reality.
McNamara’s late-life plea was for “nuclear abolition” and “de-escalation,” recognizing that in a world of technical perfection and human fallibility, the odds eventually run out.
Reading All the Shah’s Men, Strategic Vision, and In Retrospect in 2026 feels like reading a manual for a crash that is already in progress.
The “wars of choice” in the Middle East are being fought with 21st-century technology but 20th-century mistakes.
We learn that history is not a straight line, but a cycle driven by hubris and the measurement of the wrong variables.
McNamara’s tragedy was that he realized his errors thirty years too late. It seems the US is destined to relearn the lessons of Vietnam all over again in the sands of the Middle East.
