History does not repeat itself, key characters have passed on, situations evolve, but the present does sometimes resemble aspects of what has gone before.
Certainly, regarding Western intervention in the Muslim world, events of the recent past seem to echo still today. The Iraq War is a case in point, but there are other examples.
The plight of women under the Taliban, and 9/11, were both cited in favor of Western intervention into Afghanistan. It did not end well. Two decades of bloody occupation ended and the Taliban returned to power.
In Libya, the pretext was to defend protesters from a violent crackdown by the regime. Civil war ensued, which jihadists opportunistically exploited, and today two rival governments are battling it out.
This contrasts with the hesitation over Ukraine, where a clear case of a European country being invaded elicited a response from the West that, to put it mildly, was less than persuasive.
Iran has a population nearly four times that of Iraq at the time of the 2003 invasion. Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Lurs, Arabs and Turkmen make up its kaleidoscopic population. A corrupt theocracy reigns brutally, but the regime, and this is not understood adequately in Western capitals, has an entrenched support base.
Ultra-conservative candidates can still depend on garnering millions of votes. This does not in any way excuse its excesses but it does give the regime a thin veneer of legitimacy.
At the very least, it is not a government imposed by outside powers.
And Iran has seen Western intervention before. The CIA and MI6 destroyed Mohammed Mossadeq’s democratically elected government in a coup in 1953.
He committed the unforgivable act of demanding a better price from major oil companies for Iran’s precious resource. Such impertinence could not be tolerated by the oil giants.
The Americans called his removal Operation Ajax, (the British chose a more pertinent title, Operation Boot). In World War II, Britain staged a joint invasion of Iran with Soviet forces when the Shah’s father got a bit too close to the Nazis in 1941.
The Iranians have learned from their relations with the West. And they understand it much better than we understand – or bother to understand – them. They remember, for instance, the Algiers Agreement of 1975 that made the Shah the policeman in the Gulf. This title was later passed on to a certain Saddam Hussein who, in another event barely recalled in the West but of supreme relevance in Iran, invaded the country in 1980.
Let there be no doubt, few will mourn the demise of the theocratic regime in Tehran. Brutality and incompetence are their hallmarks. But the Shah’s regime, with its Savak secret police, was hardly popular with the Iranian people.
This Shah’s failure to understand his people was exemplified by extravagant nonsense at Persepolis in 1971, where at a cost of millions of dollars, he hosted a party for global leaders that suggested a link to the legendary Darius, who reigned circa 500 BCE.
In one incredible scene from that event, the Shah tries to communicate with Darius in the hope of establishing a line of divine communication.
But a rampant, uncontrolled imagination is not confined to the Shah. Like George W. Bush, President Donald Trump has made himself a hostage to his own mind play.
Last year, he claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s missile program when it was abundantly clear he had failed.
He confirmed this himself when he said in his recent State of the Union address that Tehran’s ballistic missiles could “soon” reach US territory. This fib is straight from the 2003 playbook of false US and UK claims about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
The “pre-emptive” strike claim by Israel as justification for its attack on Iran is rooted in propaganda. There is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that Iran was about to attack or had the capability to carry out such an attack.
Too much about this Iran situation resembles 2003. And yet when a country is threatened, is invaded, as Ukraine was, the Trump White House is unwilling to meet the challenge. Real events take second place to wishful thinking.
In one important area, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was better defined than the attack on Iran. There was no doubt then that regime change was the prime objective. There is a lingering fog of doubt over what comes next in Iran.
There is more than just a growing suspicion that the Iran attack might have more to do with creating conditions where the mid-term elections in November could be postponed.
In May 2003, Bush prematurely declared “mission accomplished.’’
Trump can never say this: No one knows what, precisely, the mission is.
The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.