The Iran War in Perspective
The Khomeinists have not abandoned their aggressive goals
(Mourners accompany the body of deceased ‘supreme leader’ ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran on Monday, July 6th, 2026)
It’s difficult to assess the war with Iran without a broader perspective.
Many believe this conflict began on February 28th, when the US and Israel launched a major air campaign to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment and nuclear weapon programmes, ballistic missile and other military capabilities.
Some recall the twelve-day war last summer (June 13th to 25th, 2025) when Israel hit targets across Iran. They also recall Trump’s January 3rd, 2020 drone strike near Baghdad international airport that killed major general Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Some believe Iran’s aggression began when Trump exited the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018 — or when Obama negotiated it back in 2015.
But to understand this year’s phase of the war we need to look much further back.
Iran’s war actually began in 1978-79 with the revolution itself.
First, it targeted Iranians themselves.
For eight years, it was directed against Iraq.
Iran’s Khomeinists intervened in Lebanon’s civil war to counter US and Saudi influence and build Hezbollah into the proxy threat to Israel it remains.
After the misguided US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran exploited chaos there, then later in Syria and Yemen, to build more proxy armies. This gave their axis real teeth.
After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 — at Ariel Sharon’s initiative, but also at the urging of the US and its allies — Iran made Hamas a formidable military machine co-located within hospitals and schools, embedded in densely populated civilian areas, supported by a massive tunnel network, camouflaged by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), funded by Iranian, Qatari and other foreign donors.
For decades, Israeli leaders warned about these threats.
They only acted decisively to end them after the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attacks.
But Iran has been the main threat to Israel since 1979.
