Preparing for a war 45 years in the making

In the 1970s, Iran began to transform from a dictatorship under U.S.- and U.K.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into a theocracy led initially by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Despite enormous economic growth in the country, religious leaders and followers had felt disenfranchised by the secular turn the government had taken in the almost 40 years of rule by the Shah. This frustration came to a boil on September 8, 1978, with an incident referred to as the Jaleh Square massacre.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi official portraitPhoto byGhazarians

With at least 64 people killed (some estimates take this total to over 100), and many others injured by the Iranian military for protesting the government, the populace of Iran began an uprising. On January 17, 1979, the Shah took flight from Iran in a move mired in controversy. Initially, the move was attributed to the Shah’s health which was said to require treatment available only in the United States. Eventually, it was admitted that he was exiling himself from the country, admitting that his monarchal regime would not survive the uprising that was building.

The contention between the religious leaders in Iran and the United States and Britain began in 1953 with the overthrow of democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had nationalized the British-owned oil industry in Iran, a move supported by Iran’s national parliament. The coup d’etat that returned the Shah to power was carried out by the Iranian military with support from both the U.S. and the U.K.

During his reign, the Shah continued to move the country into secularism against the wishes of religious leaders. Known as the White Revolution, the Shah’s reforms led to demonstrations with Khomeini being one of the loudest voices against the government. The tensions between the Shah and Khomeini continued to grow as Khomeini was arrested twice and exiled from Iran in 1964 due to his protests against the government.

Ayatollah Ruhollah KhomeiniPhoto byWikipedia

The tensions grew to the point that anti-government protests began turning to civil resistance in 1977. A major jump in this came in August 1978 when a fire was set in the Cinema Rex, killing by some estimates almost 500 people. With the fire originally blamed on agents of the government's secret police force, the perpetrators were eventually determined to be Islamic extremist militants seeking to ramp up demonstrations against the government.

This event, particularly with the rumors of having been started by government agents, stirred the anger of the people to the point of revolution. This led to November 4, 1979, considered by many to be one of the darkest days for American-Middle Eastern relations. It was on this day that militants opposed to the Shah stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took it over at the height of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. The 52 Americans held hostage on the embassy compound were finally released on January 20, 1981.

Tensions between the two countries were rising based on the U.S. and U.K. support provided to the Shah through the years.

Just four months before the release of the hostages, Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980. Unlike the Iranian Revolution, this invasion and the subsequent war were based on religious differences as opposed to secular vs. religious rule. The two governments were built on differing sects of Islam, and their differences were much like the Catholics and Protestants of Ireland.

Over the next eight years, the two battled and suffered combined losses estimated to be over $1 trillion. The fact that the U.S. provided an abundance of financial, political, and logistical aid to Iraq only served to further the tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

It was during that eight-year war between Iraq and Iran that U.S. President Ronald Reagan declared Iran to be a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984. By 2022, Iran was considered to have no fewer than 13 proxy groups throughout the Middle East combating the United States and its allies in the region.

Iranian Proxy Organizations sanctioned by U.S. GovernmentPhoto byU.S. Institute of Peace

The spread of the proxy groups covered the entire Middle East, from the Palestinian Territory eastward to Iran, from Yemen in the south to Syria on the Mediterranean Sea. Most were placed such that they surrounded Iran’s archnemesis and the U.S.’s strongest ally in the region, Israel.

In Lebanon and Syria, Iran backs Hezbollah. Syria also plays host to members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian military. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are to be found in the Palestinian Territories, most notably the Gaza region of Israel. Yemen, at the southern end of the Red Sea, is home to Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi.

Considering their reach across the region, Iran either directly or indirectly instructed that action be taken on October 7, 2023. On that day, Hamas led a charge of gunmen into Israel while also firing thousands of rockets across the border. At the end of the day, more than 1,200 people had been killed with an estimated 250 people taken hostage and dragged back to the Gaza Strip.

Israel responded by flooding troops into Gaza to search for and rescue the hostages, as well as to avenge the attack on its people. With Israel focused on the Gaza region and Hamas, Hezbollah began to strike Israel from Southern Lebanon and Western Syria.

Based on the ties of these groups to Iran, and Iran’s hatred for the U.S., some experts are contending that these attacks are the first steps in an attempt by Iran to goad the U.S. into war.

As these steps did not result in a direct engagement by the U.S., Houthi forces in Yemen began attacking and hijacking commercial ships in the Red Sea. To help prevent an escalation of this, U.S. and U.K. warships were deployed to the area and then began coming under fire themselves.

Similarly, a U.S. military base in Jordan was attacked on January 28 by drones from the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. The attack killed three U.S. soldiers and injured 40 others. This group and others backed by Iran have also stepped up attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq.

If this situation continues to escalate, it will result in a war between the U.S. and Iran that has been brewing for the better part of the past 45 years.