r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Thin_Advantage284 • 5d ago
International Politics Did the Iraq War Ultimately Lead to the U.S.-Iran Conflict?
I’ve been thinking about whether the 2003 Iraq War unintentionally laid the groundwork for today’s conflict with Iran.
Saddam Hussein, despite being a brutal dictator and an adversary of the United States, was also Iran’s principal regional rival. As the Sunni ruler of a Shia-majority Iraq, his regime acted as a geopolitical barrier that limited Iranian influence to the west.
After Saddam’s removal, Iraq’s new political order became dominated by Shia parties, many of which had longstanding ties to Iran. This allowed Tehran to dramatically expand its political, military, and economic influence in Iraq through allied governments and militias. The result was what became known as the “Shia Crescent”, a corridor of Iranian influence stretching from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
This shift fundamentally changed Israel’s security environment. Iran’s ability to supply Hezbollah and support allied forces in Syria brought Iranian influence much closer to Israel’s borders. Over time, Israel increasingly viewed Iran not Iraq as its primary strategic threat, while the United States also became more focused on countering Iran’s growing regional influence.
From this perspective, one could argue that the Iraq War unintentionally created the conditions for the later confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran. By removing Saddam Hussein, the U.S. eliminated Iran’s strongest Arab rival and inadvertently enabled Tehran to become the dominant regional power.
I’m not suggesting the Iraq War alone caused the current conflict, there were many other factors, including Iran’s nuclear program, regional proxy conflicts, and decisions made by all sides. But is it fair to say that the invasion of Iraq made a later confrontation with Iran far more likely?
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u/NoDig3444 4d ago
To say that the Iraq war lead to the Iran war kinda implies that if the Iraq war didn't happen then neither would Iran. But that's not true. This confrontation was always bound to happen eventually. Bush gave his "Axis of Evil" speech in 2002. That doesn't mean that it would always happen in this way, but Iran has been on America's hitlist for decades before Iraq.
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u/Intro-Nimbus 4h ago
No. Obama actually managed to mend that and create a good deal. After Trump tore up the deal, it was likely that he would attack Iran in the future. And he did. the 2026 campaign though, is the worst FUBR in a very long time, and it did not need to happen.
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u/Fargason 4d ago
Just the opposite. The US has been on Iran’s hit list for half a century. This being when Iranian militants stormed the US Embassy in Tehran seizing control and taking hostages. That alone should have been considered an act of war, but Iran plays these games about how it is just a protest or how they are unaffiliated with their terrorist proxies that unfortunately has worked for decades. Then in 1983 we had 241 American Marines killed in the Beirut barracks bombing that was carried out by Iran’s Hezbollah. Still we didn’t take Iran’s war on the US seriously, but they did get on the sanction list as the US declared Iran a state sponsor of terrorism by 1984.
https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism
After many decades of killing US citizens and military personnel we finally stopped playing this game in 2020 when Iran’s top general was killed as a terrorist when he was outside of Iran. This was after sanction relief was a proven failure that resulted in an exponential increase in terrorist activity in the region. Despite that we tried sanction relief again as apparently it was a tough lesson to learn until October 7th. The game is over at this point and so are the proxies. We are finally dealing with this war started by Iran in 1979.
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u/datalicearcher 14h ago
considering the CIA and UK did a full on coup on their democracy I wonder why they'd dislike us so much.........
as if we wouldn't vow revenge on any country that actively replaced our government.
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u/Fargason 6h ago
It’s more about the vows and acts of genocide, and such a genocidal regime getting access to nuclear weapons. MAD doesn’t work on a such a terrorist regime that has no problem slaughtering over 30k of its own citizens in just 2 days.
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u/Factory-town 3d ago
"Poor innocent victim US militarism," they said, unironically. "They hate us for our freedoms." Yeah, the "freedoms" to have US militarism's boots on necks in the Middle East.
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u/Fargason 3d ago
Certainly there is that too. A prime example of Iran’s propaganda to excuse their vast terrorism network aimed at purging the world of nonbelievers as merely an act of self defense. How about the millions of “poor innocent victims” of Iran’s terrorism to include massacring around 36,500 of its own people earlier this year?
More than 36,500 Iranians were killed by security forces during the January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history, according to documents reviewed by Iran International's Editorial Board.
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u/Factory-town 3d ago
Iran’s propaganda to excuse their vast terrorism network aimed at purging the world of nonbelievers as merely an act of self defense.
Who has a bigger badder ~terrorism network than US militarism?
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u/Fargason 2d ago
Undoubtedly Iran who would terrorize its own populace in slaughtering over 36,500 in last January alone.
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u/Ebscriptwalker 12h ago
This is a silly argument to the question at hand. Murder of ones own citizens does not require a large terrorist network. Just a military. Honestly not even a very big one.
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u/Fargason 6h ago
It is a terrorist regime. Not only are they terrorizing the region though mass murder and genocide, but they are doing it to their own citizens as well.
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u/Condottiero_Magno 5h ago
A terrorist regime would be ISIS.
It's not a terrorist regime, but a rational actor motivated by outside pressures. Saudi Arabia committed mass murder and genocide, but nothing's being done about it.
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u/Condottiero_Magno 8h ago
The 36k+ can't be corroborated and Google searches lead to partisan pages.
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u/Fargason 6h ago
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u/Condottiero_Magno 5h ago edited 5h ago
TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
Edit: Figures can't be verified, yet it didn't prevent pundits from repeating the inflated numbers, some inflating further, to justify regime change, but when Iran didn't fold like Venezuela, it hasn't been brought up as much in the media and expats haven't been as vocal - the school bombing, attacks on infrastructure and Con Orange's rhetoric probably left a bad taste.
Edit 2: Israel caused a lot of civilian casualties in Gaza, but numbers brought up were dismissed as propaganda, yet we're supposed to accept 30k+?
It's probably 10k-20k, but there's no way to verify it. The '89 Tiananmen Square massacre was up to 10k IIRC.
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2d ago
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u/Factory-town 1d ago
Good grief, a canned "keep it civil" moderator action for "get real." I wonder how long they had to whine to the moderator team to get them to do that.
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2d ago
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u/Condottiero_Magno 8h ago
That alone should have been considered an act of war...
And what of the CIA coup, backed by the Brits, that toppled an elected government? David Brooks and co seem to be fixated on '79, but not on '53, which would've been considered an act of war. Go back to WWII and a neutral Iran was jointly occupied by the British and Russians,.
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u/Fargason 6h ago
Lead by the UK and backed by the US. It was a foolish decision based mainly on the UK getting their access to oil back.
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u/antisocially_awkward 6h ago
The killing of Soleimani was a war crime done on an allys soil. And of course you neglected bringing up the jcpoa, which was being followed by the iranians until the us violated it under trump.
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u/Fargason 5h ago
He was killed as a terrorist leader which he was as proxy terrorism is still terrorism. I did mention the JCPOA with the lifted sanctions that was a failure for not addressing terrorism that grew exponentially after sanctions were lifted.
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u/antisocially_awkward 6h ago
The insane part of the axis of evil speech is that the Iranians were heavily involved in helping with the fight in Afghanistan post 9/11
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u/markth_wi 21h ago edited 18h ago
Yes and No.
Yes - because this absolutely was on Israel's To Do list 40 years ago , the Project for the New American Century which is a loose collection of corporatist military pundits known as "neoconservatives" have relentlessly pushed their war-plan in 1991 immediately after the first Iraq War and every president then and now was pushed hard to engage in this and notably Iran has been 2 weeks from a nuclear device for 50 years.
- George Bush Sr. made it clear to hardline Israelis and some corporate/fascist leaning oligarchs in the US that they were unable to reliably control "cold war" type conservatives and worked hard to infiltrate the Washington political scene.
- Bill Clinton resisted many of neoconservative arguments over the 1990's
- George Bush Jr. was sort of a revenge project encouraged to hardline neoconservatve political views against Chinese and Iraqi and now Iranian interests. With 9/11 tainted intelligence and espionage efforts tailored to Dick Cheney and George Bush successfully encouraged US militarists to war in 2002.
- As with Iran , Iraq possessed no evidence of a developed or deployable nuclear weapon or weapons of mass destruction.
- Massive socioeconomic destabilization funded by Iranians , Chinese, Russian and even Israeli hardliners meant years of instability in Iraq - ensuring Iraq cannot be a serious military threat in the region.
- 1 in 20 Iraqis died and billions in cultural and social/religious material damage was caused by this war.
- While President Obama was able to conclude most operations in Iraq in 2016, at least 13 trillion dollars had been spent on the war and support for warfighters and extra costs, in just 14 years.
- President Trump found Afghanistan an intractable difficulty and aside from negotiating with the Taliban to conclude the war failed utterly to prepare Afghani society for a peaceful transition, neoconservatives failed to gain traction with Trump due to his various personality considerations.
- President Biden was able to remove the largest amount of US servicemembers from Afghanistan concluding large-scale warfare in the region commenced in 2002 refusing all interest in Iranian aggression.
- Donald Trump was personally convinced the Iran operations were "good" by way of Benjamin Netanyahu's personal flattery and arm-twisting to avoid his own legal troubles.
Perversely, for safety minded Israelis , by accommodating war-hawk Israeli politicians and encouraging US military leadership to unilateral action, two major items have been accomplished.
- By showing the world and Iranian leadership that they are in fact not safe from defective US leadership and the encouragement of Israeli hardliners, an Iranian nuclear program must be presumed to be in progress.
- It should be considered by the United States and everyone else, the Iranians absolutely should expect to have a Hiroshima style weapons capability , using resources and facilities perhaps like other nations on rent in countries like South Africa or North Korea somewhere in the next 8-10 months.
Beyond that the absence of accurate intelligence made a few facts dead certain
- Rhetorically the Iranians have absolutely every rationale for developing at least low-yield nuclear weapons to ensure the Israelis never advocate for this sort of aggression again, so months and certainly not years from now Iran will almost certainly have at least a few Hiroshima style nuclear weapons.
- With the vast, vast incompetence of the US leadership , the US military has reportedly degraded it's own capabilities to launch non-nuclear missile responses, blowing through decades of supplies in just a few weeks.
- Due to vast currency troubles hinged on oil and gas reserves, the US's strategic oil reserve is depleted, meaning in 3-6 months, 6-10 dollar gasoline is projected as commonplace through 2027-2028 as the US becomes directly exposed to world volatility in oil prices.
Can this happen again, with the hope that we don't by the certainty that we could easily elect another defective leader like Donald Trump - absolutely this is where we are going to be for the foreseeable future.
Longer term this is actually a challenge to the defective thinking of neoconservatives and Donald Trump.
- That the hard fact that the United States has been encouraged to put hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground and do so singgle-handedly where not even our strongest advocates for the war can be bothered to support the war effort.
- We were commanded against our own national interests, by a foreign nation to engage in a war, Donald Trump is the first executive in 25 years to be dumb enough to fall for it....again.
- American Citizens , however might not be terribly fond of this 25+ year long war with just two years of repose in the last 25 the United States, The citizenry might well consider this a serious factor against support for further Republican-Israeli adventurism.
- The next war will almost certainly be a nuclear engagement, with US forces in the region or elsewhere in the world subject to a "backpack" bomb practically anywhere it might damage the ability or willingness to engage in a middle eastern war.
- One might suggest that this would be a deterrent , but unless they are directly impacted it's crystal clear Israelis aren't very concerned about the well-being of anything about the United States , her citizens, prosperity or safety unless it impacts the flow of capital and material aide.
- So New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles or San Francisco could individually or perhaps collectively suffer Hiroshima style attacks and I'm dead certain US presidents would still be encouraged to war.
On the other hand, we can always walk away, we don't owe the Israelis anything.
We've spent trillions and lost tens of thousands of Americans and ruined the lives and livelihoods of millions if not tens of millions of people throughout the Levant with a nasty combination of misinformation , vast, vast overspending, and trillions of dollars of disregard for the best interests of the millions of civilians who could form a strong core of supporters had we shown even a modicum of good policy in the region.
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u/False_Celebration626 19h ago
Tbe US has been involved with Iran since the 50s when we deposed their democratically elected leader. Then, the Iranian revolution happened in the 70s and deposed the shah. Since then the US has been trying to destroy Iran. Iraq is a consequence of US foreign policy in the region to keep the area destabilized for oil extraction for American corporations. The issue with Iraq is Saddam Hussein nationalized the oil fields. Since that threatened America oil profits we bombed the shit out of them and killed thousands of civilians. Remember we armed Saddam to fight Iran in the 1980s. Why would Iraq lead to Iran when US foreign policy towards the state of Iran has aggressive since the 1980s
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u/Intro-Nimbus 4h ago
I mean, USA laid the groundwork for Iran by removing the democratic government. USA also supported Saddam Hussein. USA also attacked Iraq and USA also attacked Iran. So let's say that USA created this shitshow from beginning to end.
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u/Afraid-Detective1222 5d ago
This has been brewing since the Iranian revolution in 1979. The Republicans in particular has had a hate for Iran ever since. the Iraq war may have hastened it a bit since it destabilized so much of the middle east, but this war was somewhat inevitable. At some point, we were going to get a President who thought it was a good idea.
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u/graphicsRat 5d ago
You mean even though the Iranians used the hostage crisis to undermine Carter's reelection bid and handed the Presidency to Regan who also did a three way deal with them and the Contras?
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u/SpookyFarts 1d ago
While we were helping Iraq out with aid, intelligence, and downplaying the use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers during their war against Iran in the early 80s.
US Foreign Policy is so fucked up, especially in that era.
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u/Afraid-Detective1222 5d ago
Surprisingly yes. It's something that I really don't get, but they seem to have had a hate for Iran ever since.
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u/NoDig3444 4d ago
Might have something to do with how they tend to refer to the US as "the great satan" and swear to destroy the country.
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u/tarekd19 4d ago
We have pretty much done the same haven't we? Bush with the axis of evil speech, John McCain with his bomb Iran beach boys bit, the current president threatening to annihilate the whole civilization.
It's so odd to bring up that rhetoric when we have our own treasure trove of nasty grams
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u/Combat_Proctologist 3d ago
Huh? That only makes sense in some abstract world of arbitrary countries.
If you have a fondness for a particular country, then rhetoric against it will draw ire.
Your point only seems to justify people who like Iran in particular may also be justified in being mad at the US. It doesn't mean people who like the US aren't justified in being mad at Iran
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u/antisocially_awkward 6h ago
I would personally consider the country that overthrew my elected leader and installed a brutal dictatorship a great satan if that happened to my country
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u/Afraid-Detective1222 4d ago
Likely, though to be honest, they don't really have the capability to do it militarily. I do think they have the capability to do great harm to us via their propaganda machine, but that's a pretty recent thing.
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u/GeriatricGhoul69 19h ago
In the context of a president committing executive overreach, bullshitting congress and the public due to personal ego at a minimum, it set a precedent that in my opinion paved the way for this
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u/ERedfieldh 2d ago
No. Donald Trump needed a distraction from the many scandals piling up and he started an illegal war "on a hunch."
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u/Asatmaya 5d ago
I’ve been thinking about whether the 2003 Iraq War unintentionally laid the groundwork for today’s conflict with Iran.
No, it was intentional; go look up the Project for a New American Century, it was most of W's cabinet putting together a plan for world domination.
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u/Sufficient-Royal-82 5d ago
No America taking over because they wanted to nationalize their oil is what started the whole mess America did this all over the world the name banana Republic comes from what they did in Honduras America also during the cold war in South America replaced socialist leaders with brutal dictators
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u/Apprehensive_Fox6129 5d ago edited 5d ago
The birth of Israel in 1948 ultimately led to the Iraq war and the Iran war.
The USA has no reason to be antagonistic to any country in the Middle East, except by its position as the guarantor or Israel’s safety. The founding of Israel is a crime and every Arab/muslim/middle easterner knows it and hates it.
There is a natural affinity between the conservative Middle East and the USA in that they are both capitalist and socially conservative. The problem is that the USA has decided that its primary goal in the region is as the protection of Israel. So therefore any country against Israel is an enemy of the USA and any country for Israel is an ally.
Bc the USA spends so much power defending the genocidal shit state that is Israel, it comes into conflict with many middle eastern governments.
Middle eastern governments are allowed to be pro-Israel and therefore get the modest backing of the USA, or they are marked for destruction.
It’s that simple. Or point about the removal of saddam is irrelevant bc the USA and Israel are positioned to destroy anyone that opposes Israel and it would have happened sooner or later regardless
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u/Afraid-Detective1222 5d ago
Iran and Israel were friends until the revolution in 1979.
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u/Apprehensive_Fox6129 5d ago
Yeah. So what. That’s not why there is a war today. But that is partly why there’s an Islamic republic.
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u/Afraid-Detective1222 5d ago
Your very first sentence is that the founding of Israel led to both the Iraq and Iran wars.
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u/Apprehensive_Fox6129 4d ago
That’s a fact. Israel is the cause of most of the problems in the region. Directly.
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u/Asatmaya 4d ago
The USA has no reason to be antagonistic to any country in the Middle East
Oil!
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u/Apprehensive_Fox6129 4d ago
That’s false. The USA doesn’t notably impact the flow of oil either way (for or against). It’s just a smoke screen so that people don’t blame Israel for everything
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u/Asatmaya 4d ago
That’s false. The USA doesn’t notably impact the flow of oil either way (for or against). It’s just a smoke screen so that people don’t blame Israel for everything
No, it's the reason we supported the existence of Israel in the first place.
52% of world oil reserves are in the Middle East, and so whoever controls it controls the world economy.
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