Trouble in Iran

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Sometimes history rhymes, sometimes it replicates itself to a near exactitude, and sometimes it repeats in the same geographical area but with updates - with modern patches. There are a handful of spots on the earth where conflict has been close to constant ever since ancient times. The Balkans spring to mind. Poland has an extremely sad and violent past. Afghanistan has known less peace than average over the millennia. But the land we currently call Iran has never really ceased being a crucible for conflict.

Persia, as it was known before 1935, has been the theatre of war more times than is practical to mention. Along with her feared and loathed sister to the west, the land between the two great rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates, Mesopotamia, they have been plagued by the strife of men ever since we began recording the events of our human civilisation.

To cherry-pick just a few of the big-hitters, there’s Cyrus The Great casting the shadow of his hand over the land, there’s Darius, Xerxes, Alexander, Seleucus, the Assyrians, the Medes, the Elamites, the Parthians, the Islamic hordes, the Mongolian hordes, the list goes on.

The twentieth century certainly did not spare this land the ravages of its turmoil. Again and again, it was manipulated and used as if it were little more than a playing piece in the greater game of politics and power - BP and the CIA, I’m looking at you... In 1979, however, the king of Persia, The Shah, was deposed and replaced by an Islamic republic, headed by a supreme Shi‘ite Ayatollah.

Ever since, Iran has proved to be something of a sticky wicket on the international stage. She has few natural allies. The logical antagonism she feels towards the West is largely reciprocated, and the vast majority of the Islamic world view the Shia branch of the faith as outright heresy. Only shaky and highly conditional relationships exist with Russia, and to a lesser degree China, as these larger powers calculate that supporting Iran is somehow strategically in their interests.

Yet it is Iran’s relationship with Israel that draws my attention. For though the Western mainstream media will very rarely mention it, Israel is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from manufacturing nuclear weapons. It seems to be a hill upon which they are prepared to die. A line in the sand. A commitment they view as bound up with their very existence.

The murders of Iranian nuclear physicists by Israeli intelligence services is a fairly common thing. A semi-secret war against Iran’s technical ability to enrich uranium and perfect a device for delivery is going on and has been going on for many years. It isn’t just Israel that has a dog in this fight. Many nations in the region would be mortified to awake one morning, only to discover Iran could turn their capitals to glass in an instant. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to name but one.

What odd bed-fellows Israel and the Saudis make. What strange partners, hitched by their shared distaste for Shia fundamentalism. And yet it isn’t so incredible to imagine a coalition of the willing – to borrow the phrase – of those around Iran that would like to see her crippled or destroyed. Again, it is not so incredible to imagine a gigantic night sortie of dozens, or even hundreds of Israeli fighter planes, one dark and moonless night, not too long from now, swooping in and bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. The ones not buried deep inside mountains, that is.

Based on historical precedent, Israel has never failed to act when it felt its survival was on the line. I see nothing in today’s political landscape that would change that. Particularly in light of Biden’s extreme coldness towards Jerusalem and his state department’s increased warmth towards Tehran. Israeli news, if you care to watch it, is increasingly hawkish. Talk abounds of America’s betrayal and the urgent need to safeguard themselves against being rolled into the sea.

Iran’s proxy wars against her myriad enemies may be coming to a head. But it is with the eyes of an amateur historian that I look upon this latest round of trouble in the east. Just as I find it astounding that the wars during my life have largely played out in the same places that Cyrus and Seleucus fought; places like Nineveh or Babylon. To see British and American tank divisions storm across the same deserts that hosted Hulagu Khan or Timur is quite remarkable.

I wonder now if the scream of fighter jets will roughly mirror parts of Alexander’s campaign trail when he struck deep into Persian territory; the Zagros mountains, the Gedrosian wastes. Probably there will be multiple incursion points, targeting Bushehr in the south, Isfahan and Natanz more north. I wonder if Persia and its endless dance with war will serve us up a fresh portion of history repeating.