Trump’s current war on Iran picks up where a longstanding enmity left off | US-Israel war on Iran

For millions of young Americans, Iran’s sudden explosion on the national political stage and consciousness may seem like a bolt from nowhere.

But to older generations and those with deeper historical awareness, Donald Trump’s announcement Saturday of an attack on a distant enemy sounds more like the outcome of a long-foreshadowed battle.

The codename of the military operation Epic Fury provides a clue. The underlying mutual resentments fueling tensions between the United States and Iran are truly epic, boiling dangerously over nearly half a century and finally escalating into open war.

Iran has occupied a deep place in the American national psyche since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, one of the most significant events of the 20th century; The revolution toppled the pro-Western monarchy of ruler Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and inspired the spread of radical political Islamism, which later generations would become familiar with through acts of terrorism.

But the revolution also brought a more immediate, long-lasting trauma to the American soul that is now bearing bitter fruit.

The militant takeover of the US embassy in Tehran by Islamist revolutionaries in November 1979 put America on par with the defeat in Vietnam on the global stage.

The subsequent 444-day detention of 52 US hostages, who were often paraded around in public blindfolded and subjected to numerous mistreatment, including mock executions, belittled American power and doomed Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Carter’s failed attempt to free the hostages in a quixotic rescue operation ended in disaster in the Iranian desert, resulting in the deaths of eight U.S. soldiers and crystallizing the sense of national denigration.

The otherworldly strangeness of Carter’s nemesis, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the elderly Shiite cleric who became the spiritual leader of the revolution, intensified the sense of alienation that many Americans began to feel as Iran fell under ascetic sharia rule.

Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election, but thanks to Khomeini’s narrow-minded determination to inflict maximum humiliation on a nation he called “the great Satan,” the hostages were held until minutes after he left office the following January and not released until Reagan was sworn in.

This ended the embassy drama, but solidified Iran’s prominent place in US foreign policy decision-making and made its presence felt for years to come.

In the 1980s, Hezbollah, Iran’s recently formed Lebanese Shiite proxy group, began capturing American hostages in Beirut. With diplomatic ties between Washington and Tehran severed in the wake of the embassy crisis, Reagan sent envoys on a secret mission to Iran to appeal to the elusive regime “moderates” in an attempt to secure their release.

The result was a secret deal in which the United States supplied arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages — violating a congressional arms embargo — and the profits were funneled to the Contras, a Nicaraguan rebel group trying to overthrow a Marxist government. This violated an act of Congress.

The Iran-Contra affair scandalized Reagan when it was finally exposed and brought the end of his presidency to a close. While some hostages were released, others were taken, deepening the moral wound between the United States and Iran.

The excruciating human drama of that period—exemplified by wall-to-wall television coverage of the embassy siege, yellow ribbons tied around trees as signs of hope for the hostages, and Carter’s haggard face as he fruitlessly fumbled with phones trying to free them—is unclear to later generations of Americans.

But they may have left an indelible mark on Trump, who, at nearly 80 years old, often criticized Carter as the worst president of the United States and remembers it vividly.

Trump, who is now openly calling for regime change, has reportedly told aides that he wants to be the president who will overthrow the Islamic Republic, a political system openly despised by millions of Iranians who, like their American counterparts, are too young to remember the revolution.

This, together with the regime’s current weakness after the recent mass demonstrations it bloodily repressed and last summer’s US-Israeli attacks on nuclear and military facilities, could lead Trump to think he is pushing an open door.

But there is a reflection of the United States’ deep-seated obsession with Iran.

While many young Iranians have praised America, especially Trump, as a symbol of hope in recent protests, Iran has historical grievances with Washington that go back further than the revolution and could serve as an incentive for those who remain loyal to it.

It is these grievances that have inspired generations of loyal Iranian revolutionaries to chant the following slogans:Marg bar Amrika(Death to America) is a slogan that experienced Iranian analysts describe as a pillar of the regime’s ideology.

Fueling the pain are those of Operation Ajax, a US-British-instigated coup in 1953 that toppled nationalist Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who angered Britain by nationalizing Iran’s oil assets, which then belonged to Britain.

This incident is often remembered as the CIA’s first successful coup – giving it the pleasure of staging more – and solidifying Pahlavi’s power as ruler.

Pahlavi fled the country during the coup he supported, fearing it might fail. When he succeeded, he became more powerful than before and ruled as an absolute ruler with the help of the Savak, the repressive Israeli-trained intelligence agency.

The lesson learned by his opponents, including Khomeini, was that the United States was Pahlavi’s patron and puppet master, and that Pahlavi was imposing a modernization program on a country that most of the more traditionally minded population found foreign.

As a result, the United States replaced Iran’s traditional foreign bogeymen, Britain and Russia, as the chief agents of hateful Western interference in the country’s affairs, whose anger dates back to the 19th century.

Khomeini was exiled in 1964 after denouncing the Shah as a “traitor” for so-called “capitulations” that granted legal immunity to U.S. service workers and their families.

By the 1970s, there were an estimated 50,000 Americans in Iran; most of them were military personnel, as the Shah spent his oil wealth on state-of-the-art weapons that the country did not have the skills to use.

But there was little cultural understanding. When Pahlavi was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (a type of blood cancer) by visiting French doctors in 1974, the diagnosis was kept secret and, in an embarrassing intelligence failure, former CIA director US ambassador Richard Helms was unaware of it.

Reports of Americans and other Westerners committing gross cultural infractions, such as riding motorcycles into historic mosques in Isfahan, one of Iran’s cultural jewels, have further increased the sense of alienation.

Thus, when opposition to the Shah grew into popular street protests in 1978, one of the driving forces was the demand to encourage foreign – especially US – intervention in Iranian politics.

Two generations later, the spirit of revolution once again gripped Iran. But this time, by staging strikes and openly calling for regime change, Trump is openly reinserting U.S. intervention into the heart of a nation that has historically resented foreign influence but found political stability elusive.

In a dynamic opposite to the events of 1978-79, the Shah’s son Reza Pahlavi openly cheered Trump’s intervention is considered “humanitarian” and calls on Iranians to “take back” their country from what many see as a regime of tyrannical theocrats.

US-based Pahlavi, who finds himself in a “unique position” to lead the democratic transition in Iran despite having not been in the country for 48 years, said demonstrators “cavid shah” (Long live the Shah) – a far cry from the slogans “Death to the Shah” that heralded his father’s overthrow.

This is another mirror image; except that this time the Islamic regime, in its determination to retain power, showed a much more brutal willingness to kill demonstrators than the late Shah had in 1978. In other words, regime change may be widely desired but may prove to be illusory.

While his son and those who sing hymns for him gaze with fascination at the reflection of history, they will likely find their vision blurred by the thick smoke.