Iranian War Is Not The Same As Iraq

[HappyFace2025]

Some people seem to think the current war equates to the one in Iraq in the 2000s. It manifestly is not the same.
While Saddam treated Iraqis appallingly as the Islamic Republic has done to Iranians, Iran has been exporting terror throughout the Middle East via its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and Houtis, as well as elsewhere including the UK, where 20 terrorist attacks were foiled last year (announced yesterday.)

Completely agree. People are incredibly naive, at best, about the nature and reach of the Iranian regime.

I agree with you @HappyFace2025

There is a similarity in that the US want to prevent Iran developing weapons of mass destruction.

Apart from that, completely different scenarios.

Oh the delicious irony. We went to war in Iraq to stop them deploying their Weapons of Mass Destruction remember?

So?

So not really that different at all.

I think there are several similarities.

Iran under the theocracy and Iraq under Saddam Hussein are both brutal regimes.

The US has pretended to be concerned for the citizens of the country but there are other reasons for the attacks.

Danger of destabilisation in the wider Middle East.

No planning for what happens if/when the regime falls. In Iraq, that left a power vacuum which led to the rise of Isis.

That’s why I said there is “a similarity”.

But there are also many differences. The Iranian regime is destabilising the whole region by funding & using their proxies Hamas, Hezbollah & the Houthis to cause perpetual trouble in various regions across the ME.

How is it a delicious irony that I acknowledged there is one big similarity but many differences?

It’s too simplistic to say that this war is just the same as the Iraq war, it isn’t.

I think people think that Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, Yemen are all separate spaces, so when the USA or Israel launch attacks there it looks chaotic. It’s not separate though, these are all part of the same conflict with Iran as the backer. Also Syria under assad.

The point is if the IRCG falls you will eventually see stabilisation in the region. Funding cut off to Hamas, Hezbollah, houthis, militias in Iraq should actually see a reduction in violence in the long term

You are already starting to see the effects in Lebanon. Hezbollah fired at Israel because they are stupid, Israel responded and the Lebanese prime minister has told them they need to hand over their weapons and to sit down and shut up. There are pro-hezb accounts on twitter bemoaning Hezbollah’s behaviour. They have already been clearing weapons out of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon. They have the chance to be a normal country soon hopefully.

Cutting off China from Iranian oil will make everyone safer frankly and hopefully Ukrainians will stop being bombed with shaheed drones at some point.

Also Iranians are not Iraqis, there isn’t the same tribal sentiments, they aren’t arabs. It’s an entirely different country. Yes there are multiple ethnicities and no doubt some will agitate for independence movements.

Fundamentally in my view if you believe that Palestinians should have a state that is run for their own benefit and freedom to behave as a normal country (which I do, even if they keep kicking themselves in the ass) then you should wish that for Iranians too.

People who oppose this action either don’t understand whats going on, have a third worldist view so can’t identify the IRCG as imperialists or oppressors (which astounds me), are so anti war that they would have let numerous peoples around the world be massacred so they could feel smug or do understand and feel sad at the idea that a bunch of terror groups are about to get their funding massively diminished.

Any war will have several different motivations not just one. And the Middle East was already destabilised largely due to Iran and their proxies.

People talk about plans for after the war - how do we know what plans may or may not be in place after the war? Did Britain have a plan for after the war when they went to war with Germany? Maybe they did I don’t know - or maybe they just felt the Nazi regime had to fall.

Seems to me one person on the internet says, what’s the plan for afterwards? And everyone repeats it.

I think the Iraq war fried a lot of peoples brains tbh. It’s the only war many people can actually reference so they fall back to that a lot.

They particularly fall back to it if they have an anti Western mindset which many seem to have these days - even Westerners.

Also the way Iran is lobbing ballistic missiles and drones at neighbouring countries who absolutely did not take part in the action against them and wouldn’t allow their soil to be used tells you a lot about the IRCG and no it’s not just US bases, it’s hotels, apartment buildings, airports, civilian infrastructure.

I think you'll find that Iraq also did quite a lot to destabilise the region if you check your notes.

But the big similarity here is the pressure for the UK to blindly follow the US into some half baked military conflict to destroy weapons that dont exist with no plan for what comes next. A military conflict started by the US for reasons quite different from the ones being presented.

Let's hope they're are no unintended consequences this time eh? And that the Iranians aren't required to pay such a high price as the people of Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Libya.

Oh but yes, Trump has a well planned approach, he said it the other day. It's for the Iranian people to rise up and take over. It's their country so it's all down to them, and if they don't, they are wasting the opportunity of generations.

I say the above tongue in cheek. It was said from the privileged and secure position of his Mar a Lago estate.

As much as I hate Donald Trump, I will be extremely happy if they manage to put an end to the IRCG and particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon, who have turned a beautiful country into a shadow of it's former self and ruined the lives of many normal people.

Are you trying to pretend Iran is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons?

Because it is. No one disputes that.

Well it’s not unreasonable with some help, over 30’000+ iranians are dead because they did precisely that. Why not help them, it solves a problem for many countries and if the Iranians can pull it off with the support of their own regular army and police it would be wonderful. But they absolutely cannot do it with the state apparatus intact.

Yup can’t stand the man but if he pulls this off then I will tip my hat. It would be the single most important event in geopolitics for decades. It will fundamentally change the middle east for the better.

People talk about plans for after the war - how do we know what plans may or may not be in place after the war? Did Britain have a plan for after the war when they went to war with Germany? Maybe they did I don’t know - or maybe they just felt the Nazi regime had to fall.

Not in the same sense, because the two situations aren't in any way similar and can't really be compared.

The US and Israel clearly want regime change in Iran, and while that was an obvious end goal of war against Nazi Germany, Britain did not initiate a conflict with Nazi Germany for the express purpose of toppling that regime. Indeed, in 1939 when war was declared, and certainly through 1942, there was no real certainty that Britain was going to prevail and have to consider what to do with post-war Germany in any case. WWII was a war of eradication, from the US and Israeli perspective at least, this action against Iran is not. The US clearly and understandably believes that if it had a mind to see it to conclusion it would ultimately prevail in a conflict with Iran, so it can think right now in terms of "what will we do after we win?". That's a wholly different proposition from the situation Britain faced in the first half of WWII or the Soviets were facing in 1941-43, because at those points in time they were fighting purely to survive and not really contemplating what to do post-victory.

From 1943 onwards that changed, and more and more thought was given to what on earth the victorious nations were going to do with the defeated ones, but even through the late 40s there wasn't always a consensus and it led to ongoing occupation, division, and the advent of things like the Berlin Wall and the Cold War.

Interestingly though, at the very first face-to-face meeting between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Josef Stalin, Stalin pitched up and immediately enquired as to what the others planned to do once they had destroyed the Nazi regime 😀

It's being trying for the last 20+ years. Was the threat imminent- no. It hasn't succeeded or even come close - if it had Israel wouldn't risk bombing it, given that the country's being run by people who would absolutely fire a nuke as the last act of defiance even if it led to the destruction of their population.

You can despise the Iranian regime whilst suspecting American motives for the current action, or the wisdom of such action at all. Or whilst fearing what may become of it.

Such a brilliant post. Opening paragraph is spot on. The amount of people with opinions on the ME with no understanding of the ME is remarkable.

The conflict has been portrayed by anti-Israel activists, for propaganda purposes, as Israel against Gaza. But it’s not. There are a conglomeration of ME players all intent on the genuinely genocidal destruction of Israel and all the Jews who live there. That is the war Israel is fighting.

The only thing I take issue with in the quote post is the final paragraph. The reason why people oppose this action is because they have a fanatical hatred of an Israel. (and maybe Trump too).

Quote : "It’s too simplistic to say that this war is just the same as the Iraq war, it isn’t."

I counter with: It's too simplistic to say they are not the same.

As evidence for my counter, to quote the OP " Iran has been exporting terror throughout the Middle East via its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and Houtis..."

The OP said that makes the 2 different.

However, Bush said the exact same thing about Iraq. Evidence here :

Saddam Hussein's Support for International Terrorism (archives.gov)

Thats a whitehouse document from the Bush era.The title says it all really. There is nothing being said now that is different to anything in that document about Iraq.

How do you know the threat wasn't imminent or that it hadn't come close?

Steve Witkoff said Iran’s top negotiators boasted in the first round of negotiations earlier this year of having enough highly enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs.

“In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly — with no shame — that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium] and that they’re aware that could make 11 nuclear bombs,” Witkoff recalls in an interview with Fox News.

Still, Witkoff says the Iranian negotiators “were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”

I never said Iran has nuclear weapons. I said it is seeking to develop them. No one knows how close they are.

But this is a fanatically religious regime, that celebrates martyrdom and believes 100 percent in an afterlife, is comfortable ( to say the least) with killing citizens and is dedicated to destroying Israel for reasons tied into its religion and racist/ religious hatred. And is funding a nest of terrorist groups to murder your citizens. So you know it’s serious in its genocidal intent against you, and their words aren’t rhetoric. If you had a neighbour on your border like this, who felt like this like you, would you rest of your laurels and think ‘ oh well, they probably aren’t too close with that nuclear bomb yet. Nothing to fear’ ?

There's a bit of work to do between "we have x amount of enriched uranium", and actually nuking an enemy State. You don't just place that uranium on top of a missile and the lob it at your target. North Korea has actively and openly been pursuing a nuclear ballistic missile program for decades, including dozens of test firings, and there is still no real belief that they actually have a deployable nuclear weapon. Iran has done none of this beyond simply producing enriched uranium, and even then it's highly contentious how successful their efforts have been in pursuing this.