Brendan O’Neill reminds us of all the ways that Israel’s war with Iran is unlike the West’s war with Saddam Hussein: “Israel’s clash with Iran is nothing like the Iraq War,” by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, June 18, 2025:
Remember when Saddam Hussein sponsored an army of fascists that invaded the United States and raped and murdered thousands of Americans? And when he funded a gang of religious fanatics to fire thousands of rockets at people in Leeds and Manchester here in the UK? And when he himself pressed the button on ballistic missiles that landed on New York City and London? No, me neither. Which makes it perplexing that Israel’s push against Iran is being compared to the Iraq War of 2003 – for Iran has done all of that to the Jewish nation, and it dreams of doing more.
The debate about Israel / Iran is at risk of being derailed by disinformation. Gaslighting swirls all around it. This is a crazed stab at ‘regime change’, cry Israel’s critics, and we all know what hellish things spring from ‘regime change’. It is an ‘illegal war’ and a ‘war of aggression’, insists the left. And the trump card: it’s Iraq all over again. Both the digital right and digital left are ‘invoking the spectre of Iraq’, in the words of the New York Times. ‘Welcome to Iraq 2.0’, says the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Only worse – Israel’s ‘unprovoked attack’ on Iran has the potential to be ‘far, far more catastrophic’, apparently….
Israel would certainly be glad if Iran’s defeat in this war would lead to regime change, but it is not the main goal, as it was in the American war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Iraq war was a strategic error by the United States; the war by Israel against the Islamic Republic is a strategic necessity.
By 2003, Iraq had been in two wars that used up men, materiel, money, and morale. The first was the war with Iran that lasted from 1980 to 1988, and resulted in more than 240,000 Iraqis killed and many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were wounded. In addition, the war cost Iraq $500 million, a colossal sum. In 2001, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and declared it to be the 19th province of Iraq. The Americans drove Saddam’s forces out of Kuwait, killing 20,000 Iraqis, and destroying 150 Iraqi planes and hundreds of tanks.
The Israel-Iran clash is wholly the reverse of this. Iran has attacked Israel ceaselessly and ferociously. Its neo-fascist proxies in Hamas sent a 6,000-strong army into Israel in October 2023 where they raped and murdered hundreds. Its most important proxy – Hezbollah – followed up this pogrom with barrages of missiles into northern Israel. Between Hamas’s pogrom and June of last year, Hezbollah fired 5,000 rockets and other projectiles at Israel. This caused the evacuation of 60,000 people and the deaths of scores of civilians, including 12 Druze kids. Iran itself has directly fired missiles at Israel: 120 ballistic missiles in April 2024; 200 in October 2024.
And in the first week of the Iran-Israel war, Iran has fired another 400-500 ballistic missiles, though 90% of them were intercepted.
Israel does not expect, and does not want, American soldiers fighting in Iran. It wants only one thing of America: either to be given the 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb and use of a B-52 to deliver it, or for America to drop that bomb, or bombs, itself, on the nuclear facility deep inside the mountain at Fordow. That’s it. Not a single American soldier will be putting boots on the ground.
Iran is not Iraq. Iraq was on its last legs, militarily, when the Americans went to war against Saddam Hussein on the pretext that he had, or would soon have, weapons of mass destruction. He did not. But Israel recently learned that Iran was getting close to enriching enough uranium to produce nine bombs within a few weeks. Israel’s war against Iran, which a week ago was indeed a potent military force, is fully justified; the Iranians have been attacking Israel for many years through their many proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, even Syria. Last April, they began sending their own ballistic missiles and drones directly into Israel. The Islamic Republic has made clear that the annihilation of the Jewish state remains its goal. It has been rushing pell-mell to enrich enough uranium to just below weapons-grade level so that, should it decide to produce nuclear weapons, it could do so “within weeks.” Brendan O’Neill refuses to accept the notion that Israel’s worries are baseless, and that its attack on Iran is, therefore, illegitimate.
Kosh's Shadow says
Don’t forget Iran declared war on the US in 1979
As for Iraq, Saddam was like asbestos – contain it, and it is not that dangerous. Let whatever contains it crumble, and it is dangerous.
Saddam was easy to contain.
Iran has been attacking the US and Israel via proxies since 1979. This war is to prevent a big chunk of nuclear material from getting out and being used.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
When Saddam attacked Iran in 1980, the regime was still brand new, & largely had popular support. On top of that, Saddam made it about ethnicity, boasting about how this war would be a rerun of the battle of Qadisiyyah, the battle in which the Arabs defeated the Persians and started their conquest of Iran. So he had plenty of backing of other Arab countries, like Egypt (which was trying to schmooze its way back into the good graces of Arab countries miffed at the Camp David Accords). But in the process, he also polarized Iranian opinion against him, since the Ayatollah Khomenei could rally the Iranians against Iraq by showing it exactly as Saddam described it – as an Arabs vs Persians war. Ironically, if one recalls Iran-Contra, Israel at that time was one of the supporters of Iran, b’cos they saw the Arabs, especially Iraq & Syria as a threat
Since then, the support that the Ayatollahs had has waned, particularly after the creation of Hizbullah. It finally came to a point where the main security of the regime fell on Hizbullah, who in turn had first dibs on any money Iran made from its oil. I had an Iranian co-worker in one of my past jobs, who told me that the issue was less of Iran backing Hizbullah than Hizbullah backing the Iran regime
As a result, a lot of Iranians today see this regime as a foreign backed regime, among all the other great reasons to wanna get rid of it. Hopefully, that happens sooner rather than later
Since then
Tony Rice says
Unlike Iran, Israel has not vowed to wipe the other country off the face of the earth, re which the gutless pro Muslin United Nations has made no utterance as far as I am aware. Image the uproar if Israel were to declare its aim is the wipe Iran off the face of the earth. Although Israel is the home of Judaism, it is also where Christianity originated, and what that consequentially means.
Plus Iran wanting to bomb Israel with nuclear ones, they would in the process kill 20% + of Israel’s population , they being Arab/ Muslims, although some voluntarily convert to Judaism. I am not aware of any Israeli Jews converting to Islam, Plus, Israel being a small country, closely bordered by Arab countries BUT Iranians are not Arabs, and thus not too bothered re what happens to them by atomic fall-out. In fact Iran’s aim is to take over the leadership worldwide of Islam from the Saudi Arabians, who secretly are more pro Israel then Iran.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Actually now, after seeing interviews of Iranian activists in the West like Sana Ebrahimi and Elica Le Bon, I’d rather see Israel’s main goal being regime change. This doesn’t imply that Israel should be the one installing the replacement regime, but they should certainly do what they can to convince the Iranian people that the regime is no longer capable of retaliation and has a very low probability of surviving
Like I mentioned in yesterday’s debate thread of Robert vs Dave Smith, there are 2 ways of ensuring the security of both Israel and the US:
⮞ Taking out all their nukes OR
⮞ Taking out the islamic regime
Either one of these has to happen: both don’t have to happen, although that would be welcome
Of these 2 actions, if Israel does the first, that is only a temporary solution to the problem. Granted that this time, they’ve killed most of Iran’s nuke scientists, but if the regime remains, in the long term, they can develop that again and Israel will have the same problem. In other words, taking out the nukes is just a temporary solution
If, otoh, Iran takes out the regime, the nukes will be redundant. Let’s say a secular, democratic government emerges in Tehran that has good relations w/ most non-muslim countries, including Israel, then Jerusalem wouldn’t have a problem. The new government could & should work w/ the US, Israel & the IAEA to minimize some of the sunk cost in converting those into genuine commercial energy-centric nuclear reactors, enabling them to export more oil once the sanctions are lifted and their oil is back on the international market. That should assuage both US & Israel that Iran won’t be a future threat, and w/ all that transparency (maybe they could agree on it), they know that Iran is just generating electricity for things like their industries, data centers, crypto mining or whatever
We need to disabuse the notion that the only concept of “regime change” is the way it was done in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those were externally imposed by the US, w/o doing anything about the underlying issue – islam! However, every country that has transitioned from a dictatorship to a democracy has undergone regime change – some peaceful, some bloody. Peaceful ones including the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, and much of the Warsaw Pact countries. The bloody, or at least restive ones include Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan (when the Taliban overthrew the US-backed regime), Pakistan, Bangladesh and so on. Few of the critics of regime change in this case seemed to have any problems w/ most of the others, except when the US or NATO was involved. I have not heard any criticism from the Dave Smiths or the Tucker Carlsons on the regime changes in Egypt or Tunisia, which did not involve any US or NATO troops
That’s the point that needs to be driven home about Iran: that it will be Iranians changing their government. If something happens like in Syria, where jihadists come to power, obviously it would be a problem for the outside world, given all that it entails. But if the Iranians elect a government that’s just inwardly focused and not obsessed about other countries, then foreigners like Dave Smith or anyone else have no business objecting to who they go w/, whether it’s a king or a president or anyone else
SKA says
I think that in the cases of Egypt and Libya there was covert influence by the covert convert Obama, who was in effect a de facto agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. He must be bitter about the current taking down of the Islamist regime in Tehran.
SKA says
I am really disappointed with Tucker Carlson and his interview with Senator Cruz. Cruz quoted Genesis 12:3 but could not remember the book chapter and verse citation when challenged by Carlson. Well whenever St. Paul or the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews recited portions from the Old Testament they never cited the chapters and verses numberings because these were not assigned until the invention of the printing press. But people familiar with the scriptures knew the contents of them even if they had not yet been assigned their numberings.
Apart from Carlson and Candace Owens I have also seen more supposedly conservative people showing greater hostility towards Israel. Persons whom I used to trust now referring to the Rothschilds and “Khazarian mafia” etc. The timing of all this is very concerning to me as Israel may be facing nuclear annihilation.Even if the Iranians cannot further enrich their uranium they might still in desperation put some of their uranium into cluster explosives deliverable by their ballistic missiles and so achieve very destructive dirty bombs.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I watched that interview, and thought that Tucker had the upper hand, even though he didn’t end up changing my mind. For instance, the question about which Iranian tried to kill Trump: Robert had the name yesterday in that debate w/ Dave Smith, for which Smith had no answer, but Cruz didn’t. Tucker’s question about Iran’s population was indeed irrelevant, but the follow-up one about Iran’s ethnic groups, which Cruz mostly got right when he said Persians (who are 61% of the population) was pretty relevant. Tucker did however look ridiculous when he called for nuking Teheran if they were behind the Trump plot – something that Dave Smith tried to copy yesterday
On the question of whether God recognizes the current state of Israel, does he have any Bible that states that a state designed under the Westphalian model that is Israel is illegitimate? I didn’t quite get what his argument was: what exactly does Israel have to be in order to have his approval? A Christian theocracy? I used to enjoy him when he was at Fox and didn’t touch Israel w/ a 10 foot pole, b’cos then, he didn’t expose his idiocy to that extent
On the last part about Russia-Ukraine, Tucker was on much more firmer ground. Cruz told him that his visit to the Moscow supermarket was weird, but Tucker made his point: the US sanctions have only driven Russia into Beijing’s orbit. Cruz agreed that it was not a positive development, but didn’t have any answer about what the solution to that should be. Right now, Putin’s threats to both Trump & Netanyahu seem to suggest that he wants to turn his attention away from Ukraine and towards Iran, seeing that if the regime falls, the successor regime may be hostile to Russia and refuse to be its link to the Indian Ocean. But I believe that it’s rather late: this regime is more likely than not to collapse, and once it does, Moscow will probably have no say in what ensues
Keys says
Things will be no different for Iran without regime change. They will continue to strive for nukes, etc. This regime wants death for Israel and the USA.
Here is a partial list of Iran’s Twelver Shia Ayatollahs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ayatollahs
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Precisely! Nukes or no nukes, regime change has to happen. Not by US, but by Iranians themselves. Even if Israel helps them, the regime that follows can’t be seen to be an Israel-installed regime. The most Israel should do is assassinate the Ayatollah, the Foreign Minister, the President & other leading members of the government, so that a transitional team like the one Pahlavi has created can step in
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
When I hear the refrain bemoaning “forever wars,” they say it’s caused by bad planning, no end-of-war exit status. But nobody has talked* about the contents of the Holy Ko-Ran. What was different about Iraq and Afghan is that the two were filled with Moslems, the forever war people.
*Michael Savage has written books over the years calling Islam for what it is. He’s got a show on Newsmax now, so that’s why the asterisk.
gravenimage says
The Iraq Analogy Does Not Hold
……………………………..
The problem was too many thinking that Islam can be civilized–it cannot be. But Islamic nations can be isolated and rendered less dangrous to others.