Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon
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States’ old hostility has reemerged with
a vengeance.
The durability o the United States’
40-year obsession with Iran is remark-
able. Consider that the United States
fought and lost a decadelong war in
Vietnam that claimed more than 58,000
American lives, yet full diplomatic ties
between Washington and Hanoi were
reestablished in 1995, only two decades
after the last helicopters left Saigon.
Iranian misdeeds—above all, holding 52
U.S. diplomats and other citizens hostage
for 444 days from 1979 to 1980—have
certainly played a role. But the number
o American deaths that can in any way
be attributed to Iran since 1979 is shy o
500.On 12 occasions over the last 18
years, the polling organization Gallup has
asked Americans the question, “What
one country anywhere in the world do
you consider to be the United States’
greatest enemy today?” Iran topped the
list Äve times, ranking higher than China
six times and higher than Russia eight
times, despite not having nuclear weap-
ons, a deep-water navy, or the ability to
project power in any serious fashion.
How can this hostility be explained?
One reason is that Iran Äts neatly into
a well-deÄned American idea o what a
serious threat should look like. Similar
to the Soviet Union during the Cold
War, Iran has a revolutionary ideology,
an expansionist orientation, and a
network o allies around the world—in
Iran’s case, the Shiite communities in
the Middle East and in their diasporas
in South America and West Africa.
And until the U.S. invasion o Iraq,
Iran had some success in cultivating its
image as a global ideological power,
posing as the leader o Muslim resis-
tance to U.S. hegemony. With the fallIran; after repulsing this initial assault, in
1982, Iran invaded Iraq with the aim o
overthrowing Saddam and spreading the
Islamic revolution, sparking U.S. fears o
Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf. In
1983, after a U.S. peacekeeping mission
in Lebanon transformed into an inter-
vention backing the country’s Christian
government, Iran and Syria supported
Lebanese Shiite militias that attacked
American diplomats, military personnel,
and intelligence ocers. And although
the United States, fearful that an Iraqi
victory could lead Iran to turn to the
Soviet Union for help, made eorts during
the mid-1980s to back Tehran in the
Iran-Iraq War, by the late 1980s, after
the revelation o the Iran-contra scandal
had rocked the Reagan administration,
Washington had decisively thrown its
support behind Baghdad.
By the early 1990s, the United States
had painted itsel into a corner. Wash-
ington felt that it had to indeÄnitely
suppress the ambitions o both Iran and
Iraq, rather than use one to balance the
other. Yet this policy proved unsustain-
able. After the United States demol-
ished Saddam’s regime in 2003, it was
left with an enemy, Iran, but no local
partner to contain it. At the same time,
the U.S. invasion o Iraq convinced
Iranian leaders—now faced with U.S.
troops on both their Afghan and their
Iraqi borders—to take the opportunity
to draw U.S. blood by transferring
deadly explosive devices to Iraqi Shiite
militias, further worsening relations
between the countries. For a brie
period during the Obama administration,
the United States was able to use a
combination o diplomacy and pressure
to create space for the negotiation o the
È¢¬. But under Trump, the United