In my blog post on Iran a week ago, I tried to be even-handed, not completely condemning the War that had just begun with the assassination of the Ayatollah, but raising its complexities and expressing caution for the future:

“I think that it is all up in the air, that an outcome we cannot even imagine is as likely as any of those put forward today,” I wrote.

It took just a day to confirm that. I—and apparently most pundits and our nation’s leaders—did not imagine Iran striking out at multiple embassies, hotels, and oil installations in a dozen countries across the region, did not imagine the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and exploding gas prices. And I did not imagine the newsreels of dismantled city blocks in Tehran and a room of adults standing over school children laid in death shrouds.

On reflection, and listening to the many comments on Iran from journalists, military specialists, diplomats old and new, etc., it seems to me that most choose to start Iranian history, and the history of US-Iran relations, with the Revolution of 1979 and the takeover of the American Embassy. I believe that they also fail to talk much about Netanyahu and the Israeli role in this entire affair. I tried to address the failure to look back past 1979 in my first blog post. Here’s an attempt to summarize, to make a brief US-Iran timeline 1953-1979, and to address the other omission, the role of Netanyahu and the new role of assassinations in war.

The Shah and the US from 1953

Iranian history, and the history of Iran-US relations did not start in 1979 with the Revolution of the Ayatollahs and the taking of US hostages. The history goes back further, but in modern times it starts with the 1953 overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh and the reinstatement of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The popularly elected Mossadegh and Iranian parliament had nationalized oil, which angered British oil companies and the British government, and brought in the American CIA for the fix.

That was followed by a mostly cozy US relationship with the Shah, which included oil and huge purchases of US military hardware. There were many financial and military deals between the Shah and US government and industry. It included a “white revolution” of sweeping modernization efforts, with women voting, gaining college educations, and wearing western clothing. And a long run of the Peace Corps working in Iran, the reason for my 1968 visit to help evaluate the program.

The historical amnesia ignores the growth of SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, which was established in 1957 and tasked with following enemies and detractors, eliminating them by imprisonment, exile, or killing. I cannot imagine that the US ambassador who did not want to hear Peace Corps Volunteer complaints about the Shah’s self-aggrandizement and neglect of peoples’ needs in our exit interview in 1968, was not aware of SAVAK.

It ignores the Shah’s 1971 “feast in the desert,” a lavish 3-day, $100+ million celebration of 2,500 years of the Persian Empire held near the ancient city of Persepolis. Over 60 kings, queens, presidents and heads of state were treated to palatial tents in the desert, food catered by Maxims in Paris, copious wine, 50,000 birds flown in for the occasion, and the Shah tying his reign to that of Cyrus the Great! It was early in the mentioned self-aggrandizement, and became one catalyst for the Shah’s opposition factions, clerical and political, to grow.

It ignores the flux, confusion and opposing factions at the Shah’s overthrow, the contests between democrats, communists, and clerical autocrats. If there was a choice, the US would take the Ayatollahs over communists. This was still the cold war, and Iran had a long border with the Soviet Union.

it ignores the fate of the abdicating Shah, how England turned him down for medical treatment, and how Henry Kissinger and David Rockefller (whose bank had huge financial dealings with the Shah’s Iran) led a pressure group that convinced a reluctant Carter administration to let the Shah come to the US. It was the final catalyst that led, just days later, to the seizure of the American Embassy and the taking of hostages. After the early release of some women and African-Americans, 52 hostages spent 444 days in captivity. That led to Carter’s aborted helicopter rescue with the crash in the desert, Carter’s failure at reelection, the Iran-Contra affair, The Iran-Iraq war, etc. But that is all post-1979 history.

Netanyahu and the new warfare of assassinations

Netanyahu’s War in Gaza—with assorted outbursts in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Iran even before the current attacks—demonstrated a new kind of warfare. It’s one NYT mostly conservative columnist Russ Douthat described as “not shock and awe; {but} drone strike and assassinate.”

Netanyahu’s modus operandi:

1. Deny responsibility for errors in the past (e.g. the October Hamas attack);
2. Destroy the leadership of enemies with assassinations;
3. Pursue those leaders into civilian spaces—schools and hospitals—unapologetically, civilian casualties and the infrastructure and homes of those civilians be damned;
4. Disbar foreign journalists from witnessing the war-sites and harass one’s own journalists and political opponents who disagree with the government (and quite probably, target indigenous journalists on the other side; over 200 Gaza journalists have died).

There is very little attention today to Netanyahu’s renewed war in Lebanon, but the destruction and displacement there looks much like it has looked in Gaza.

And is beginning to look like in Tehran and other Iranian cities.

I do not know, or know if I even care if Bibi Netanyahu “dragged” Trump into this war, or if Trump pushed Netenyahu, as he himself has suggested. I know that it displays the habits and hubris of both men, and that it exemplifies a new kind of warfare rehearsed by Israel in Gaza. And that we—Trump and his advisors and a compliant Congress—are following, willy-nilly, Israel’s lead in pursuing their old enemies in Iran.

Netanyahu is pursuing perceived and announced Hamas enemies still in Gaza and now, breaking another fragile peace in Lebanon with new war on Hezbollah. It is doubtful that enemies could ever be taken out to the last person, as more enemies are created with every assassination. And we learned on Sunday, March 8, that the late Ayatollah’s son will be his successor, and that the Israeli military has vowed to assassinate any new leader that is appointed.

Russ Douthat goes on, in his column, to say about the end of military leaders who gain early success “This is the pattern of many historical conquerors: The long run of success yields the inevitable hubris, and the grand career ends with a grand debacle and would-be successors reaching for the knife.”

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