In announcing that the U.S. war objectives in Iran have been nearly completed, U.S. President Donald Trump also reminded listeners that this war in the Middle East and North Africa has been going on for 47 years, or since the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. A watershed year, 1979 marked the end of the Iranian Revolution, the beginning of the Iranian hostage crisis, and (in Afghanistan) the beginning of an attempt to create a Soviet foothold in both the Middle East and South Asia. The next year saw the start of the Iran-Iraq war, and by that time the Lebanese Civil War was already five years underway. While the Iranian Revolution ended in 1979, the remaining of these conflicts and crises ended around 1988-1990. However, these major wars in the Middle East and North Africa were followed by internecine conflict that involved international jihadist movements, the U.S., and Europe; wars of attrition on several key borders; an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; localized non-state actors fighting their own regimes or a neighboring regime; localized revolutions in Libya and elsewhere; the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan; and, of course, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Revolution.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to prove a counterfactual. Nonetheless, The Art of War by Sun Tzu suggests that, while it is ideal religiously and in terms of military strategy to break the resolve of the enemy without fighting, in a prolonged conflict having allowed time to pass and all possible avenues for peace to have been rejected by a foe, such a peaceful army (in our modern sense of just war) must eradicate the army of the foe on the battlefield so as to leave behind no enemy force, which would naturally only follow and strike later. In that way, the conflict is ended more humanely, that is, with fewer total casualties over time and place. It will not have the opportunity to drag along, it is warned, otherwise sometimes for centuries. This principle stands even while the argument is also made not to corner a desperate enemy prior to reaching the point of what we might today call just war conditions.

In such light, the lack of response to the Iranian holding of U.S. hostages in 1979 likely emboldened not only actors in the Middle East and North Africa, but the Soviet Union, and others, to view U.S. resolve as limited.  Rather than fighting that war at the time—which might have involved many fewer states, fewer non-state actors, and fewer interests local, regional, and international—it has dragged on for 47 years. Meanwhile, the U.S. has hosted many peoples from the Middle East and North Africa as immigrants, and some as refugees.

Whether one approves of the current war, or not, these basic facts of the historical map of the Middle East and North Africa, 1979-2026, suggest that addressing serious conflict—particularly in the form of major acts of war, such as the hostage crisis in Iran—in the moment as they occur is a better approach than the wait-and-see policy approach of the past 47 years. This period can be aptly described as a war of attrition between certain Middle East and North Africa actors, the U.S., Russia, and certain European powers. Read through a post-colonial lens, an influential regional narrative suggests that this ‘war of attrition’ has been a reasonable way to push out colonial influences of “the West,” broadly construed, which began with Napoleon, and sustained Russian involvement since the early 1800s. Other Western powers began economic involvement in the region in the 1880s and afterward, particularly including England, Germany, and later Italy. Dutch involvement began even earlier than that of France or Russia. There is some truth, thus, to the fact of those involvements. 

What goes unstated, usually, when limiting the discussion to the late 1800s is that the Ottoman Empire, in economic decline, agreed to these economic involvements in its provinces as part of economic treaties with Europe in the late 1800s. That is, it was not a wholesale or unidirectional phenomenon. When considering the earlier monarchies that involved themselves in the region, the influential post-colonial narrative does not always account for who, exactly, those actors were. The more speedy Ottoman economic decline of the late 1800s appears to be best explained by the demands of European banks, to whom the Empire was indebted, to move from the diffuse rule of monarchy and empire to direct rule from the center in something closer to a nation-state system. Conceding to some of these demands in at least a limited way alienated local populations around the Ottoman Empire to such a degree that those tribal confederacies, cities, towns, and villages began to refuse to defend the empire.  These constituencies had previously extended their arms to help to sustain, expand, or defend the borders of the Ottoman Empire since Osman arrived in the 13th century, the Seljuks by the 11th century, and turkic tribes (usually identified with Central Asia and Mongolia) many centuries before that.

The centralization impulse with which Europe was so enamored—as part of its move from feudalism and monarchy to the secular nation-state system—was not accepted by Ottoman populations. And the Ottoman Empire ultimately fell because of it, together with the severe attempts at centralization of the Committee of Union and Progress of the Young Turks at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, while the post-colonial narrative has a good deal of validity—perhaps particularly as relating to early Dutch involvement in the region—it is not complete. And, importantly, the U.S. was not involved in any of these events. So, local and regional thinking at the grassroots level suggesting that “attacking America” would resolve the post-colonial equation is not exactly correct.

It took 47 years to find an administration that would adjust the seating, so to speak, in the Middle East and North Africa by responding, finally, to that massive act of war against the U.S. that was the hostage taking of U.S. persons in 1979 in Tehran. Meanwhile, the same and related administrations have made peace and diplomatic ties with important Arab states, as well as with states in neighboring regions. Indeed, the fact that many of these states have stood by and allowed the current conflict to proceed should be indicative to critics that Iran had, over time, come to be seen by many in the region as a problem. Perhaps, then, the current events will mark the beginning of a new era in the Middle East and North Africa, one with more productive ties while maintaining the much valued cultural, political, and social (meaning sociological) independence, autonomy, and freedom.

Further Reading on E-International Relations

Ottoman International Relations: A Research Agenda

Neo-Ottomanism as Civilizational Nationalism: Turkey’s Quest for Identity

New Book – The Praeter-Colonial Mind: An Intellectual Journey Through the Back Alleys of Empire

Iran at War: Deterrence, National Identity, and Existential Stakes

The US-Iran-China Nexus: Towards a New Strategic Alignment

In Search of Food Security: US-China Hegemonic Rivalry in Africa

Patricia Sohn, Ph.D. [also published as Patricia J. Woods], is Visiting Faculty, Kathmandu University–Nepal Centre for Contemporary Studies (KU-NCCS), Nepal. She is co-editor of Beyond the Death of God: Religion in 21st Century International Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2022). She is published in Political Research Quarterly, Droit et Société, Field Methods, other journals, and has book chapters in top university presses. She received national fellowships, awards, and was Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University. She has served on the Fulbright National Committee and has been proposal reviewer for other national-level foundations. Her research centers on culture and institutions (judiciary, and an interest in bureaucracy); religion and politics; religious freedoms and women’s rights; new interests in political phenomenology, particularly relating to paradigmatic community experiences of the political; and linking qualitative field research with scientific method.

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