The recent conclusion of the Israel-Iran conflict offers a sobering moment for Americans to examine their nation’s role in yet another Middle Eastern crisis. While politicians and pundits debate the immediate tactical outcomes, a more fundamental question demands our attention: How did American foreign policy contribute to creating the very conflicts they claim to resolve?

Latest chapter, familiar story

The Israel-Iran war followed a depressingly familiar script. Initial provocations escalated into full-scale military confrontation, with the United States providing unwavering support to Israel while demonizing Iran. American intelligence agencies presented conflicting assessments, with some officials acknowledging no evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, while others pushed for military action based on questionable intelligence, a pattern that the US has shamelessly followed in most of the doctored conflicts around the world, prominent being the claims of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, a false construct on which US invaded and ruined Iraq.

Throughout the present conflict, American officials spoke of Israel’s “right to self-defence” while remaining conspicuously silent about the massive civilian casualties in Iranian cities, and the ongoing Gaza genocide. This selective application of humanitarian concern reflects a deeper pattern in American foreign policy—one that prioritizes geopolitical allies over consistent moral standards.

A pattern decades in the making

The Chinese embassy in Moscow recently published a list of countries bombed by the United States since World War II, spanning over 30 nations from Japan in 1945 to Syria in recent years. While the timing and source of this list served obvious propaganda purposes, the underlying facts are undeniable and documented by the US Congressional Research Service.

Since 1991 alone, the United States has launched 251 military interventions, bringing the total to 469 interventions since 1798—with half occurring since 1950. This represents an extraordinary level of global military activity that far exceeds any other nation in modern history.

Each intervention was justified to the American public as defending freedom, democracy, or civilian populations. Yet military tactics employed often left behind massive civilian “collateral damage,” and nearly all post-World War II interventions defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. interests rather than promoting genuine democracy.

Human cost of American exceptionalism

The most troubling aspect of the Israel-Iran conflict was not the tactical details, but how it reflected American attitudes toward foreign casualties.........

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