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GWYNNE DYER: Why hasn't the US-Iran war ended yet?

Despite cease-fire agreements, tankers are being shot up in the Strait of Hormuz as the US and Iran differ on the meaning behind the MOU

The last time oil-tankers were being shot up in the Persian Gulf, back in the 1980s, it was Saddam Hussein’s brutal tyranny in Iraq versus Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary Islamist regime in Iran, and people used to say “It’s a shame that both sides can’t lose.”

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The United States backed Saddam because he was just another murderous thug, whereas the new regime in Tehran was an actual threat to American interests. It had overthrown Iran’s American-backed puppet king and wanted to spread its Islamist ideology across the region.

So, of course, Ronald Reagan’s administration chose Saddam’s side. It sent Iraq arms by clandestine means (because Congress wouldn’t authorize it), and even provided targeting information for Iraqi poison gas attacks on Iran. The Americans chose the ‘lesser evil’, but at least they knew it was evil.

Once in a while, they would even say it out loud, quoting US diplomat Henry Kissinger: “It’s a shame that both sides can’t lose.” But they never did anything about it, and after eight years of slaughter, the war ended in a no-score........

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