War

The Iraq War Cheerleaders Were Wrong. They're Wrong About Iran Too.

Hawkish pundits predicted both wars would be swift and successful. That's not how it turned out.

Matthew Petti | From the October 2026 issue

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google

Media Contact & Reprint Requests

(Illustration: Thomas Biegalski/Dreamstime/Midjourney)

The George W. Bush administration and its camp followers in the media sold the Iraq War with lies and spin. Before the war, hawkish pundits such as CNN host Fareed Zakaria and New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman promised that it would bring reform to the Arab world. Once the war started, Fox News host Brit Hume gloated that critics got it "completely wrong," and his colleague Tony Snow declared a "relatively bloodless victory"—two statements that aged very badly as the new Iraq collapsed into decades of war, with U.S. troops in the line of fire.

So it went in Iran. Pro-war journalists and TV talking heads predicted that the Iranian government would collapse at the first push. Once the war started, they ignored signs that things were not going as planned. Unlike the Iraq War, the war in Iran has not turned into a drawn-out insurgency. The U.S. did not even topple the government, instead accepting a ceasefire after four weeks. But that ceasefire did not hold. At press time, the U.S. and Iran were fighting over the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for trade that had been fully open before the war.

***

Before the U.S. attacked Iran on February 28, a chorus of media personalities, including several with direct lines to President Donald Trump, argued that a war with Iran would last only a few........

© Reason.com