ASEAN Beat | Security | Southeast Asia

In an echo of history, Iran hints at a war of attrition with the U.S. and its allies.

A protest against the war in Iran close to the White House, Washington. D.C., Mar. 7, 2026.

“Briefings full of fantasy from the frontlines.”

In an X post on March 20, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi compared official updates on Operation Epic Fury to the U.S. military’s briefings on the Vietnam War.

Araghchi was referring to the upbeat status reports from Saigon dubbed the “Five O’ Clock Follies” by journalists. He chided the U.S. for following the same “script” from an unwinnable war fought more than 50 years ago.

“Even as hundreds of U.S. soldiers were dying in Vietnam, and the outcome was already clear, General William Westmoreland was flown home to reassure everyone that the war was going well – that the U.S. was “winning,’” posted Iran’s top diplomat, referring to the military commander’s address before a joint session of Congress in April 1967, requesting additional troops.

Leading supporters of the war privately expressed their doubts to President Lyndon Johnson. In a memo, McGeorge Bundy wrote, “public discontent with the war is now wide and deep . . . people really are getting fed up with the endlessness of the fighting.”  The former National Security Advisor, a vocal advocate for the surge in ground troops while in office, appeared despondent. “What really hurts . . .”  he continued in the now declassified document was “the cost of the war in lives and money, coupled with the lack of light at the end of the tunnel.”

Nicholas Katzenbach, the under secretary of state who publicly defended Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War before Congress, urged the president in November 1967, “If we can’t speed up the tortoise of demonstrable success in the field we must concentrate on slowing down the hare of dissent at home.”

The Tet Offensive, launched by the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong guerrillas in January 1968, further eroded public support for the war. Despite Johnson’s assertion that the U.S. and allied forces had inflicted a “devastating defeat” on communist forces, televised coverage of the Tet attacks reinforced the widespread belief that “overall victory in Vietnam was not imminent.”

Public disenchantment with the war had consequences on the home front. In 1968, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection, and General Westmoreland stepped down as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam.

Decades later, a former officer in the North Vietnamese army claimed that Tet “was designed to influence public opinion.” In a 1995 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Colonel Bui Tin maintained that Ho Chi Minh did not set out to win a military victory. Instead, the communist leader hoped to wage a protracted war of attrition until the U.S. was ready to “give up and get out.”

Veterans of past American wars point out that U.S. forces often underestimate weaker adversaries. General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told the New York Times, “when we got into Vietnam . . . we developed a strategy that said . . . we will raise the pressure on them until we hit the point at which they’re willing to quit.” Like Vietnam, McChrystal observed, Iran has demonstrated a degree of immunity to airstrikes:  “We may be at a point where we’ve run into a country that has an extraordinary capacity to be bombed.”

In the introduction to his book “Iran’s Grand Strategy,” Vali Nasr, an academic at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., wrote about a 2015 meeting between a senior official from Iran and Henry Kissinger, an architect of U.S. policy on Vietnam.  The Iranian representative told the 92-year-old former secretary of state that “exhausting America” to make it “quit the Middle East” was part of Iran’s strategic agenda.

Nasr does not name the individual, but a few details, including quotes from Immanuel Kant, suggest the official was Ali Larijani, the Iranian leader killed in an airstrike on March 17.

Araghchi was reportedly taken off the “kill list” but continues to troll the U.S. and its allies. In an interview with Al Jazeera on March 31, the Iranian foreign minister said, “we are waiting for them… we are completely ready to confront any sort of ground attack.”

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“Briefings full of fantasy from the frontlines.”

In an X post on March 20, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi compared official updates on Operation Epic Fury to the U.S. military’s briefings on the Vietnam War.

Araghchi was referring to the upbeat status reports from Saigon dubbed the “Five O’ Clock Follies” by journalists. He chided the U.S. for following the same “script” from an unwinnable war fought more than 50 years ago.

“Even as hundreds of U.S. soldiers were dying in Vietnam, and the outcome was already clear, General William Westmoreland was flown home to reassure everyone that the war was going well – that the U.S. was “winning,’” posted Iran’s top diplomat, referring to the military commander’s address before a joint session of Congress in April 1967, requesting additional troops.

Leading supporters of the war privately expressed their doubts to President Lyndon Johnson. In a memo, McGeorge Bundy wrote, “public discontent with the war is now wide and deep . . . people really are getting fed up with the endlessness of the fighting.”  The former National Security Advisor, a vocal advocate for the surge in ground troops while in office, appeared despondent. “What really hurts . . .”  he continued in the now declassified document was “the cost of the war in lives and money, coupled with the lack of light at the end of the tunnel.”

Nicholas Katzenbach, the under secretary of state who publicly defended Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War before Congress, urged the president in November 1967, “If we can’t speed up the tortoise of demonstrable success in the field we must concentrate on slowing down the hare of dissent at home.”

The Tet Offensive, launched by the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong guerrillas in January 1968, further eroded public support for the war. Despite Johnson’s assertion that the U.S. and allied forces had inflicted a “devastating defeat” on communist forces, televised coverage of the Tet attacks reinforced the widespread belief that “overall victory in Vietnam was not imminent.”

Public disenchantment with the war had consequences on the home front. In 1968, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection, and General Westmoreland stepped down as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam.

Decades later, a former officer in the North Vietnamese army claimed that Tet “was designed to influence public opinion.” In a 1995 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Colonel Bui Tin maintained that Ho Chi Minh did not set out to win a military victory. Instead, the communist leader hoped to wage a protracted war of attrition until the U.S. was ready to “give up and get out.”

Veterans of past American wars point out that U.S. forces often underestimate weaker adversaries. General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told the New York Times, “when we got into Vietnam . . . we developed a strategy that said . . . we will raise the pressure on them until we hit the point at which they’re willing to quit.” Like Vietnam, McChrystal observed, Iran has demonstrated a degree of immunity to airstrikes:  “We may be at a point where we’ve run into a country that has an extraordinary capacity to be bombed.”

In the introduction to his book “Iran’s Grand Strategy,” Vali Nasr, an academic at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., wrote about a 2015 meeting between a senior official from Iran and Henry Kissinger, an architect of U.S. policy on Vietnam.  The Iranian representative told the 92-year-old former secretary of state that “exhausting America” to make it “quit the Middle East” was part of Iran’s strategic agenda.

Nasr does not name the individual, but a few details, including quotes from Immanuel Kant, suggest the official was Ali Larijani, the Iranian leader killed in an airstrike on March 17.

Araghchi was reportedly taken off the “kill list” but continues to troll the U.S. and its allies. In an interview with Al Jazeera on March 31, the Iranian foreign minister said, “we are waiting for them… we are completely ready to confront any sort of ground attack.”

Sribala Subramanian is a New York-based columnist for The Diplomat.

U.S.-Israel war on Iran

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