It is rare that political pundits wax philosophical, and probably not advisable when they do. Yet in the first week of the revived American-Israeli war with Iran, most American commentators shared the exasperation of the pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus: “I would rather discover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia.” 

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The new war with Iran, dubbed Operation Epic Fury by the Trump administration, is a resumption of a recent war, the 12-day war of June 2025 that detonated Iran’s nuclear ambitions with a bang in Operation Midnight Hammer. Both wars are the beginning of the end of a much older war, the one that began on Nov. 4, 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. And this war and the 12-day war are also outcomes of the war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas jumped the gun and the Gaza fence and launched a war against Israel. Iran’s other proxies joined in, and Israel leveled them one by one before striking Iran’s nuclear program with American support.

Major events rarely have one true cause. Certainly not in the Middle East, where history is the present and infinite grievance makes a Sicilian with a grudge look mild and forgiving. This complexity explains some of the uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration’s motives and objectives. The administration hardly helped itself in this regard. On Feb. 28, after American and Israeli missiles had killed Ayatollah Ali Khameini, President Donald Trump, ruminating with customary expansiveness, described his war aims as preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, destroying its ballistic missile capability, and, almost as an afterthought, inspiring the Iranian people to revolt: “When we’re finished, take over your government.”

Much of the uncertainty is derived from bad memories. The Global War on Terror is still going on, regardless of the changes of name and theater. The long war with Iran predates it, but historians have identified the 1979-80 Islamist takeover in Iran as its real beginning. Americans’ trust in their government has declined sharply since 2001. The money-burning, bloodshedding mission creep of the GWOT has played a big part in that. It is no more than sensible to fear the worst when a war is launched without a clear exit plan.

The media accepted the invitation to replay an older script. A battalion of veteran pundits dusted the sand off its Iraq War commentary and warned of the perils of forever wars and “boots on the ground,” and the delusions of regime change, especially “regime change from the air.” The baboons of the online Right revived the specter of the neoconservatives. Tucker Carlson frowned even more chimpishly than usual as he opened a new front in his war against Israel and the Jews. Everyone had a splendid time, especially when a clip of Marco Rubio was edited so it sounded like the secretary of state was admitting that yes, Israel forced us to do it.

The reality is that the Trump administration’s one-two punch against Iran bears little resemblance to the GWOT’s march of folly into the middle of nowhere. The U.S.-led expeditionary force that invaded Iraq in 2003 differed little in method and intent from the one the British Empire sent in 1916 to put boots on the ground in what was then an Ottoman Turkish province. The “shock and awe” that blew open the road to Baghdad was the logic of Sherman’s March to the Sea, written in sand: massive force, followed by occupation. This war began as the January 2026 raid on Venezuela ended, with regime decapitation. Trump seems determined to end the assault in about four weeks.

This is a different war, fought in a different time. In 2003, America was a global........

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