Iran is waging a forever war

And so an ‘entire civilisation’ did not die on Tuesday night, as US president Donald Trump threatened if the Islamic Republic of Iran did not agree to end the conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, with Trump’s 8pm deadline looming, talks between Washington and Tehran, mediated by Pakistan, led to the agreement of a two-week ceasefire. But beyond a pause in the hostilities, little has been truly resolved.

The 10-point peace proposal from Iran – which Trump has optimistically described as a ‘workable basis on which to negotiate’ over the next fortnight – raises more questions than it answers. As it stands, Tehran wants to consolidate its most significant wartime gain: its control of the Strait of Hormuz. It has demanded the US recognise its sovereignty over the all-important waterway and wants the right to charge maritime traffic a fee for ‘safe’ passage. On another point, it wants the US to accept the Islamic Republic’s right to enrich uranium, which raises the spectre once again of an Iranian nuclear-weapons programme. It is also demanding the lifting of sanctions, the payment of reparations and the withdrawal of all US forces from the Gulf.

These may be maximalist demands, but it’s difficult to see the US agreeing to even heavily watered-down versions of them. Allowing the Islamic Republic to use its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz to hold the world to ransom is surely a non-starter. As are Iran’s nuclear dreams and its calls for the US to effectively leave its Gulf allies at the Islamic Republic’s mercy.

Furthermore, Iran seems to think that the ceasefire extends to Israel’s ongoing battle with Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Given that the IDF have continued fighting against the Shia militia, it’s clear that Israel disagrees.

But the obstacles to a lasting peace go far deeper than arguments over the terms of the ceasefire and Tehran’s ridiculous wishlist. Their roots lie in the continued existence of the Islamic Republic itself, which is constitutionally committed to ‘ensuring the continuation of the [Islamic] revolution at home and abroad’. For it is this Islamist mission that has led the Iranian regime to wage a bloody, decades-long shadow war on Israel, using proxy armies and terror groups across the Middle East and beyond.

After all, this current war didn’t really begin on 28 February this year. It started in earnest on 7 October 2023, when Hamas – an Islamic Republic proxy – invaded what it calls the ‘Zionist entity’ and slaughtered and raped hundreds of Israeli Jews. The joint US-Israeli war in Iran is merely the latest and most explosive phase of a conflict that erupted two-and-a-half years ago. In fact, you could argue that the seeds of this conflict were sown with the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the birth of the Islamic Republic itself. For as long as the Islamic Republic persists, at least in its current form, achieving a lasting resolution to this conflict looks unlikely.

That is not to say that the mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have not been dealt some very severe blows over the past few weeks. Iran’s leaders may claim to have inflicted an ‘undeniable, historical and crushing defeat’ on the US and Israel – a claim echoed by the West’s anti-Trump media and degenerate bourgeois left. In truth, the devastation US-Israeli forces have visited on the regime tells a different story. Countless political and military leaders have been taken out, including Ayatollah Khamenei himself, while his successor son, Mojtaba, is yet to rise from his rumoured hospital bed. Iran’s ballistic missile capability has been depleted, its air defences mostly eliminated and its navy sunk. On top of the ruination of the Islamic Republic’s military infrastructure, its economy has been ravaged further. This is a state in desperate survival mode.

Still, as it stands, survival is enough for this wretched, parasitic regime. The supreme leader and his Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps remain in power, and their vicious proxy armies, from Hamas and Hezbollah to the Houthis and various Iraqi Shia militias, are still active. For as long as this remains the case, then the Iranian threat to the Middle East’s security persists. The war may be paused, but the Islamist regime that’s driving it is still holding on.

This is one of the grim ironies of the US-Israeli military operation. When it was launched, Trump talked grandly of Iranians’ ‘hour of freedom being at hand’. Yet far from heralding the Iranian people’s liberation, the war has likely supercharged their repression. Reports suggest that the Iranian government has been busily using the cover of war to execute protesters and opponents.

The only hope for a more peaceful future lies with the Iranian people. For all the military power of America and Israel, only the Iranians themselves can take their country back from the Islamist thugs squatting over them. They have been trying to do precisely that in recent years, most notably during the protests in December and January. Those were put down by security forces, leaving thousands upon thousands of protesters dead. But that popular desire for freedom from the Islamic Republic hasn’t gone away.

If and when it reemerges, perhaps then the problem of the Islamic Republic, and the conflict it has fuelled, might finally be resolved.

Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.