Because we are flying to Key West on Wednesday, someone suggested that we should watch the movie True Lies because the ending scenes are shot in the Florida Keys. True Lies is a 1994 film directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Arnold. It’s basically a spy comedy about Iranian terrorists trying to extract retaliation from the United States. While I had seen the movie years ago. I had no idea when I put this on, just how timely the concept would be as our country has put itself into DEFCON 3 by attacking Iran in the last two days.
The history of Iran is as ancient as any. Ancient Persia as long ago as 3000 BC is one of the world’s oldest civilizations, centered on the Iranian plateau. The oldest names are unfamiliar to most with the Elamite civilization among the earliest (3000–550 BC), then the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) founded by Cyrus the Great, which became the largest empire in ancient history, stretching from Greece to India. Cyrus was famous for the Cyrus Cylinder, considered an early human rights document. Then the names begin to resonate with Darius I and Xerxes expanding the empire and fighting the famous Greco-Persian Wars (Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis). Then Alexander the Great conquered Persia and burned its capital, Persepolis. Then came the Seleucid Empire (Greek rule) and the Parthian & Sassanid Empires (247 BC – 651 CE). It was the Parthians who drove out the Greeks and ultimately revived Persian culture.
The Sassanid Empire (224–651 CE) was the Persian golden age, when it was a rival superpower to Rome and Byzantium. Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion, but that changed when Persia fell to the Arab Muslim conquest (633–651 CE). Islam replaced Zoroastrianism over time and Persia became central to Islamic civilization in literature, science, philosophy and mathematics. The Persian language and culture survived and became a deep influence for the Islamic world. In many ways, Persia’s heritage is a major part of western civilization.
The Mongol invasion (1219–1258) under Genghis Khan devastated the region and caused mass depopulation. Timur (Tamerlane) again ravaged Persia in the late 1300s. Shah Ismail I founded the dynasty and declared Shia Islam the state religion — a defining moment that shapes Iran to this day. That created the foundation of the modern Iranian state and identity and started the major rivalry with the Ottoman Empire, the base of what we call the Sunni sect of Islam. After several ruling dynasties, Persia became interesting to the west with Russia and Britain competed for influence. Iran lost significant territory to Russia (Caucasus, Central Asia) during that time.
The Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911) created Iran’s first parliament (Majlis) establishing its early democratic movement. The discovery of oil in 1908 by the British created the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which later became BP. This started the growing resentment of foreign control. It’s also when the Pahlavi Dynasty of Reza Shah seized power and modernized Iran along Western lines. It was the Shah who renamed the country from “Persia” to “Iran” in 1935. During WWII, Britain and USSR occupied Iran, and forced Reza Shah to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Shah. In 1951 Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized the oil industry, leading to the 1953 CIA/MI6 coup (Operation Ajax) that overthrew Mosaddegh and restored the Shah’s power — a defining grievance in recent Iranian memory.
The Shah pursued rapid Westernization (the White Revolution) and a close US alliance. SAVAK (the secret police) brutally suppressed dissent and growing opposition from religious conservatives, leftists, and nationalists that eventually took root and led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The mass popular uprising overthrew the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini was returned from exile to established the Islamic Republic.
The Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) saw a US-backed Iraq, inflicting Sunni harm on their Shiite brethren, including using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The time since then has been dominated by international sanctions which have crippled Iran economically. Violent suppression and a global tug-of-war over a government Nuclear Deal (JCPOA of 2015) was an effort to have Iran agree to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. But the US withdrew under Trump in 2018 and here we are where we are today. This all has all caused Iran to spawn numerous proxy conflicts across the Middle East, mostly targeted against Israel. Iran even launched direct missile/drone attacks on Israel in 2024, galvanizing support for Israeli efforts against Iran by the U.S.
There are key themes throughout Iranian History. As one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations, there is deep pride in Persian identity and culture predating Islam. There has been recurring tension between modernization and tradition and a legacy of foreign interference shaping nationalist sentiment. Shia Islam as a defining political and cultural force has created some isolation from the Arab Sunni world, in some ways allowing the west to have its way with Iran without much push back from the Sunni Islamic world.
After many years of controversial and unpopular U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, America under Trump has decided that Iran is a threat worthy of reentering the region militarily. After tossing out the JCPOA, and then bombing the Iranian nuclear facility to what Trump said was smithereens, Trump has used the Iranian nuclear threat to join Israel in a full-on attack seeking total regime change.
Under the U.S. Constitution, war powers are split between Congress and the President. Only Congress (Article I, Section 8) has the explicit authority to declare war, raise and fund the military, and make rules governing the armed forces. The President is Commander-in-Chief and has control only over the execution of what Congress mandates. Our Founding Fathers deliberately divided this power — Congress holds the “on/off switch” (declaring war), while the President commands the forces once engaged. However, the last formal declaration of war by Congress was World War II (1942). Since then, presidents have committed forces under executive authority, with Congress authorizing military force through AUMFs (Authorizations for Use of Military Force) rather than formal declarations. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 was passed to reassert Congressional authority, requiring the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing troops and limiting unauthorized engagements to 60 days — though its constitutional effectiveness remains debated.
Under the UN Charter, unprovoked attacks are explicitly prohibited. Article 2(4) provides the Core Prohibition: All member states must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. This is considered one of the foundational rules of the international order that has served the world so well for the last 80+ years. The rules are clear, both in the United States and in the United Nation, but enforcement is weak because there is no standing UN army and Permanent Security Council members can veto action against themselves or allies. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other conflicts illustrate that violations occur with limited formal consequences. The bottom line is that unprovoked attack (called aggression) is illegal under international law and the UN Charter — and since 2018 can even constitute a war crime under the ICC’s jurisdiction — but enforcement depends heavily on political will…and the world’s policeman (America) is on the dole.
Let’s face it… sovereign regime change has been pursued frequently by major powers — the US (Iraq, Libya, Panama, Chile, Iran 1953), Soviet Union/Russia, etc. — often with legal justifications that most international law scholars reject. We live in a world where nine countries (US, Russia, China, France, UK, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) have nuclear weapons. South Africa, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan used to have them, but agreed to give them up. Non-nuclear countries like Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey have nuclear weapons deployed in them, but not under their control. And Iran and Belarus are both actively seeking to obtain nuclear weaponry.
Iran is at the center of what is called the “Axis of Resistance” — Iran’s primary alliance network, built around opposition to the US and Israel. Those countries are Syria, Russia, China and North Korea. Iran’s alliance structure is built more on shared enemies (US, Israel, Saudi Arabia) than shared values. Its most reliable relationships are with non-state proxies it funds and arms directly but have mostly been defanged recently, giving it only limited strategic reach across the Middle East without direct military confrontation.
So, here we sit as a world on the precipice. And its all built on true lies. The alliances are lies. The rationale for intervention are lies. The ideologies (sectarian or religious) are lies. But the truth is that we are all prepared to lie for our self interest. We are on the verge of another round of nuclear Russian Roulette and where we used to take solace in the reality that the U.S. holds 90% of the nuclear arsenal, the biggest truth of all is that the Trump Administration has built itself on a bulwark of nothing but lies, so there remains little comfort in that reality. Time for the next flood.