On Feb. 28, the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran, targeting missile infrastructure, military sites and leadership in the capital of Tehran. The next day, March 1, the Iranian state news agency confirmed the attacks killed the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As of March 8, Iran has named Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the former supreme leader, as his father’s successor and new supreme leader of the country, according toFarnaz Fassihi of The New York Times .
Of the recent attacks on Iran, one American missile reportedly struck an Iranian elementary school, killing 175 people–most of them children. A video, uploaded by Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency and verified by The New York Times showed the attack.
In response to these recent attacks, the coalition of USF Students for Justice in Palestine quickly moved to share a protest against the U.S.-Israel War in Iran that took place the afternoon of Feb. 28 at the San Francisco Federal Building. Additionally, the USF Educators for Justice in Palestine organized an anti-war vigil on Gleeson Plaza on the afternoon of March 3.
These strikes are the second time in less than a year that the U.S. military has bombed Iran. American forces bombed three nuclear facilities in the country last June. American presence in the region has long reflected a pattern of military presence. Our last major wars in the region were in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2001, respectively.
“It follows the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Mossadeq in 1953, US backing for Saddaam Hussein’s war against Iran in 1980-88, as well as the US shooting down of Iran Air Flight #655 in 1988, and the assassination of Gen. Qasem Suleimani in 2020,” Asian studies Professor Stephen Roddy stated in an email. “After the hostage crisis of 1979-81, Iran has not attacked Americans directly in 45 years. To the contrary, Iran offered indirect assistance to the US after 2001 in Afghanistan.”
When asked about the historical precedent of the American war in this region, Sofia Weinberg, a junior politics major said, “I don’t know a lot about the U.S. and the Middle East throughout history. I feel like nobody ever taught me about American action abroad.” Her view represents a larger trend in America in which many Americans are deeply uncertain about the motivations of the strike.
Journalism Professor Tim Redmond, said when asked about the motivations behind why Trump might pursue this course of action, “I don’t understand why—and neither, apparently, do a lot of people in the United States. People don’t understand why we’re doing this. Iran was not an imminent threat to us… In a normal time, in a normal world, it would never even occur to me that a President of the United States would go to war to distract people from other issues.”
As Americans are confronted by the confounding circumstances of the Trump administration’s repeated foreign interference, many are asking what it means for them. In considering the implications of these attacks, Ivory Loeng-Loth, a senior international studies major said; “I don’t think the strike itself will affect day-to-day Americans too much…However, the price of gas and diesel will likely increase very quickly”
This sentiment was echoed by Professor Stephen Zunes, a prominent specialist on U.S. Middle East policy as he states; “The main thing will be the economy, in the sense that 20% of the world’s oil comes from the region…if this continues for another month there’s a serious risk of a global recession.” The domestic implications for these strikes are explored further by Professor Redmond as he explains; “Polling shows, depending on the polls, that support for the attack on Iran, the war in Iran, is between 21% and 40% depending on the poll. That’s the lowest that support for a military action by a president has been in the history of modern polling.”
The actions of the Trump administration have been deeply unpopular with the American public, with CNN reporting nearly 60% of Americans disapprove of the US decision to take military action in Iran. Moreover, according to this same poll, 60% of Americans also say they do not think Trump has a clear plan for handling the situation.
In observing the rationale for a war unwanted by many Americans and so-quickly orchestrated by the Trump administration, it is clear that the levels of American interest abroad are in concert with changing international power dynamics. This has resulted in a situation concisely explained by Professor Zunes as such; “Trump wants to dictate other nations’ policies and he’s willing to go to war if they don’t obey. The Iranian regime is indeed terrible, but their real crime is defying U.S. hegemony.”
