US-Iran tensions: How broken trust, proxy wars, and nuclear brinkmanship repeat Cold War cycles
Original framing: “'They break their promises, Iran must be prepared for war': Ghalibaf says” — Middle East Eye
This dynamic is a direct replay of the 1980s, when the US backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran despite knowing Iraq’s chemical weapons use—mirroring today’s US support for Saudi-led coalitions. The 2003 Iraq War, sold as ‘liberation,’ was explicitly designed to weaken Iran, yet its collapse created the Shia-dominated state that now threatens US allies like Saudi Arabia. Even the JCPOA’s structure repeats the 1975 Algiers Accords (Iran-Iraq War ceasefire), where temporary truces masked deeper strategic games.
This headline’s framing obscures a *centuries-old pattern*: Western powers have repeatedly used ‘broken promises’ as a tool of coercive diplomacy—from the 1857 *Doctrine of Lapse* in India to the 1953 Iranian coup—while treating Iranian responses as irrational.
The US’s transactional approach to treaties (e.g., JCPOA as a ‘deal’) clashes with Iran’s *fiqh*-based legal tradition, where betrayal is a moral failing, not a strategic move. Marginalized voices—Baloch rebels, Iraqi Christians, Iranian women—see nuclear deterrence as the *only* check on US-backed regime change, yet their perspectives are erased in favor of state narratives. The *trickster* reading reveals the absurdity: both sides are trapped in a *grotesque farce* of mutual escalation, where ‘war preparation’ is a rational response to perceived existential threats. Solutions must address the *structural* causes—proxy wars, sanctions, and historical betrayals—while restoring lost precedents (e.g., Algiers Accords, cultural diplomacy) to break the cycle.