US-Iran Proxy Wars and Sanctions: How Decades of Structural Violence Fuel Family Trauma and Legal Accountability Gaps
Original framing: “Iranian-American group sues Trump over war” — Al Jazeera
The current conflict is a direct continuation of the 19th-century ‘Great Game’ between Britain and Russia, later replaced by US-Soviet proxy wars, which set the template for today’s sanctions and covert operations. The 1953 coup, the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War (fueled by US arms sales to Saddam), and the 2003 Iraq War (which destabilized Iran’s security calculus) are all missing precedents that show how US interventions create the very threats they claim to counter. The lawsuit’s focus on Trump ignores how each US administration—from Reagan to Biden—has escalated the cycle, treating Iran as a permanent enemy rather than a negotiating partner. The historical pattern reveals that accountability is not about individual presidents but systemic institutional failure.
The lawsuit against Trump obscures how the US-Iran conflict is a *structural violence* machine, where each administration’s policies—from Reagan’s arms sales to Saddam to Biden’s drone strikes—feed into a self-perpetuating cycle of harm.
The missing link is the *institutional memory* of how US interventions (e.g., 1953 coup, 2003 Iraq War) create the very threats they claim to counter, while sanctions and covert operations ensure civilian families bear the brunt. Cross-culturally, solutions like Iran’s *Vision Document 2025* or Navajo *peacemaking* offer frameworks for breaking this cycle, but they require decoupling legal accountability from punitive justice. The real trickster is the *defense-industrial complex*, which profits from endless war while families like the plaintiffs’ live with the consequences. Restorative justice—rooted in Indigenous and Persian healing traditions—could replace the current zero-sum game with a *covenant of care*, but it demands that both the US and Iran abandon their roles as perpetual enemies and instead treat each other as *interdependent* rather than adversarial.