Does the Iraq war hold lessons for Iran?

0:00Today on State of the World, does the Iraq War hold lessons for Iran?

0:08You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. It's Monday, March 9th. I'm Greg Dixon. As we enter the second week of U.S. combat operations in Iran, many observers are wondering about the similarities and differences from the last time the United States waded into a war in the region. in 2003 in Iraq. One of the people wondering about the lessons that can be drawn is NPR's Layla Faddle, who covered the Iraq war and now is back in that country reporting on the U.S. war in Iran. Here's Layla.

0:43Leila Fadel:Soon after the U.S. and Israel dropped the first bombs on Iran, President Trump addressed Americans. A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. Trump's declaration of war felt eerily familiar. My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. President George W. Bush's war against Iraq was supposed to be decisive, short.

1:30Leila Fadel:A few weeks before it started, his defense secretary at the time, the late Donald Rumsfeld, offered a timeline. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months. America's war in Iraq dragged on for years. It was predicated on weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. It cost upward of a trillion dollars. It sparked a sectarian civil war. Thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insists... Stop. This is not Iraq. This is not Iraq. This is not endless. Hegseth says the U.S. is working off a new playbook, one that appears to snub international law.

2:14No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars. For years, I lived in Iraq and covered the aftermath of regime change.

2:28Leila Fadel:It was bloody, and the outcome is still unclear today, as the U.S. and Iran continue to compete for influence. I'm back here now, starting in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the past is hanging over questions about the future. Is the end of the Islamic Republic in Iran imminent? Will it go the way of Iraq? And will the ripple effects destabilize the region and the world? Well, there certainly are echoes of the Iraq war. Peter Mansour was a key leader in the U.S. Army during the U.S. troop surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. His role was to try to turn the tide in the war. Iran had gained huge influence over the U.S.-backed Shia leadership in Iraq.

3:11The U.S.

3:12Leila Fadel:was facing a Sunni insurgency, fighting their presence and the U.S.-backed Shia leadership in Iraq. The equivalent would be some sort of IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, revolt that we then support. But I think the real echoes are the focus on combat operations. You can hear it in the Secretary of Defense's news conference. unleashing the most lethal. We're all about bombing various targets. B2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course, classified effects all on our terms with maximum authorities. But there's no discussion of longer term strategy. How does the Iranian regime fall? How does Iran get put back together and reconstructed?

4:02You know, they're talking now about perhaps arming the Kurds in the north, which brings its own set of problems into play with ethnic rivalries in Iran. And so all of these various factors that the administration, quite frankly, has failed to consider will come back eventually to haunt the administration. And that has echoes with the planning of the George W. Bush administration for the Iraq war.

4:30Leila Fadel:Mansour knows this problem intimately. After all, he was one of the people tasked with trying to put Iraq back together. If we're going to foment an insurgency, which is one way this war could end, albeit it would be months and years in the making, would be to find Persian groups that we could support, arm, equip, and then potentially guide in taking down the IRGC with the support of a lot of U.S. air power. Do you worry about civil war? You know, by some accounts, about 80 % of the Iranian people would welcome regime change. Well, as you recall, that was about the same percentage in Iraq. And that didn't necessarily lead to peace and stability in the aftermath of a regime change.

5:18Because the 20 % of the population that supported the regime and benefited from it took up arms to oppose what came in its aftermath. And if the RGC and its supporters do the same thing, then this could be a long, drowned-out conflict, which is exactly what we don't want.

5:37Leila Fadel:Past administrations have gamed out scenarios of external regime change efforts in Iran to dismantle the government. Jen Gavito was part of many of those exercises when she was at the State Department until 2024. virtually every scenario every tabletop exercise every war game that's been conducted over you know the last decade or so and maybe even longer than that has led to the conclusion that the most likely outcome of an attempt to impose regime change externally would be further consolidation of power by the IRGC. And so regime change likely would lead to a harder line Iranian government than the one that we are attempting to currently dismantle.

6:23Leila Fadel:The prospect of the end of a brutal dictatorship always brings euphoria and hopes for a different future. We saw that at the beginning of the war in Iraq, with scores of Iraqis celebrating the news of Saddam's capture in the capital.

6:39Leila Fadel:We saw that last week when many Iranians celebrated the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei in the streets of Tehran.

6:49We are at the turning point in our history.

6:52Leila Fadel:Arash Azizi is an Iranian-American historian and writer. Clearly we are entering in the post-Khamenei phase. And I am cautiously optimistic that some of the worst policies of Khamenei will be abandoned in Jew time, and that our country will emerge to be some sort of more normal, basically. But unfortunately, at this moment, it's clear that it is going to be U.S. and Israel, as well as different factions inside the regime, who get to determine our fate. That first moment when you heard the strikes were happening, what was your overarching emotion? You know, first of all, very concerned and worried.

7:29Things are changing. And when Khamenei was killed, a moment that I had sort of waited for all my life, and I always thought I would be happy, it was hard for me to feel anything. I definitely couldn't celebrate as my country was on the bombardment and I was worried about my family dying. You know, I sort of felt numb, pondering this guy's legacy and how terrible he was for Iran. Really one of the worst leaders we've had in thousands of years of our history. It's a very terrible situation that our country has brought in for it to be subject to war like this and for its fate to be determined by its own unelected misrulers and its foreign adversary.

8:06And I hope one day, I dream of a day where that's not the case, where Iran can determine its own fate.

8:13Leila Fadel:Azizi says he dreams of a day where Iranians get to reshape their own future. That was NPR's Leila Faddle.

8:25That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.