Imperial Anxieties: The U.S.-Israeli War on Iran

A decade ago, Donald Trump was clear. “Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” he declared at a Republican presidential debate. “George Bush made a mistake. . . . We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.” “I’m not going to start wars,” he reiterated on election night in 2024.This February, the United States and Israel started a war with Iran, massively destabilizing the Middle East. In this Boston Review roundtable discussion moderated by BR contributor Alex Shams, four scholars of Iranian history and politics—Peyman Jafari, Ali Kadivar, Manijeh Moradian, and Naghmeh Sohrabi—assess the incoherent rationales offered by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu; the growing geopolitical, economic, and human toll; reactions from within Iran and the Iranian diaspora; and the fate of Iranian struggles for freedom and democracy “under the boot of empire.”This discussion took place on April 6, two days before a ceasefire was brokered. An edited version of the transcript appears in our Spring 2026 issue, Forever Wars.Further Reading:“Iran After Khamenei: An interview with Asef Bayat”“The Catastrophe That Has Befallen All of Us: A war diary”To support work like this, please subscribe to the magazine or make a tax-deductible donation to BR.