After years of international suspense, the conflict between Israel and Iran escalated to undeclared war this summer, pulling the U.S. military into the crossfire.
Prompted by the looming fear surrounding Iran’s nuclear advancement, Israel launched several airstrikes on June 13 against Iranian military and nuclear sites.
Over the following twelve days, Iran launched over a thousand drones in retaliation, nearly all of which were struck down, according to the Israeli Defense Forces. Israel continued to attack as well. As the back-and-forth series of attacks unfolded, Iran recorded significantly higher civilian mortality rates than Israel.
Amid the air combat, the U.S. government assisted and defended Israel through military, financial and humanitarian support, and on June 21, President Trump ordered U.S. forces to strike several crucial Iranian nuclear sites.
In a White House speech hours following the airstrikes, President Trump warned Iranian forces that they “must now make peace,” and threatened that “if they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”
Trump also took to his social media platform, Truth Social, declaring that “Obliteration is an accurate term” to describe the operation’s success. However, reports continue to surface and confirm that the attack significantly damaged only one of the three targeted facilities.
On the evening of June 23, Trump announced on Truth Social that Israel and Iran agreed on a “complete and total ceasefire.” Both countries alleged violations almost immediately, but within a few days, the violence settled.
Before the next eruption, the next generation of voters and leaders must educate themselves on the historical context behind the tension — decades of political, ideological and regional disputes that will continue to involve the U.S. This is not the first time the U.S. has gotten involved in Iran’s affairs; the country’s historical background and America’s longstanding engagement have contributed to the current situation.
Iran has an extensive history of monarchical rule that dates back 2500 years and only ended in the late twentieth century.
The last Shah of Iran was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ruled from 1941 to 1979. During Pahlavi’s reign, he was briefly forced into exile in 1953 through political opposition and a deteriorating relationship with Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh had strong popular support and nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, changing the financial landscape of the country and causing tensions with Britain and the U.S. — whose petrol suppliers were used to sourcing from private companies in Iran, not a federal body. The Shah soon returned to power with the help of a CIA-orchestrated coup. However, he couldn’t easily regain the public’s support.
According to Amin Saikal, author of “Iran Rising: The Survival and Future of the Islamic Republic,” the Shah’s image had been shattered.
“Despite all his nationalist, pro-Western, modernising efforts, the Shah could not shake off the indignity of having been re-throned with the help of a foreign power,” Saikal wrote in an article for The Conversation.
Twenty-five years after the Shah’s return, the pro-democratic, conservative Iranian Revolution took place, a movement seeking to overthrow the monarchy for good. The Shah’s perceived corruption, coupled with his lavish lifestyle and the gap between the wealthy elite and the general population, only further fueled public resentment.
Composed of various ideological groups, the Revolution initially lacked a uniting leader. Quickly taking on the position, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini first led the Shia clerical group – a powerful body of religious scholars known as the Ruhaniyat – but soon emerged in the broader movement. His strategic guidance helped mobilize the population against the Shah’s regime, and in February of 1979, the monarchy toppled. The Shah fled to Egypt, and then several other countries before ultimately landing in the U.S. for cancer treatment.
Anti-Western sentiment caused many of Iran’s Western-educated elite to flee the country as well, and millions of other concerned Iranians followed. In the critical months following the Shah’s fall, Khomeini and his followers – including Iran’s current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – established “a cleric-dominated Islamic Republic,” Saikal writes.
With Khomeini’s rise to power, the U.S. was no longer as dominant a presence in the region. Revolutionized Iran shaped its new domestic and foreign policy around fearing American and Israeli hostility. Khomeini banned Western culture, instead enforcing traditional Islamic law and severe punishments for dissent. Under Khomeini’s rule, Iranian women were denied equal rights and required to wear a veil.
In November of 1979, revolutionist Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 66 American diplomats and citizens hostage and demanding the Shah’s extradition from the U.S. The negotiations soon involved the Iranian government shiftING to the release of frozen assets and the removal of a U.S.-led trade embargo. Then-president Jimmy Carter, led these diplomatic efforts up until the final moments of his term. In 1981, just minutes before Ronald Reagan’s presidential inauguration, the hostages were freed.
In 1989, ten years after the revolution, Khomeini died, the Assembly of Experts chose as his successor Ali Khamanei. He maintained his predecessor’s opposition toward the U.S. and its allies, especially Israel, and supported Russia and China.
Despite the lineage, Iranians’ disapproval of Khomeini’s rule has only heightened over time, with current polls suggesting that upwards of 80% of Iranians living in the country would prefer a change in governance.
In late 2011, even before President Donald Trump assumed the presidency or officially entered politics, he tweeted “In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.” It was an allegation Trump would repeat for several years. However, there were no military conflicts between the U.S. and Iran during former President Obama’s terms.
Instead, the Obama administration helped to negotiate the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” a deal reached in 2015 between Iran, the European Union and “P5+1” – the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with Germany as an additional signee. The agreement was “to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful.”
In his first presidential term, Trump ended the U.S.’s participation in the JCPOA. A 2018 White House press release stated that Iran negotiated the deal in “bad faith” and that the JCPOA “gave the Iranian regime too much in exchange for too little.” The press release also said that the JCPOA had facilitated secret, malicious action by Iran and allowed the country to preserve nuclear-weapon research and development under the guise of peaceful applications like nuclear power.
The same 2018 press release announcing Trump’s desertion of the JCPOA stated that “President Trump is committed to ensuring Iran has no possible path to a nuclear weapon and is addressing the threats posed by the regime’s malign activities.”
The statement also insisted that Iran end its “publicly declared quest to destroy Israel.”
As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden pledged to rejoin the JCPOA and extend its terms to curb Iran’s nuclear program. Then when Biden took office in 2021, his administration initiated talks with Iran to revive the deal.
Negotiations stalled — Iran demanded sanction relief first, and the U.S. demanded a commitment to the nuclear restrictions first. Although efforts persisted sporadically during Biden’s term, a full return to the JCPOA never occurred.
In 2022, Iran imposed sanctions against several U.S. business figures and politicians, claiming they supported “terrorist groups and terrorist acts.” in September 2023, the Biden administration orchestrated a high-profile prisoner exchange, marking the first diplomatic breakthrough between Iran and the U.S. since the U.S.’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. Iran released five Americans, and in return, the U.S granted clemency to five Iranian nationals held in U.S. custody. This deal was contingent upon the transfer of nearly $6 billion in Iranian oil proceeds that were previously frozen under U.S. sanctions.
The prisoner swap raised hopes for lasting diplomacy, but little else occurred. Meanwhile, regional tensions escalated, especially following the Israel–Hamas War and increasing activity and attacks in the region from Iran-backed militias — culminating in what is now being called “The Twelve-Day War.”
While tens of thousands gathered in Tehran on June 28 to attend the state funeral for the victims of the war, Supreme Leader Khamenei remained resolved, tweeting that “The Iranian nation should know that the reason for the conflict with America is that they want Iran to surrender…. Such an event will never happen.”
On July 2, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian declared that the country would no longer cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations partner.
For the U.S., the June ceasefire does not mark a resolution, but rather a temporary halt in a larger struggle against what it still perceives as one of its most dangerous adversaries.
Though the danger of this conflict may seem distant for U.S citizens given that it’s on foreign soil, its impact on American society is real, expensive and only growing. According to a recent Reuters survey of U.S. citizens, 79% said they were living in fear of the U.S. being a new target for attack after the U.S. struck Iran, while 84% reported being constantly worried about Middle East developments in general.
Amidst budget cuts, current military funding not only meets past amounts, but continually increases. Since 2001, the U.S. has spent trillions in military operations in the Middle East alone, either through deploying our own troops or through aid for foreign militaries. Globally, the US currently has the largest military budget, which has its downfalls as money gets located into the military support and away from other industries. In 2022, the US spent $877 billion on military funding, which accounts for almost 40 percent of all spending. Contarily, that year, the US federal government put just $76.4 billion towards education, less than a tenth of what they put towards the military. The way conflicts like this push the government to increase the allocated budget for military support will continue to take away from the industries like education that support the youth of the US.
Motivated also by humanitarian aims, some young Americans are seeking to end the cycle, forming peaceful protests to spread awareness of the impact the latest, violent developments in the conflict have had on innocent populations in both countries. And that support crosses party lines, with so many Americans concerned about continued conflict in the Middle East, even if it’s for different reasons.
More than just a good sign, that engagement shows a willingness for this generation to acknowledge the history of conflict while still pushing for new solutions. Contributing to conversations about this global issue and sharing their own opinions allows young people to stay connected with the issue and encourages their peers to recognize that the threats of this crisis are ongoing and severe.
Worldwide too, the youth must continue to report and hold their governments accountable for attacks on human rights and other atrocities. Unless we continue to demand that global leaders implement transparency and restraint, ceasefires like this one will merely be pauses in the development of an even deadlier generational war. That includes when it’s today’s young voices in tomorrow’s war rooms.