For the Back Seat: Why Iran Is Not Iraq or Afghanistan

We are hearing it again. From the random comedian turned geopolitical analyst, the podcast influencer, and the back seat foreign policy expert. “Remember Iraq,” they say. “Forever war.” As if that one phrase ends the conversation. The uninformed reflex is to think of years of troop deployments, endless insurgencies, wasted lives, and strategic quagmires. The instinct is understandable. But it risks misreading the moment we are in. Because Iran is not Iraq. It is not Afghanistan. And this is not the same war.

Israel and the United States are not talking about regime change. That is not the mission. The mission is clear and limited. It is to irreversibly destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program. That is it. Not to occupy Tehran. Not to rebuild Iran’s government. Not to democratize the Middle East. The goal is singular: to stop the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism from acquiring the most dangerous weapon on earth.

Many invoke Iraq as a cautionary tale. I was on the ground as an American soldier, sent on missions to find those exact weapons of mass destruction. They were not there. The United States invaded Iraq based on intelligence assessments that turned out to be catastrophically wrong. There were no active WMD programs, yet that claim became the justification for war. But the greatest failure came after Baghdad fell. The mission shifted from regime removal to vague, open-ended nation building, with no clear plan and no unified political strategy.

Then came one of the most damaging decisions in modern U.S. history. The Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the entire Iraqi military, sending hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers home without jobs, income, or direction. At the same time, a sweeping de-Ba'athification policy purged virtually every experienced civil servant from government, not for war crimes or corruption, but for their affiliation with a ruling party they had often joined just to survive professionally. These moves collapsed Iraq’s governing institutions overnight and left a vacuum that was immediately filled by chaos, insurgency, and extremist groups. The failure was not in the use of force, but in what came after—a rushed deconstruction of a functioning state with no viable plan to rebuild it.

The intelligence in the lead-up to Iraq was thin, ambiguous, and in some cases outright fabricated. A single CIA source, later discredited, claimed Saddam Hussein had restarted biological weapons programs. The infamous claim that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake from Africa was based on forged documents. Analysts pointed to aluminum tubes as possible centrifuge components, even after the Department of Energy and other experts dismissed the theory. Much of the intelligence was politicized, cherry-picked, and presented with far more confidence than it deserved. Conspiracy and historical revisionism have since claimed that the government intentionally lied. But it is far more likely that a combination of fear, urgency, and human error in the wake of 9/11 led to a cascade of bad assumptions, institutional groupthink, and confirmation bias.

That is not the case with Iran. The IAEA has hard data, not vague suspicion. It has verified uranium enriched to 83.7 percent. It has documented missing stockpiles and hidden facilities. The only historical comparison is not Iraq in 2003, but Iraq in 1981, when Israel destroyed the Osirak reactor before Saddam could complete his program. The world later saw that act for what it was: a necessary preemptive strike that likely prevented a future disaster. The situation with Iran today is even more urgent.

The United States is not at war with Iran. But it did act, forcefully and with purpose, when the Iranian regime crossed every diplomatic and nuclear red line. After Israel had launched its preemptive campaign, the U.S. carried out a singular, strategic strike that only it could conduct, targeting Iran’s most hardened and deeply buried nuclear enrichment facilities. This was not just about assisting an ally. It was about doing what only the United States could do to stop the Islamic Republic from becoming a nuclear-armed state.

The U.S. strike came after the International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran was in violation of its safeguards agreement and had enriched uranium to 83.7 percent purity, near weapons-grade, at Fordow and Natanz. Iran failed to provide credible answers about man-made uranium particles found at undeclared sites and obstructed access to inspectors. General Erik Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, testified before Congress that if Iran decided to sprint to a nuclear weapon, it could produce enough fissile material in one week and possibly build up to ten nuclear bombs within three weeks. General Anthony Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, warned that Iran’s breakout timeline is now presumed to be less than one week and that its progress is deeply concerning with strategic implications for global stability.

This was not a prelude to war. It was a deliberate, proportional military action to send a clear signal. Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb will not be tolerated. Not diplomatically. Not politically. Not militarily. This was not a hypothetical threat. It was real, immediate, and accelerating.

Some will say military action risks escalation. That Iran will retaliate. But this moment did not begin with the United States or Israel. It began with Iran’s continued defiance of international nuclear agreements and its rapid acceleration toward a weapon. Iran has enriched uranium to near weapons grade, buried its program deep underground, and paired it with increasingly long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. This is the escalation. It is not theoretical. It is deliberate. And it has brought the region to the edge of a strategic crisis.

Waiting did not reduce the threat. It allowed it to harden. Every day of delay gave Iran more time to disperse its program, develop more advanced delivery systems, and raise the cost of future action. The window to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran was closing. Acting when we did was not escalation. It was prevention.

This is also not a partisan issue. Since World War II, nearly every U.S. president, regardless of party, has used military force without explicit prior congressional authorization when core national security interests were at stake. President Biden did it in Syria. President Obama did it in Libya. President Reagan did it in Grenada. The War Powers Resolution has never been a meaningful constraint when the executive judged the risk to be urgent and the mission limited. President Donald Trump, as commander in chief, has acted decisively to support Israel, degrade Iran’s most dangerous capabilities, and deter further aggression. That is presidential leadership within the bounds of long-standing precedent.

So to those shouting “Iraq” or “Afghanistan” from the sidelines, I hear you. I fought in Iraq. I have studied these wars my entire adult life. But you are applying the wrong history to the wrong context. This is not a forever war. This is not occupation. This is not regime change. This is preemption. It is decisive action to prevent the single most destabilizing development in the region: a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran.

This is about stopping Iran from getting the bomb. Nothing more. But also nothing less.

John Spencer is executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute.

He is the coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.

Learn more at www.johnspenceronline.com

You can also follow him on 'X' at: @SpencerGuard

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