Key Points –U.S. reticence about a potential Israeli strike on Iran is misguided, shaped by an over-reliance on the lessons learned from the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan.
-This is analogous to how fears of another Vietnam almost prevented the successful 1991 Operation Desert Storm, which ultimately enabled new peace opportunities like the Madrid Conference.
-Rather than dictating to Israel, the US should recognize its ingenuity and the possibility that Iran’s regime, like Saddam’s Iraq, may be a “paper tiger.”
-The greater strategic risk is not a decisive Israeli strike but allowing a nuclear Iran to feel immune behind its own deterrent.
Why Letting Israel Strike Iran Could Be the Next ‘Desert Storm’ Moment
On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait to make the small oil-rich country Iraq’s 19th province. President George H.W. Bush equivocated about a response. After all, by some accounts, Iraq had the world’s fifth-largest army and, at least on paper, it boasted significant Soviet hardware. Iran, a country that at the time had three times Iraq’s population, was unable to penetrate deep into the country as Iranian forces counterattacked following Iraq’s 1980 invasion. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously beseeched Bush, “This is no time to go wobbly.” In internal meetings, Colin Powell, at the time chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was dead set against military intervention, fearing a quagmire.
Powell justified his prudence in history, and he was prudent with power; history informed him. He served two tours in Vietnam, in 1962-1963 and then in 1968, and suffered injuries in both. He saw how the Vietnam conflict grew and feared a similar quagmire in the Middle East. Bush ultimately overruled Powell, and Operation Desert Storm redefined warfare. The U.S.-led coalition did in 100 hours what Iran could not do in eight years.
Americans watched televised imagery of smart bombs so precise that they could go down Iraqi smokestacks. Far from being a lethal military, the concluding turkey shoot on the so-called “Highway of Death” showed that Iraq’s not only Iraq’s conscript army but also its vaunted Republican Guard were paper tigers. Only Powell’s intercession—and his obsession with Vietnam—prevented the United States from pushing to oust Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, 400 miles to the north.
Washington’s view and its general reticence appear overwhelmingly shaped by America’s more recent experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If his last war had defined Powell’s thinking ahead of Desert Storm, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s understanding of Kuwait’s liberation colored his attitude toward warfare, especially after September 11, 2001. Rumsfeld embraced the concept of fourth-generation, technology-directed warfare. After President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq to oust Saddam, Rumsfeld oversaw planning that had U.S. forces bypass major cities; he downplayed the resources necessary to occupy and instead had a misguided belief that America’s qualitative military edge would mitigate the risks of war. In effect, just as Powell was once blinded ahead of a looming conflict by his focus on the last war, so too was Rumsfeld blinded in the opposite way based on his focus on Operation Desert Storm. Both Iraq and Afghanistan were far different than Kuwait and later Panama, though, by any assessment, the post-9/11 wars were quagmires.
The United States may not be a combatant, but as an Israeli strike on Iran appears increasingly imminent, Washington’s view and its general reticence appear overwhelmingly shaped by America’s more recent experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan was America’s longest war; like Vietnam, it was a loss, even if, like Vietnam again, this was more due to a lack of political will than battlefield defeat. The legacy of the Iraq War is less clear; as with President Harry S. Truman’s defense of South Korea, its wisdom may only be recognized generations later.
The question then becomes whether U.S. analysts in the Trump administration, Pentagon, intelligence community, and think tanks are again being blinded by their last war. If the Vietnam experience almost led men like Powell to abandon Kuwait, is the Afghanistan and Iraq experiences leading men like Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth to abandon Israel?
Perhaps a more modest approach would be to acknowledge Israel’s ingenuity: It castrated Hezbollah and has Hamas on the ropes. It has not only assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists in the heart of the Islamic Republic, but it stole Iran’s entire nuclear archive and managed to kill Hamas’ leader inside a secured Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guest house.
Like Ukraine, Israel is fighting a new style of war for which the United States has yet to train or prepare. Israel has already shown it can penetrate Iranian defenses with impunity and strike with precision. Rather than impose Washington’s Afghanistan and Iraq obsession on Jerusalem, perhaps the White House should recognize that, like Iran in 2025, it is akin to Iraq in 1991.
If the Islamic Republic collapses like a house of cards and Iran becomes a normal country, the regime’s “axis of resistance” will collapse.
Such an observation is neither bloodlust nor warmongering; rather, the advantage of allowing Israel to take matters into its own hands would be the possibility of establishing new diplomatic opportunities that today appear fevered dreams. Had the United States not demonstrated its dominance over Saddam Hussein in 1991, then the Madrid Peace Conference that brought together Israel, rejectionist states like Syria, and even the Palestinians would not have been possible nor would the 1993 Oslo Accords.
If the Islamic Republic collapses like a house of cards and Iran becomes a normal country, the regime’s “axis of resistance” will collapse and the region’s most lethal terror groups—both Shi’ite and Sunni—will disappear for lack of resources, unless Turkey fills the gap. The billions of dollars that regional countries spend on arms and combating terror can be redirected to the economy, trade, and development.
Israel’s task today will not be easy, but it is focused on fighting a new war; to be restrained by a Pentagon operationalizing the wrong lessons could lead to the worst possible outcomes. It is not an Israeli strike on Iran that the United States needs to fear, but rather an nuclear Iran that feels immune behind its own deterrent.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on June 12, 2025, before Israel’s strike on Iran.
