Erik van Zuidam

Marco Rubio is lying. Iran has not spent the decades since 1979 waging war on its neighbours. It has spent those decades under attack, and much of that history is documented in the records of the United Nations itself. On 22 September 1980, nineteen months after the revolution, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and seized Iranian territory, including Khorramshahr. The Security Council waited six days, allowing Iraq to consolidate its territorial gains, before adopting Resolution 479. The resolution merely called on “both Iran and Iraq” to cease the use of force and accept mediation. It condemned nothing, identified no aggressor and demanded no withdrawal. Compare this with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Within hours of Iraqi forces entering Kuwait, the Security Council adopted Resolution 660, condemning the invasion and demanding Iraq’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal. It was the same aggressor and the same Council. The difference was the victim. Washington was not neutral. In 1982, it removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and shared battlefield intelligence with Baghdad while Saddam used mustard and nerve agents against Iranian soldiers and chemical weapons against the people of Sardasht, in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol. The Security Council condemned the use of chemical weapons while refraining from naming Iraq. Iran had every reason to retaliate, yet never resorted to chemical warfare. In 1991, in his report pursuant to Resolution 598, the UN Secretary-General formally attributed responsibility for initiating the conflict to Iraq. Iran’s military engagements since then have followed the same pattern: response, not initiative. When ISIS reached the gates of Baghdad and Erbil in 2014, Iran was among the first to provide military advisers and weapons. It played a central role in defeating the group in Iraq and Syria, operating at the invitation of both governments. Its 2024 strikes against Israel were in response to the bombing of its diplomatic premises in Damascus and the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, where he was an official guest of the Iranian state. In June 2025, Israel attacked Iran two days before a scheduled round of nuclear negotiations. This year’s war began in late February with a joint US-Israeli military campaign. Iran’s strikes across the Persian Gulf are responses to attacks launched from American military bases on the territory of neighbouring states. If @SecRubio is looking for a "regime" that has made war on its neighbours a recurring instrument of policy, he need not look far. Israel has invaded Lebanon four times since 1978 and carried out military strikes against Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Qatar and Iran. It has occupied Palestinian territory since 1967. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful and found that its settlement policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of that territory. In September 2025, a UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Israel also possesses an estimated 90 nuclear warheads, remains outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has no comprehensive IAEA safeguards agreement, even as it attacks the safeguarded nuclear facilities of a state party to the Treaty in the name of non-proliferation. Rubio has the history backwards. Since 1979, Iran has been the target of aggression, not its author. In most of those wars, Washington was either arming the aggressor or fighting alongside it.