Wednesday in the Age of Reason-Munchausen (1988)

A look at the last year in the US-Iran relationship reveals why. After assassinating Suleimani, Washington made other decisions that were devastating for Iranians. While Trump wavered and shrugged in the face of the pandemic’s toll in the United States, he was focused and relentless when it came to making life worse for Iranians. Even as the pandemic exploded, the United States intensified a decades-old sanctions regime, hurting the Iranian medical industry and impoverishing millions of Iranians.

Washington ratcheted up military hostility too, doing just about everything to provoke Tehran short of actually invading Iran. It moved aircraft carriers to Iran’s coast and kept them there for the entire year. It added thousands of troops to the region in countries surrounding Iran, where they joined the many thousands who were already stationed there. It armed and encouraged its allies Saudi Arabia and Israel in their own actions targeting Iran. 

In fact, the year was bookended with the assassination of another high-profile Iranian, nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November. Fakhrizadeh had long been targeted by Israel, and a US official has said that Tel Aviv was behind the killing, though Israel officially denies it.

In the days after last January’s assassination, when the United States and Iran stood on the brink of greater conflict, Americans in multiple cities rallied, denouncing war. Crucially, Tehran showed restraint in its response, carrying out a limited attack on US bases in Iraq calculated to show that Iran could not be stepped on without a response, while avoiding American casualties.