No, the U.S. has not been at war with Iran for 47 years

After the United States and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February of this year, the war’s defenders suddenly began to claim (and incessantly to repeat) that the U.S. has already been at war with Iran for 47 years.  Evidently, the motivation for this newly minted talking point is to try to defuse two obvious objections to the war: that it is a war of aggression and therefore unjust, and that it did not receive constitutionally required congressional authorization and is therefore illegal.  The idea is that, if the current operation is part of a wider war that is already longstanding, then it does not constitute aggression and does not need special authorization.

This is sheer sophistry.  There is no plausible case for the claim that the U.S. and Iran have already been at war for decades.  And even if there were such a case, it would support Iran’s cause as much as (or possibly even more than) it supports the U.S. cause.

What is a war?

Since those who make the claim play fast and loose with the concept of “war,” it will be useful to begin with a definition.  Since I approach these issues through the Thomistic just war tradition, I would advocate the definition common among writers in that tradition.  But as it happens, there is nothing distinctively Thomistic about that definition, and I think it corresponds closely to how pretty much everyone usually understands what a war is (except some advocates of the current war, who for political reasons suddenly favor a more expansive definition).  Here’s how the Catholic moral theologians Fr. John McHugh and Fr. Charles Callan define war in their pre-Vatican II manual Moral Theology: A Complete Course, Vol. I:

War is defined as a state of conflict between two or more sovereign nations carried on by force of arms.

(a) It is a state of conflict, and so differs from passing conflicts, such as battles, skirmishes, campaigns…

(b) War is between sovereign nations… war is made by nation against nation, not against particular individuals or groups of individuals within a nation.

(c) It is carried on by force of arms, and so differs from trade war, rivalry in preparedness for war, embargo, blockade, breach of diplomatic relations, etc.  (p. 557 of the 1958 edition)

Similar definitions can be found in other such works of the day.  For example, Fr. Austin Fagothey, in his ethics manual Right and Reason, writes:

We may define [war] as a condition of active armed hostility between two or more sovereign states… commercial rivalry and diplomatic tilts are not strictly war, nor is the so-called “cold war.”  War is active hostility; mere preparation for future aggression or defense is not war, but there must be actual fighting, though it may be intermittent. (p. 560 of the second edition)

Note that on these definition, for two nations to be at war, it is not sufficient that there be bad diplomatic relations between them, that they inflict economic harms on one another, that each side makes preparations for war, or even that there be occasional isolated battles or skirmishes between their respective armed forces.  There has to be a condition of sustained armed conflict between them.

This fits actual ordinary usage.  Consider that throughout most of the twentieth century, the United States and the Soviet Union were enemies.  Diplomatic relations were bad; we imposed economic sanctions on the Soviets after their invasion of Afghanistan, and blockaded their ally Cuba during the missile crisis; we aided their enemies in Afghanistan, and the Soviets aided our enemies in Korea and North Vietnam; both sides prepared for possible direct conventional and nuclear confrontation; and there were even occasional skirmishes between U.S. and Soviet forces (as when the U.S. joined in the failed Allied effort to crush the nascent Bolshevik government beginning in 1918, and when American and Russian pilots clashed during the Korean war).  Nevertheless, we were not literally at war with the Soviet Union.  (When Richard Nixon spoke of achieving “victory without war” with the Soviets, nobody feigned bafflement or said “What? We’ve been at war with them for decades!”)

Or consider that relations between the U.S. and Japan were tense for decades before World War II.  There were longstanding Japanese complaints about American treatment of Japanese immigrants, and longstanding American complaints about Japanese expansionist policy in Asia and the Pacific.  In 1937, the Japanese sank a U.S. Navy gunboat, killing several of those onboard.  In the years before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. imposed an oil embargo against Japan, cut iron and steel exports, and froze Japanese assets.  America also supported and armed China in its conflict with Japan, and both sides planned for a possible war between the U.S. and Japan.  Still, we were not actually at war with Japan until war was declared after the Pearl Harbor attack.  No one at the time tried to mount an argument to the effect that such a declaration was unnecessary insofar as the two countries had already been at war for years.

Then there are examples like the longstanding tense relationship between the U.S. and China, which involved actual combat between American and Chinese troops during the Korean War, and Chinese support for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.  There is the tension that has persisted between the U.S. and North Korea ever since the end of the Korean War, which has included occasional skirmishes.  These facts notwithstanding, we have not been at war with North Korea since 1953, and have never been at war with China.

Other examples could be given, but these suffice to make the point.  The relationship between the U.S. and Iran has for decades been, at worst, analogous to the tense relationships that existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during most of the twentieth century, between the U.S. and Japan prior to World War II, and between the U.S. and countries like China and North Korea for the last several decades.  But those cases did not amount to actual war.  Hence, neither did the U.S.’s tense relationship with Iran over the last several decades amount to a state of war.

Selective history

The reason the war’s defenders say that it has been going on for 47 years is that they claim it began in 1979 with the Iran hostage crisis, during which 66 Americans were held captive for fifteen months.  They also cite a number of events that occurred between that time and now, such as the 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, and insurgent IED attacks during the Iraq war which killed hundreds of American soldiers, all attributed to groups with ties to Iran.

One problem with this narrative is that – as the parallels with the examples involving the Soviet Union, Japan, China and North Korea show – the occurrence of isolated skirmishes, or even sporadic more serious military engagements between U.S. forces and Iranian proxies over the decades, simply do not entail that the two countries have been at war all that time.  We were at war with Soviet proxies North Korea and North Vietnam, and there was some direct military engagement between U.S. forces and Russian and Chinese forces in Korea.  All the same, we were never actually at war with the Soviets or the Chinese.  Japanese and American naval forces clashed in 1937.  But we were not actually at war before 1941.  By the same token, the fact that there have, over the decades, been engagements between U.S. forces and Iranian proxies simply does not entail that we were literally at war with Iran during those decades.

A second problem is that the narrative leaves out crucial historical details that clearly point away from the conclusion that the U.S. and Iran have been at war since 1979.  Start with the hostage crisis, which ended when the U.S. and Iran signed the Algiers Accords on January 19, 1981.  Iran agreed to free the hostages; the U.S. agreed, among other things, not to intervene in Iranian affairs; and both countries agreed to settle disputes by appeal to a tribunal.  Obviously, then, the U.S. took the particular crisis that began in 1979 to have ended with the signing of the accords, and did not regard itself as being at war with Iran.  Moreover, the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran during the 1980s (as was revealed at the time of the Iran-Contra scandal).  And it is hardly plausible to suggest that the U.S. was selling arms to a country it regarded itself as at war with.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the Iranians expressed sympathy with the U.S., provided some intelligence assistance, and sought better relations with America.  This goodwill between the two countries didn’t last, of course, but it is another illustration of the fact that they did not then see themselves as in a state of war.  Then there is the fact that the U.S. and Iran agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) during the Obama administration, which restricted Iran’s nuclear program to peaceful purposes and relaxed U.S. sanctions on Iran.  While the agreement is no longer in force, it was not Iran that ended it, but the United States, during the first Trump administration.  Whatever one thinks of the agreement, it further underlines the fact that the two countries were not in a state of war with one another.  You don’t agree to limit your weapons options, or to relax damaging economic sanctions, with a country you are literally at war with.

A third problem with the narrative according to which the U.S. and Iran have been at war for 47 years is that it conveniently leaves out facts that would arguably make the U.S. rather than Iran the aggressor in this purported decades-long war.  For one thing, it is arbitrary to begin the story in 1979.  The regime that the Islamist revolutionaries overthrew that year was one that had been installed in 1953 during a military coup backed by the United States.  From the Iranian point of view, then, it was the U.S. that first aggressed against Iran, and the events of 1979 were a late response to this aggression.  Then there is the fact that in the early 1980s, the U.S. began to support Iraq in its war with Iran (playing both sides, since it was also selling arms to Iran), despite the fact that Iraq had been the aggressor. 

Of course, this does not mean that the U.S. and Iran really have been at war since 1953, and it does not mean that Iranian support for proxy attacks on U.S. forces, or pursuit of nuclear weapons (if Iran ever decided to pursue them), are justifiable.  The point is rather that if you are going to play the sorts of games defenders of the current war play – namely, selectively pointing to offenses from the distant past to rationalize current aggression – then Iran could play them too.  That’s one more reason not to engage in such sophistry.

Further reading:

The U.S. war on Iran is manifestly unjust

America’s conflict in Iran is not a just war

Does just war doctrine require moral certainty?

Misunderstanding the “just cause” condition of just war doctrine

Just war doctrine and the duties of soldiers