Opposing a war on Iran is not an emotional stance, nor is it an alignment with Tehran’s theocratic regime—a regime that has been cruel enough to harm its own people first, and to export an ideology of domination to its neighbors second. Iran’s rulers, with all their ideological and security layers, need no one to defend them. The real objection comes from somewhere else: from a memory that has not healed, from an Iraqi wound that became a global political lesson in how failure is manufactured.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it did so under the banners of “liberation” and “weapons of mass destruction.” Two decades later, nothing remains of those slogans except belated admissions.

Even Donald Trump described the invasion as America’s greatest modern failure, as if the world’s superpower needed twenty years to discover what Iraqis understood in the first week: occupation does not bring freedom, and it does not build a state.

Even Donald Trump described the invasion as America’s greatest modern failure, as if the world’s superpower needed twenty years to discover what Iraqis understood in the first week: occupation does not bring freedom, and it does not build a state.

It opens doors that cannot be closed.

Post‑invasion Iraq became a laboratory of chaos: a collapsed state, a corrupt political class, sectarian militias multiplying like fungus, a captured economy, and a society living atop a pressure cooker on the verge of explosion.

This legacy alone is enough to make any new war in the region feel like a replay of the same mistake—only on a larger scale.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was not offering a historical reflection when he spoke about the Iraq War; he was issuing a political warning. He said the U.S. invasion did not only destroy Iraq—it unleashed a wave of extremist terrorism, drove up global energy prices, and altered the world’s balance of power in ways no one could control. He added that an attack on Iran carries the same fog of uncertainty, and that its consequences will not produce a more just international order, but a new round of disorder.

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This view is not isolated. European foreign ministers, Western think tanks, and even retired generals have all reminded the world that the Iraq War was the turning point that exposed the limits of military power—and that any new war in the Middle East will reproduce the same scenario: collapsing states, rising militias, and a region transformed into an open arena for proxy conflicts.

Why does the world seem more afraid of war today? Because everyone knows the Middle East cannot withstand another one. Because the Iraqi experience proved that war is easier than building peace, that toppling regimes does not mean toppling crises, and that it is always the people who pay the price.

And because the Iranian regime—despite all its brutality—is not merely a “military target,” but a geopolitical knot stretching from the Gulf to the Mediterranean. Any war against it will not be a “precise surgical operation,” but an earthquake reshaping energy routes, alliances, and the global economy.

That regime has indeed been cruel enough to harm its own citizens and to export its ideology of domination. But its downfall—this must be emphasized—is a popular demand inside Iran itself before it is a regional desire. The millions of Iranians who took to the streets over the past two decades were not asking for cosmetic reforms; they were demanding the end of a system that confiscated their lives and freedoms and turned their country into a battlefield.

Still, rejecting war does not contradict the desire to see the regime fall. It stems from the Iraqi lesson that still hovers like a warning above everyone’s head.

Yet the region itself is not innocent in fueling today’s anxieties.

The Arab Gulf states found themselves in a war they never declared when Iran and its allied Iraqi militias struck vital oil and infrastructure facilities—as if sending a message that Tehran’s reach does not stop at its borders.

The Arab Gulf states found themselves in a war they never declared when Iran and its allied Iraqi militias struck vital oil and infrastructure facilities—as if sending a message that Tehran’s reach does not stop at its borders.

These attacks were not mere military operations; they were declarations that the entire region had become hostage to Iran’s calculations and its armed proxies.

The question now is whether the world can learn from the Iraqi lesson before it finds itself facing a new version of the same chaos—this time on the shores of the Gulf and at the heart of the global energy market.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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