NPR’s Scott Simon speaks with Swarthmore College political science professor Dominic Tierney about the U.S.-Iran war and other conflicts that have left the U.S. in drawn-out entanglements.
Transcript
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
There is an uneasy calm in the Middle East at the moment after Iran struck ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and President Trump declared the ceasefire over and ordered strikes on targets across Iran. The on-again, off-again fighting is the latest indicator that the U.S. may be engulfed in a conflict with no clear end – or even a goal in sight – almost a month after signing the memorandum of understanding. Dominic Tierney teaches political science at Swarthmore College and joins us now. Professor, thanks for being with us.
DOMINIC TIERNEY: My pleasure.
SIMON: Let’s be blunt. Has the Iran war become a quagmire?
TIERNEY: Well, it does seem that way. The United States is stuck in a difficult military campaign that it cannot extricate itself from. And the tragedy of this is that this is not a new experience for the United States. In fact, it’s part of a longer story where America has struggled in war for many decades. You know, up until World War II, the U.S. won virtually every war that it fought. And since World War II, the United States has barely won a war and instead has endured a string of stalemates and defeats and quagmires – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now potentially the Iran war.
SIMON: Well, let me ask, because the United States is routinely acknowledged for having the strongest military in the world. Did it, in this case, overestimate its military capability to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and bring about a popular uprising?
TIERNEY: I think that that is unquestionably the case. You know, when wars begin, leaders often have hubris, you know, and overconfidence. And they think that, you know, the war will be over before the leaves turn brown, back in World War I, or you think of George W. Bush in the Iraq War. Or now in Iran, where Trump seems to have believed that the regime was teetering and would be quickly toppled and perhaps we could have a kind of another Venezuela, where a pro-U.S. regime is essentially installed at very minimal cost. And that’s just not how the war evolved, and this just adds another chapter to America’s long and difficult story of modern war.
SIMON: What has each side accomplished or lost? I mean, President Trump called for regime change, and Iran did just bury one supreme leader.
TIERNEY: So, you know, there aren’t necessarily any real winners in the war because it’s been costly for all sides. You know, talking about who won a war is almost like talking about who won an earthquake, right? It’s devastating all around. And Iran has undoubtedly suffered a, you know, loss of military capabilities. And – but the United States has also suffered. You know, 13 Americans have been killed. Many have been wounded. A lot of U.S. bases have been hit.
And the key point is that the regime is arguably in a stronger position now than it was when the war began. And we saw that with the recent funeral of the killed supreme leader, with apparently a lot of nationwide support. So the war has not achieved the goals that Trump laid out and other U.S. officials laid out, which, I have to say, were very confusing and sometimes a little contradictory or in tension at the start of the war. So we’ve ended up in a campaign that has not achieved the core goals. Iran is stronger, although it has been punished, and the U.S. is trying to get out of the ditch.
SIMON: What’s your estimation been of negotiating teams so far? Are they negotiating or drawing out the process?
TIERNEY: Well, I think they’re doing both. You know, you shouldn’t expect a quick diplomatic resolution to this war. The single – arguably the single most difficult task that a – an American president can face as a leader is extricating the U.S. from one of these failed wars. It’s the supreme challenge, and I wish it didn’t happen so frequently, but it does.
And when you look back at some of these other wars, the – it’s often taken a long time to get out of them. So the U.S. was negotiating for two years to get out of the Korean War. It took five years to negotiate a way out of the Vietnam War. We spent three months in Vietnam just negotiating the shape of the table around which we would negotiate with the other side. And similarly, it took years to get out of Afghanistan. So this is not going to be a quick process. We’re only in the middle of the movie here, and we’ve got to be ready for a difficult process of extrication.
SIMON: Dominic Tierney is chair of political science at Swarthmore College. Professor, thanks so much for being with us.
TIERNEY: It was my pleasure. Thank you.
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