You Can Sell MAGA a Forever War if You Make It a Civilizational War
Iran has not, in fact, been at war for 3,000 years. But there’s a reason Trump says things like that.
The Iran war, supposed to last a mere four weeks, is about halfway through its fourth month. To Donald Trump, the war might be in its third millennium.
Trump reached far back into history last weekend as he vocally – and futilely – urged Israel to forestall retaliation against Iranian missiles launched on Tel Aviv to avenge the Israeli bombing of Beirut. In doing so, he backdated the war to long, long before the establishment of the State of Israel, or even the United States of America.
Iran’s missiles “were attacks that did not kick at all,” he told the Financial Times’s Edward Luce. “It’s one of those things that’s been going for 3,000 years, or 47 years, depending on how you count.” To Axios’s Barak Ravid, Trump forecasted that “If Bibi strikes them back it’s just gonna keep going like the last 47 years, or the last 3,000 years.”
We’ll come back to “47 years” in a moment. But claiming Iran has a track record of 3,000 years of aggression is not a statement about history.