“In the weeks immediately after the bombing [in Lebanon], I believed the last thing that we should do was turn tail and leave. Yet the irrationality of Middle East politics forced us to rethink our policy there. If there would be some rethinking of policy before our men die, we would be a lot better off.” — Ronald Reagan, An American Life, pp. 466-467
On February 13, 1980, Jimmy Carter referred to the 1953 coup in Iran and the installation of Mohammad Reza Shah as “ancient history.” Yet that “ancient” event occurred only 27 years before Carter’s remark—and 72 years before 2026—and its consequences continue to reverberate today. Unfortunately, both this event and several other more recent events get strategically left out of much of the rhetoric concerning the ongoing war with Iran, even as we are reminded of the US’s past with Iran.
While history is necessarily selective, and no society possesses a complete record of the past, historical memory often becomes ideologically selective. For example, medieval Islamic wars and conquests from more than five centuries ago can be treated as ever-relevant, while the CIA’s 1953 coup can be dismissed as “ancient history.” The 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis and the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing are appealed to in order to justify war with Iran, yet the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) and the Iran-Contra of 1986 (with the underlying operations spanning 1985–1986) fade conveniently into the background.
Today, in the midst of an undeclared war against Iran, we are invited—even demanded—to believe as obvious the claim that Iran has been at war with the US for 47 years. For example, Randy Fine—a Republican US representative from Florida and member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee—argued on the House floor (April 16, 2026),
Mr. Speaker, for 47 years, there has been a war involving Iran. It has been a war against the United States. It started 47 years ago with: ‘‘Death to America.’’ When they chanted it, they meant it. It started in 1979, when they took our hostages. In 1983, when Iran killed 241 Americans, including 220 marines, Iran recognized they were at war with us.
While this claim is seemingly so obvious and undisputed to Randy Fine and many others, it has hardly been obvious to many of the very people now advancing it. Indeed, the claim that America has been “at war with Iran for 47 years” has been presented alongside simultaneous affirmations that the current war is not a war and that we are not—and have not been—at war with Iran. What was eventually repeated as though it were an unquestionable historical fact is contradicted by the recent statements of many of the same people now supporting the war.
Vice president, JD Vance stated (June 22, 2025), “No, we’re not at war with Iran. . . We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.” While Vance may have meant that the war policies were not intended against the Iranian people, the actions described were certainly actions of war. House Speaker Mike Jonhson said (March 5, 2026), “We are not at war. We have no intention of being at war.” Instead, Johnson called the military action a “limited operation.” In February 2020, after the US killed Qassem Soleimani, then-Senator Rubio explicitly told the Senate: “. . .we are not engaged at this moment in hostilities with Iran—we are not at war with Iran. . .”
Despite these claims, Trump claimed (March 7, 2026), “We’re winning the war by a lot. The war itself is going unbelievably. It’s as good as it can be.” On March 11, 2026, Trump was asked about his calling the war a “little excursion.” The reporter asked, “You just said, ‘It is a little excursion,’ and you said, ‘It is a war.’ So which one is it?” Trump said, “Well, it’s both.”
Further confusing the issue, the meaning of “war” apparently changes not only when the war began, but when it supposedly ended. We have repeatedly been told that the “war” was already “over” or decisively “won,” even as the fighting continued. In fact, Trump has claimed to have “won” at least 30 times!
Reagan: Coward and Traitor?
While it is obvious that there has been a contradictory mixed message, it ought to also be evident that the supposedly-obvious claim that the US has been at war with Iran continuously for 47 years is untrue. Contra Jimmy Carter, who apparently believed 27 years was “ancient history,” 47 years is also not ancient history. But neither were 1983–84 and 1985—when the Beirut barracks bombing (October 23, 1983) was followed by Reagan’s withdrawal of the Marines from Lebanon (February 26, 1984), and the Reagan administration began secretly facilitating arms transfers to Iran, respectively.
Following the Beirut barracks bombing, in which 241 American servicemen were killed, Reagan ultimately decided to withdraw the Marines from Lebanon. While Reagan initially believed that “the last thing that we should do was turn tail and leave,” he later explained that “the irrationality of Middle East politics forced us to rethink our policy there.” By February 26, 1984, the Marines had withdrawn from Beirut.
The following year, the Reagan administration began the secret initiative that would develop into the Iran–Contra scandal, facilitating the sale of weapons to Iran through Israel during the Iran–Iraq War—even as the United States officially tilted in favor of Iraq and Saddam Hussein. The official investigation records that, “Israel was more than willing to provide these weapons to Iran, but only if the United States approved the transfer and would agree to replace the weapons.”
Whatever else may be said about the wisdom or legality of that policy, the Reagan administration evidently did not behave as though the United States had already been at war with Iran continuously since 1979. Indeed, Reagan himself described the initiative as an effort “to renew a relationship with the nation of Iran,” and, a week later, “to replace a relationship of total hostility with something better.”
Was Reagan a coward or traitor?
While there are areas of Reagan’s policy that certainly may be critiqued, this article does not take the harsh position that the title may suggest. Instead, the argument is intended to call many mainstream national conservatives to consistency if they truly believe their rhetoric concerning the current Iran war.
If the United States really has been at war with Iran continuously for 47 years, then it would stand to reason that such conservatives ought to evaluate Ronald Reagan as a coward for withdrawing American forces following an Iranian-linked attack and as a traitor for facilitating the sale of weapons to the Iranians while at war with them. Writes Jack Hunter,
. . .they [the neoconservatives] certainly have no shame in rewriting history to reinforce this.
This has been especially true of this new narrative that the United States has been at war with Iran for forty-seven years, since the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis of 1979. But now only Trump has been president enough to end this almost half century war!
Not only is this completely made up—Team Trump really did launch a brand new war of aggression against Iran no matter how they spin it—but if it were true, President Ronald Reagan was in fact a traitor!
After all, Reagan sold weapons to Iran in the 1980s precisely when today’s neocons insist the United States and Iran were already in an active war.
But no one thought the Reagan administration committed treason at the time because despite major tensions, no one thought America was at war with Iran.
If conservatives refuse to tarnish the reputation of one of their favorite presidents in this way, perhaps they do not truly believe—or have not seriously considered the implications of—their own rhetoric concerning the supposed 47-year war with Iran. In this case, their “historical revisionism” leads to an uncomfortable conclusion.
The Left, Right, & Language Games: We Have Always Been at War with Iran
Language ought to be used to describe and communicate about reality, not to create it. For genuine communication to take place—wherein both sides are coherent and understand one another—language must correspond to reality.
Both the Left and the Right at least give lip service to this in that they claim to represent the truth and accuse others of lies. Yet, one of the most common fallacies is the fallacy of equivocation—when a word or phrase shifts its meaning midway through an argument, making an invalid conclusion look correct. What we observe regarding this Iran war—both being a war and not being a war, being over and won and ongoing—is retroactive reconstruction of the past to make the present narrative appear continuous and unquestioned.
Admittedly, defining a war requires some precision and common sense. According to the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war; however, the fact that Congress has not formally declared war since World War II does not mean that the subsequent wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere were not actually wars. A formal declaration of war is therefore not necessary for us to recognize the reality of war.
Further, we recognize that there can be a state of non-peace, hostility, or conflict that nevertheless falls short of war—the Cold War being the obvious example. To be fair, we can even recognize that US-Iranian relations cannot simply be characterized as wholly peaceful since 1953, much less since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. There have been coups, revolutions, hostage crises, terrorism, proxy conflicts, sanctions, covert actions, threats, and even direct military clashes. In fact, by the same reasoning, Iran could claim that the US has been at war with them since 1953 or since the 1980s. None of that should be minimized merely because we insist upon using the word war accurately.
But, all that admitted, it does not follow that it is legitimate to claim simultaneously that the United States and Iran are not at war, are at war, and have been at war continuously for 47 years. These propositions cannot simply be treated as interchangeable descriptions of the same reality. If words are to communicate rather than merely persuade, war must mean something.
The political Right—though hardly monolithic and composed of many disagreeing factions—has traditionally appealed to certain core ideas or commitments. Among these are belief in objective truth and ethics; a structure to reality according to which people and things possess a nature; God-given or nature-given realities in the world that cannot simply be wished away or redefined; and the possibility and value of rational argument as a means of reasoning toward truth. Whatever disagreements exist concerning the philosophical foundations of these commitments, conservatives have frequently presented themselves as defenders of the basic proposition that reality exists independently of our preferences and that language ought to correspond to it.
This has been an important part of the conservative critique of the political Left. Especially under the influence of Marxism, critical theory, and postmodernism, significant portions of the Left have come to view language and argumentation through the lens of power. Language is not regarded merely as a means of describing an independently-existing reality, nor logic and argument simply as a common enterprise by which disputants reason toward truth. Categories, definitions, and even the rules governing discourse may themselves be regarded as products or instruments of existing power structures. To accept an opponent’s terminology, definitions, or rules of argument may therefore be viewed not as submitting oneself to a common standard of truth, but as allowing the opponent to determine the terms of the debate, thereby conceding power before the argument has even begun.
Taken to its political extreme, this relationship between language and power produced precisely the sort of manipulation of reality for which Communist regimes became notorious. The Party did not merely lie about reality; language and history themselves had to remain sufficiently malleable to accommodate whatever the Party presently required. Yesterday’s ally could become today’s enemy, yesterday’s policy could become today’s betrayal, and the historical record could be reconstructed accordingly. Orwell famously satirized this mentality in 1984:
Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. (emphasis added)
Then later,
Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. (emphasis added)
This is precisely why the rhetoric surrounding Iran should trouble conservatives. One need not compare contemporary America with a Communist dictatorship to recognize a disturbing similarity in the treatment of language. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote a short essay in 1974 called “Live Not by Lies.” Solzhenitsyn’s larger argument is that falsehood depends upon ordinary people participating in it—repeating claims they don’t actually believe because social or political pressures make doing so convenient. He calls for “personal nonparticipation in lies”: even if you cannot compel everyone else to tell the truth, you can refuse to lend your own voice to what you believe is false.
Conservatives ought to be particularly resistant to this temptation precisely because they have spent so much time condemning it elsewhere. It is incoherent to insist that men are men, women are women, and words must retain meanings grounded in reality only suddenly to become linguistic relativists when the subject turns to foreign policy. As Matt Walsh was successful in asking, “What is a woman?” perhaps he can now ask mainstream national conservatives an equally elementary question: “What is a war?”
