Share and Follow
“But the war, it really disturbed our lives and many other people’s lives. Everyone knew a war was coming, but no one could predict how devastating it would be.”
Then-Australian prime minister John Howard, visiting Australian troops in the Middle East in 2003. Source: AAP / AP
The US’ allies, including Australia and the United Kingdom, immediately joined the conflict and formed what became known as the ‘coalition of the willing’. Their involvement in the war was based on supposed intelligence, later proven to be false, that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
Within hours of the announcement, Israel reported intercepting missiles from Iran, and the following morning, Iranian state media reported retaliatory strikes from Israel.
Israeli soldiers and a rescue team search for survivors amid the rubble of residential buildings destroyed by an Iranian missile strike that killed several people, in Beersheba, Israel. Source: AP / Leo Correa
Despite a rocky start, Trump has remained adamant that the ceasefire will hold, signalling a potential departure from the Iraq war years and ending a conflict with Iran before it could get started.
But has the US military, the richest in the world, learned from its past?
‘The Iraq playbook’
Earlier this month, after the first strikes from Israel and Iran were traded, UK MP Zarah Sultana wrote a popular post online about Israel taking its tactics from “the Iraq playbook”.
Yet on Sunday morning AEST, US missiles hit Iranian nuclear sites, causing what Trump described as “monumental damage”.
Akbarzadeh says the Iraq War was “a diplomatic disaster for the US”, which positioned the US as a bully that acted outside international law.
US troops in Baghdad, 2003. Noor Aljaberi’s said her whole world collapsed when US troops invaded Iraq. Source: Supplied / Noor Aljaberi
Akbarzadeh says the US has once again “acted on faulty intelligence”, referring to Trump’s claims that Iran is seeking to build a nuclear weapon.
The Iraq campaign was deeply unpopular in Australia. It sparked some of the largest protests in the country’s history, with hundreds of thousands marching against Australia’s involvement.
Protesters mocking then-US president George W Bush and then-Australian prime minister John Howard during an anti-Bush protest in Sydney in October 2003. Source: AAP / AP
Yet as Australian soldiers started their staggered withdrawal from Iraq on 1 June 2008 under then-prime minister Kevin Rudd, his predecessor John Howard defended his decision to send in troops in 2003.
But the rationale used by the US and its counterparts has been widely discredited in the years since, as Iraq has struggled with a weak economy and disordered society.
From ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to regime change
In brokering a ceasefire, Trump has put the idea of toppling the Iranian regime “to one side”, Akbarzadeh explains.
Chaos reigned in Iraq when coalition troops removed Saddam Hussein from power. Credit: Chris Hondros/Getty Images
But experts warn that regime change may not necessarily yield a positive outcome for Iranians. For many Iraqis, what came after Hussein was more dangerous than the dictator’s rule.
“You had thousands of men with weapons trained on how to use these weapons — they had expertise on explosives — and they started getting paid by these radical forces that paid them to kill Americans, and paid $500 more if they could film it,” he says.
So when you have an absence of central authority, it will always be filled. The question is by whom.
This had knock-on effects not only for geopolitical relations between Middle Eastern and Western powers, but also spurred anti-Middle Eastern sentiment.
“It meant that they couldn’t find jobs and they couldn’t adjust in society. And guess what? It actually led them in some cases to extremism, acts of violence and terrorism.”
‘The world was collapsing’: The civilian burden of war and regime change
“It’s something I feel should no-one should ever endure, especially children and the elderly.”
Dr Ramzi Al Barnouti fled the Iraq war for Australia after several of his colleagues had been tortured and kidnapped. Source: Supplied
Dr Ramzi al Barnouti also fled Iraq for Australia following the US invasion and occupation.
Al Barnouti says a key message from the Iraq War still hasn’t been learned.
In war and conflict, everybody loses every time. Peace is the only path to dignified life.
Why Trump is different to other US presidents
“He is not prepared to be the president that has a legacy of another war in the Middle East.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has denied Iran has ambitions for a nuclear weapon. Source: AAP / EPA
Iran’s ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, warned in an interview with SBS World News that any Western-led attempt to remove Khamenei would be so severe that he does “not want even to talk about it”.
What could happen next?
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”
Iran will likely want to maintain the ceasefire, Akbarzadeh says, because it does not want further escalations with the US.
Iranians have been protesting in the streets following the US strike on nuclear sites in the country. Source: AAP / Sobhan Farajvan
But Akbarzadeh says it’s probable Iran will harden its resolve against the US and may decline to participate in nuclear talks. Some voices in Iran may even push for the country to develop nuclear weapons.
“We carry these memories with us and seeing similar things unfold again is really triggering,” she says.
The region has already been disturbed for many years, so the idea of more war in the region is really heartbreaking for many of us from the Middle East.
