New Delhi: In May this year, U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a searing rebuke of past American leadership. His words were not veiled. They stung. “These so-called nation-builders,” he said, “destroyed more countries than they ever built”. It was a reckoning.
He spoke in Riyadh, a place that has seen America’s embrace and its bombs. The target of his ire? Decades of interventions – some cloaked in noble intent, others plainly imperial. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Afghanistan. And now, again, Iran.
Barely a month after that speech, the United States and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. The justification? Curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Trump framed it as a “decisive step to neutralise the world’s top terror sponsor”. But beneath the surface lay echoes of old ghosts. Every time Washington promised to stay away from the Middle East, it always found its way back.
And the consequences? They have rarely been clean.
The Day Democracy Died in Tehran
Let’s rewind. It is 1953. Then Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, pushes to nationalise the country’s oil. That was his crime. Within months, British and U.S. intelligence worked together to throw him out. The Shah – America’s man – was back in power.
Washington called it necessary. Iranians called it betrayal. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) later owned up to the coup, decades too late. But by then, the damage was already hardwired into Iranian memory. What followed was repression, rage and finally, revolution in 1979. Anti-Americanism did not come out of nowhere. It was nursed in the wound left by 1953.
Afghanistan: The Playground of Powers
When the Soviets rolled into Kabul in 1979, the United States saw an opportunity. With Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s help, America armed Islamic fighters – the Mujahideen. The idea was simple – bleed Moscow dry.
It worked. The Soviets left. But so did America. In the vacuum emerged the Taliban. And from their shadow, Al-Qaeda. One invasion begets another. One ally becomes tomorrow’s enemy.
Ronald Reagan once hosted Mujahideen leaders at the White House. Two decades later, their ideological offspring brought down the Twin Towers. History, it seems, keeps receipts.
Iraq: The War Built on Lies
In 2003, George W. Bush told the world Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. There were none. That did not stop the war.
America invaded, toppled Saddam, but never managed to hold the country together. Chaos followed. Cities burned. Militias ruled. And a new monster emerged – Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The damage did not stop at Iraq’s borders. The entire region trembled. Civil wars, refugee crises and sectarian clashes – all fed by the fires lit in Baghdad. Twenty years on, the death toll remains contested. What is undeniable is this – the cost was colossal.
When Friends Become Foes
Washington’s alliances shift like sand. Yesterday’s partners become today’s threats. In Afghanistan, warlords once armed by the CIA turned their guns on American troops. In Libya, U.S. airstrikes helped oust Gaddafi only to plunge the country into anarchy.
Even Syria became a tangle of contradictions – support this rebel group, bomb that one. The lines blurred. The blood did not.
America’s Double Game with Israel
The United States has always stood firmly behind Israel, through every offensive and every war. Billions in military aid flow annually, no questions asked. But that blind backing has not gone unnoticed in Arab capitals.
Every bomb dropped on Gaza echoes in the streets of Cairo, Amman and Beirut. Washington says it wants peace. But its weapons often write a different story.
The Endless Exit That Never Comes
In 2021, President Biden ordered the final U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The exit was chaotic, messy and painful. Two decades of war ended with the Taliban back in power – exactly where they started.
Billions spent. Thousands dead. Women erased again from public life. And still, no lessons learned.
What Comes Next?
America keeps returning to the same battlegrounds, wearing different faces but repeating old tactics. Each war starts with a moral pitch – liberation, democracy and peace. Each ends with rubble.
In Iran, in Afghanistan, in Iraq – the people still live with the aftermath. And as the world watches the United States once again entangle itself in Iran’s future, a question rises – how many more lessons will go unlearned before history stops repeating?
