Could Iran be the next ‘forever war’?
The Global Story
BBC
3.8 • 668 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Following President Donald Trump’s announcement over the weekend that the United States was launching an offensive in Iran alongside the Israeli military, comparisons to past US interventions in the region began to proliferate. Many Americans asked whether this latest military operation would become another ‘forever war’, as the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan came to be called.
We talk to Gordon Correra, security analyst for the BBC, about America’s complicated history of intervention in the Middle East and surrounding region, and ask what these past conflicts might tell us about possible outcomes for the war in Iran.
Producer: Viv Jones, Aron Keller and Xandra Ellin
Sound engineer: Travis Evans
Senior news editor: China Collins
Photo: A US soldier watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad in 2003. Credit: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | What is happening to the man that I supported, the man that denounce what happened in Iraq, |
| 0:12.6 | the man that said no more foreign wars, no more regime change. |
| 0:16.2 | The former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green has compared the Iran War to Iraq. |
| 0:21.9 | He doesn't care about what the American people think, and he may put troops on the ground. |
| 0:28.4 | After Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, Donald Trump was supposed to be the anti-forever wars candidate. |
| 0:36.5 | I am furious about this. |
| 0:40.3 | How much is this war going to cost us? |
| 0:43.8 | From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. |
| 0:47.8 | And today on the global story, the U.S. has a tumultuous recent history of interventions in the Middle East. |
| 0:55.8 | What makes Donald Trump think that Iran will go any more smoothly? |
| 1:06.2 | Gordon, so great to have you with us. Could you introduce yourself, please, for us with your name and |
| 1:10.3 | title? My name is Gordon Carrera. I am an security analyst for the BBC, a long time previously a security correspondent for the BBC. |
| 1:18.6 | I also now host a podcast called The Rest is Classified. |
| 1:21.8 | Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We wanted to speak with you today about the possible comparisons between what is happening |
| 1:29.8 | in Iran now and various different U.S. military interventions in the Middle East, North Africa, |
| 1:35.2 | and surrounding regions over the last few decades. Try and understand what lessons, if any, |
| 1:40.2 | have been learned. Let's start with Iraq, which is a comparison that a lot of people are |
| 1:45.2 | making right now, the Iraq War that started in 2003. You've done a lot of in-depth reporting |
| 1:51.1 | on this period of recent US history, particularly on the case that was made for the Iraq war |
| 1:58.1 | and the build-up to it. What are the similarities and differences between |
| 2:03.2 | Iraq 2003 and Iran 26? The shadow of Iraq is hanging over what the US is doing in Iran now. |
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