Iran’s foreign minister, Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, was a teenager when Saddam Hussein invaded his country. The Iran–Iraq War began with airstrikes in September 1980. Saddam believed that Iran was weak—the fledgling Islamic Republic of Iran had been established just the prior year and the country remained in the throes of political revolution. The Iraqi dictator’s opportunism led to a brutal eight-year conflict that Iranians call the “imposed war.”

Araghchi was among the one million young Iranian men who volunteered to defend their country, motivated by a combination of patriotism and faith. Teenagers doctored their birth certificates to enlist, and Iranian military planners turned a blind eye as they struggled to replenish ranks. The war was the formative experience for a whole generation in Iran. Like all wars, it left scars and trauma, but it also profoundly shaped the worldview of the men now leading the Islamic Republic.

Araghchi’s life-long commitment to diplomacy reflects the lessons he learned during the Iran–Iraq War. After serving in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, he entered Iran’s diplomatic academy in 1985, while the war was still ongoing. Over the last two decades, Araghchi has played a central role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the West. Most recently, he conducted five rounds of negotiations with special envoy Steve Witkoff to reach a new nuclear deal with the United States.

During his time working on the nuclear file, Araghchi has repeatedly had to defend Iran’s pursuit of diplomacy in the face of attacks from hardliners in the Iranian system. Much like in Washington, the political discourse in Tehran is dominated by hawkish voices, who believe that Iran must project strength through military action. Any other approach is viewed as a sign of weakness.

To justify negotiations, especially with the United States, Araghchi has repeatedly insisted that diplomacy and military force are complementary strategies. In his view, “diplomacy moves forward relying on the power of military force, and the military force paves the way for diplomacy, which has the power to ensure national dignity.” In certain respects, Araghchi could be viewed as an Iranian “restrainer” who believes that diplomacy can keep Iran from getting embroiled in needless wars, but that the country must also retain a strong military with a defensive posture.

The value of restraint is a lesson Araghchi learned in Iraq, something he shares with numerous members of the Trump administration, who likewise confronted the realities of “imposed wars” during their own deployments in the same country. Senior officials such as J.D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard were part of the generation of Americans, motivated by patriotism and faith, who deployed during the long War on Terror. At first, they believed that the war had been imposed on the United States by the likes of Osama bin Laden. Later, as the U.S. got mired in aimless conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, they realized that the war had been imposed on the American people by the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Much like Araghchi has had to battle the hawks in Tehran, American restrainers have had to battle hawks in DC. For a time, President Donald Trump appeared to be their ally. He was the first Republican politician to unambiguously declare that the Iraq War was “a big, fat mistake.” But today, with Israel’s offensive against Iran having scuttled the nuclear talks, Trump appears poised to make a mistake of similar magnitude. In this context, the restrainers in Tehran and Washington, weighing the legacies of two different wars in Iraq, find themselves on the same side in a critical fight.

Benjamin Netanyahu has imposed a new war on Iran. Much like Saddam, he assessed that Iran was weak and saw an opportunity to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities and military assets, ensuring Israel’s outright supremacy in the Middle East for generations to come. But Netanyahu cannot truly win the war without significant U.S. support, and so he and his neoconservative allies are trying to drag Trump into the conflict.

Reports suggest that Trump has been swayed by the same kinds of lies that led the U.S. into its disastrous war in Iraq. Israeli officials have claimed that their strikes on Iran were preemptive and that Iran was just weeks away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. What the Israelis presented does not accord with the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community. Director of National Intelligence Gabbard made this assessment public in late March, testifying that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Khamenei had not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. In a worrying sign, Trump has said he “does not care” what Gabbard said, as though her testimony was a matter of opinion, and not the scrupulous consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies.

If Netanyahu manages to drag the U.S. into war with Iran, it will be because of the same kinds of deceptions that neoconservatives used to drag the U.S. into the war in Iraq two decades ago. The goal will be similar as well—Israeli officials have spoken publicly about their intention to foment regime change in Iran. 

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The lessons of the two Iraq wars loom large. The lessons of the Iran–Iraq War have led Araghchi to keep the door open for diplomacy with the United States, even as Israel continues its punitive strikes. Iran has made clear it will not surrender as Trump has demanded, but American and Iranian leaders are exchanging messages through backchannels seeking some kind of diplomatic off-ramp.

The lessons of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the disaster that ensued have led key figures in the administration and leading voices in the MAGA movement to attempt to steer Trump away from a war with Iran. They have criticized the enormous cost of U.S. support for Israel, warned of the risk of getting drawn into a new quagmire by invading a country key leaders “don’t know anything about,” and have noted the absurdity of American troops being expected to put their lives on the line for the sake of Netanyahu’s political survival.

From different vantage points, restrainers in both Iran and the United States are warning about the dangers of imposed wars. If they can find common cause and find a way back to the negotiating table, they may finally excise the ghosts of two Iraq wars, ending a dark chapter of invasion and interventionism in the Middle East. Just as American and Iranian restrainers were once guided by patriotism and faith to prepare for war, today they can be guided to prevent it.