Name: Iran war: Iraq 2003 all over again? | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-03-05T16:59:36.000Z
Duration: 9 min 45 s
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As the war with Iran rages on, a question a lot of people have been raising is this, isn't this just like what happened in Iraq back in 2003?

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Now, maybe the Iraq war isn't something you remember clearly or at all.

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Maybe you were too young or maybe you were born after it happened.

But that war was one of the most controversial and consequential events of the early 2000s.

And the way it unfolded still shapes how governments, militaries, and entire societies think about conflict today.

So in this video, we're talking to someone who can really break this down, Dr.

Roham Albandy from the London School of Economics.

We're going to walk through what made the Iraq war so defining why the justifications for it sparked global outrage and whether the US Actions in Iran today spark share any meaningful parallels or if this is an entirely different story.

First of all, the justifications for the war in 2003 turned out to be false.

I mean, the idea that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program posed an imminent threat that justified an attack on Iraq turned out to be not the case.

And then the second, I think, was that, you know, Iraq really had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks on the United States, despite the attempts of the Bush administration to kind of link Saddam Hussein's regime to Iraq.

So I think a lot of the controversy surrounding Iraq had to do with what is the reason for this war.

Why is the United States going to war against Iraq?

I think at the outset that was the main controversy.

Why I think that war was such a watershed was because it really was a war of choice for the United States.

And the aftermath of the war was handled so badly with such terrible consequences.

And I think those two things still haunt the United States, still haunt Americans.

This idea that Iraq was a terrible mistake that shouldn't have happened and that we're still in a way, all these years later, living with the consequences of that decision.

So could the US War in Iran end the same way?

Recently, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hexeth said, this is not Iraq.

He called the last 20 years of nation building wars dumb.

The notion that this is a war of choice now in Iran definitely echoes with what happened in 2003.

And I think people are rightly drawing that parallel and really questioning whether given all the instability that was caused by the war in Iraq, given the horrific consequences of it for Iraqis, you know, was it really worth it?

Was it really worth embarking on a war of choice?

And I think the idea of another Middle east conflict, where the United States and its allies find itself kind of embroiled in a brutal conflict for decades, scares people and unnerves people.

And that brings us to a second similarity.

That this conflict violates international law.

Well, I think certainly we can draw parallels in terms of the illegality of the war, but

I think any consideration of international law went out the window quite a long time ago.

You know, it's part and parcel of a much bigger shift, global shift, that we're seeing as an old order is dying and a new order is emerging.

And it's very sad to say that this new era that we're entering is not one where there is any kind of concern for international law.

It's a Hobbesian world of a war of all against all, where life is nasty, brutish, and short.

As Hobbes said, those countries that would like to hold on to some sense of international law order, particularly European countries, really will find it very difficult to do so, because, as, for example, Spain is finding out, the cost of defying Trump or standing up for that old order is going to be pretty steep.

The lessons of history have taught us that it is important when we make decisions like this that we establish there is a lawful basis for what the United Kingdom is doing.

I don't think that this is a war to, you know, for regime change or to create some sort of Iranian democracy or any of those kind of neoconservative visions that animated the American decision in 2003 in Iran.

I think what's going on here is a decision to essentially cripple and weaken the Iranian state, regardless of who is in power in Iran.

If the objective of the Trump administration was regime change in Iran, was to create a secular and democratic Iran that could be potentially an American ally in the region.

There could be an Israeli ally in the region.

The kind of vision for Iran, for example, that Prince Reza Pahlavi has articulated, then I think they would have gone about this in a very different way.

First of all, there would have been much closer coordination between the Iranian opposition and the Trump administration.

There's very little evidence that that is the case.

I think it would have been a much more surgical strike that was aimed at decapitating the regime rather than degrading completely Iranian infrastructure, which it seems is the goal.

And I think there would have had to have been some element of boots on the ground realistically to carry out a regime change operation.

The idea that you can change a regime from the air is really unprecedented in history.

We don't have any examples of that having been successfully achieved.

So I don't think that that is what the intention is.

I think there's been a sort of cost benefit analysis that, you know, Iran is in a very weak position.

The axis of resistance that Iran had built up in Syria and Lebanon has been degraded, if not completely destroyed.

Protesters are on the streets of Iran demanding regime change.

That this is an opportune moment essentially to cripple and paralyze Iran in a way that it won't pose any kind of problem or threat to Israel or the United States for years to come.

And one final thought on why comparisons with the Iraq War of 2003 are difficult and why this time could be much different.

The consequences of sowing chaos and disorder in a country three times the size of France and with a population of 90 million people.

The consequences of that would dwarf what has happened in Syria or Iraq.

The consequences in terms of refugee flows towards Europe, the consequences in terms of energy prices, the consequences in terms of regional stability.

How is the world going to deal with either an Iran that is in total chaos and disarray, or a version of the Islamic Republic that survives these strikes and lashes out at its own people in order to hold on to power and lashes out at the United States, Israel and anybody who helped them in carrying out these kinds of things.

And I think people need to start thinking about how they're going to deal with a massive humanitarian problem in Iran that may well emerge from this conflict.

DW News is closely following this breaking news story to bring you more deep dives like this one on here and across the rest of social media.