Middle East Policy’s special issue, The Israel-Iran War, is free for all readers, even those without a subscription! Drawing on the journal’s vast archive, this new installment provides analyses of the post-October 7 regional order alongside older articles probing the key moments that sparked the unprecedented US bombing of Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. In the part two of the special issue, we examine how Washington conjured an enemy in Tehran and cemented the alliance with Israel.
Annie Tracy Samuel kicks off this section of the special issue with a new article examining how American officials and domestic media created a discourse during the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War that established Tehran as an enemy. “The narrative constructed by policy makers and the press significantly impacted US-Iran relations, and this established patterns of discourse and action that have persisted to this day,” Tracy Samuel writes. “This process helped solidify the official and popular conception of Iran as a dangerous threat antithetical to US values and interests, necessitating a policy of enmity and confrontation.”
This legacy of stoking conflict with Iran led to poor American strategies across the region and allowed the threat of weapons of mass destruction to grow more dire. As Chas W. Freeman contends in his analysis of the US “misadventures” in the Middle East:
For most of the past 20 years, Washington demanded that Iran end its nuclear program but declined to speak with Tehran. By the time American diplomats finally did sit down with the Iranians, their program had expanded and advanced. Despite some rollback, we ended up accepting Iranian nuclear capabilities much beyond what they had earlier offered.
Military threats and bombings are not solutions, Freeman contends, as they promote “hatred and bravado, not thoughts of surrender.” At this time, in July 2025, it appears that bravado and a clandestine nuclear program are far more likely than surrender, or even containment.
Mark N. Katz’s contribution to the special issue reminds us that this did not have to be. The longtime analyst of the regional order argues that, 20 years ago, “enough common interests…emerged to finally make rapprochement possible between Washington and Tehran.” Katz lays out the many points of disagreement between the US government and Iranian officials and scholars: declaring Iran part of the “axis of evil,” democratization and the push for regime change, the nuclear issue, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and many others. The differences can seem insurmountable.
However, Katz observes, scholars and officials in Iran acknowledge that the United States has achieved unlikely diplomatic breakthroughs in the past, especially with China. Interactions with those Iranians suggested that high-level meetings and lower-level exchanges could help lead to a thaw. Still, Katz notes, the ascension of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency widened the divide between the two states, and Washington seemed to have little interest in anything more than talks aimed solely at the nuclear threat.
One of the long-standing barriers to US-Iran relations has been Israel and its preferences. In a 1994 address sponsored by the Middle East Policy Council, Defense Secretary William J. Perry underscored that Iraq and Iran would have to be contained by military power because they “pose very serious threats to Israel.”
Stephen Zunes picks up on this in an archival piece that resonates today, analyzing not the American military posture but the monetary assistance. “The U.S. aid relationship with Israel is unlike any other in the world or, indeed, any other in history,” Zunes writes in his 1996 article explaining the strategic functions of these layouts. “In sheer volume, the amount is the most generous foreign-aid program ever between any two countries.” But the author warns that “there has been virtually no debate on a national scale in either country about the risks inherent in the U.S.-Israel relationship. The result could be tragic.”
This new special issue, The Israel-Iran War, is free for all readers, even without a subscription. The other two sections, The Brewing Conflict and The Nuclear Confrontation, feature new and archival analyses from Thomas Juneau, Trita Parsi, Shibley Telhami, Gawdat Bahgat, Paul Pillar, and many other scholars and practitioners.
Middle East Policy, The Israel-Iran War—special issue!
THE BREWING CONFLICT
Iran’s Annus Horribilis in 2024: Beaten, but Not Defeated
Thomas Juneau, 2025
The Impact of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Beliefs on Israel’s War against the Axis of Resistance
Emir Hadžikadunić | Marko Ćuže, 2025
Iran’s Ballistic-Missile and Space Program: An Assessment
Gawdat Bahgat, 2019
Iran and Israel: The Avoidable War
Trita Parsi, 2007
Israeli Foreign Policy After the Gulf War
Shibley Telhami, 1992
WASHINGTON TAKES ISRAEL’S SIDE
Conjuring an Enemy: US Discourse and Policy on Iran, 1979–88
Annie Tracy Samuel, 2025
Lessons from America’s Misadventures in the Middle East
Chas W. Freeman, 2015
Iran and America: Is Rapprochement Finally Possible?
Mark N. Katz, 2005
The Strategic Functions of US Aid to Israel
Stephen Zunes, 1996
Gulf Security and US Policy
William J. Perry, 1992
THE NUCLEAR CONFRONTATION
Negotiating the Restoration of the Iran Nuclear Deal
Wyn Rees | Hossein Salimian Rizi, 2024
Negotiating the Impossible? A WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East
Robert Mason, 2025
Israel’s Future and Iran’s Nuclear Program
Leonard Weiss, 2009
Iran and the Arab World: Implications of the Nuclear Negotiations
James N. Miller | Nabeel Khoury | Paul Pillar | Sara Vakhshouri, 2015
BOOK REVIEWS
The World Powers and Iran: Before, During, and After the Nuclear Deal, by Banafsheh Keynoush
Reviewed by Mahmood Monshipouri, 2025
A New U.S. Paradigm for the Middle East: Ending America’s Misguided Policy of Domination, by Paul Pillar, Andrew Bacevich, Annelle Sheline, and Trita Parsi
Reviewed by Ken Weisbrode, 2020
Europe and Iran: The Nuclear Deal and Beyond, by Cornelius Adebahr; Nuclear Multilateralism and Iran: Inside EU Negotiations, by Tarja Cronberg
Reviewed by Naysan Rafati, 2017
Reagan: His Life and Legend, by Max Boot
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce, 2025