Persistent Western policy toward Iran has been a failure for half a century, and current military actions will also prove ineffective, according to Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens.
As airstrikes against Iran resumed on Wednesday, Hitchens questioned the efficacy of continued hostility toward the nation on the "Alas Vine & Hitchens" podcast. He pointed to historical instances of Western interference, including the 1956 U.S. and U.K. overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, to install the Shah, who was later ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The U.S. and U.K. also supported Iraq during its war with Iran in the 1980s, and decades of international sanctions have impacted Iran's economy.
"None of this has worked," Hitchens stated. "Iran remains a country deeply hostile to us and determined to assert its independence and its sovereignty." He suggested that with the conflict now in its fifth month, a diplomatic course change is needed to integrate Iran into the international community.
Hitchens expressed support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran Nuclear Deal. This multilateral agreement, signed in 2015, allowed Iran to enrich uranium for domestic use while restricting the development of weapons-grade material. The U.S. withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 under President Donald Trump's administration, an action Hitchens attributed to sabotage, partly by Israel.
"That was sabotaged mainly by Israel, mainly by Benjamin Netanyahu, but Donald Trump joined in, and it stopped, and since then we went back to tension," Hitchens said. He characterized the subsequent renewed attacks on Iran as "shocking and duplicitous" because they were initiated during ongoing negotiations intended to avert them. The response from Iran, he argued, has been to "continue to assert itself" rather than surrender.
Hitchens also engaged in a debate with podcast co-host Sarah Vine regarding the treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan. Hitchens contended that Western interventions have contributed to the country's current state, recalling that Afghan women wore miniskirts 50 years ago. Vine countered that a misogynistic, hardline Islamist ideology is the primary cause, seeking to spread its influence wherever governments are weak.
"Do you really think you just have to sit by and go, 'Well, that's their country'?" Vine asked, questioning whether the international community should remain passive while women's lives are destroyed. Hitchens responded that Western governments use human rights as a pretext for policies that harm other nations, a claim Vine dismissed as a "cop-out."