Could Iran be the next ‘forever war’?

伊朗是否会成为下一场“永久战争”?

The Global Story

2026-03-05

27 分钟
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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
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  • What is happening to the man that I supported, the man that denounced what happened in Iraq,

  • the man that said no more foreign wars, no more regime change?

  • The former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has compared the Iran war to Iraq.

  • He doesn't care about what the American people think, and he may put troops on the ground.

  • After Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, Donald Trump was supposed to be the anti-Forever Wars candidate.

  • I am furious about this.

  • How much is this war going to cost us?

  • From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London.

  • And today on The Global Story,

  • the US has a tumultuous recent history of interventions in the Middle East.

  • What makes Donald Trump think that Iran will go any more smoothly?

  • Gordon, so great to have you with us.

  • Could you introduce yourself please for us with your name and title?

  • My name is Gordon Carrera.

  • I am a security analyst for the BBC, a long time previously a security correspondent for the BBC.