Why nothing was done before? WHY? (part 1)

 The war is ongoing. Terrible, because every war, even a necessary one, is terrible. It began this morning (28.02.2026) with air raids on Tehran. So, apparently, it was started today by the USA and Israel. Is this a necessary war? And did it really begin today? Could it have been prevented? Could the world, which today began a traditional session condemning it, have done something and did it want to do something?

In my opinion, the answer to these questions is: it could, but it definitely did not want to. Where do such (my) conclusions come from?

Let's start by analyzing what the Iranian regime is, where it came from, and what it strives for.

Chapter I Where the Ayatollahs Came From:

Shah Reza Pahlavi, sitting on a peacock throne, was certainly neither a democrat nor a pure, shining figure. Educated in Switzerland, the playboy ruled Iran with all the "charm" of a dictator. His political police, SAVAK, murdered many Iranians (though incomparably fewer than the current regime, but who could have known back then...). He maintained good relations with all sides of the contemporary geopolitical puzzle, which in the bipolar world of the Cold War required considerable skill. I have already written that Iranian-Israeli relations during the Shah's time were excellent. But he also maintained relations with the USA (personal greetings from Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter), with Western countries (France, Switzerland, Great Britain among others), Eastern Bloc countries (he hosted Broz Tito and Ceausescu) as well as independent leaders and warlords (Mohamed Suharto, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, Haile Selassie to name a few). He also tried to open Iran to the Western world - often forcefully and clumsily. Hence his very critical (to put it mildly) attitude towards religious opponents. In 1964, he expelled the talented speaker and fanatical Islamist Ruhollah Khomeini from the country. However, Khomeini, with the help of an army of Iranian clerics connected to him and loyal followers, maintained and strengthened his influence in Iran. Khomeini lived in Paris for many years. What neither the Shah (probably deeply trusting in his own diplomatic abilities) nor the French authorities knew was that since the early 1960s, Khomeini had been cooperating with the East German Stasi (and through them with the KGB). In the Stasi files, he was referred to as the 'Shia Messiah.' They invested in him when he was still a little-known mullah, and that investment paid off exceptionally well for them. When tired of the Shah's excesses, permanent crisis, and the deeds of the brutal SAVAK, the Iranians began to rebel in 1978. Khomeini, with money from both the Shia Islamist opposition and the communist services, supported them as much as he could. Half of Iran's population lived in poverty, the Shah luxuriated in wealth, and the situation was ripe for an explosion. Sick and tired, in 1978 the Shah agreed to loosen censorship and schedule elections. It's hard to say what would have happened, but Khomeini did not intend to leave anything to chance. On August 19, 1978, in the city of Abadan, a wealthy center of oil extraction, a fire broke out in an overcrowded cinema. The escape routes were blocked so that people would not enter without paying. 477 people died in the fire. Only Khomeini and the Stasi knew it was not an accident. On Stasi orders and with the promise of support for him, Khomeini persuaded his supporters to set it on fire. This fire, to which the Shah reacted too late and too weakly, was the proverbial drop of water that overflowed the jug of the revolution. When the terminally ill shah fled into exile, where he soon died, Khomeini, ecstatically welcomed, took a special Air France flight from Paris to Tehran, where he was greeted as a savior. He vowed that he would establish freedom and abolish censorship, he vowed that he would uphold human rights, he vowed that women's rights would be respected. I probably don't need to add that he did not keep a single promise. Iran did not become richer, freer, or more democratic. But the USSR gained a powerful ally exactly where it needed one, although the ally was sometimes capricious and willful.

Chapter II: What the Ayatollahs of Iran are striving for
For now, this will not be about Israel, that will come shortly, although the newly minted ruthless leader of the ayatollahs has never hidden his attitude toward it. However, neither for Khomeini nor for the USSR was the destruction of Israel the only or (for the USSR) the main political goal. Iran is Shiite, a minority branch of Islam, though still powerful. Almost all Arab states are Sunni. Iran is Persian. Arab states are... Arab. The Arab minority in Iran has never been treated well, especially since it is geographically concentrated in the most oil-rich areas, which was displeasing both to the Shah and the ayatollahs. Iran speaks Farsi, Arabs speak Arabic. Pan-Arabism as a political movement developed from the 1940s (at least), the ayatollahs came to power at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. And from the beginning (and still have) they had immense ambitions to become the leader of the region. The region, where for many reasons they were seen as pariahs, enemies, or exceptions. How to change that? Surely the bloody war with Iraq in the 1980s did not help. Nor did the bloody proxy war with Wahhabi Saudi Arabia in the 21st century in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has ambitions in the region similar to Iran’s. But there was one issue that, certainly at the onset of the ayatollahs' rule, and largely thereafter, constituted and still constitutes a bridge between Iran and the Arab countries in the region. Anti-Semitism. After the lost wars with Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973, all initiated by Arab states, anti-Israeli sentiments at the time Khomeini came to power in the region were very strong. The peace with Egypt was fresh, the peace with Jordan had not yet been concluded, the peace process with the Palestinians had not yet begun, while the PLO had already been expelled to Lebanon by King Hussein and was seething with a desire for revenge, and its main source of support was the USSR bloc, the same that also sponsored Khomeini. What a beautiful, diabolical scheme...