The current war against Iran has been framed in many ways: an “imminent threat” requiring a pre-emptive strike; a battle against a tyrannical regime; the need to destroy Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes and eliminate proxy terrorism. Few have focused on the history and memory that has shaped Iranian conduct and will determine its future.Western interference in Iran began early. British General Edmund Ironside seized power on behalf of Brigadier Reza Khan, who was anointed king in place of the Qajar dynasty. When he was removed in 1941, his son Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was placed on the throne – all to control the oil fields of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later renamed British Petroleum.Mohammed Reza ruled as an autocrat until 1951, when Mohammed Mosaddegh was appointed Prime Minister. In 1953, the British and Americans organised a coup that overthrew his government, which had introduced significant social and political reforms. His real crime was nationalising Iranian oil. With his removal, the chances of Iran emerging as a modern democracy receded dramatically. The Shah crowned himself emperor, ruled with an iron hand, and was feted by the West as a moderniser – the principal security actor of the region, supplied with America’s latest weapons.The 1979 revolution was engineered by a coalition of religious leaders, bazaaris, and leftists. But the clerics under Ayatollah Khomeini sidelined the secular elements and established a regime based on the Vilayat-e-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) – a system permitting elected non-clerical government under careful clerical supervision. Real power rested with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Basij militia.The nuclear programmeIran’s civil nuclear programme was the Shah’s vanity project, begun in the 1950s with American and Western European support. The first research reactor, supplied by the US, was commissioned in 1967. By 1974, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran had nearly 5,000 staff. Siemens began constructing two reactors at Bushehr; Iran invested $1 billion in the French Eurodif uranium enrichment consortium and bought a 15% share in a South African uranium mine. Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 as one of its earliest signatories. The revolution brought all of this to an abrupt halt.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran – to check the rise of Shia power and reclaim the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. The US backed Iraq, providing intelligence, economic aid, and satellite imagery to assist Iraqi military operations. The results were catastrophic for Iran: an estimated 350,000 dead, 500,000 wounded, over 20,000 killed by chemical weapons, and more than $1 trillion in economic damage. Towards the war’s end, Iraq launched missiles at Iranian cities and stepped up chemical attacks that proved decisive in forcing a ceasefire in August 1988. Iraq also struck the Bushehr nuclear plant.It was in this context that Iran began rethinking its nuclear posture – not unlike India before 1974. New Delhi’s strategy was to master the full nuclear fuel cycle to signal to adversaries that it could build weapons if it chose to. Unlike India, however, Iran was an NPT signatory, expressly forbidden from developing nuclear weapons. And though enrichment was permitted, no country would sell it the technology.Iran therefore clandestinely acquired centrifuges through the A.Q. Khan network. In 1990 it signed nuclear cooperation protocols with China; in 1995, a deal with Russia to complete Bushehr. By 2000, a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan was complete. It was around this time that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) detected Iranian efforts to produce plutonium and highly enriched uranium. In 2002, a dissident group exposed undeclared nuclear sites at Natanz and Arak – both with dual-use potential. That Iran had concealed them from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) deepened international suspicion.The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 led Tehran to end its clandestine weapons-oriented programme. Iran also claims a 2003 fatwa by Supreme Leader Khamenei prohibited nuclear weapons development. The Americans rejected an Iranian offer to negotiate that year, branding it part of the “Axis of Evil.”Negotiations with France, Germany, and the UK followed. Iran agreed to cooperate with the IAEA, sign the Additional Protocol, and temporarily suspend enrichment. But under President Ahmadinejad it withdrew, triggering UN Security Council resolutions. Eventually, after years of talks, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) came into force in 2015. Centrifuge numbers were capped, advanced centrifuges banned, and Iran’s low-enriched uranium stockpile reduced from 7,154 kg to 300 kg. A comprehensive inspection regime would monitor compliance.Though the US had helped negotiate the JCPOA, Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018. Iran, which had been fully compliant, stopped permitting IAEA inspections at certain sites. Biden expressed interest in reinstating the deal, but it never happened – derailed by Iran’s brutal suppression of civil protests in 2022, its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, and ultimately by the tensions following the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre and the outbreak of war in Gaza.Israel’s strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus triggered a missile and drone attack on Israel in April 2024. After the assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh and IRGC general Abbas Nilfourshan, Iran struck again in October 2024. In both instances, the US played a significant role in shooting down Iranian projectiles. In the meantime, Iran expanded its nuclear activities, accumulating uranium enriched to 60% – sufficient for several weapons – and installing thousands of advanced centrifuges.The current warOn June 13, 2025, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran targeting nuclear and military facilities. Having degraded Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tel Aviv calculated the moment had come to destroy Iran’s regional influence and military capacity. Nine days later, the US joined, striking three nuclear sites with deep-penetrating bombs, including Natanz and Fordow. Trump declared Iran’s nuclear capacity “totally destroyed.”But eight months later, following a major internal uprising brutally suppressed by the IRGC, a second Israel-US surprise attack was launched on February 28, 2026. The American justification has shifted notably – from a nuclear threat (which Trump had already claimed was eliminated) to dismantling Iran’s missile capability. Now Washington demands “unconditional surrender.”This shift matters legally and morally. For a pre-emptive strike to be legitimate under international law, the threat must be immediate, there must be no alternative, and there must be no time for diplomacy or UN intervention. Here, no UN intervention was sought and diplomacy served as cover. The conflict has moved from a targeted strike to regime change – which, if anything, will harden Tehran’s position and prolong the war.As for the nuclear threat that ostensibly justified the strikes, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said on March 2, 2026, that Iran had no structured programme to build a nuclear weapon, though it had pursued an ambitious nuclear programme. Asked by CNN whether Iran was “days or weeks away from building the bomb,” he was clear: “We never had information indicating that there was a structured, systematic program to build or construct a nuclear weapon.”ConclusionThe pattern is not difficult to see. Western powers overthrew Iran’s democratic government when it tried to control its own resources, backed the dictatorship that replaced it, supported Iraq when it invaded and used chemical weapons, blocked Iran from purchasing legitimate nuclear technology, rejected Iranian diplomatic overtures, withdrew from a functioning arms control agreement, and then launched military strikes on the basis of a nuclear threat the IAEA says it cannot substantiate.There is also an asymmetry that cannot be ignored. Israel, which has never signed the NPT and is widely understood to possess nuclear weapons, faces no sanctions. India and Pakistan developed weapons outside the NPT framework and were eventually accommodated. Iran, an NPT signatory that legally pursued civilian enrichment, faced escalating sanctions and ultimately military strikes.Viewed against this history, Iran’s nuclear programme looks less like aggression and more like a rational, if imperfect, attempt by a repeatedly violated state to acquire strategic insurance. The tragedy is that the opacity and ideological belligerence of the clerical regime gave its adversaries the ambiguity they needed to treat a defensive programme as an offensive one.The writer is a distinguished fellow with the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.A version of this piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.