After months of increased conflict and military buildup in the Middle East, the United States and Israel launched a series of missiles over Iran Feb. 28, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and sending waves of panic rippling throughout the globe. The new war on Iran comes nearly fifteen years after the last war America was involved with in the Middle East, the Iraq War, ended.
Professor of History, International Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies, Nova Robinson, welcomed Seattle University to her March 3 History of the Modern Middle East class for a teach-in on the Iran War.
The teach-in began with Robinson and her students providing a brief history of Iran, as well as the relationship that the U.S. has with the country and its surrounding region.
One of the main discussions of the teach-in was why the war is happening in the first place. Third-year Humanities for Teaching and History major Braden Colaner, raised at the teach-in that the objective of the U.S. attacking Iran isn’t very clear.
“So far, the stated objective is to make sure Iran does not have nuclear facilities. So Israel and the United States are working together to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Colaner said. “Trump, in June of 2025, said that they had obliterated the nuclear facilities already. So if that was true, then why are we doing this now?”
Colaner is not the only American questioning the U.S.’s decision. According to a national poll, military actions against Iran are opposed by 53% of Americans.
One student who attended the teach-in, Second-year Political Science major Said Malik Fazlitdinov, believes that the U.S. chose to get involved in the conflict in part due to its strong alliance with Israel, a longtime opponent of Iran.
“I still believe that there’s an interest in Israel being in there and [the U.S.] having control over the Middle East through Israel, even though the U.S. has a lot of allies in the face of Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. But having Israel as one of those powers, too, would be really beneficial for the U.S.,” Malik Fazlitdinov said.
At the time of publishing, there are no American troops deployed in Iran. According to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, boots on the ground in Iran are not off the table, and the U.S. is “willing to go as far as [they] need in order to be successful.”
74% of Americans are opposed to placing troops on the ground. Robinson is unsure of whether troops will be deployed or not, but does believe that the conflict will get worse before it gets better.
“We’ve already seen [the war] escalate significantly through Iran’s attacks on U.S. military diplomatic installments throughout the Middle East. I can’t say for certain whether or not I think that there will be troops on the ground; that feels like it would be a very dangerous gamble,” Robinson said. “I wish the United States might have learned some lessons from its invasion of Iraq in 2003. But it doesn’t appear that we have.”
With increasingly tense relations between the U.S. and its foreign allies, Robinson says that the U.S. may not get the support that it is looking for in this war.
Robinson also believes that U.S. involvement in supporting state violence for the entirety of the 21st century will have long-term consequences with many of its allies.
“You cannot go against international norms to the extent that we have in the last couple of years without consequences. Our allies have kept us safe. Those alliances with Canada, those alliances with the EU, have been very important for our prosperity, and we will have to come to terms with what a future without those supports does to our economic prosperity,” Robinson said.
There have already been some economic consequences from the military action in Iran, one of the most significant for American citizens being skyrocketing oil prices. Robinson predicts that the economic fallout, as well as general discontentment with the war, will likely influence the upcoming midterm elections.
“I think that domestically, we will see the actions of the United States in Iran [significantly influence] the midterm elections,” Robinson said. “I certainly hope that it is a force that people carry with them as they consider who to vote for in the midterm elections, both in the primaries and the election itself in the fall.”
