Iranicide: The Genealogy of Hate
The haunting sight of thick, black smoke suffocating Iranians seemingly signals the slow asphyxiation of a proud country before the world’s eyes. With the goal of securing the Islamic Republic’s complete surrender, the US-Israeli military campaign has moved well beyond stated, if shifting, objectives. Operation Epic Fury raises urgent questions about the true intent of this conflict. After two difficult weeks, the relentless bombing of Tehran and other Iranian cities makes it abundantly clear that this war has one fundamental aim: Iranicide, or the decimation of Iran.
As Iranians choke on the literal fallout of war, the silence from international oversight bodies is deafening, leaving a void where there should be a fierce condemnation of such indiscriminate environmental and humanitarian assaults. The harm to Iran’s (and humanity’s) architectural heritage, from the Golestan Palace, the Chehel Sotoun, and prehistoric caves, has become scripted as collateral damage in a war whose stated purpose remains opaque. The heavy bombing of Iran also runs the risk of unleashing earthquakes, given that the country lies on a faultline.
The lack of meaningful responses from the United Nations and other international watchdogs to this heavy and inhumane bombardment signals a troubling erosion of global humanitarian standards yet again. Whereas the United Nations has condemned the Islamic Republic for lashing out against its neighbors and escalating the war, such indignation is not expressed for the suffering people of Iran, subjected to a war over which they have no control. Already, more than three million Iranians have been displaced by the war, and this number will surely rise.
While ostensibly targeting military assets, the sheer scale of the military strikes on Iranians, already under duress by their regime and international sanctions, functions as psychological warfare against the civilian population. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth repeatedly uses incendiary language to express pride in Iran’s utter annihilation. The tasteless videos making light of the military operations in Iran only dehumanize the country, its people, and all the other victims of this conflict to justify the Iranicide underway.
No longer an academic matter, Iran’s survival has emerged as an existential one, brought on in part by the divisive policies of the Islamic Republic and the hubris of its armed forces; the desire for revenge among the belligerents in this war; and the geopolitical (re)mapping of the Persian Gulf coast. With this logic, the Islamic Republic stands out not only as a battlefield but a global admonishment—an example to all of the costs of challenging the prevailing world order.
This disastrous outcome was long in the making. For decades, the international narrative of Iran contained many flaws. It ignored the impact of colonialism on Iran’s legitimate security concerns after the First World War. For centuries, the Persian Gulf was a waterway where Iranian influence mattered. In the nineteenth century, Britain challenged Iran’s role in the Persian Gulf, which became dubbed sardonically a “British Lake,” to mark Britain’s rising influence. Throughout the twentieth century, the gradual colonial remapping of the southern Persian Gulf coast triggered a sharp shift in paradigm. Britain sought to solidify an Arab identity along the southern shores, effectively sidelining Persian and Iranian communities in those areas. An artificial reframing of Iran as an outsider to the Gulf fueled this narrative, often depicting Iranians as aliens to this coast and emphasizing their dominant Persian/Shi'a identity against the Arab/Sunni in the littoral states.
At the same time, the post-colonial mapping of the Persian Gulf created a massive wealth gap. It provided significant oil income for sparsely populated Arabian states and their elites, while it disenfranchised non-Arab, including Persian and Iranian, communities, many of them Shi‘a, in those countries. By framing the southern Gulf states as exclusively Arabian and Sunni, the West fueled the Arab/Ajam rivalry, leaving Iran to navigate a regional landscape that systematically effaced its cultural and religious heritage. Western colonialism thus entrenched these antagonisms.
In 1981, the creation of the Gulf Cooperation Council amid the Iran-Iraq War only reinforced this divide. Because the GCC, headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Iran conceived of their security in mutually exclusive terms, a shared security landscape often appeared out of reach. Certain actions taken by the other side were viewed as potential threats.
The Islamic Republic of Iran's perceived marginalization and exclusion from such arrangements have accounted partly for its aggressive posture since 1980, especially after Iraq’s attack. It compelled the Islamic Republic to project power through proxies and maritime disruption to ensure it could not be ignored or willy-nilly threatened. Yet the Islamic Republic has also gravely miscalculated. The theocratic state never held itself accountable for its policies of hate toward others. It also displayed overconfidence in its military capabilities over the years, a misjudgment culminating in the US attack on the Kharg Island, its “crown jewel,” in the Persian Gulf and its oil lifeline.
Along with military strategy, punitive impulses seem to be guiding the current US-Israeli war efforts. The dehumanization of Iranians (not just hatred for the Iranian state) has normalized a primal desire for revenge among the belligerents in this war. They seek a final settlement of historical scores that includes the possibility of Iranicide. For American hawks, this conflict represents the culmination of decades of perceived humiliations—from the 1979 hostage crisis and the subsequent killings of countless Americans to America’s retreat from Iraq. Even the attack on Kharg Island was an idea President Donald Trump had entertained decades earlier. Israel, too, has its axes to grind. Its pursuit of retribution goes back not just to the legacies of the 1979 revolution but also to the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose inflammatory remarks called for Israel’s removal from the map. In retaliation, Israeli hardliners want to show that Iran itself can be erased.
The region now stands at a precipice. Historical grievances, strategic miscalculations, and competing visions of power have converged, leading the Persian Gulf into a perilous stalemate. Hostile rhetoric has only buttressed the genealogy of hate. Unless a radically new call for peace and a framework for cooperation emerge, the human, cultural, and geopolitical costs of this ill-conceived war will only deepen the divides, plunging the region into ruin.
The diplomatic deadlock has done more than just prevent peace. While the Islamic Republic has never been able to mount a decisive military challenge against Israel or the United States—despite periodic violent clashes and its provocative, misguided calls for “death to America” or “death to Israel”—the reality is that the United States and Israel possess overwhelmingly superior military powers capable of devastating Iran. For the belligerents, this war is not mere bluster. It sanctions the escalation of serious war crimes already underway and the active obliteration of a longstanding culture – Iranicide – and the declared eradication of a country and its 92 million lives. Yet even now, Iran’s future remains unwritten, sustained by a collective will and legacy that no bombardment can efface. Despite their sharp political differences, Iranians who are fighting for a better future do not want the wanton destruction of their country or neighborhood. The very scale of this assault may yet galvanize a global reckoning that reasserts the rights of Iran and its struggling people to survive with dignity and maybe even freedom.
