Half a century of Western intervention in Iran has failed spectacularly - and the current US-Israeli military offensive will too: PETER HITCHENS

By TOM MIDLANE and JOSEPH LUKE PALMER Published: 17:29, 9 July 2026 | Updated: 17:40, 9 July 2026 Half a century of Western interventions in Iran have failed - and the current US-Israeli military offensive will too, Peter Hitchens has argued. As airstrikes against the Islamic Republic resumed on Wednesday, the longstanding Mail on Sunday columnist questioned the wisdom of pursuing a policy of hostility towards Iran on the latest Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast. The history of Western interference in the region is enduring. In 1956, the United States and UK overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Operation Boot, in part to protect British oil interests after he nationalised the industry. In his place they installed the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ruled as an absolute monarch until he was swept aside in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.  Both the US and UK provided support for Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist Iraq in the 1980s as they sought to stop the revolution spreading. International sanctions also had a cooling effect on Iran's economy for decades. Hitchens said: 'It's 47 years now of Western policy trying to mess up Iran by, first of all, getting Iraq to make war on it and costing huge numbers of lives, then by horrible sanctions, which make life utterly miserable for ordinary people, but don't at all affect the regime, and now by bombardment. 'None of this has worked. Iran remains a country deeply hostile to us and determined to assert its independence and its sovereignty.' With the Iran war now into its fifth month, Hitchens says it is now time for a diplomatic course change to bring the Middle Eastern nation back into the international fold.  President Donald Trump posted an image on Truth Social on Wednesday showing the aftermath of a US-Israeli airstrike on the city of Chabahar in southeastern Iran  Peter Hitchens (pictured) says Western intervention in Iran is a dead end - you can listen to the full episode of the latest Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast here He said: 'Doesn't it occur to anybody in the major Western countries that perhaps, having failed so completely for so long, they might try something else?' Hitchens, a former foreign correspondent in both Moscow and Washington, D.C., praised the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), colloquially known as the Iran Nuclear Deal.  The multilateral agreement signed by Iran, the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the US) and the EU, allowed the Islamic Republic to enrich uranium for domestic use. However, it restricted them from treating nuclear fuel in such a way that it would yield weapons-grade material.  The JCPOA was greenlit by Barack Obama in 2015 but the US withdrew from the agreement in May 2018 during President Donald Trump's first term in office.  Hitchens added: 'There was a really, really strong effort made in actually, the so-called JCPOA, an agreement under which Iran was agreed to make it plain it wasn't making nuclear weapons, in return for some realisation of sanctions. 'That was sabotaged mainly by Israel, mainly by Benjamin Netanyahu, but Donald Trump joined in, and it stopped, and since then we went back to tension. 'Then we began, and I say we, because I suppose that's the way I have to refer to the Western nations, a new attack on Iran, shocking and duplicitous, because it was launched in the middle of negotiations, which was supposed to avert it. 'The response of Iran has not been to die or roll over and surrender, but to continue to assert itself. And this extraordinary event now going on is a reminder of that.' Alas Vine & Hitchens: What's the big idea? Get the Mail's new politics podcast, hosted by columnists Sarah Vine and Peter Hitchens, wherever you listen to podcasts now He added: 'Since 1979 have the Western nations successfully brought Iran back into the comity of civilized nations by this policy of constantly making trouble for Iran, as we have done, trying to starve it of money, trying to make it hard for it to sell its oil, impoverishing it, and attacking it, and recently bombing it.  'Has this worked as a strategy? Has it turned Iran? If you're looking at the events now going on in Tehran, has it turned Iran into our friend?'  His comments led to a debate on the validity of Western intervention, with the hosts clashing about the causes of the treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan. Hitchen's said: 'Fifty years ago Afghan women strolled through the streets of Kabul, wearing miniskirts. It's been outside interventions which have brought it to where it is.' However, Vine disagreed, instead blaming 'a hardline Islamist ideology' that is built on misogyny and seeks to replicate itself and spread.  She said: 'There is a hardline Islamist ideology that hates women, that is misogynistic, and not only that, has a prophesizing and interfering policy, and wants to replicate that situation in other countries. 'Wherever there is a weak government, or wherever there is all sorts of problems, they take hold.' She added: 'Women constitute half of the world's population. So any country, any nation that discriminates in the way that Afghanistan does, not only discriminates, tortures, rapes, abuses, does terrible things to half of their population.  Thousands of people holding flags and posters gather for the funeral ceremony for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Mashhad, Iran on July 9, 2026 'Do you really think you just have to sit by and go, "Well, that's their country"? Are you saying that we should just watch those poor women have their lives destroyed and do nothing about it?'  Hitchens countered that Western government's used human rights as a pretext to enact cruel policies on other countries - an argument Vine branded a 'cop out'.   'We're withholding food aid on Afghanistan because we don't like their policy towards women, that's what we're doing,' Hitchens said.   Vine responded: 'You see, I always think that the starving children line is the cop-out line. because it's very easy to go, "Oh, you're killing babies, you're starving babies, blah blah blah."  'Yes, these are all terrible things. Nobody wants to hurt children. I also don't want to hurt little girls who would like to go to school, and maybe not have to marry men five times their ages, and then be forced into having sex with them when they're eight.  'So, what about those? So, what about those kids? What do we do about them to be starved and abused?'