Writing for the Daily Mail, columnist Peter Hitchens has argued that 50 years of Western intervention in Iran have failed and that the ongoing US-Israeli military offensive will fail too. Speaking on the Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast as airstrikes on the Islamic Republic resumed on Wednesday, he questioned the wisdom of a policy of hostility towards Tehran. His argument matters because it offers a dissenting view amid an escalating conflict, now in its fifth month, in which Iran has struck back at US targets in Gulf states and warned of a "crushing response".

The article traces a long history of interference: the 1953-era overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (the piece dates it 1956) after he nationalised the oil industry, the installation of the Shah, and Western support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s to contain the 1979 Islamic Revolution, alongside decades of sanctions. Hitchens contends that war, sanctions and now bombardment have all failed, hurting ordinary Iranians rather than the regime, and leaving Iran still hostile and determined to assert its sovereignty.