'Imminent' or not, Iran has been at war with US for decades | Opinion

The loudest criticism of America’s recent strike on Iran has focused on its legality.

Members of Congress and foreign leaders alike have rushed to condemn the action as unprovoked and a violation of international law. Sen. Bernie Sanders called it an illegal war. Sen. Elizabeth Warren described it as dangerous and unlawful. Sen. Ed Markey labeled it unconstitutional. California Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed the charge.

Internationally, Spain, Norway, the European Union and the United Nations issued familiar calls for restraint and legal process.

The common premise behind these objections is that the strike was unjustified because there was no immediate – i.e., "imminent" – threat. That premise is wrong.

US hostilities with Iran actually began decades ago

It rests on a dangerously narrow understanding of both law and history, one that treats Iran’s nearly five-decade campaign against the United States as irrelevant unless it fits into a 24-hour window of “imminence.” That framework may be politically convenient. It is not strategically serious.

Iran’s war against the United States did not begin last week or last year. It began in 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held American diplomats hostage for 444 days.

That act was not an aberration. It was the opening move in a pattern that has defined Iran’s behavior ever since ‒ the use of force, proxies and hostage-taking as tools of state policy:

• In 1983, Iran backed Hezbollah’s bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American service members in one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. forces since World War II.
• In 2016, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps captured 10 U.S. Navy sailors at gunpoint and paraded them on Iranian state television.
• In 2020, Iran launched ballistic missiles directly at bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq, causing dozens of traumatic brain injuries.
• In 2024, an Iran-backed militia drone strike killed three American service members in Jordan.

US can't dismiss Iran's history of hostile actions

These are not ancient grievances. They are part of an unbroken chain of hostile acts carried out by the Iranian regime or its proxies, targeting American personnel, allies and interests across multiple theaters.

Nor is Iran’s conduct limited to military harassment.

U.S. authorities have publicly disclosed attempts by Iran to assassinate President Donald Trump. Tehran’s intelligence services have plotted kidnappings and attacks on dissidents and officials far beyond the Middle East.

This is not a state at peace with the U.S. It is a state engaged in sustained, asymmetric warfare.

Critics argue that preventive action is illegal unless a threat is “immediately imminent.” But international law does not require a nation to wait for the next attack when faced with an adversary that has demonstrated both intent and capability over decades.

Self-defense is not a suicide pact, nor is it confined to responding after bodies are counted.

The claim that diplomacy was working is equally misleading.

Iran has perfected the art of negotiation as a delay. For years, it has entered talks, stretched timelines, violated commitments and used the process itself as cover to advance its nuclear and military programs.

Deadlines come and go. Inspectors are restricted. Promises are broken. Then the cycle repeats.

Reports that Iran signaled interest in negotiations through intermediaries should be taken with a grain of salt. Tehran has used back-channel diplomacy repeatedly to buy time, relieve pressure and avoid consequences.

Don't be fooled by premature calls for a ceasefire

Now, as Iran reportedly seeks a ceasefire, any discussion should come only after the next Iranian leader clarifies whether he will continue the regime’s longstanding calls for “death to America” and its sponsorship of terrorism.

The deeper issue exposed by the backlash to the U.S.-Israel strikes is not legality; it is denial.

For years, much of the international community has insisted on treating Iran as a misunderstood actor responding defensively to Western pressure. That narrative requires ignoring the regime’s own words, actions and record. It requires pretending that proxy warfare is not warfare, that hostage-taking is not aggression, that decades of attacks do not add up to a pattern. They do.

Calling the strike “unprovoked” does not make it so. It merely erases history.

There is also a strategic cost to the reflexive condemnation now on display. When democratic leaders rush to denounce enforcement while offering no alternative means of deterrence, they reinforce the very behavior they claim to oppose.

Iran has learned, repeatedly, that escalation is punished less severely than restraint is rewarded. That lesson has shaped its conduct across the region.

The question facing the United States is not whether Iran will retaliate. It already has, repeatedly, for decades.

The question is whether America and its allies are prepared to acknowledge reality: that the Iranian regime is not a misunderstood negotiating partner; it's a hostile power whose strategy depends on Western hesitation.

Ending that cycle requires recognizing that law without enforcement is theater, and that diplomacy without consequences is an invitation. If international law is to mean anything, it must apply not only to moments of response ‒ but also to decades of provocation.

Aviva Klompas is CEO and cofounder of Boundless, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting antisemitism. She is also the host of the "Boundless Insights" podcast.