Editor’s view: Iran strike another chapter in the era of ‘endless wars’

Iran – a sponsor of terrorism – could now seek to target American interests around the globe, but for now, again, the world holds its breath, writes the editor.

A banner bearing a picture of US President Donald Trump accompanied by a message, is displayed in Tel Aviv on June 22, 2025. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)

It might be printed in our history books, but historians actually disagree on the exact date World War II started.

In the Commonwealth we consider the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and Britain’s declaration of war on September 3, as the start of the conflict, but that is by no means a universal view.

In Russia, notwithstanding its complicity with the Nazis in the destruction of Poland, it marks June 22, 1941 – when Germany invaded the Soviet Union – as the beginning of what it calls the “Great Patriotic War”.

In the US they do something similar, with the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 marking the start of the conflict.

But many contemporary historians go the other way. Antony Beevor points to battles fought between China and the USSR in early 1939 as the true start of the global conflict, while others refer to the start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, or even the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 as the true start of the global conflagration that claimed the lives of around 80 million people.

The point of this history exercise is this; While the world wonders if the US air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities could trigger World War III, it is probably fair to ask if it has in fact already started.

Emergency workers attend to a building hit by a reported Iranian missile strike on June 22, 2025 in the Ramat Aviv neighbourhood of Tel Aviv, Israel. (Photo by Erik Marmor/Getty Images)

For those of us raised during the Cold War, World War III was another term for nuclear armageddon. But the threat of a more ‘conventional’ war has never gone away.

US President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to end the “forever wars” – the costly and indecisive campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as other places in the Middle East – that were sparked by the shocking terror attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.

At the same time we have seen regular and costly wars between Israel and the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, fighting in Yemen, and uprisings following the Arab Spring in 2011 whose repercussions are still being felt.

And then we’ve had Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014, and the bitter, bloody war following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

We have witnessed a new kind of warfare, with surprise attacks launched via explosive pagers and attack drones hidden in the roofs of sheds.

The first quarter of the new millennium has been soaked in blood. It might not be World War III, but it certainly isn’t the peace we were promised after the fall of the Soviet Union and what political scientist Francis Fukuyama called “the end of history”.

But if we are sliding towards a broader conflict, the attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites, providing they achieved their objectives, can only be a good thing, a necessary evil.

While many in the west may object to the politics and rhetoric of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and America’s Donald Trump, surely they must agree when they say “Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.”

Simply, if it had them, it would use them.

And while Mr Trump was broadly mocked for giving Iran two weeks to abandon its nuclear ambitions, the fact that he struck within days seems to have caught Iran off guard. It may have in fact been a masterstroke.

Of course, we have been in this situation before, with the “Coalition of the Willing” joining George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, in part because of apparent evidence of weapons of mass destruction. It turned out there were no such weapons.

Security forces keep residents behind a cordoned-off area as they gather at the site of an Iranian strike in the Israeli port city of Haifa on June 22, 2025. (Photo by Fadel SENNA / AFP)

What happens now is the big question. For Mr Trump it is entirely up to Iran.

“Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” he said in an address yesterday.

“If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”

While America does not appear to be prepared to launch a ground invasion like with Iraq in 2003, air attacks bring with them the risk that the conflict could escalate.

While Russia has been weakened from its war on Ukraine, it is still an adversary to be respected, and not just because it has a huge nuclear arsenal controlled by a dictator.

It will feel it needs to respond to a US attack on its ally Iran.

Iran – a sponsor of terrorism – could now seek to target American interests around the globe.

Just as worrying, in the longer term, is the response of China.

Will it take advantage of the global turmoil to launch an invasion of Taiwan, or implement a naval blockade.

If that happens there will be no doubt that World War III has arrived.

But for now, again, the world holds its breath, waiting to see if conflict in the Middle East will draw in the great powers.

It may be terrifying, but is something that we have experienced time and again over the past 25 years.

Originally published as Editor’s view: Iran strike another chapter in the era of ‘endless wars’