The war in Iran has not taken place

In 1991, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard published a book titled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. The text was heavily criticized: it was seen as one of the main examples of the absurd drift of French postmodernism by minimizing the suffering of the war with an approach that did not even help to understand why Iraq invaded Kuwait and what the reasons for the United States’ response were.

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What Baudrillard wanted to point out is that this war was conceived as a spectacle, as a simulacrum. In that spectacle, with bombings broadcast on television, the schemes of a movie or a video game were followed: it was a just fight against an evil enemy, Saddam Hussein, who had invaded a country for its oil. In combat, the allied forces, far superior, barely suffered casualties and Iraqi deaths were hardly mentioned, especially civilian ones.

From that point of view, Baudrillard was somewhat right: there was no war, but an atrocity disguised as a spectacle. The analysis is incomplete, but it shows a trend that is even more obvious today. Reality is hidden behind interested narratives that try to reduce it to entertainment, to content. The first Iraq war was a movie: it was brief, there were good guys and bad guys, and it had an ending. The second Iraq war, the one in 2003, was like a badly written series: it started with a similar approach to 1991, but it dragged on and ended with a muddled plot and a confusing ending that almost no one followed. The current Iran war is a reality show like the ones Trump starred in before going into politics: there is no recognizable plot, beyond the statements of the characters, which are exaggerated and incoherent, and for which there is hardly any notable context. For example, Trump has said he wanted to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, that he wanted a change of government, that he wanted Iranian oil, that the attack would last two or three weeks, that an entire civilization would die, that it might last longer, that it is about to end.

The argument does not matter, what is important is that there is content that can be commented on social networks and that Trump supporters can sell any headline as a victory. For example, a few days ago, political analysts and Trump supporters commented on X that the president’s opponents would be left looking foolish if he managed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, ignoring that the strait was wide open before the U.S. attack. After the failure of the reopening (and the peace negotiations), the Republican supporters have gone on to applaud his decision to block the strait, ignoring that the strait was already blocked. Others focus on the fact that a regime change would be good news, emphasizing the high-ranking Iranian officials who have been assassinated, but the truth is that, so far, the attacks have only managed to replace Ayatollah Khamenei with Ayatollah Khamenei junior.

It can even be argued that the attacks are helping a regime that was not only bloodthirsty but also tremendously unpopular. This can be seen, for example, in the success that the tweets from Iranian embassies around the world are having, sharing memes that mock Trump. That is, now there are thousands of people applauding the jokes of a despicable theocratic dictatorship because the United States has started a cruel and barely thought-out offensive.

Taking all this into account, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that the Iran war has not taken place either. What we are seeing is not a war, it is an atrocity disguised as a farce. We are facing a simulacrum, a spectacle designed for us to comment on everything Trump and his secondary characters say on social media. For us to wonder, for example, if Benjamin Netanyahu is the one who really rules or if the shah’s son will make it to the second season or fall by the wayside, as happened in Venezuela to María Corina Machado. This is what they want to sell us: a reality show to cover up reality.