In Iran, echoes of the Iraq war

Summary

Front Burner: “In Iran, echoes of the Iraq war” (CBC, March 27, 2026) – Detailed Episode Summary

---

Episode Overview

Host Jamie Poisson explores the parallels—and crucial differences—between the current US-Israeli war with Iran (Operation Epic Fury) and the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom). Drawing on the expertise and firsthand experiences of veteran journalists Jonathan Landay (Reuters), Jane Arraf (NPR), and Jeremy Bowen (BBC), the episode scrutinizes the justification, execution, and aftermath of both conflicts. The discussion centers on the politics of intelligence, the pitfalls of military overconfidence, the lack of postwar planning, and the human and geopolitical costs of “wars of choice” in the Gulf.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Presidential War Declarations and Rhetoric

“Two solemn presidential declarations of war, 23 years apart, both foreshadowed in State of the Union addresses.” — Jamie Poisson (02:00)

• Jamie juxtaposes George W. Bush’s 2003 declaration of war on Iraq with Donald Trump’s declaration on Iran, highlighting the recycling of rhetoric: both wars sold to the public as preemptive actions against an imminent nuclear threat, and both portrayed as being welcomed by local populations.

  • “If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, I think the odds are unacceptably high that we would find out with a mushroom cloud over New York City or Los Angeles or Tel Aviv in Israel, both…” — G.W. Bush audio clip (02:39)

• Overconfidence in swift victories is a recurring theme:

  • “I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that.” — G.W. Bush (03:13)
  • Jamie observes that Trump’s administration likewise signaled a quick, decisive outcome in Iran, though history shows otherwise: “It's still not clear when Donald Trump's war with Iran will end.” (03:32)

---

2. Political Legacy of the Iraq War & Trump’s Position

• Trump built political capital on criticizing the Iraq War, claiming he foresaw its destabilizing impact:

  • “I said, it's a terrible and a stupid thing. It's going to destabilize the Middle East. And that's exactly what it's done.” — G.W. Bush (impersonation or clip) quoting Trump (04:16)

• Despite this, his administration now insists the Iran conflict is fundamentally different:

  • "This is not Iraq. This is not endless." — Jonathan Landay quoting Administration rhetoric (04:58)

---

3. The Media, Intelligence, and Selling the Iraq War

“They promoted several notions…founded on exaggerated and bogus…intelligence information.” — Jonathan Landay (08:03)

• Landay describes how the Bush Administration tied the case for war to alleged WMDs and tenuous links to Al Qaeda, ignoring the findings of intrusive UN inspections or dismissing Iraq's denials outright.

  • “What do you make of the...Iraqi government...that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction...?” — Jamie Poisson (10:55)
    “‘They’re lying. Next.’” — G.W. Bush (11:06)

• Landay provides a rare account of journalistic skepticism:

  • “The more I dug into their case for war...the more I became convinced that it didn't exist. It was a very lonely experience.” (11:38)
  • Major media, led by the New York Times, “were getting it wrong and being spoon fed this bogus information directly from senior members of the Bush administration.” (12:25)

---

4. Weapons Programs: Iraq vs. Iran

• Today's intelligence landscape is different: While Iran has enriched uranium near weaponization levels, there is no consensus or evidence it produced or intends to use nuclear weapons imminently.

  • “Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon...they had not, as far as anybody could tell, actually put a weapon together and tested one.” — Jonathan Landay (13:38)
  • “There's no intelligence that I'm aware of that supports that intention.” — Landay (14:20)

• Landay draws parallels: Both conflicts have been built on shaky intelligence, or outright misrepresentation, to serve political ends:

  • “In both cases, the intelligence did not cast...Iraq and in this instance Iran as imminent threats to US security.” (14:38)

---

5. Coalition-building and International Legitimacy

• The Iraq invasion faced significant international opposition; France, Germany, and Canada all refused to participate, not accepting US threat analysis. Still, the Bush Administration tried to build a coalition and sought (unsuccessfully) UN legitimacy:

  • “There was that famous presentation by former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Council...” (16:40)

• In contrast, Trump’s Iran campaign is markedly unilateral:

  • “Canada was not informed in advance of the strikes and was not asked to participate...other major US allies were similarly not consulted.” — Jamie Poisson (21:30)

• Jeremy Bowen highlights the absence of efforts to drum up international or domestic (including Congressional) backing for war with Iran:

  • “I think frankly [Trump] went to war quite lightly.” (22:49)

---

6. Aftermaths: Chaos, Insurgency, and Regional Impact in Iraq

• The post-invasion collapse of Iraq led to a devastating power vacuum, fueling sectarian violence, insurgency, and ultimately, the birth of ISIS.

  • “It's hard to do justice in words to the way that Iraq fell apart, because it fell apart violently. It imploded.” — Jane Arraf (27:43)
  • “The massive vacuum...after the removal of the regime...serious mistakes in their governance, not least their decision to abolish the army...many moved over to the insurgency.” — Jeremy Bowen (28:46)

• The humanitarian toll was staggering:

  • “Over 2 million Iraqis fled...approximately 200,000 [direct] civilian deaths...Other estimates...as high as half a million.” — Jamie Poisson (31:15)

---

7. Worries for Iran’s Future

• There is deep anxiety among experts and regional neighbors: If the Iranian regime is toppled, there’s no plausible, organized alternative—raising fears of complete state collapse and catastrophic regional consequences.
  • “There are no cohesive opposition groupings...What people here fear...is that Iran could fall apart.” — Jane Arraf (32:44)
  • Iran is much larger, more populous, and more unified in its sense of self than Iraq ever was.
    • “Iran was never colonized...It's a big country. It's four times the size of Iraq...with a population of more than 90 million people. It's got an absolutely extraordinary history...” — Jeremy Bowen (33:28)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On repeating mistakes:

  • “If there have been lessons learned, I'm not seeing it...I have not seen anything that would explain why it is worth the potential we're facing to see the disintegration of Iran and its effect on the region.” — Jane Arraf (34:40)

• On the challenges of regime change:

  • “It's really quite easy to start a war. It's really quite hard to end it.” — Jeremy Bowen (24:41)

• On postwar chaos in Iraq:

  • “All of this took years to unravel, years of a military campaign...Iraq just lost so much.” — Jane Arraf (30:31)

• On survival instincts of regimes:

  • “[Regimes] who believe they're in trouble have this sense of deliverance and victory...the regime in Tehran right now is trying to survive.” — Jeremy Bowen (35:34)

• On the mythology of swift victory:

  • “Mission accomplished with George W. Bush. Well, that ended well, didn't it?” — Jeremy Bowen (26:02)

---

Key Timestamps

• 00:35 – Intro: Framing Iran war through the lens of Iraq
• 02:00–03:41 – Presidential war rhetoric, promises of swift victories
• 05:18–07:47 – Jane Arraf and the shock of war, lack of planning on the ground
• 08:03–12:25 – Jonathan Landay on Bush administration’s manipulation of intelligence, lonely role of skeptical journalism
• 13:03–14:38 – Comparing Iranian nuclear capabilities and intelligence failures
• 16:30–19:16 – International legitimacy: Bush’s coalition-building vs. Trump’s go-it-alone approach
• 22:12–22:46 – Jeremy Bowen on Trump’s lack of war planning or public/political persuasion
• 24:41–27:43 – Aftermath in Iraq: “Mission Accomplished,” chaos, “stuff happens,” and collapse
• 27:43–30:31 – Insurgency, rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, birth of ISIS
• 31:15–32:16 – Human cost: refugees, deaths, Iraq war statistics
• 32:44–34:40 – Fears of Iranian collapse, lack of real alternatives, regional consequences
• 35:34–36:30 – Discussion of regime survival dynamics and historical analogies

---

Conclusion: Lessons (Not) Learned

The episode closes on a somber note, questioning whether any real lessons have been learned from Iraq, as the world faces another open-ended conflict in the Gulf. The journalists caution against overconfidence, poor intelligence, and lack of planning—and warn that toppling regimes can open up vacuums with devastating consequences for millions.

---

For listeners seeking a deep, nuanced examination of war, foreign policy, and history’s cruel echoes—this episode is essential.

Transcript

[Jamie Poisson]

Taking care of your eyes shouldn't be a hassle. That's why Warby Parker is a one stop shop for all your vision needs. Our prescription glasses and sunglasses are expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Stop by a nearby store or use our app to virtually try on frames and get personalized recommendations. Did we mention we offer eye exams and take vision insurance too? For everything you need to see, head to your nearest Warby Parker store or visit warbyparker.com today. That's warbyparker.com

[Jonathan Landay]

this is a CBC podcast.

[Jamie Poisson]

Hi everyone, I'm Jamie Poisson. It's been nearly a month now of Operation Epic Fury, the US Israeli war with Iran. But the shadow of another war looms large over this one. Operation Iraqi Freedom, George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq. So today we're going to trace the Iraq war, the parallels we're seeing with Iran right now, and the significant differences to better understand the potential fallout when US Forces go to war in the Gulf.

[George W. Bush]

My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.

[Jamie Poisson]

Two solemn presidential declarations of war, 23 years apart, both foreshadowed in State of the Union addresses.

[George W. Bush]

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons

[Jonathan Landay]

for over a decade.

[George W. Bush]

But one thing is certain. I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can't let that happen.

[Jamie Poisson]

Both egged on for months with rhetoric of a dire nuclear threat. There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire a nuclear weapon. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

[George W. Bush]

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, I think the odds are unacceptably high that we would find out with a mushroom cloud over New York City or Los Angeles or Tel Aviv in Israel, both

[Jamie Poisson]

sold as welcomed by the local population.

[George W. Bush]

Things have gotten so bad inside Iraq. From the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will in fact be greeted as liberators. All over Iran, the voices of the Iranian people could be heard cheering and celebrating in the streets when his death

[Jamie Poisson]

was announced, and both were projected to be swift victories.

[George W. Bush]

I can't tell you if the Use of force in Iraq today would last five days or five weeks or five

[Jeremy Bowen]

months,

[George W. Bush]

but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that.

[Jonathan Landay]

And that's why we don't talk about, you can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three.

[Jamie Poisson]

It's still not clear when Donald Trump's war with Iran will end.

[George W. Bush]

When are you going to know when it's over? When I feel it, okay? I feel it in my bones.

[Jamie Poisson]

But Bush's invasion of Iraq dragged on for nearly nine years.

[George W. Bush]

Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake. All right?

[Jamie Poisson]

Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination, railing against his fellow Republicans for their positions on the Iraq war.

[George W. Bush]

It took Jeb Bush, if you remember, at the beginning of his announcement, when he announced the president took him five days. He went back. It was a mistake. It wasn't a mistake. Took him five days before his people told him what to say. And he ultimately said it was a mistake.

[Jamie Poisson]

During his first presidential run, he hammered Hillary Clinton on the same thing.

[George W. Bush]

I said, it's a terrible and a stupid thing. It's going to destabilize the Middle East. And that's exactly what it's done.

[Jamie Poisson]

Opposition to the Iraq war is an essential part of his political branch in Iraq.

[George W. Bush]

So they spent. President Bush went in. I strongly disagreed with it, even though it wasn't my expertise at the time. But I had a. I have a very good instinct about things. They went in and I said, that's a tremendous mistake.

[Jamie Poisson]

So now Trump's people are quick to say that they're not making the same mistake all over again in Iran.

[George W. Bush]

To the media outlets and political left

[Jonathan Landay]

screaming, endless wars, Stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless.

[Jane Arraf]

We look back on that era of George Bush and the invasion of Iraq as maybe one of the most terrible foreign policy decisions we had seen.

[Jamie Poisson]

This is Jane Araf. She's now an international correspondent for National Public Radio.

[Jane Arraf]

It's not up to us as journalists to determine whether foreign policy was the right thing to do. But being on the ground, you could see the disastrous effects it had.

[Jamie Poisson]

At the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, she was CNN's Baghdad bureau chief.

[Jane Arraf]

On the eve of the war breaking out, I still thought, no, this isn't gonna happen. Even as it was happening, even as the fighting was going on and villages were being emptied and we were seeing people killed, honestly, and I know this sounds stupid, it was still hard to believe that it was happening. I feel that way more now because it isn't just One country is it. It's one country that is the foundation for so many other regional dynamics and the potential for this all to go wrong. Because again, like Iraq, there doesn't seem to have been a lot of planning for what would happen next. The consequences for this region and particularly for neighboring countries, and I'm in Iraq right now, are so potentially catastrophic that it makes it even harder to believe that this is happening.

[Jamie Poisson]

Iraq was also in Iraq during the lead up to the 2003 invasion. And back in the US the Bush administration was signaling its plans pretty clearly. Well, we had a problem with Iraq before September 11th. We have a problem with Iraq after September 11th. But perhaps we see it with a little more clarity now what it means to have a threat that's out there, lurking, hostile threat to the United States and not to be able to get to that threat before it gets to you. We heard that Iraq was a threat from then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, from Vice President Dick Cheney.

[George W. Bush]

Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon we cannot really gauge. Intelligence is an uncertain business, even in the best of circumstances.

[Jamie Poisson]

From Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, we know

[George W. Bush]

they have weapons of mass destruction. We know they have active programs. There isn't any debate about it.

[Jamie Poisson]

And of course from George W. Bush

[George W. Bush]

himself, I take the threat very seriously. I take the fact that he develops weapons of mass destruction very seriously.

[Jonathan Landay]

They promoted several notions. The first, that Saddam Hussein, despite the fact that Iraq was the subject of one of the most, if not the most intrusive international inspection regimes ever devised, was still producing and developing weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, biological and chemical weapons.

[Jamie Poisson]

This is Jonathan Landay. He's a national security correspondent for Reuters

[Jonathan Landay]

in Washington D.C. and this was their number one assertion for the need to take action against Saddam. And then they linked that idea that he had all of these terrible weapons to allegations that he had been in touch with or his people had been in touch with the Al Qaeda extremist network. And they raised this idea that Saddam could not be allowed to provide weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda for use against the United States and its allies. Now, both these notions were founded on exaggerated and bogus, well, I hesitate to call it intelligence information.

[Jamie Poisson]

In the lead up to the war, Landay worked for a now defunct news agency called Knightritter. He and his reporting team were some of the only American journalists publishing skeptical stories about Iraq's so called weapons of mass destruction.

[Jonathan Landay]

When I first started looking into this whole question of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein as posited by the Bush administration. I actually believed that Saddam was looking to develop an arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. But then the more I dug into that issue, the more I became convinced that it was impossible because the Saddam regime was under a microscope, an international microscope. One of the things I learned was that if, if you are developing a nuclear weapon or trying to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon via this method that uses these machines called centrifuges to spin it and purify it, you need a very large power source. And no one had discovered such a power source in the inspection operations.

[Jamie Poisson]

Despite UN inspectors turning nothing up, the US continued its accusations and dismissed Iraq's denials out of hand.

[George W. Bush]

What do you make of the statement

[Jonathan Landay]

made by the Iraqi government, the statement by the Iraqi government yesterday that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction and is not developing any?

[George W. Bush]

They're lying. Next.

[Jamie Poisson]

The Bush administration would not be dissuaded.

[Jonathan Landay]

I remember Vice President Cheney speaking before. I think it was the Veterans of Foreign wars convention and I believe it was in the summer of 2002 where

[George W. Bush]

he said, but we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.

[Jonathan Landay]

There was no one really who knew anything about Saddam's weapons programs that believe that. All in all, the more I dug into their case for war when it came to this alleged weapons of mass destruction program, the more I became convinced that it didn't exist. It was very lonely experience.

[Jamie Poisson]

The late Rob Reiner even made a movie about Knight Rider's reporting. Landay's character is played by Woody Harrelson.

[Jonathan Landay]

What I want to know is, is Dick Cheney ignoring good intelligence that contradicts his assumptions or is he just getting bad intelligence?

[Jamie Poisson]

The Vice President is lying.

[Jonathan Landay]

And sometimes, you know, I would experience sleepless nights full of doubt having published, you know, whatever the latest story that we had published because I wasn't sure, you know, I was saying to myself, why isn't anybody else doing this? And in the end it turned out that we were the only ones who were getting it right. And the rest of the so called mainstream media led by the New York Times were getting it wrong and being spoon fed this bogus information directly from senior members of the Bush administration.

[Jamie Poisson]

Fast forward to today and the situation with Iran's weapons capabilities is very different. Landay says that Iran has enriched uranium to levels just short of what's needed for a nuclear weapon.

[Jonathan Landay]

But still they were still very short of the steps that are required to develop and produce a nuclear weapon that has assurance that it will work properly. They had not put one together as far as anybody could discern. And in fact, the IAEA, that's the

[Jamie Poisson]

International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear

[Jonathan Landay]

inspector, Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, couple weeks ago, I think, said that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. There is evidence that it did in fact maintain parts of the program, but it had not, as far as anybody could tell, actually put a weapon together and tested one. Also, the President of the United States contended that Iran would soon have, and these are his words, intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States. Well, that also was untrue. And so the idea that they were on the verge and the President contended, oh, they're only two to four weeks away from having a nuclear weapon and using it. There's no intelligence that I'm aware of that supports that intention.

[Jamie Poisson]

And so while it might be at a different scale, this all feels a bit familiar to Landay.

[Jonathan Landay]

I see a parallel between the lack of solid intelligence that the Bush administration had to justify the invasion of Iraq and the lack of solid intelligence backing up President Trump's arguments for why Iran needed to be attacked. In both cases, the intelligence really did not cast in the first instance Iraq and in this instance Iran as imminent threats to US security.

[Jamie Poisson]

These are both essentially wars of choice.

[George W. Bush]

That new thing.

[Jonathan Landay]

Yeah, we've got it. The Drop by GNC bringing you all

[Jane Arraf]

the newness that matters.

[George W. Bush]

Hand picked by the pros who actually know what's up and what's proven to work. We keep you on top of the

[Jonathan Landay]

trends and dialed into what's next.

[George W. Bush]

Whether you're crushing it at the gym,

[Jonathan Landay]

leveling up your game, or thriving every day, the Drop by GNC is where the latest solutions in health and wellness

[George W. Bush]

land first nonstop innovation and fresh finds daily explore what's new and what's next

[Jonathan Landay]

on the drop by gnc.

[Jeremy Bowen]

Dressing.

[Jamie Poisson]

Dressing.

[George W. Bush]

Oh, French dressing.

[Jane Arraf]

Exactly. Oh, that's good.

[George W. Bush]

I'm A.J.

[Jane Arraf]

jacobs and that is a little taste

[Jeremy Bowen]

of our award winning podcast, hello Puzzlers,

[Jane Arraf]

where we solve original audio puzzles with our celebrity guests.

[George W. Bush]

Puzzle lovers like Ken Jennings, Dax Shepard and Roy Wood Jr. Are you looking for a daily dose of aha moments and laughs?

[Jane Arraf]

Check us out at the hello Puzzlers podcast.

[Jonathan Landay]

Major US allies like France and Germany refused to participate in the invasion of Iraq.

[Jamie Poisson]

So did Canada, by the way, because

[Jonathan Landay]

they did not share the same threat analysis that the Bush administration was amplifying in the United Nations. And elsewhere. And so we see the same with this war. But at least in the Bush era, efforts were made to enlist the allies. There was that famous presentation by former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Council where he held up that little vial and said, how much

[George W. Bush]

longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's non compliance before we as a council, we as the United nations say enough, enough.

[Jamie Poisson]

This was a little over a month before the invasion that Colin Powell made this presentation with props. He held up a small vial with a blue cap and white powder in it, meant to represent less than a

[George W. Bush]

teaspoon of dry anthrax. A little bit about this amount. This is just about the amount of a teaspoon, less than a teaspoonful.

[Jamie Poisson]

Anthrax attacks had shocked the nation, killing five Americans just a few years earlier. And here's the US Secretary of State, a highly respected figure in the administration, one who had previously been critical of US military intervention in Iraq, insinuating that Saddam Hussein has tons of this scary,

[George W. Bush]

deadly stuff, tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons.

[Jamie Poisson]

And where does he deliver this call to action on the world stage? At the United Nations Security Council, I

[Jeremy Bowen]

reported on the lead up to actually both the previous Gulf wars, the one in 1991 and the one in 2003. And actually the approach to war was so different back then than the way it was with Donald Trump.

[Jamie Poisson]

This is Jeremy Bowen, he's the international editor of BBC News.

[Jeremy Bowen]

In 1990, the first president Bush, after Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait, actually went to the UN and got UN resolutions that made it a legal war. In 2003, with the invasion of Iraq by the second president, George Bush, they didn't manage to get the UN resolutions because the French particularly were against it. However, the US administration spent, well, I'd say the best part of a year trying to make the case that war was necessary, not just in the US but internationally as well.

[Jamie Poisson]

The Bush administration had one particular ally who helped them make their pitch abroad.

[Jeremy Bowen]

A very articulate and persuasive British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, made the case that there were weapons of mass destruction secretly being manufactured in Iraq. I mean, I'd been going to Iraq right through the 90s. I had seen what the UN inspectors were doing in terms of taking away actually not nuclear weapons, but chemical weapons and destroying them. And I knew the state of disrepair of Iraq after years of sanctions. So I was really, really skeptical. I just thought, there's no way they could have weapons of mass destruction. But Tony Blair was so persuasive that I heard him in one crucial parliamentary debate here in the uk, in London, making the case that they could threaten Cyprus, that there were missiles.

[George W. Bush]

It concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to

[Jonathan Landay]

produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons which could be activated within 30, 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population, and that he's actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

[Jeremy Bowen]

And he was so persuasive, I started doubting myself. I thought, well, maybe I'm wrong on this. Maybe all the evidence that I've accumulated over what, by then, about 10 years of reporting in Iraq, maybe it's wrong. He really was very good at making an argument. But it turned out, of course, the argument was 100% incorrect.

[Jamie Poisson]

An official inquiry would later be damning of nearly every aspect of the UK's involvement in the war, finding that Tony Blair overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Still, Blair thinks the current British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, should have gotten involved in this war with Iran, saying, we should have backed America from the very beginning. UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has pushed back on this.

[Jeremy Bowen]

Are you calling Tony Blair a poodle?

[George W. Bush]

I think the point is to make

[Jane Arraf]

sure that actually we learn the lessons from some of the things that went

[Jamie Poisson]

wrong in Iraq, and I think that is exactly. Trump has also been critical of Starmer's decision to not immediately support his strikes on Iran. But Trump didn't make much of an attempt to build an international coalition of the willing before striking Iran with Israel. Prime Minister Mark Carney has said that Canada was not informed in advance of the strikes and was not asked to participate. And other major US allies were similarly not consulted or advised. Instead, Trump has lashed out at allies for not supporting the war, calling NATO cowards. Domestically, Trump made little effort to build support in Washington. Unlike the war in Iraq, there is no congressional approval for military action.

[Jeremy Bowen]

Yeah, he put the ships there, which made people think, well, something's bound to happen because this is the biggest buildup since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But when it came, it just came. And he didn't make any attempt to try to sell the idea, particularly to the American people. And his press secretary at the White House said she said something along the

[Jane Arraf]

lines of, the president, prior to that phone call, had a good feeling that

[Jonathan Landay]

the Iranian regime was going to strike

[George W. Bush]

United States assets and our personnel.

[Jeremy Bowen]

So, you know, he shoots from his gut. He has a feeling.

[Jane Arraf]

This was a feeling the President had

[Jamie Poisson]

based on facts Facts provided to him.

[Jeremy Bowen]

Previous US Administrations, I think frankly took the subject of war and going to war much more seriously. I think he went to war quite lightly.

[George W. Bush]

Foreign.

[Jamie Poisson]

Indication that Jane Araf sees that the Trump administration didn't necessarily think through all the possibilities of a war with Iran. Is his apparent surprise that Iran has retaliated against US Allies in the Gulf.

[George W. Bush]

They weren't supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Those missiles were set to go after them. So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, uae, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked.

[Jane Arraf]

It is absolutely extraordinary. Anyone with even the vaguest idea of dynamics in the Middle east know that Iran is a powerful country that plays the long game. It will have strategies, it will have plans for what happens if the leadership is decapitated. It will use incredible brute force as we've seen, to suppress dissent and it will do everything it needs to do to remain in power.

[Jeremy Bowen]

I don't think there is evidence that they thought very hard about what it was they were going to do because they reckoned that they were going to have a, a quick victory.

[George W. Bush]

We had to do a little excursion, if you don't mind. Excursion to take care of nuclear weaponry in the hands of maniacs. But other than that, in a couple of weeks and won't be much longer. It's moving along fast. We're way ahead of schedule. Did you know that, Mr. Speaker?

[Jeremy Bowen]

And clearly that is not happening. And that is why I think President Trump is learning that it is quite easy to start a war. It's really quite hard to end it.

[George W. Bush]

The men and women in uniform, US and coalition alike are performing superbly. They're doing an outstanding job. The resistance that's being encountered was expected. It has not affected coalition progress. Iraqi forces are capitulating by the hundreds. It's a plan that's on track. It's a plan everybody had input to to. It's a plan everybody agrees to is a brilliant plan. And we've been at it now for less than a week. We're just about to Baghdad.

[Jonathan Landay]

This is the most symbolic moment. The image of the day as Saddam hussein and his 25 year rule is about to come crashing down. It's featuring on the Edge.

[Jamie Poisson]

Six weeks after the initial invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush gave this triumphant speech aboard a US Aircraft carrier.

[George W. Bush]

Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

[Jamie Poisson]

Behind the president hung a large banner over the Stars and stripes. Read the words mission accomplished.

[Jeremy Bowen]

Mission accomplished with George W. Bush. Well, that Ended well, didn't it?

[Jane Arraf]

So when I first went back to Baghdad, it was, of course, controlled by the Americans, although in chaos. Looting going on everywhere, buildings still burning, people coming to our office, the CNN office, and saying that they had documents about nuclear secrets in their car trunk. All sorts of things happening. But so much of it was soldiers who were confused. They had been told, the soldiers as well as senior officers had been told that it would take a few weeks. I think six weeks was what I heard most, that they would be there for six weeks. And then in that six weeks, everything fell apart.

[George W. Bush]

Does that mean you couldn't go in there and take a television camera or get a still photographer and take a picture of something? Was imperfect, untidy? I could do that in any city in America. Think what's happened in our cities when we've had riots and problems and looting. Stuff happens. But in terms of what's going on in that country, it is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over and over and over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say, oh, my goodness, you didn't have a plan. That's nonsense. They know what they're doing, and they're doing a terrific job. And it's untidy, and freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes.

[Jane Arraf]

You know, it's hard to do justice in words to the way that Iraq fell apart, because it fell apart violently. It imploded.

[Jeremy Bowen]

Well, it was. It's not too strong a word. It was catastrophic.

[Jane Arraf]

I remember standing outside the palace in. In 2003 in the searing heat. It was summer by then, and the order had been given to disband the army because it was Saddam Hussein's army, which meant that literally thousands of army generals were out of work and lots of arms still floating around. And there were a couple of them who had dressed up in suits in the heat, because that's what you do when you're going to a formal meeting. And they were trying to persuade a soldier, a very young soldier at one of the gates, that they should be allowed in to talk to someone in charge. And he wouldn't let them in because he didn't have orders to let them in. But it's that image that kind of stays with me. The imbalance, the tragic misunderstanding of that

[Jeremy Bowen]

country, the massive vacuum that opened up at the top after the removal of the regime, the way that they made some really serious mistakes in their governance, not least their decision to abolish the army, to fire thousands of men and hundreds of thousands of pensioners who had all trained soldiers, many of whom in their anger at having lost their positions and their pensions and their salaries, moved over to the insurgency.

[Jane Arraf]

So Al Qaeda gained ground. Al Qaeda was seen as protecting Sunnis and also fighting the Americans. Al Qaeda began attacking Shia Muslims who are the majority in Iraq. The Shia formed groups that fought with Al Qaeda. These groups were fighting in the street. The US was fighting against them. All of this took years to unravel, years of a military campaign. You know, the US tried different strategies. At one point it resorted to forgiving those who had been involved in attacks on US forces and working with them. It was called the Awakening. And it was mostly Sunni tribes who joined forces with the us. They resorted to surging troops into Iraq because they wanted to basically envelop communities with US forces.

[Jeremy Bowen]

One thing that those really troubled years did was they incubated hardline jihadist movements and the most notorious of which came out of the remains of Al Qaeda in Iraq and it became known as Islamic State, isis.

[Jane Arraf]

They tried a lot of different military strategies and in the end, what they were left with, and this is another of my very vivid memories, it is of Iraq emptying. It is every time I would fly out of the airport, I would see all of these people, nicely dressed families, you know, a lot of them professionals holding plastic ID documents from the International Organization for Migration, which was arranging flights for people who had applied for and received approval for asylum in other countries. And Iraq just lost so much.

[Jamie Poisson]

The Iraq war went on for nearly nine years. Over 2 million Iraqis fled the country as refugees and many thousands died. Estimates put the number of Iraqi civilians killed directly by violence from the war at approximately 200,000. Other estimates that include deaths from other war related causes like infrastructure collapse are as high as half a million. We are still far from knowing what the fallout from the war with Iran will be. We don't even know when it will end. But here's what we do know. Civilian casualties are already mounting both in Iran and in the region. The impact on the global economy is already already enormous. The disruption to the world's oil and gas supply is now considered the largest in history. At the time of recording this on Thursday afternoon, there are not yet US boots on the ground in Iran, but thousands of troops are amassing in the area. And for now, the Islamic Republic is still in charge.

[Jeremy Bowen]

Now in this year, in 2026, the regime has not been removed, even though they killed the supreme leader with virtually the first shots of the war. And while they are as The Americans keep saying they're very much on schedule when it comes to hitting all their targets, thousands and thousands of targets doing massive damage. They are not dealing with the sort of the political nub of it or the fact that they can't seem to get rid of the regime.

[Jane Arraf]

I've been asking people here who live next to Iran, who go there, who do business there, and what they fear is if the leadership is toppled, if the regime is toppled, there isn't anything that looks likely or ready to replace it. There are no cohesive opposition groupings. There are opposition groups, but each one of them does not have a huge following and a race. Iran. The opposition in Iran itself has been weakened by the government's brutal reaction to protests. And so what people here fear to a large extent is that Iran could fall apart.

[Jeremy Bowen]

Oh, I think the consequences of this are going to go on for years. I think it's going to lead to a huge rethink and shake up. Iran is a really large, important country with an immense sense of itself in a way that other countries maybe don't have. I mean, Iraq, for example, was a country that was essentially dreamt up by the British putting together a number of Ottoman provinces after the First World War to form a state that they called Iraq. Iran was never colonized, but it was invaded many times, but it was never colonized in the same way by Western imperial powers. It's a big country. It's four times the size of Iraq. It's got a population of more than 90 million people. It's got an absolutely extraordinary history stretching back, you know, well into before the time of Christ. So this huge sense of itself, a sense as well of you can't trust the outsiders because they tend to come in and try and make things much worse for us. And I don't think it's going to lead to some kind of long lasting peace in the Middle east as the Israelis are arguing at all.

[Jane Arraf]

If there have been lessons learned, I'm not seeing it. I like to think there have been. And I think we have to remember a lot of policy decisions aren't necessarily the ones we see in the news. And the factors that go into them aren't necessarily known. But I have not seen anything that would explain why it is worth the potential we're facing to see the disintegration of Iran and its effect on the region. We're already seeing huge implications on countries we thought would never be attacked. All of the Gulf countries, the oil installations, everything else. And so once you put, put all that Together, you kind of have to ask, did nobody foresee this? And if not, why didn't they foresee it?

[Jeremy Bowen]

Iran is going to be immensely isolated. I think that there will be supercharged resentment against them from those people in the population, of which there are many who would like the end of the Islamic regime there, the Islamic Republic. But they are, I imagine, going to retain enough force to put down demonstrations, probably with at least as much ferocity as they used in January when they killed the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people. One thought occurs to me, and it's about the way that regimes who believe they're in trouble have this sense of deliverance and victory in a way, if they end up surviving. And the regime in Tehran right now is trying to survive because they want to preserve the Islamic Republic. I was in Baghdad in 1991 when the Allied armies led by the Americans in Operation Desert Storm were pushing. They pushed into Kuwait, they pushed into Iraq. And there was a real belief among the regime people who we dealt with in Baghdad then, the last few days before the ceasefire, that they were on the way out. Their attitude towards us completely changed. They were ingratiating where previously so many of them had been hostile. It was almost as if they were preparing for the moment when there would be probably American troops in Baghdad. And then when I woke up one morning, I was woken by gunfire. I thought, my God, the Americans must be here now. And I was lying in my bed, actually, in the Rashid Hotel. I was listening and I went to the window and I thought, it's all small arms fire. It's not heavy. There's nothing heavy. It can't be the Americans. I looked down and there were guys in the courtyard of the hotel, in the garden, firing their Kalashnikovs into the air. And I realized they were celebrating. And what they were celebrating was that there'd been a ceasefire and that George Bush had decided to stop and not push on to unseat Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. So they could not believe their luck. They thought that they had had it and suddenly they were delivered from that. And what did they do when there was an uprising of Kurds and Iraqi Shias? They were able to crack down on it with tremendous ferocity and killed thousands of people. I wonder if there might be any repeat of something a bit like that with Iran. We don't.

[George W. Bush]

Foreign.

[Jamie Poisson]

Burner was produced this week by Matthew Amha, Joytha Shankupta, Shannon Higgins, Lauren Donnelly and Mackenzie Cameron. Our intern is riley Cunningham. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Shabazin. Our senior producers are Elaine Chao and Imogen Burchard, who produced today's episode. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe. Blocos. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you all on Monday.

[Jonathan Landay]

For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.