A simple question about whether the United States, Israel, and Iran could ever reach a real peace process led me to a deeper question:
Who gets to define peace?
The answer matters because the word “peace” is often used as though it means the absence of resistance to the most powerful side in a conflict. A government may call for stability while carrying out actions that make ordinary people less safe. A military alliance may call itself defensive while operating through force, pressure, proxy relationships, intelligence networks, arms transfers, and political arrangements that shape an entire region for decades.
That does not mean every actor has equal power. It does not mean every action is morally equal. It does not mean Iran and the armed groups it supports should be excused for terrorism, hostage-taking, threats against civilians, or attacks designed to create fear.
They should not be excused.
But neither can peace be built on a story where Iran is treated as the sole engine of regional violence while the actions of the United States, Israel, other regional powers, and outside governments are treated as irrelevant background.
The region did not become unstable in a vacuum.
For generations, decisions have been made by presidents, prime ministers, intelligence agencies, military commanders, monarchies, political parties, and armed organizations whose power far exceeds that of the ordinary people living under their decisions. Those people make agreements, launch operations, fund allies, impose sanctions, move weapons, draw borders, conduct surveillance, authorize strikes, and manage public narratives.
Then ordinary people inherit the consequences.
An Israeli family living under the fear of rockets did not create the full history that made those rockets possible.
An Iranian family living under sanctions, military threats, and the constant possibility of war did not create the full history that placed them in that position.
A Palestinian family trying to survive displacement, military operations, restriction, and loss did not design the systems governing their lives.
A Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Yemeni, or American family grieving death or injury did not vote for every covert arrangement, proxy conflict, intelligence program, or military escalation that helped create the conditions around them.
This is what centralized power does when it becomes insulated from consequence.
It turns human beings into strategic terrain.
It reduces civilians to “collateral damage,” political risk, bargaining leverage, demographic problems, security threats, public-relations complications, or acceptable losses. It takes people with names, families, memories, beliefs, and futures and translates them into abstractions that can be managed from a distance.
That is not a problem unique to one country, religion, political ideology, or military alliance. It is a human problem that becomes more dangerous wherever power is concentrated and accountability is weak.
The historical record makes that impossible to ignore.
Declassified records and historical documentation show that outside powers have repeatedly used covert action, intelligence relationships, military support, proxy arrangements, political pressure, and private political deals to shape outcomes across the region.
Some of those actions are decades old. Some fall outside a strict fifty-year window. But history does not reset because a government changes administrations or because the people carrying the consequences were not alive when the original decisions were made.
Distrust has memory.
A nation remembers when outside powers helped remove governments, armed rivals, supported dictators, funded proxies, made private deals, or treated its people as a means to some larger geopolitical end. That memory does not justify future violence. But refusing to see it guarantees that the next generation will inherit the same unresolved logic.
Peace requires more than demanding that one enemy surrender, disarm, submit, or disappear.
Peace requires truth.
It requires every side to admit that civilian life has value even when those civilians are politically inconvenient. It requires every government to be judged not only by the threats it faces, but by what it is willing to do to people in the name of responding to those threats.
It requires accountability for terrorism and hostage-taking.
It requires accountability for collective punishment, unlawful killing, forced displacement, torture, indefinite fear, and policies that make entire populations pay for the actions of governments or armed groups they do not control.
It requires security guarantees that protect human beings rather than merely protecting the power structures above them.
And it requires a refusal to accept permanent domination as the same thing as peace.
The easy answer is to say that this is unrealistic. The easy answer is to say that the world is dangerous, therefore power must remain centralized, force must remain available, and some people will inevitably be sacrificed for stability.
But endless escalation is not realism.
It is merely the continuation of a system that has already shown its limits.
A real peace process between the United States, Israel, Iran, and the wider region would be difficult. It would require restraint from people and institutions that have learned to survive through distrust. It would require people to give up the comfort of simple stories. It would require nations to recognize harm they have caused, not only harm they have received.
That may sound hopeful.
But hope is not denial.
Hope is the refusal to call endless war inevitable when ordinary people are the ones being asked to bleed for decisions they never made.
Sources and Historical Context
This opinion piece is informed by documented historical context. These references are included as factual background, not as a claim that any single source proves every broader conclusion in the essay.
- Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Iran, 1951-1954: State Department historical records including documents on U.S. policy toward Iran and the 1953 coup.
- National Security Decision Directive 114: A Reagan Library copy of a 1983 directive concerning U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq War.
- Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair: Official GovInfo records relating to congressional investigations of the Iran-Contra affair.