The United States has a habit of making enemies for life. Analysts often discuss “forever wars” but talk far less about forever enemies, the countries trapped in amber in Washington’s imagination at the moment they first became adversaries. A revolution, hostage crisis, war, or attack becomes a permanent lens, flattening complex and changing societies and turning old grievances into enduring U.S. policy rooted in emotion rather than strategy.
Numerous countries have held a place on America’s list of grudges. Cuba has been a near-permanent member, rooted in events now more than six decades old. Libya remained on the list for decades under Muammar al-Qaddafi, as did Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Even after Saddam’s fall, Iraq never fully escaped the stigma, because of its relationship with Iran.
No country better illustrates the United States’ tendency to freeze its understanding of an adversary in a single moment, and in the process create a forever enemy, than Iran.
For many U.S. policymakers, the 1979 hostage crisis might as well have happened yesterday. For Americans at the time, the images of Iranian students parading blindfolded U.S. diplomats through the embassy compound, sovereign American diplomatic territory, were viewed not just as an act of war but as a profound national humiliation that still lingers today.
