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https://theconversation.com/how-the-words-that-iran-and-america-use-about-each-other-paved-the-way-for-conflict-279015>
"The conflict between the US – and its partner Israel – and Iran was nearly
half a century in the making. Many explanations have been offered: strategic
miscalculation, nuclear brinkmanship, regional rivalry and the failure of
deterrence of Iran’s nuclear programme. But there is also the nature of the
language through which each side has come to perceive the other.
Over 47 years, the language on each side has progressively hardened from
assessments of behaviour into verdicts about the moral nature of each side’s
adversary. It not only describes the enemy, but actively participates in
creating it.
The language of American enmity towards Iran did not begin as a full moral
verdict. In the 1980s and 1990s, Iran’s clerical leadership appeared in western
media and policy discourse as the “mad mullahs”. It was a label that
personalised the conflict and cast Iranian leaders as irrational rather than
simply hostile. By the 1990s, the “rogue state” frame took hold, still defining
Iran by its behaviour rather than its nature: a rogue, in principle, could
change course.
A significant shift occurred in January 2002 when George W. Bush designated
Iran as part of the “axis of evil”. His speechwriter David Frum later recalled
drafting “axis of hatred”, but Bush insisted on using “evil” instead. This
choice was unsurprising, as Bush’s was widely seen a “faith-based” presidency,
influenced by deeply internalised evangelical Christianity.
By February 2026, the vocabulary had reached its most extreme register. Donald
Trump described Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as “one of the
most evil people in history”, killed along with “his gang of bloodthirsty
THUGS”. In a video posted on his Truth Social, Trump explained the collapse of
negotiations by stating that Iran’s leaders “just wanted to practise evil”. The
Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, invoked the
Book of Esther,
equating the Iranian leadership with Haman — the inherently evil villain of
Jewish scripture. He framed the operation as the fulfilment of a 2,500-year
moral obligation.
Iran had its own vocabulary, with roots that were theological before becoming
political. The designation of America by the Islamic Republic’s first supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the “Great Satan” drew on the Quranic
figure of
shaitan ar-rajim (accursed one/outcast devil). It eventually became
a category through which American actions – the 1953 coup and decades of
support for the deposed shah — were interpreted. The term also served a
domestic purpose: the Great Satan depicted any Iranian advocate of
rapprochement as a collaborator with Satan. This made moderation seem less like
a policy dispute and more like a form of moral treason."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
