“As long as the same passions and interests subsist among mankind, the questions of war and peace, of justice and policy, which were debated in the councils of antiquity, will frequently present themselves as the subject of modern deliberation” — Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon’s words ought to resound in the meeting rooms of Switzerland today, like bells tolling for all humanity. No man, woman or child is untouched by war, even when far removed from the theatre in which it is fought. Gibbon described war as the folly of mankind and a disgrace and calamity of human nature. Nothing could be more relevant to the present moment.
The United States and Israel entered their conflict with Iran in the belief that military superiority would yield swift political success; that a country burdened by internal tensions, sanctions and external pressure would collapse under sustained force. Such calculations have often proved dangerous.
Eighty-five years ago, another Western leader, Adolf Hitler, imagined that a single decisive blow would bring down the Soviet Union. Instead, the Red Army resisted at Moscow, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Sevastopol, Ukraine and the Caucasus, before driving German forces all the way back to Berlin.
Iran, too, did not collapse under more than one hundred days of relentless bombardment. It did not accept peace on terms dictated solely by its adversaries. Whatever one’s view of Iran’s internal politics or regional posture, the larger lesson is unmistakable: nations with deep historical consciousness, large populations and a strong sense of sovereignty cannot simply be bombed into submission.
I am therefore tempted to recall, after more than sixteen centuries, the peace concluded between the Roman Emperor Jovian and the Persian King Shapur II in 363 CE. That agreement emerged from the ruins of his predecessor Emperor Julian’s disastrous Persian expedition: a campaign begun in pride, sustained by military illusion and ended by death, exhaustion and retreat.
Julian marched against Persia believing that force could settle permanently the ancient rivalry between Rome and the Persian Empire. He entered Mesopotamia with a formidable army, ravaged the countryside, destroyed towns and cities and threatened the Persian capital. Yet war has a way of humbling those who begin it with excessive confidence.
Julian was mortally wounded during the campaign. His soldiers, stranded in hostile territory, deprived of supplies and unable to cross the Tigris, were forced to elect a domestic, Jovian, as emperor.
Jovian inherited neither glory nor victory. He inherited a trapped army and an empire facing catastrophe. The peace he concluded with Persia was condemned by Roman opinion as humiliating because Rome surrendered territories and abandoned commitments it had long defended. But it saved lives and prevented the destruction of the Roman army.
It remains a reminder that the conclusion of an ill-considered war rarely comes with triumphal language. It comes with blame, recrimination and the painful rediscovery of limits, just as America and Israel are discovering now to their chagrin.
That ancient episode comes to mind as the United States and Iran pursue negotiations in Switzerland after a conflict that has endangered regional stability, international trade and global peace. The talks, supported by international mediation, are intended to establish a framework for a more enduring settlement. Yet diplomacy must not obscure the grave human, political and moral questions raised by the war itself.
The first question is simple: why was war considered necessary and inevitable? What immediate and unavoidable threat made violence preferable to negotiation, verification, restraint and international law? Wars are often dressed in the language of convenience, security, deterrence, pre-emption and national survival.
But behind these expressions may lie strategic anxiety, political calculation, ideological hostility, cynicism, historical resentment and the assumption that overwhelming military power can impose a new political reality on an adversary.
Iran is not an accidental country without history, identity or civilisational depth. It is one of the world’s great historical societies that is remaining intact today. Persia existed as a political and cultural force when many modern states had not yet emerged. Its people have endured conquest, invasion, revolution, foreign intervention, sanctions, isolation and war.
They have encountered Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, Russians, British and Americans. Yet Iran has remained Iran.
This is the central fact that external powers have too often failed to understand. A country with such historical consciousness cannot simply be intimidated into submission by the destruction of infrastructure, the disruption of its economy or the threat of superior weaponry, even of nuclear arms.
Material losses may be immense and human suffering grievous. But national endurance is not measured only by the strength of arsenals. It is also measured by dignity, cohesion, sacrifice and the conviction that a people are defending their independence.
The Persians defeated Emperor Valerian and took him captive. They endured the wars of Roman emperors including those by Galerius as well as Julian’s devastating invasion, and compelled Rome to negotiate after his death. These historical memories are not mere antiquarian curiosities. They reflect a longstanding Persian understanding that survival itself can become a form of victory when confronting external aggression.
The most recent conflict against Iran planned and executed by Western countries has demonstrated once again that military power, however sophisticated or awesome, does not necessarily produce political submission. The United States and Israel possess immense technological, intelligence and military advantages. But force cannot extinguish a nation’s will, erase its history or compel it to accept an arrangement it considers dishonourable.
Excessive force may instead consolidate public sentiment, intensify resistance and make compromise more difficult. The greatest error of those who launched or supported the war may have been the assumption that Iran would react as other, weaker states have sometimes reacted in the past.
For decades, many Arab states were drawn into security arrangements with the United States and, secretly, with Israel, that did not always reflect the full dignity, autonomy or aspirations of their peoples. Vast sums were spent on useless military equipment imported from the West while independent strategic capacity remained limited. Their insecurity was too often treated not as a problem to be solved, but as a market to be exploited.
Iran, however, chose a different path. At considerable cost, it sought indigenous resilience, military capacity, scientific competence and strategic autonomy. Iran simply refused to be reduced to permanent subordination. That refusal has shaped the present moment.
The Iran–US peace arrangement must therefore not become another exercise in imposing humiliation upon one side while preserving the illusion of victory for the other. No durable peace can be built on vengeance. No agreement will endure if it rests on threats, selective compliance or the continued punishment of a people for insisting on national sovereignty.
A meaningful settlement must guarantee an end to attacks on civilian populations and vital infrastructure. It must uphold the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iran and all states in the region. It must provide credible mechanisms for addressing nuclear concerns through impartial verification rather than military coercion.
The United Nations has called for a complete ceasefire, restoration of navigational freedoms and serious negotiations capable of ensuring the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. This must be scrupulously respected.
Above all, the agreement must recognise that security cannot be monopolised. Israel cannot demand absolute security while disregarding the security concerns of others. The United States cannot insist upon a rules-based order while clearly violating those rules and applying them selectively according to alliance and interest.
Iran cannot be expected to accept obligations that are not matched by reciprocal guarantees, sanctions relief and respect for its sovereign dignity.
Responsibility must not be avoided. The destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, economic facilities and cultural sites cannot be treated as incidental details in geopolitical argument. The anguish of parents whose babies are killed, displacement of families, instilling mortal fear in children and destruction of livelihoods are not collateral matters. They are the moral substance of war.
Peace must therefore mean more than a 60-day pause in bombing. It must mean permanent security, the restoration of life, dignity and regional order. It must mean reconstruction rather than further strangulation through sanctions. It must mean negotiations conducted in good faith rather than diplomacy used as subterfuge and a prelude to renewed coercion.
The lesson of Emperor Jovian’s peace is not that surrender is virtuous. It is that pride can lead powerful states into disasters from which they must eventually retreat through negotiation. Julian’s expedition revealed the limits of imperial ambition. The present conflict should teach the same lesson to all parties, especially to those who claim Rome as their ancient progenitor.
Iran has shown that it cannot be casually subdued. The United States and Israel have learned that military force does not automatically translate into political success. The wider world has again witnessed the terrible cost of treating war as an instrument of policy before exhausting diplomacy.
The task now is to turn the Swiss negotiations into a just and durable peace. That will require courage, restraint and honesty from all sides. It will require recognition that no nation, however powerful, has the right to impose endless insecurity upon another. And it will require an international order in which peace is not the privilege of the strong, but the right of all peoples.
History will judge this moment not by the grandeur of military claims, but by whether the parties possessed the wisdom to end a ruinous conflict before it consumed the region completely.
