US President Donald Trump receives the coffins of six American service members killed in Kuwait following Iran's retaliation, at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on March 7. (©Reuters)
In the United States, reactions to the Trump administration's military strikes on Iran have frequently invoked the phrase "47 years of humiliation" — a view that Washington's relationship with Tehran has been defined by nearly half a century of national indignity.
While Democratic opposition to the latest military actions has been pronounced, equally noticeable have been supporters who have leaned into the aforementioned narrative. Why then does it carry such weight now?
Origins of a Grievance
The phrase "47 years of humiliation" reflects an anger-laden sentiment that, since the establishment of Iran's Islamist regime in 1979, the US has consistently been subjected to indignity and insult. By that logic, a full-scale strike against a long-standing adversary like Iran is overdue.
For the US, this sense of indignity is rooted above all in the November 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, when Iranian militants held 52 Americans — most of them diplomats — hostage for over a year.
At the time, the American public was confronted daily with harrowing images of hostages with their hands bound behind their backs. They were forced, before television cameras, to deliver scripted "confessions" denouncing the alleged crimes of US imperialism.
Then-President Jimmy Carter, a liberal Democrat, protested and authorized a military rescue operation, but it ultimately failed. At home, criticism mounted that his approach to foreign policy was fundamentally too weak, and consequently caused this turmoil.
From Friend to Foe
It is worth recalling that Iran, once a pro-US state under the Pahlavi monarchy, was swept by an Islamist revolution in 1979 amid rising domestic discontent.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been in exile in France, became the supreme leader of the new Islamic state. He was succeeded in 1989 by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who remained in power until his death on February 28.
Operating under the slogan "Death to America," the Islamic Republic has since repeatedly launched attacks against the United States and Israel in various forms.
Even so, Washington exercised restraint, avoiding direct military strikes on Iranian soil until the advent of President Donald Trump.
It is this history that helps explain why so many Americans today back the strikes against Iran. I, myself, who was in Washington during the hostage crisis as a journalist, saw firsthand the depth of public rage and national indignation.
The gulf between the United States and Iran has thus been long, deep, and difficult to bridge.
Lessons for Japan
Japan has long found itself caught in between. Historically, Iran was seen as a friendly country and a vital source of oil. That helps explain why Tokyo stopped short of unequivocally condemning Tehran, even after it took American diplomats hostage.
In December 1979, however, Japan came under fierce bipartisan criticism in the United States. As Washington moved to impose an oil embargo on Iran, several Japanese firms snapped up roughly 20 million barrels of Iranian crude left in limbo — at elevated prices.
The move unleashed an unusually strong backlash across both government and private sectors in the US. Branded the betrayal of an ally, the episode sparked outrage intense enough to call even the alliance into question.
The Japanese government swiftly moved to defuse the anger. This long history of US–Iran tensions, therefore, still holds lessons for Japan.
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Author: Yoshihisa Komori, Associate Correspondent in Washington DC for The Sankei Shimbun
(Read this article in Japanese)
