Now that “Epic Fury” has started and is expanding from the borders of Iran throughout the Middle East, many historians are drawing parallels between this war and the Vietnam War. I lived through the start and end of the Vietnam War, and I’ve been carefully watching this war progress. With that perspective, I decided to share a few observations on the similarities and differences between the two conflicts, along with some lessons learned. However, before doing so, I feel a “full disclosure” statement is in order.
I am a proud veteran who served as an officer in the United States Navy during the early 1970s when the Vietnam War was raging. When I started college, I, like many, initially bought into the government’s “domino theory” that argued U.S. involvement in Vietnam was necessary to stem the advance of communism in Southeast Asia. I was wrong, and I later became convinced that America’s Vietnam War was a tragic mistake, militarily, economically, and in the significant toll it took on human life.
Whether or not I agree with the mission given to our military by the president and commander-in-chief, I always support the brave men and women who serve their country and all those who aid their efforts. I have no doubt that U.S. armed forces and military commanders are the most highly trained, dedicated, and capable in the world. I also strongly believe that veterans, and particularly those who have been wounded physically or mentally, should be honored and taken care of once their active duty has finished.
I was a moderate Republican for most of my adult life. However, I now consider myself an independent, having voted for Republican and Democratic candidates based on their qualifications, not party affiliation. I strongly disagree with much of what Donald Trump does and says, and I believe he poses a “clear and present danger” to the U.S. and the free world. In addition, I’ll once again repeat my assertion that Pete Hegseth is unfit to be Secretary of Defense, and the rest of Trump’s cabinet members are largely unqualified and inept. I also consider Stephen Miller to be perhaps the most dangerous person ever to hold a staff position of power within the White House.
Turning to Iran, I believe the brutally repressive Islamic theocracy led by the Supreme Leader is a threat to peace in the Middle East and that Iran should never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. That said, I would not have engaged U.S. forces in active combat operations in Iran and would have preferred the U.S. had provided intelligence to Israel and non-lethal air support if Israel chose to go ahead with their bombing campaign that started on February 28, 2026.
I agree with the intelligence assessments that conclude the air strikes that killed Ali Hosseini Khamenei and other Iranian leaders left a leadership void that resulted in Khamenei’s son, an even harder-line cleric, being selected to succeed his father as Supreme Leader. Finally, understanding that regime change in Iran cannot be achieved (if that remains one of Trump’s unclear and continually changing objectives) without “boots on the ground,” I don’t support American troops being deployed for any “in-country” operations of this type.
In my opinion, there are many useful parallels to be found between Trump’s war in Iran and Johnson’s and Nixon’s Vietnam War.
▶︎ None of the administrations provided a truthful statement of why the U.S. must go to war, nor was a comprehensive exit plan and “post-war” governing approach ever articulated for either Vietnam or Iran.
▶︎ The U.S. administrations assumed both conflicts would be “asymmetric” because the U.S. had overwhelming military and air superiority compared to its opponents.
▶︎ Military operations in both cases commenced with an intense aerial campaign (“Operation Rolling Thunder” on March 2, 1965, and “Epic Fury” on February 28, 2026), followed by deploying a Marine expeditionary force to the region (the 9th Marine Brigade then and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit now).
▶︎ A swift end to the war was projected following those massive bombing campaigns, but it didn’t happen.
▶︎ Whether purposely or inadvertently, many innocent civilians were killed or injured.
▶︎ Each initial conflict theater rapidly expanded to neighboring countries (e.g., Laos and Cambodia in the Vietnam War, and Middle East countries in the Iranian conflict).
▶︎ Both North Vietnam and Iran proved more resilient and resourceful than originally anticipated, and each became committed to a war of attrition, hoping to outlast the U.S. until public opinion forced a negotiated peace deal.
▶︎ As both conflicts continued, public support for U.S. involvement eroded at home and abroad.
▶︎ Each administration withheld or delayed the release of unfavorable battlefield and economic information from the American public.
▶︎ Both wars’ economic costs were high, and the attendant government expenditures could have been better used to address pressing domestic problems.
▶︎ North Vietnam and Iran both received direct or indirect support from Russia, China, and North Korea.
▶︎ In addition, other “proxy” forces supported American adversaries (East Germany, Cuba, and Albania provided equipment, training, and logistical support to North Vietnam, and Hezbollah and the Houthis supplied drones to strike at US/Israel assets).
There are also some key differences between the Vietnam War and Trump’s war in Iran.
▶︎ President Johnson and Nixon were granted broad authority to conduct military operations in Vietnam after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; Trump initiated Epic Fury without formal congressional authorization, and the Senate subsequently defeated efforts to use the War Powers Resolution to limit Trump’s authority.
▶︎ Both LBJ and Nixon enjoyed much better job approval ratings and public support when they inherited the Vietnam conflict from their predecessors than did Trump when he started the war in Iran; in fact, Trump had the lowest job approval rating of any president since public opinion polls on this topic were started by Gallup in 1938.
▶︎ While France encouraged U.S. involvement in Vietnam to protect its interests, it had little influence on the final U.S. decision to commence hostilities there; on the contrary, many believe that Israel and Netanyahu were instrumental in convincing Trump to plan for and launch Epic Fury.
▶︎ Iran’s territory is much larger than Vietnam’s and is characterized by mountainous terrain and vast deserts, presenting many more challenges for any ground occupation than the jungles of Vietnam.
▶︎ Going into the war, Iran possessed a greater arsenal of sophisticated weaponry than North Vietnam; unlike North Vietnam, Iran also maintains a mature, domestic arms industry, a sophisticated network of underground missile silos, and deep, reinforced tunnels.
▶︎ At least for now, the Iran war is being largely waged through surgical air strikes, supported by cyber warfare, satellite imagery, and advanced drone technology rather than the deployment of ground troops, use of conventional armament, and guerrilla fighting that characterized the Vietnam War.
▶︎ North Vietnam had little capability to engage in terrorist threats beyond its borders, while Iran and its proxies have significant capabilities in this area.
▶︎ In the early days of the Vietnam conflict, few believed that it would devolve into the quagmire that was eventually experienced; today, many analysts and most of the American public fear that outcome.
▶︎ The Vietnam War had little impact on global energy prices, unlike the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has significantly spiked up the prices of oil, fertilizer, helium, aluminum, and other critical commodities, possibly triggering a global recession.
The Vietnam War lasted almost 20 years. Although the 1973 Paris Peace Accords removed U.S. combat troops from Vietnam, the war officially ended on April 30, 1975, when North Vietnamese forces finally captured Saigon, leading to the surrender of South Vietnam and the final evacuation of remaining U.S. personnel. Between 1955 and 1975, approximately 58,000 American military personnel died, over 300,000 were wounded, at an estimated cost of about $168 billion (roughly $1.3 trillion in today’s dollars).
Looking back, and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the most important lesson to learn — and the biggest mistake the U.S. made — was initially starting and then escalating the war in Vietnam. Recognizing that many other mistakes were made once the Vietnam War was underway, several stand out and are worth noting as lessons learned for future consideration.
▶︎ Senior U.S. leadership from the president on down failed to understand that the North Vietnamese weren’t fighting to spread communism; they were fighting for their independence, and as such, they were willing to keep fighting in the face of major battlefield losses and high casualties.
▶︎ The strength and popular support of the South Vietnamese government were grossly overestimated, and the resolve and resourcefulness of the North Vietnam and Vietcong fighting forces were significantly underestimated, particularly as the war dragged on.
▶︎ The U.S. never won over the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people; the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons (e.g., Agent Orange, Napalm, white phosphorus) and the continued bombing of local villages further alienated the very people the U.S. said they were there to protect and liberate.
▶︎ Slow escalation in the use of significant U.S. firepower failed to cripple the North Vietnamese ability to respond early on, giving them time to regroup and gain confidence that they could eventually win a war of attrition.
▶︎ More specifically, Operation Rolling Thunder failed to cut critical supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, demonstrating that U.S. military forces were not invincible and helping to unite more of the North Vietnamese population in opposition to the U.S. invaders and their puppet government in the South.
▶︎ U.S. troops weren’t adequately trained in the local customs or counterinsurgency and counter-guerrilla tactics that were necessary to combat the relative advantage the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong capitalized on to compensate for their shortcomings in waging large-scale combat with American forces.
▶︎ Battlefield and political assessments were either purposefully or inadvertently inaccurate and based on faulty measurements, giving the false impression that the U.S. was rapidly winning the war when the opposite was true.
▶︎ Misleading, inaccurate, or unequivocally false information reported to the American public by the Johnson and Nixon administrations eroded support, sparked protests, increased distrust, and ultimately made the war politically untenable.
▶︎ As the hostilities progressed, both administrations, and particularly the Nixon administration, failed to recognize that the war could not be won on the battlefield and would need a negotiated settlement.
Let’s hope that the lessons learned in Vietnam, and subsequently during the first 2-year Gulf War in 1990, the 20-year War in Afghanistan, the 8-year Iraq War, and all the other armed conflicts in between, help guide the Trump administration’s future decisions in Iran and the Middle East. They would be well advised to remember the famous quote from George Santayana in his 1905 book, The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Will that happen?
Don’t hold your breath, because only time will tell if rising gas prices, other bad economic news, a further drop in his job approval ratings, additional loss of Republican support, rising concerns about the midterm elections, strengthened Iranian resolve to “wait him out,” and more unfavorable developments force Trump to declare victory and retreat from or modify his original objectives, as ill-defined as they were.
In the meantime, Trump risks losing control of his war in Iran because it will become increasingly clear that he badly miscalculated Iran’s resolve and aggressive reactions to the most recent U.S. and Israeli hostilities. The “feeling in his bones” that the war he started at the end of February would end soon was erroneously based on Iran’s limited reaction to the June 21, 2025, “Operation Midnight Hammer,” when B-2 stealth bombers and over 125 aircraft dropped bunker-busting bombs on facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, and the short duration of “Operation Absolute Resolve” on January 3, 2026, when U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
As the war rages on, expect Trump and his surrogates to continue their attacks on the free press and to intensify threats against reporters and news outlets that accurately report unfavorable news on the war in Iran and other topics. And although Trump neither consulted with nor asked for support from NATO and other allies before he launched Operation Epic Fury, look for him to threaten allies with reprisals if they don’t send warships to help open the Strait of Hormuz and provide other tactical support. And when NATO countries understandably balk at Trump’s request, he’ll likely threaten to pull the U.S. out of NATO, which he can’t do unilaterally without a 2/3rds Senate vote or an act of Congress, or he’ll reverse course and say he doesn’t need their help anyway.
Finally, in light of Trump’s “cozy” relationship with Vladimir Putin, and recognizing that Putin was the big winner when Trump lifted the U.S. oil embargo that the G7 countries imposed on Russia when it invaded Ukraine in 2022, don’t bank on the Trump administration punishing Russia for providing Iran with drone components, satelite imagery, and other vital information regarding U.S. force deployment in the Middle East.
(Sources: Medium)
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