The real fear of some Arab regimes is not that Iran will drag them into war. It is that Iran will drag their populations back into memory. Back into the forgotten idea that Muslim lands should not be military real estate for foreign empires. Back into the dangerous belief that Palestine is not an inconvenience but a test. Back into the suspicion that the rulers are not weak by necessity, but by design. This is why Iran’s posture terrifies them. Because resistance is contagious. And cowardice becomes much harder to market when someone nearby is still willing to absorb the cost of saying no.

They say Iran is a Shia power pursuing "Shia hegemony." This is the argument. This is the frame. This is what the think tanks produce and what the foreign ministers repeat and what the TV channels that are funded by governments that normalize with Israel broadcast every day. "Iran's support for resistance movements is sectarian." "It is not about Palestine." "It is about expanding Shia influence." "It is about the Safavid project." "It is about Persian imperialism dressed in the language of resistance." Hamas is Sunni. Iran gave Hamas a political office in Tehran in the early 1990s, and supported it with funding, weapons and military training for decades. Islamic Jihad in Gaza is Sunni. Iran has been one of its principal financial and military backers. The Yemeni resistance, Ansar Allah, is not, in its tribal and doctrinal composition, a straightforward Shia movement in any sense that the people deploying this argument actually believe. The argument is not made in good faith. It has never been made in good faith. It is produced specifically to give Sunni populations a theological reason to not identify with the only forces actually fighting for a Sunni majority population in Gaza. It is designed to confuse. To divide. To neutralize solidarity at the moment when solidarity is most needed and most dangerous to the people who need it neutralized. And some people repeat it. On television. With conviction. Because it is easier than answering the actual question. The actual question being: seventy-five thousand dead. Who stood with them? Who stood against them? Answer that. Without the sectarian deflection. Without the think tank framing. Answer it simply. And then tell me which side you're on.

Let's be honest about what the United States came to Vietnam to do. Not to "save" anyone. Not to "stop communism." Not to "protect democracy." Those were the slogans they sold to their own people so the boys from Ohio and Georgia would climb onto the planes without asking too many questions. What they actually came to do was make an example. The "Third World" was getting ideas. Countries were looking at their own land, their own oil, their own rubber, their own rice, and thinking "dangerous thoughts." Thoughts like: this belongs to us. Thoughts like: we don't need to ask permission. Thoughts like: maybe we can choose our own way. That could not be allowed. So they chose Vietnam. A small country. A poor country. A country of farmers and fishermen and people who had already spent a century being told they were too primitive to govern themselves. The perfect candidate for an example. The plan was simple: destroy Vietnam so completely, so publicly, so mercilessly, that every other poor country on earth would see it and go quiet. Would swallow their dignity. Would open their resources to the right corporations and smile while doing it. They dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped by all sides in all of World War II combined. Let that land on you. More bombs. Than all of World War Two. On one small country. On its villages. On its hospitals. On its rice fields. On its children. And they still lost. Not only did they lose. They lost to people in sandals. They lost to people moving supplies on bicycles through jungle paths. They lost to a people so committed to their own liberation that they built an entire city underground and kept fighting. The example was made. Just not the one they intended. The lesson the "Third World" learned from Vietnam was not don't resist. The lesson was: they can be beaten. The lesson was: their technology is not destiny. The lesson was: if you are willing to pay the price of dignity, they will eventually run out of the stomach for the bill. Every sanction today. Every coup. Every engineered "color revolution." Every "civil society" organization funded from Langley. These are the tactics of an empire that learned in Vietnam that it cannot always use the full weight of its military without consequences it can't control. They are not acting from confidence. They are acting from the memory of Vietnam. And Vietnam said no.