LONDON: The war that generations of diplomats, generals and spies had tried to avoid began on Saturday morning, when waves of US and Israeli aircraft and missiles struck targets across Iran, including in Kermanshah, Qom, Isfahan, Tabriz and Karaj, in what President Donald Trump called a “massive and ongoing” campaign.

For nearly half a century, the US and Iran have circled each other through covert action, proxy wars, sanctions and sporadic clashes, but never tipping into open conflict. That balance has now collapsed.

Ajax, Eagle Claw, Nimble Archer, Prime Chance, Praying Mantis, Midnight Hammer and now – in collaboration with Israel’s own Operation Lion’s Roar – Operation Epic Fury.

There has been no shortage of US military operations against Iran or Iranian forces in the Gulf ever since the two countries became sworn enemies following the overthrow of the pro-Western Shah by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The seeds of that revolution, and the subsequent emergence of Iran as a destructive force in the Middle East, were sown in 1953. Operation Ajax, a coup engineered by America’s CIA and the UK’s MI6, overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh, who had attempted to nationalize the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

As part of that plot, America’s first attack on Iranian soil took place in August 1953 when, in a bid to stir up anti-Communist sentiment, CIA operatives bombed the home of a prominent Muslim in Tehran.

The coup, which led to the installation of the Shah, paved the way for the 1979 revolution, the return of Ayatollah Khomeini from exile and the foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

America’s first military incursion followed shortly afterward. When news broke in 1980 that the deposed Shah had been flown to America for medical treatment, Iranian revolutionary students seized the US embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

US President Jimmy Carter authorized an audacious rescue bid, Operation Eagle Claw, but it ended in disaster, thanks to poor planning and a collision between two US aircraft on the ground in central Iran, which cost the lives of eight US personnel.

It was President Ronald Reagan, Carter’s successor, who designated Iran as a state sponsor of terror following the bombing of a US base in Beirut in 1983 by Iran-backed Hezbollah, in which 241 US military personnel were killed.

Between 1987 and 1989, America and Iran came to blows several times in the Gulf during Operation Earnest Will, in which the US navy sought to protect tankers from Iranian attacks during the Iran-Iraq war.

In a secret parallel operation, codenamed Prime Chance, US special forces attacked Iranian ships laying mines under cover of darkness, and in 1987 Operation Nimble Archer saw the US navy attack and destroy an Iranian oil platform.

The following year, two Iranian warships and three attack speedboats were sunk with the loss of 56 lives during Operation Praying Mantis (1988), launched in retaliation for the mining of a US frigate.

Also in 1988, the USS Vincennes, an American warship on patrol in the Gulf, shot down a civilian Iranian Airbus A300 on a scheduled flight to Dubai. All 290 people on board, including 65 children, were killed.

For the past 47 years, America’s main weapon against Iran has been sanctions. They were imposed for the first time in November 1979, during Carter’s presidency, in response to the takeover of the US embassy and the hostage crisis. Diplomatic ties between the US and Iran were severed the following year.

Sanctions targeted at Iran’s nuclear program and Tehran’s support for terrorist proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, were first imposed during Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1995.

The pressure was further increased by President Barack Obama between 2010 and 2013. But it was under his administration that, in 2015, the US agreed to ease sanctions in exchange for Iran signing up to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a deal under which it agreed to limit its nuclear program.

In May 2018, during his first presidency, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the JCPOA and imposed fresh sanctions on Iran.

In 2019, the Trump administration designated Iran’s Quds Force a terror organization. The following year, in the dying days of the first Trump presidency, the US killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of the organization, in a drone strike at Baghdad airport.

Trump returned to office in January 2025 and nuclear talks, mediated by Oman, began in April that year. The first round ended inconclusively. But on June 13, two days before the talks were due to resume, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iranian nuclear targets.

It was the beginning of the so-called Twelve Day War. On June 21 America joined the conflict, sending long-range bombers to hit targets including nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan in Operation Midnight Hammer.

Indirect talks between the two countries resumed in Muscat, Oman, on Feb. 6 this year, and continued in Geneva on Thursday.

They appeared to have gone well.

Afterward, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said they had made “very good progress and entered into the elements of an agreement very seriously, both in the nuclear field and in the sanctions field.”

A US official described the talks as “positive,” and a further round was proposed for this week.

But for the past few weeks, even as the talks were under way, America had been assembling the largest force of warships and aircraft seen in the region since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

On Friday, President Trump said he was not happy with the way the talks were going but implied they would continue. “We’ll see what happens,” he said. “We’re talking later.”

But the talking had stopped.

On Saturday morning, the world woke to the news that at 09:30 a.m. Tehran time, the US and Israel had launched Operation Epic Fury, a joint attack on Iran.