Pompeo vs Stephen Walt: Who Started the Iran War — Tehran’s Missiles or America and Israel’s First Strike?
A heated exchange between Mike Pompeo and Stephen Walt captures the central dispute of the Iran war: is Tehran the aggressor, or did U.S.-Israeli strikes trigger the escalation?
The argument between Mike Pompeo and Stephen Walt cuts through weeks of propaganda with one brutal question: who started the Iran war? Pompeo frames the issue as simple deterrence. You do not let a radical regime close the global economy or fire Shahed missiles with impunity. Walt pushes back with equal simplicity: those missiles were not being fired until Israel and the United States attacked Iran.
This is not just a television argument. It is the moral and strategic center of the war.
Pompeo’s view is familiar from the hawkish wing of U.S. foreign policy. Iran is a revolutionary regime with proxies, missiles, drones and nuclear ambitions. It threatens Israel, shipping and U.S. forces. It uses escalation to extract concessions. Therefore, force is not aggression but enforcement. If Iran closes Hormuz, launches missiles or backs attacks through allied militias, the U.S. and Israel must respond decisively.
Walt’s realist counterargument is different. States respond to threats, and Iran is no exception. If the United States and Israel struck first, then Iranian retaliation cannot be understood outside that initial act. That does not make Iran innocent or benevolent. It means causality matters. If you bomb a country and then describe its response as unprovoked aggression, you are manipulating the timeline.
The word “started” is slippery in international politics. Did the war start with the first missile? The first assassination? The nuclear program? The sanctions? The proxy attacks? The collapse of the old nuclear deal? The Gaza war? The first Israeli strike? The first Iranian retaliation? Each side selects the starting point that makes its own behavior look defensive.
This is why the debate matters. If Iran is seen as the sole aggressor, escalation appears necessary. If the U.S. and Israel are seen as initiating the war, escalation appears reckless and possibly illegal. Public opinion depends heavily on where the story begins.
Pompeo’s strongest point is that Iran’s regional behavior has been destabilizing for decades. Tehran has armed groups across the region, threatened shipping, attacked or pressured rivals, and used deniable violence as a tool of policy. Many Gulf states, Israelis and Americans do not need propaganda to fear Iranian power. Their fear is based on experience.
Walt’s strongest point is that military dominance often creates selective memory. Powerful states strike and call it prevention. Weaker states strike back and are called irrational. The U.S. has repeatedly used sanctions, covert action and military force while presenting itself as the guardian of order. Iran’s behavior may be dangerous, but American behavior is not automatically neutral because it wears the language of security.
The public should resist the comfort of one-sided narratives. Iran is not simply a victim. The United States is not simply a policeman. Israel is not simply defending itself, and its enemies are not simply reacting. The war is a chain, and each actor points to the previous link as justification.
The most useful question is not only “who started it?” but “who benefits from continuing it?” If the war makes Iran more nationalist, Israel more militarized, Gulf states more vulnerable, Europe more energy insecure and America more trapped, then even the side that claims to be enforcing order may be manufacturing disorder.
The headline says Pompeo and Walt clashed over who started the Iran war. The deeper lesson is that timeline is power. Whoever controls the first sentence of the story controls the moral frame of everything that follows.