On February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran, killing their supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. President Trump said his motives were primarily to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, destroying its missile capabilities, eliminating its navy, and ensuring its regime cannot fund “terrorist armies”, though he has provided many contradictory reasons for this mission’s aims. 

The strike built on tensions between the United States and Iran, creating a direct conflict and adding to the complicated history between the two countries.

Few people understand this history as personally as my grandpa, Barry Rosen.

For me, it’s interesting that I’ve grown up with my grandparents always around, but never truly understood their lives before I was born. I sat down with them to discuss the current war, and this is their story.

Barry Rosen was one of 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. 

Rosen first went to Iran as a Peace Corps volunteer between 1967 and 1969. During those two years, he traveled across the country, learned the Farsi language and immersed himself in Iranian culture, developing a deep connection to Iran and its people.

His experience in Iran led him to pursue graduate studies in Iran and Central Asia at Columbia University. Eventually, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service and worked at the Voice of America in 1979, where he was the head of the Uzbek service and did broadcasts for Soviet Uzbekistan. Though he wasn’t directly involved with Iran at the time, he explains that U.S. and Iran relations are all in the backdrop of the Cold War.

For decades, the Shah of Iran had ruled as an authoritarian leader with backing from the United States. Many Iranians viewed him as a dictator, especially after the United States and Britain supported the 1953 coup that removed the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he attempted to nationalize Iranian oil and installed the Shah. 

According to Rosen, that moment left a lasting impact on how many Iranians viewed the United States.

“It’s a very important period in Iran,” he explained. “Iranians remember that the United States helped keep the Shah in power.”

Within a year, protests across the country had forced the Shah to flee by 1979. The protests steamrolled toward a revolution, and this uprising was unusual compared to many others in modern history because it was driven heavily by Islamic ideologies.

“What happened was a theological revolution,” Rosen said. “That’s almost unheard of in the modern world.” 

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a religious leader who had spent years in forced exile, returned to Iran and quickly became the central figure of the revolution. He united a broad coalition of religious groups, intellectuals, nationalists, and leftist activists who all wanted to remove the Shah. In the long run, he implemented militant Islam by crushing other members of the coalition to bring about an Islamic state. 

Despite the revolutionary uprisings, Rosen was hopeful that the new transitional government might still maintain a working relationship with the United States. 

Khomeini mandated that women must wear the hijab and demanded that women lose the right to vote.

During this period, relations between Iran and the United States were deteriorating. Rosen witnessed the closing of newspapers in Iran and “saw the essence of democracy being shut down by militant Islamists who followed Khomeini.”

Rosen returned to Tehran as the Press Attaché for the United States embassy in 1978.

Tensions quickly escalated. 

On November 4, 1979, a group of radical students loyal to Khomeini stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

“I was maybe one hundred feet away from the gate when they jumped over the walls,” Rosen said. “I was taken hostage and accused of being a spy and a plotter against Islam. That began my 444-day odyssey in Iran.”

While he was held in captivity, he was blindfolded, isolated, and had no idea what was happening in the outside world. Every move was controlled by the students, even when he could eat and use the bathroom. 

His wife and my grandma, Barbara Rosen, played an important role in attempting to bring Barry and his colleagues to life for the American people. She found out that her husband was a hostage through a local newspaper, previously thinking he was only on a week-long trip outside of Tehran. She explains how she felt an immense amount of “fear, uncertainty, and did not know what to do.”

Mrs. Rosen eventually became a “spokesperson” for the hostages, interviewing for newspapers and TV. She met with Helmut Schmidt, the chancellor of Germany, and  Giscard d’Estaing, the president of France, where she advocated for help and aid for the hostages. 

When Rosen was finally freed in 1981, he was “too dazed to celebrate,” he told Columbia Magazine. “I was jubilant in one way and fearful in another. I thought: Am I ready for this? Am I really ready for freedom? Am I really ready to see Barbara and the kids? Am I sane enough?”

Mrs. Rosen compares their family to a cloth. “It was like it was torn apart, and you were just expected to stitch it back together.”

Mr. Rosen added, “It was the most profound moment of my life, to be freed from the anguish and suffering that I experienced.” 

More than four decades later, he says the current conflict between the United States and Iran cannot be understood without taking into account this long history.

“Up until 1979, the United States and Iran were very close,” Rosen said. “The Shah and the United States were the closest of allies.”

That alliance collapsed after the revolution and has never fully recovered.

Today, Rosen believes the latest conflict will likely last longer than the Trump Administration believes.

Trump defended the attack by saying it was necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons and to weaken the government’s military capabilities. He also suggested the strike could open the door to broader political change inside Iran.

Rosen believes the motivations behind the attack were more complicated.

“There are many theories about why the United States acted,” he said. “Some people say it’s about regime change; the belief that Iran could become a more open society.”

Rosen stresses that Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have “given nothing true” to the American people and have changed their reasoning so often.

Dr. Matthew Maclean, a Social Studies teacher with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies, seconds this concern: “The problem is that the main goals of the United States have never been articulated. They keep shifting.” 

According to Maclean, different explanations have been offered for the strike, including regime change in Iran or stopping the country from developing nuclear weapons. But he notes that Iran’s nuclear program had previously been addressed through diplomacy under the 2015 nuclear agreement.

“To stop Iran from working toward a nuclear weapon would be ideal,” he said. “But that can be achieved through diplomacy.”

Maclean also points out that negotiations may have still been possible before the conflict began. The Omani government had been mediating discussions between the United States and Iran shortly before the attack.

“Bombing people when you’re negotiating is not really a good negotiating tactic,” he said. “I think American credibility in the diplomatic arena is gone.”

Like Rosen, Maclean is skeptical that military action alone can force major political change in Iran.

“I don’t think regime change is achievable solely through military action,” he explained. “If the system were to change, the Iranian people themselves would have to rise up against their government.”

Rosen, like Maclean, questions if their motives are “regime change, Iran’s refusal to stop enriching its nuclear stockpile, or to free the Iranian people.” Along with the majority of the American public, he is confused and skeptical about the United States’ purpose and its exit strategy. 

“This war is going to continue much longer than the United States believes,” he said. “The regime in Tehran is a deep state that will not give in.”

“The majority of Iranians want a more open society,” he said. “But the regime is very organized. Even when leaders are removed, there are always replacements. Decapitation is not going to work.” 

Rosen also worries about the impact of the conflict on ordinary people in Iran, given their government’s violent history of suppressing dissent.

“The regime is ruthless enough to kill and maim thousands of people,” he said. “From their point of view, you are either with them or against them.”

At the same time, he worries that outside military intervention rarely produces stable political change.

“The United States tried regime change in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan,” he said. “They’ve all been a total disaster.”

“I don’t think that the U.S. understands what that means; the regime will never give up.” 

Understanding this complicated history, he believes, is critical to understanding why tensions between the United States and Iran remain so difficult to resolve.

The current conflict has brought Rosen back to 1979, “being taken hostage wasn’t just being isolated for 444 days, it had a never-ending effect on me”. 

“I wasn’t just a person caught up in the hostage crisis,” Rosen explains, “one would think that I would hate Iran, but a big part of me is someone who has lived with Iranians, studied the history, spoken the language, and felt this distinct closeness to its culture.” 

“Even after 47 years, it’s indelibly etched in my mind; the hostage crisis is a part of my DNA.”