LETTER: Iran is prepared. Don’t underestimate how long it can hold out.

March 23, 2026

To the editor:

On September 23, 1980, the second day of the Iran-Iraq War, I breathlessly and nervously watched Iran’s US-made Phantom jets zoom over my eighth-story hotel room in central Baghdad and bomb the city’s military and civilian airports. Those attacks continued daily until about three weeks into the war, when the Iranian attacks ceased for a few days. Diplomats and other observers began to speculate that Iran, hampered by a US-supported arms embargo, was running out of spare parts to service its F-4 Phantoms and US-made F-14 warplanes. 

I quoted those diplomats in a story I filed on a Sunday morning in Baghdad. Sunday is a slow news day in the United States because there are no Sunday afternoon newspapers. I filed the story by phone at the Iraqi Information Ministry. 

As I walked back to my hotel, Iranian Phantoms thundered over Baghdad and bombed again. I rushed back to the Ministry, killed my story and filed a new one about the renewed attacks. 

I am reminded of that morning when I read that Trump Administration and Israeli officials are saying they have destroyed Iran’s ability to produce ballistic missiles. Iran has denied this, and indeed there has been no pause on the Iranian missiles and drones exploding in Israel and the countries of the Persian Gulf. 

Do not underestimate Iran’s ability to respond to the US-Israeli onslaught. Iran was prepared for this war and will have a say in how long it continues. 

Steve Hindy, Brooklin

[Editor’s note: Hindy covered the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press and Newsday in the late 1970s and 1980s. He is a member of The Rising Tide’s board of directors.]

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