Bombing Iran is bombing memory

Attacking Iran is framed by colonial narratives that erase its rich intellectual history, justifying violence through a 'conquest foretold'

- Vashna Jagarnath

Empire does not begin with bombs. It begins with stories. Before missiles strike, a narrative must be written to make the target bombable. Colonial narrative, as postcolonial historian Ranajit Guha shows in A Conquest Foretold, transforms conquest into destiny. It prepares the public to accept war as not only inevitable but righteous.

It is not simply that Iran was bombed on 13 June 2025. It is that the idea of Iran and its right to hold memory, to produce knowledge, to exist as a civilisational subject was already rendered illegible.

The Israeli assault on Iran was defended in familiar terms — an imminent nuclear threat, national security, surgical precision. But these are not explanations. They are scripts. Like the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the attack on Iran was rationalised through an architecture of claims that do not require evidence, only repetition. Intelligence reports denying Iran's weapons programme were irrelevant. The narrative had already been written.

Guha's insight is clear — Empire writes the future in advance. The British conquest of India was not sealed at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. That battle was a minor military affair. And yet, in British imperial historiography, Plassey was elevated to a grand foundational moment, the start of British rule in India, the point at which the East India Company became a territorial power.

As Guha points out, it was this narrative that was repeated in schoolbooks, official dispatches and parliamentary speeches. It provided the ideological foundation for expanding British rule. While the real event was modest and sordid, the story told about it became grand and civilisational.