Amid Crisis, A Lesser-Told Story of US-Iran Similarities Holds Some Hope

As experts studiously debate what the latest Israel-Iran fighting will lead to, including a possible Iranian collapse, one enduring but less understood reality goes mostly untreated: Iranians and Americans are more alike than they are different, and that likeness holds hope for a friendlier future. A new Iranian revolution would bring significant uncertainty and risk. But it would also bring to the fore Iranian ideals that, in many ways, are also very American.

A Palpable Likeness

A few years ago, while enjoying a relaxed dinner with a senior Iraqi officer, he proceeded to lecture me and a few other Americans on why he thought that America and Iran were destined to come together. He delivered a monologue about the similarities between the American and Iranian people, which I initially doubted but subsequently vetted with numerous Iran experts who largely agreed. His premise, which I now believe to be mostly accurate, boiled down to three commonalities between Americans and Iranians: we are imbued with a revolutionary spirit and national pride, we are unyielding entrepreneurs, and we are bureaucratic in our official decisionmaking, sometimes to a fault.

• Revolutionary Spirit – Americans love their revolution. We celebrate it regularly, and we beckon it in almost every national speech and theme. I don’t have to prove this to the Western reader because it’s ever-present. Nevertheless, polling consistently shows America as among the most, if not the most, “patriotic,” and our revolutionary zeal is at its center. For Iranians, their identity has been centered on revolution since 1979. That connection to the revolution has diminished, if not depleted, but the spirit of revolution as an ideal, even for those opposed to the current regime, is foundational. My dinner guest made this point clear: it’s not the 1979 revolution that has endured, but the underdog attitude that perseveres, inspiring Iranians to define their own destiny — a drive that makes Iranians and Americans so alike.

• Unyielding Entrepreneurship – America is the core of entrepreneurship in the world. Efforts to rank such traits list the US as second or third, and the US is second only to China in patents; however, the US has led global innovation for the last century. As for Iran, the country consistently punches above its weight in such categories. Indeed, Iranians, like Americans, take pride in their innovative prowess. Iran regularly ranks among the top performers for innovation in the Near East, and it outpaces the vast majority of its competition as a middle-income country. Experts on Iran are keen to observe that, absent Western sanctions, Iran has the potential to become a technology powerhouse. Indeed, the very reason Iran is under sanctions, its nuclear ambitions and advancement, is demonstrable of its technological know-how.

• Bureaucratic Decisionmaking – Although the shared proclivity for making official decisions in a bureaucratic fashion may not appear the most compelling category on the surface, it demonstrates a shared, ingrained respect for rigor and order. For all our revolutionary zeal, ironically, that zeal falls by the wayside in our approach to governing, which also has a long tradition in Iran. We appear different on the surface; the US is democratic, and Iran is theocratic, creating significant philosophical differences. However, both are bureaucratic in practice and structure. My dinner guest was adamant on this point, noting that, as an Iraqi caught between two rivals, he regularly endured our entrenched structural similarities.

An AI-generated comparison of Iranian and American government structures, albeit simplistic, highlights the regimented bureaucracy that, at best, characterizes both countries’ careful and considerate decisionmaking and, at worst, leads to sloth.Author-prompted AI-generated graphic