Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi on Friday drew an analogy that many Americans draw whenever they disagree with a war their leaders start or perpetuate — that it’s like Vietnam all over again.
Araghchi used it as a direct threat, claiming that while Donald Trump and his fellow American leaders continue to say the US “is winning” in Iran, the situation on the ground is different.
He pointedly referred to one of the most discredited episodes in US military history, the so-called “Five O’Clock Follies”. These were daily military press briefings in Saigon in the 1960s projecting optimism even as the US lost over 50,000 soldiers of its own in a conflict that killed nearly 3 million people.
Araghchi’s analogy comes at a time when Trump is facing heat from within, too, over the war. His counter-terror chief Joe Kent resigned earlier this week by saying that Israel had essentially forced Trump-led US into this war.
What Araghchi says, what that means
Araghchi wrote on X referencing Vietnam: “Americans haven’t forgotten how, even as hundreds of U.S. soldiers were dying in Vietnam, and the outcome was already clear, General William Westmoreland was flown home to reassure everyone that the war was going well — that the U.S. was ‘winning.’ The media haven’t forgotten either; those briefings full of fantasy from the frontlines became infamous as the ‘Five O’Clock Follies.'”
Gen Westmoreland commanded US forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, and was the public face of official optimism about the war. In November 1967, he was brought back to Washington and told the US Congress and the public that the US was making clear progress, and that enemy strength was declining, so there was “light at the end of the tunnel”.
Two months later, in January 1968, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces backed by Soviet Russia launched the Tet Offensive.
It was a coordinated series of attacks on more than 100 cities and towns across US-backed South Vietnam. This offensive shattered public confidence in official accounts of the war.
There was already visible anger on American streets against the war. Celebrities who famously spoke against it included the boxer Muhammad Ali.
Abbas Araghchi has claimed there’s a present-day equivalent in Iran.
“Fast forward to today: same script, different stage; (defence secretary Pete) Hegseth steps up, and the message is still detached from reality,” the Iranian minister wrote on X.
His third post read: “U.S. government says one thing, reality says another. Right as U.S. authorities claim Iran’s air defences are gone, an F-35 gets hit. As they declare Iran’s navy finished, USS Gerald Ford turns back, and USS Abraham Lincoln drifts farther away. Different decade, same ‘we’re winning.'”
Iran’s claims on jet ‘down’, warships ‘retreat’
Araghchi was referring to an F-35 fighter jet making an emergency landing after being struck by Iranian fire, and satellite imagery confirming that two US aircraft carrier groups had withdrawn from their forward positions in the region.
On this, US Central Command spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins has said, “We are aware of reports that a US F-35 aircraft conducted an emergency landing at a regional US airbase after flying a combat mission over Iran. The aircraft landed safely, and the pilot is in stable condition. This incident is under investigation.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) posted a video purporting to show an F-35 being targeted and struck by an Iranian defence system.
Secretary Pete Hegseth had actually said the US was “winning decisively” and that Iran’s air defenses had been “flattened”, just hours before the the F-35 — the most expensive combat aircraft ever built, and one that had never previously been confirmed as struck by enemy fire in combat — was on the ground after being hit over Iranian territory.
As for Araghchi’s references to warships, the USS Gerald R Ford, the US Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier, was retreating from the Red Sea after a fire broke out in its laundry room. The carrier was heading to Souda Bay on the Greek island of Crete for repairs. The fire on March 12 was described as not combat-related, with two sailors receiving treatment for non-life-threatening injuries.
USS Gerald R Ford and USS Abraham Lincoln have reportedly both abandoned their forward offensive positions to redeploy further away from the Iranian coast.
So far, at least 13 US military service members have been killed in operations against Iran, with roughly 200 others wounded. In Iran, over 1,400 people have been killed and 18,000 injured, according to local health authorities.
US officials told news agency Bloomberg that 12 MQ-9 Reaper drones had been lost in the war. Prior to the F-35 incident, the US had also lost four manned aircraft in March alone, in days after the war was started by the US and Israel on February 28.
What happened in Vietnam?
Six decades ago, the US had entered the Vietnam war at first by backing the South Vietnamese government against the Communist North Vietnamese regime. The North regime had guerrilla allies in the South, the Viet Cong.
It began under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican like Trump; and escalated sharply under President Lyndon Johnson, who was a Democrat.
At its peak, more than half a million American troops were deployed in South Vietnam. The US military dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped by all sides combined during the entirety of World War 2. And yet the enemy would not break.
For the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong’s side, the Tet Offensive of January 1968 was a turning point. It was not a military victory for the North as the US and South Vietnamese forces repelled the attacks; but it proved that everything officials had been saying was false.
A force said to be on its last legs simultaneously attacked more than 100 places, including the US embassy compound in Saigon.
The US eventually withdrew under Republican President Richard Nixon in 1973; and Saigon fell to the North in 1975. More than 58,000 Americans died in the war. Vietnamese casualties, military and civilian, across both sides, were estimated to be 2–3 million.
The US administration of Barack Obama attempted a wider overture to Vietnamese people, when he famously ate at a street cafe with traveler-chef Anthony Bourdain. Before him, though, Bill Clinton was the first US President to visit Vietnam after the end of the war, in November 2000.
Obama had signed a nuclear-energy restrictions deal with Iran that Trump undid in his first term, calling it a “sellout” and “dangerous” for America.
