{"id":155120,"date":"2025-06-29T09:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T09:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-12-day-war-world-war-iii-and-how-we-describe-whats-happening-in-iran-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T09:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T09:27:08","slug":"the-12-day-war-world-war-iii-and-how-we-describe-whats-happening-in-iran-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-12-day-war-world-war-iii-and-how-we-describe-whats-happening-in-iran-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The '12-Day War,' World War III, and how we describe what's happening in Iran – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump wants to call the most recent round of fighting between Iran and Israel<\/a> the “12-Day War<\/a>,” but he may not get his wish<\/a>.
That\u2019s because journalists and historians are usually the ones who put names on wars, and they often don’t choose the titles that government officials put on them.
It\u2019s even less likely that the conflict could be named World War III, even though Trump has been warning about it for more than a decade<\/a>, and even told the leader of Ukraine<\/a> this year he was risking starting it. \u00a0
\u201cThere\u2019s no official naming body, international or national,\u201d said David Sibley, a military historian for Cornell University who is based in Washington, D.C. \u201cIt\u2019s really just kind of agreed on by historians, by countries, and sometimes not even that.\u201d
USA TODAY interviewed experts on international relations and military history to talk about what is happening in the world, and how it should be described. \u00a0Here\u2019s what they said.
Howard Stoffer, a professor at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, said the most recent fighting between Iran and Israel marks a “historic turning point in the Middle East,\u201d comparable to the Six-Day War in 1967 or the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Trump\u2019s suggested title might be a way to invoke 1967, “where Israelis used a preemptive airstrike to defeat the Arab countries around them,” Sibley said. Israel emerged politically stronger and with more land.
\u201cIt certainly would invoke that in Israel and in the Middle East,” Sibley said. “It certainly has that sort of pithiness that is appealing, and so it would be interesting to see. I don\u2019t know. It might stick.”
On June 26<\/a> and June 27<\/a>, the news wire Reuters used the phrase \u201c12-day war\u201d to describe the sparring between the two countries earlier in the month, but not as the official name of the war, which would have a capitalized the “D” and “W.” USA TODAY has used the term in quotation marks<\/a>.
Bryon Greenwald, a professor at National Defense University in Washington, D.C., questioned whether the attacks between Iran and Israel amounted to a war at all, or just a flare-up of a long-simmering conflict the countries have engaged in for decades.
He pointed to airstrikes between Iran and Israel in March, predating the most recent conflict that led the United States to drop bombs on nuclear facilities. \u201cDoes that shift the start date to the left, so it is now longer (than) 12 Days?\u201d he asked.
Peter Singer, a political scientist and author specializing in 21st-century warfare, said if Trump wants the name to catch on, he needs “better marketing.”
Even if the the name a president or military leader catches on, names catches on, journalists and historians may change them over time.
\u201cWWI was commonly called\u00a0the\u00a0Great\u00a0War\u00a0until\u00a0the\u00a0media needed to name its successor,\u201d said Don Ritchie, a former Senate historian.<\/strong> \u201cHistorians are usually writing long after\u00a0the\u00a0fact and follow\u00a0the\u00a0common usage.\u201d
Wayne Lee, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, points to the usage by President George H.W. Bush\u2019s administration of \u201cOperation Desert Shield” and \u201cOperation Desert Storm\u201d to describe early 1990s conflicts in the Middle East. Most people refer to those conflicts as the Gulf War, the First Gulf War, or the Persian Gulf War.
When President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, his administration named it \u201cOperation Iraqi Freedom,\u201d but most people call it the Iraq War.
\u201cSometimes even the names of wars aren\u2019t agreed on,\u201d said Sibley, from Cornell. \u201cWhat we call the American Civil War, it depends on where you are what you call it \u2212 \u2018The War Between the States,\u2019 \u2018The War of Northern Aggression,\u2019 things like that.\u201d
When the U.S. bombed Iran on June 21, Americans grew anxious that World War III<\/a> had started. Experts caution against declaring armed conflicts worldwide “world war.”
\u201cI would be really surprised if this morphed into something that looks anything like the past world wars we\u2019ve had,\u201d said Will Todman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. \u201cBut that does not mean peace is likely around the world. \u2026 I just don\u2019t think those will all be connected in the same way it was in World War I or World War II.\u201d \u00a0
Russia has been at war with Ukraine for more than three years, at times<\/a> threatening<\/a> to use nuclear weapons<\/a> but never following through. Experts said tensions between North Korea and South Korea could escalate. Or they said China, another nuclear country, could invade Taiwan<\/a>.
\u201cForces were fighting just about everywhere around the globe,\u201d during both world wars, Sibley said. \u201cSo even a conflict in the Middle East between two sets of alliances, I don\u2019t know that that would rise to the level. I don\u2019t know. It retroactively could be labeled that if it gets bad enough.\u201d
Sibley said nuclear weapons act as a deterrent to attack, because countries fear having those weapons used against them. But he said, if two major powers exchanged nuclear weapons it could warrant the moniker “World War III.”
Sibley said countries tend to be more cautious about invading or attacking nuclear powers because they fear having those weapons used against them. But he said, if two major powers exchanged nuclear weapons it could warrant the moniker “World War III.”
\u00a0\u201cPost-1945, the assumption has been that World War III is going to be a nuclear one,\u201d Sibley said. \u201cAnd, so, short of that, it\u2019s hard to see something getting that label.\u201d
Singer pointed to the massive casualties from world wars, numbers that the world has not seen in several of the most recent conflicts combined.
“As many as 22 million people died in World War I and 85 million people in World War II,\u201d he said. \u201cStop trying to make World War III happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

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President Donald Trump wants to call the most recent round of fighting between Iran and Israel the “12-Day War,” but he may not get his wish.That\u2019s because journalists and historians are usually the ones who put names on wars, and they often don’t choose the titles that government officials put on them.It\u2019s even less likely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":155121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}