Pondering Memories: Iran and the Moon, then and now

Published April 16, 2026

 

We struggle with time. How we perceive it can vary a lot. Things that seem like yesterday could be decades away while simultaneously feeling like this single day is never going to end. Exactly why I feel compelled to discuss this phenomenon is unclear, but this is the larger context as we ponder the time when Iran wasn’t ruled by mullahs and the last time humans walked on the moon.

For those who lived through it, the years between 1972 and 1979 can still feel a bit blurry and distant. Yet, these dates are a mere seven years apart. To understand how tight that window truly is, one only needs to look back at our own recent history from the vantage point of 2026. The distance between the final Apollo moonwalk and the rise of the current Iranian regime is the same amount of time between the world of 2019 and the present day.

To many, 2019 feels like yesterday, but each of us might view the amount of change during that span differently. Seven years ago, astronomers captured the first-ever direct image of a black hole’s shadow in the galaxy M87, turning a mathematical theory into a visual reality. Some will say, “Who cares?” while others note this as a major scientific milestone. That first verified black hole is larger than our entire solar system!

From a more pop culture vantage point, 2019 saw the film Avengers: Endgame become a global cultural phenomenon, marking the end of a decade-long narrative saga. We also watched in real-time as a massive fire damaged the 850-year-old Notre-Dame de Paris, and then Tiger Wood won the Masters – an incredible “comeback story” in its own right, but seen differently as he’s now once again in the news for different reasons.

The speed of transformation over chunks of time might best be seen in our digital tools. While the 1972 moon mission was the analog era’s grand finale, the world of 1979 had already pivoted toward personal computer screens with the debut of the Apple II. To bridge that same seven year gap to today, consider that 1-terabyte microSD cards debuted in 2019, are common today, and a single card could hold 13.8 million times more data than the Apollo guidance computer.

In December 1972, Apollo 17 closed one of the most ambitious chapters of human exploration. When Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt departed the lunar surface, they left behind an analog world of slide rules and manual switches as well as any remaining post-WWII momentum. Even as their Lunar Module ascended, the 20th century era was starting to fade; scarred by the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, the foundational trust of the 20th century had already begun to erode.

Fast-forward only seventy-three months to 1979. The “Space Age” didn’t accelerate like most assumed. Then the Iranian Revolution fundamentally redrew the map of global power, shifting the focus of the Cold War world to the oil fields of the Middle East. The Islamic Republic wasn’t just a regional regime change like many assumed. But during that same year of 1979 and a world away, the first personal computers-based spreadsheet programs were starting to solve problems for people. 

And even though in reality these global events were worlds apart, most people today don’t remember them at all or just see them as distant. When history is no longer tethered to living memory, it loses its nuance. However, for the generation currently in its sixties and older, these events may remain visceral, sensory memories. For them, 1972 and 1979 are part of a personal narrative. And yet, they are the minority.

But, suddenly, 1972 is back in the news as we find ourselves in a world where we are planning a return to the moon via the Artemis missions. Likewise, 1979 is back in the news as the geopolitical tensions surrounding Iran have escalated once again. Fifty years is not a long time in the scope of civilization, but it is exactly long enough for a society to forget what it felt like to live through the change. 

As a witness to both milestones, I can say that few of us truly grasped then the trajectory history would take. In 1972, the idea that we wouldn’t return to the moon for half a century would have sounded like madness. Similarly, in 1979, few could have envisioned the global ramifications of a revolutionary religious regime in Iran—a shift that, in my view, serves as the root of so many modern geopolitical struggles.

I am hopeful that we’ll be successful in putting people on the moon again and staying this time. I’m simultaneously hopeful (cautiously optimistic) that whatever regime emerges could lead to an Iran that is better integrated with the world economy and with the Iranian people having more options on how they decide to live their lives. 

Success in both of these areas (even loosely defined) seems to be possible. It seems that for the majority of people that ‘success’ in either could support a healthier human experience. But there are clearly many different ways this all can play out in the coming months and years. We’ll just have to hang on and do what we can to encourage and help make a better tomorrow. 

But while thinking about this now, remember that the people who watched the final moonwalk were the very same people who, just seven years later, sat in gas lines wondering if the world they knew was coming to an end. 

Lord willing, there will be people 50 years from now struggling to imagine what we’re living through right now. They’ll have a different vantage point, and we will probably be as vague to them as today’s young people trying to consider the 70s. 

Understanding that brief, seven-year bridge in the 1970s is useful to understanding our own present. I’m not suggesting that we tie these events together. I do suggest that we all work on our grasp of reality, whether we remember the 1970s or not. 

How our lives and histories interweave shouldn’t surprise us if we are paying attention. But as we stand on our own seven-year bridges in time, we must ask: are we actually paying attention?

And beyond this, let’s see what’s next!

 

J Matt Wallace