The Israeli-American war on Iran was intended to be a lightning strike routine, fought exclusively
from the air, lasting only a few days. Instead, Washington and its
Zionist proxy have blundered into a major multi-front conflict, which
could well threaten the Empire’s very existence. The initial US aerial
bombardment’s centerpiece was the murder of Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali
Khamenei on February 28th. Initially hailed by Western media as “the assassination of the century,” the vile act has resulted in catastrophe for the perpetrators.
Iran's relentless battering of
Zionist entity civilian centers and military and intelligence
infrastructure, and US bases throughout West Asia, hasn’t been deterred
one iota. Vast crowdstook
to the streets of Tehran in vengeful mourning. Their righteous anger
has pullulated throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Ever since,
incensed protestors have violently clashed with security forces in
multiple major Pakistani cities. Meanwhile, Bahrain teeters on the brink of all-out revolution. Now, Sayyed Mojtaba Khamenei, the martyred Leader’s son, has taken his place.
Iranian citizens of every ethnic and religious extraction braved US-Israeli airstrikes to celebrate his ascension. Commonly perceived
as a hardliner with strong ties to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps,
the expectation that the new Leader will adopt a considerably less
conciliatory, patient approach than his father is widespread. Western sources
forecast Sayyed Mojtaba may decide the Islamic Republic “must move
quickly to obtain nuclear weapons in order to forestall future US and
Israeli attacks,” overturning Sayyed Ali Khamenei’s longstanding fatwa against their development by Tehran.
US President Donald Trumphas declaredhe is “not
happy” with Sayyed Mojtaba taking power, and Israeli apparatchiks are
likewise perturbed by the development. Nonetheless, this was an
inevitable upshot of assassinating the former Leader, and there was no
reason to believe doing so would precipitate the Islamic Republic’s
collapse, or lead to Tehran’s military submission. It begs the obvious
question of why Washington and Tel Aviv electively helped in the
ascension of a ruler more committed than ever to expelling the Empire
from West Asia.
Similarly, Hezbollah’s extraordinary broadsides
of the Zionist entity since Sayyed Khamenei’s assassination should
dispel any notion, as perpetuated by Israeli political and military
chiefs, that the group was obliterated
by Tel Aviv’s criminal October 2024 invasion of Lebanon. That incursion
was prefaced by an operation in which thousands of pagers used by
senior Hezbollah operatives were detonated
simultaneously, having been wired with explosives by Mossad
pre-purchase, killing and injuring hundreds. A week-and-a-half later,
the group’s Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was martyred in a
Zionist entity airstrike.
Evidently, the Resistance cannot be crushed via high-level assassinations. In fact, such actions actively strengthen
its members. This uncomfortable reality has been well-known to the CIA
since at least 2009. In July that year, the Agency produced a top-secret assessment
laying out the pros and cons of liquidating “high value targets”
(HVTs). It was prepared in advance of Barack Obama’s CIA chief Leon
Panetta shifting US “counter-terror” operations from capturing and
torturing high-level suspects to outright executing them.
The assessment concluded
that HVT operations “can play a useful role when they are part of a
broader counterinsurgency strategy,” and sought to “assist policymakers
and military officers involved in authorizing or planning” such strikes.
However, it listed many “potential negative effects” of “high value”
assassinations. "Israel’s" past killings of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders
were specifically cited as examples of how the strategy can
spectacularly backfire. We have witnessed the CIA’s unheeded cautions
play out in real-time since February 28th.
Foremost among prospective
blowback from HVT operations is the risk high-level assassinations can
increase an “insurgent” group’s support. This occurs when killing a
target “[strengthens] an armed group’s bond with the population,
radicalizing an insurgent group’s remaining leaders, creating a vacuum
into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or deescalating
a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents.” Such actions can also
“[erode] the ‘rules of the game’ between the government and insurgents,”
thus exacerbating “the level of violence in a conflict”:
“HVT strikes, however, may increase
support for the insurgents, particularly if these strikes enhance
insurgent leaders’ lore, if noncombatants are killed in the attacks, if
legitimate or semilegitimate politicians aligned with the insurgents are
targeted…An insurgent group’s unifying cause, deep ties to its
constituency, or a broad support base can lessen the impact of
leadership losses by ensuring a steady flow of replacement recruits.”
The CIA assessment noted several
historical instances of supposed HVT successes. When high-level targets
have “prominent public profiles”, assassinations can, in specific
instances, shatter a target group. However, this was not the case with
Hamas or Hezbollah. The pair “carry out state-like functions, such as
providing healthcare services,” so group leaders are well-known to
citizens of Gaza and Lebanon. Yet, their “highly disciplined nature,
social service network, and reserve of respected leaders” mean they can
easily “reorganize” in the wake of assassinations.
The Zionist entity had by this
point been engaged in “targeted killings” against Hamas, Hezbollah, and
other Resistance groups since the mid-1990s. However, their
“decentralized command structures, compartmented leadership, strong
succession planning, and deep ties to their communities” made them
“highly resilient to leadership losses.” Undeterred, Tel Aviv’s
high-level assassinations continued apace. In the early 2000s, Hamas
founder Sheikh Yassin and the group’s leader in Gaza, Abdel Aziz
al-Rantisi, were murdered. However, the killings “strengthened
solidarity” between Resistance factions, while “[bolstering] support for
hardline militant leaders.”
The obvious lessons of this wanton bloodletting remained unlearned by the Zionist entity, once the Gaza Holocaust erupted. In June 2024, elite imperial journal Foreign Affairs published a report unequivocally headlined Hamas Is Winning.
It boldly concluded, “Israel’s failing strategy makes its enemy
stronger.” The outlet also recorded how “according to the measures that
matter,” Hamas had grown considerably bigger and more powerful than on
October 7th, 2023. "Israel" had thus stumbled into a deeply ruinous
attritional war, with a “tenacious and deadly guerrilla force.”
Hamas’ surging popularity with
Palestinians throughout the Gaza genocide was found to have
significantly enhanced the group’s “ability to recruit, especially its
ability to attract new generations of fighters and operatives.” This
granted Hamas the ability to launch “lethal operations” in areas
previously “cleared” by the IOF “easily”. Foreign Affairs
charged that the Zionist entity, to its “great detriment”, failed to
comprehend how “the carnage and devastation it has unleashed in Gaza has
only made its enemy stronger.”
It is not just Hamas that has been
galvanized by the Gaza genocide. "Israel’s" “carnage and devastation”
has greatly expanded the ranks and resolve of the entire Resistance,
while its constituent members have rapidly won hearts and minds within
and without West Asia in ever-mounting numbers.Joint attacks
on the Zionist entity have gathered in pace and intensity. With Sayyed
Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Iranian Leader, the Islamic Republic and all
her allies are fully committed to Palestine’s long-overdue liberation,
by any means necessary.
The views expressed in this article
are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al
Mayadeen’s editorial stance.
European allies have pushed back on a US request to help re-open the Strait of Hormuz, with Germany stating outright that the conflict with Iran was "not Nato's war".
Iran moved to close the strait last week in response to Israel and US attacks on the country, blocking a passage where more than 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas supply moves through.
Despite a call from US President Donald Trump over the weekend for
allied assistance, there has been widespread reluctance to get involved
in the war.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's spokesman said the conflict has "nothing to do with Nato".
"Nato is an alliance for the defence of territory," said Stefan
Kornelius. "The mandate to deploy Nato is lacking" in the current
situation, he told reporters.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius added that while there would
be "no military participation", they would seek a diplomatic solution to
the crisis.
For his part, UK Prime
Minister Keir Starmer also ruled out a Nato mission, but said he was
working with allies to come up with a "viable" plan to reopen the
waterway.
"We're working with all of our allies, including our European
partners, to bring together a viable collective plan that can restore
freedom of navigation in the region as quickly as possible and ease the
economic impacts," he said in Downing Street.
"Let me be clear: that won't be, and it's never been envisioned to be, a Nato mission."
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said on Sunday that the British government was considering sending minesweeping drones rather than warships to Hormuz.
The French foreign
ministry also confirmed that France would not send ships to the Strait,
writing on X that its naval mission is in the Eastern Mediterranean and
remains "defensive".
'Very bad for the future of Nato'
Spain, which has been the most vocal critic of the war on Iran in
Europe, also ruled it out, with Defence Minister Margarita Robles saying
Madrid was "absolutely not" mulling a military contribution.
Poland, likewise, dismissed any involvement in a naval operation to open the strait.
The lukewarm response from European capitals came after Japan and
Australia voiced similar sentiments earlier on Monday, with Canberra
noting it would not be sending a navy ship to the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has warned that the refusal of allied countries to help open up
the strait would be "very bad for the future of Nato", without
elaborating.
A number of Scandinavian and Baltic countries, which have been keen to ensure US support over Russia's activities near their borders, suggested they were not closing the door on the issue.
"We did not want this war. From day one, we have called for
de-escalation," Denmark's foreign minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, told
Danish media in Brussels before an EU foreign ministers' meeting.
"That said, I believe we need to keep an open mind and look at how we can contribute."
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys told reporters in
Brussels: "Nato countries should consider" a US request for help but
said they would "need to see the entire operational environment and the
capabilities with which we could contribute".
His Estonian counterpart said his country was "always ready for
discussions with the US, including now regarding the situation in the
Strait of Hormuz".
Things have just got real in Tel Aviv, and Israel. The actual pain and destruction have begun.
Earlier today, Iran targeted a train station in the center of the country. I didn't want to draw conclusions from it, and waited to see if it was the onset of something new.
Now, there's confirmation. Iran has just destroyed one of Israel's largest train stations in Tel Aviv, and potentially incapacitated a major part of train movement in the entire country.
Israel is a tiny country and has just one major north-south railway, with the biggest stations situated in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Cutting the train movement there means Israel has no mass transit (the roads are heavily jammed routinely).
These are also major transportation hubs, with Israel's busiest and most strategic roads going nearby; breaking some bridges along these roads puts the entire center of the country at a standstill.
This also has far-reaching military consequences: the train is the main transportation solution for IDF soldiers. If what I suspect is taking place becomes reality, hundreds of thousands of soldiers will not be able to travel to or from home with any measure of efficacy.
More importantly, it's going to become extremely more difficult for Israel to move large number of soldiers north or south when a major call for reservation is announced. A logistical nightmare.
The economic implications of the train being disabled are astronomical: hundreds of thousands of Israelis travel to work each day by train.
This could all be foreseen in advance. A year and a half ago I wrote an article titled 'Iran can end Israel in a few Hours', where I anticipated precisely this scenario. - Iran has started the strategic destruction of Israel.
The Lebanese resistance thwarted an
Israeli airborne landing attempt near the town of Nabi Sheet in eastern
Lebanon, according to Al Mayadeen’s correspondent.
Israeli helicopters reportedly
attempted to deploy forces in the area, but the troops fell into a
resistance ambush, triggering intense clashes involving light and medium
weapons.
The correspondent also reported that
three Israeli helicopters landed in the Syrian mountains opposite
eastern Lebanon, as the sound of heavy machine-gun fire and
anti-aircraft fire echoed across the area.
Israeli aircraft subsequently carried out intense fire belts around Nabi Sheet, providing air cover for the military movement in the region.
Later, the Lebanese Ministry of Health
announced that Israeli airstrikes on the town of Nabi Sheet in the
Baalbek District resulted in the martyrdom of 3 citizens and the
wounding of at least 16.
Resistance confronts Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon
Israeli media also confirmed that Hezbollah fighters engaged Israeli forces in the vicinity of Nabi Sheet.
Meanwhile, fierce confrontations were reported in Khiam in southern Lebanon, where the IOF attempted to advance into the area.
According to reports, Hezbollah’s Radwan Force fighters repelled the incursion, targeting Israeli troops with explosive devices and Kornet anti-tank missiles.
Israeli media described the confrontation as “very serious,” reporting that the Israeli army was struggling to extract special forces reportedly besieged in the area.
The battles come amid escalating confrontations along the Lebanese front as the regional war continues to expand.
With more than 1,000 civilian deaths in Iran, the U.S. secretary of war said the U.S. has loosened the rules of military engagement. “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be,” he said.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Wednesday boasted
of the “death and destruction” the U.S. military can rain down on Iran,
as reports say that U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have killed over 1,000
Iranian civilians in just four days.
Hegseth
said at a press briefing that the U.S. and Israel should soon have
“complete control of Iranian skies” and that it would mean “Iranian
leaders looking up and seeing only U.S. and Israeli airpower.”
“Every
minute of every day until we decide it’s over, and Iran will be able to
do nothing about it. B-2s, B-52s, B1s, Predator drones, fighters
controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the
sky all day long,” he added.
[As the Pentagon is reportedly seeking an additional $50 billion
to wage its unauthorized war on Iran] Hegseth said the war wasn’t meant
to be a “fair fight” and mentioned that the administration has loosened
the rules of engagement for the military.
“Our
war fighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the
president and yours truly. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise,
and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never
meant to be a fair fight. And it is not a fair fight. We are punching
them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be,” he said.
Hegseth
said that in the attack on Iran, which he has dubbed “Operation Epic
Fury,” the U.S. military has “delivered twice the air power of ‘Shock
and Awe’ in 2003,” referring to the massive bombing campaign that opened
the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.
Dan Caine said at the conference that the U.S. had hit over 2,000
targets inside Iran so far.
Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Air Force Gen. Dan Caine conducting a
press briefing Wednesday at the Pentagon on the U.S attack on Iran. (DoW /Alexander Kubitza)
The
Human Rights Activists News Agency, or HRANA, a U.S.-based and
US-funded NGO that’s very critical of the Iranian government, said on
Tuesday night that at least 1,097 civilians have been killed and more than 5,000 have been wounded.
Citing Iranian medical authorities, Al Jazeera also reported
on Wednesday that over 1,000 civilians have been killed. The HRANA said
that targets struck over the previous 24-hour period included several
military bases, two medical centers, and one residential area.
The worst known civilian massacre occurred on the first day of the bombing campaign, when a missile struck an elementary school in Minab, southern Iran, killing 165 people, mostly students.
Hegseth
was asked about the strike and whose munition struck the school and
said the U.S. military was “investigating” the matter. A map displayed
during the briefing that showed areas the US had bombed showed that Minab was right in the middle of a strike zone.
The
civilian death toll is expected to continue rising as Hegseth’s message
during the briefing was that the war was just getting started and that
more U.S. forces were on their way to the Middle East. “More bombers,
fighters are arriving just today.
And
now with complete control of the skies, we will be using 500-pound,
1,000-pound and 2,000-pound GPS-and-laser-guided precision gravity
bombs, which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile,” he said.
Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
The Iranian military ship, IRIS Dena, which sank after an American
torpedo attack had recently participated in a naval exercise in India.
(Image: Reuters)
In a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of
War Pete Hegseth acknowledged the submarine strike, describing it as
evidence of America’s global reach in its conflict with Iran.
Iranian
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned the United States it will
“bitterly regret” sinking an Iranian frigate near Sri Lanka.
In a
post on X early Thursday, Araghchi condemned the United States, saying
it “has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles away from Iran’s
shores.”
The U.S. has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles away from Iran's shores.
Frigate Dena, a guest of India's Navy carrying almost 130 sailors, was struck in international waters without warning.
He said the frigate IRIS Dena, a guest of India’s Navy carrying
almost 130 sailors, was struck in international waters without warning.
“Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret the precedent it has set,” he added.
The
U.S. Department of War released footage showing a U.S. submarine firing
a torpedo at the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena, sinking it off the southern
coast of Sri Lanka on Wednesday, killing at least 80 people, according
to Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister.
In a Pentagon briefing on
Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth acknowledged the
submarine strike, describing it as evidence of America’s global reach in
its conflict with Iran.
He said that an American submarine sank an Iranian warship “that thought it was safe in international waters”.
“Instead,
it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death. The first sinking of an enemy
ship by a torpedo since World War II. Yesterday,” he said
The War Department will not stop until Iran’s Navy is completely and utterly destroyed. pic.twitter.com/9uGsXEXbZZ
A Sri Lankan authority told
Al Jazeera the frigate IRIS Dena, located about 40 nautical miles (75km)
off Galle in southern Sri Lanka, sent out a distress call between 6 am
and 7 am on Wednesday (00:30 to 01:30 GMT).
Sri Lankan Foreign
Minister Vijitha Herath told parliament that the navy had received
information that the ship was in distress, and that the government had
sent ships and air force planes on a rescue mission.
But by the
time Sri Lanka’s navy reached the location, there was no sign of the
ship, “only some oil patches and life rafts,” navy spokesman Commander
Buddhika Sampath said.
“We found people floating on the water,” Sampath concluded.
A Sri Lankan navy spokesperson said no other ship or aircraft was observed in the area where the Iranian warship sank.
A further 140 people remain missing, with 32 crew members rescued by the Sri Lankan navy off the port city of Galle.
The
IRIS Dena had been returning to Iran after taking part in a
multilateral naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal hosted by India.
The
warship’s sinking occurred as the United States and Israel conducted
air strikes on Iran for a fifth day after killing Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei and nearly 800 other people, including dozens of schoolgirls.
In the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, up to 175
young children and school staff were blown to pieces at an elementary
school. Others were maimed and burned, and will be suffering from their
injuries for the rest of their lives. Even any comparatively fortunate
ones with minimal injuries will surely experience permanent trauma from
having witnessed something so horrific. Witnesses describe scenes of
unfathomable horror, with limbs and blood strewn across classrooms.
“People were pulling out children’s arms and legs. People were pulling
out severed heads,” said a woman whose child was killed. The Guardian cites verified videos that show “children’s bodies lying partly buried under the debris”:
In one
video, a very small child’s severed arm is pulled from the rubble.
Colourful backpacks covered with blood and concrete dust sit among the
ruins. One girl wears a green dress with gingham patches on her pockets
and the collar, her form partly obscured by a black body bag. Screams
can be heard in the background.
Drop Site News spoke to the father of a six-year-old girl,
Sara Shariatmadar, who was killed in the attack. “I cannot understand
how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this,” he
said. “We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics
or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price.”
The
United States and Israel have not denied responsibility for the attack,
although it is still unclear which country fired the missile. The U.S.
said that it does not “target” schools, which does not mean that it does
not bomb them. (“We take these reports seriously,” a spokesman said.) Israel’s spokesperson said the government was not “aware”
of such an attack, which does not mean its military did not carry one
out. Photos supposedly showing that a misfired Iranian missile caused it
were debunked,
although they spread widely online among Americans and Israelis
desperate to believe that only the Bad Guys do things like this.
Domestic
coverage of this horrible crime against humanity has been muted. U.S.
media has a policy of not showing gruesome images of violence—the Guardian explicitly
stated that it was concealing the photos and videos it had “due to
their graphic nature.” As a result, war is always sanitized, so that
Americans can read that 150+ schoolgirls were killed without having to
confront the full horror of what it means for their country to drive a
missile into a crowded school in the middle of the day. (Saturday is a
school day in Iran, a fact that the U.S. government would easily have
been able to know when deciding how to time its attacks, but Secretary
of War Pete Hegseth has been open about the fact that
he regards such niceties as rules of engagement and international law
as meddlesome hindrances that can be ignored, lambasting those who
“wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the
use of force.”)
I
suspect that this attack is also difficult for U.S. media to cover
because the basic facts of the situation are so twisted, so depraved, so
evil, that they shatter the comforting narrative that the U.S.
has the moral high ground over the Ayatollah. In fact, the U.S.
government is on the moral level of the Sandy Hook school shooter, a
fact that even president Trump’s critics may have a hard time fully
accepting.
And
this was not the only massacre carried out by the U.S. and Israel in a
war that has been going on just a few days. The Human Rights Activists
News Agency reports that there have already been over 1,000 civilian deaths in Iran, including 181 children under the age of ten, with thousands more civilians injured. Drop Site reports on the nauseating scene in a middle-class Tehran neighborhood following a “double tap”
strike (dropping one bomb first, and then dropping another on the
survivors and emergency responders, a favorite war crime of the U.S. and
Israel). Warning, the following description is extremely graphic and
may undermine any love you may have for your country:
Videos
of the immediate aftermath of the attack showed several individuals
dead and wounded as well as massive destruction on the street outside.
In Cafe Ahla, next to the square, blood and debris soaked the floors.
Several patrons who had been sitting there when the attack struck could
be seen dead on the floor or with their mutilated bodies still sprawled
across their seats. “We were sitting here around 8:00-8:30 p.m. and
suddenly there was the noise and explosion. We got up and a few people
ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood
was spraying everywhere. Someone’s hand had fallen on the floor, a head
had fallen on the floor,” said Shahin, a witness who had been at the
cafe and asked to be identified by first name only. “There were scalps
torn off, hands severed, a few people were laying here all cut up and
two people were martyred.”
I
will get to the many ways in which the Iran war is illegal, making us
less safe, founded on lies, strategically insane, unbelievably costly,
etc. But let us dwell for a moment on what we are doing to these people.
The right-wing Telegraph newspaper reports that in Tehran,
“millions of civilians are trapped under relentless bombardment as food
and medical supplies dwindle and the death toll mounts,” and the city
is an “‘apocalypse’ of hospitals in flames and children buried beneath
rubble.” The paper records a total humanitarian disaster, with sick
people lacking medicine, children going hungry, diabetics running out of
insulin, and the repeated bombing of residential areas. While Americans
pat themselves on the back for assassinating Iran’s repressive head of
state, everyday Iranians (even those with little love for their
theocratic government) are facing the prospect of being killed at any
moment, or watching their children be ripped to pieces. I realize that
in the U.S., the devaluation of Middle Eastern lives means that little
Iranian girls will receive a fraction of the compassion and concern that
has arisen around, say, Nancy Guthrie.
But if we apply our morality consistently, I cannot see how we can be
anything other than completely revolted by the carnage our president is
choosing to inflict (and will apparently soon be further escalating,
according to Marco Rubio, who is promising an increased use of force to come, and Pete Hegseth, who is salivating about delivering “death and destruction all day long”).
We
are all complicit. If you are an American, you paid your government to
murder those little girls and those Tehran cafe-goers. Money was
withdrawn from your paycheck in the form of federal income taxes. If the
attack was conducted with a Tomahawk missile (of which 400 were fired in 72 hours), that money would have been paid to the RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon). Each missile fired costs somewhere between $1.3 million and $2.2 million,
of which approximately $200,000 would be pure profit. Thus the killing
of the Iranian schoolgirls, which left their bloody backpacks and tiny
severed limbs scattered across classroom floors, transferred hundreds of
thousands of dollars from us (the American taxpayers) into RTX’s bank
accounts. It also boosted the GDP. And the stock market.
Stock price of RTX (formerly Raytheon)
It
is hard for me to write about this war, because I am so sickened every
time I contemplate the full dark reality of the country I live in. I
realize that not only are there people who will drop a bomb on a school
without losing a wink of sleep, but there are people who get rich when
we bomb schools, who have a direct financial stake in ensuring we keep
dropping as many bombs as possible. (And that’s just the weapons
companies. Others are getting rich from betting on the atrocities
on prediction markets.) The fact that many Congressional Democrats
implicitly or explicitly supported this war (whether by outright goading
Trump into it, as Chuck Schumer did, dragging their feet on opposing it, or raising meek procedural objections) further adds to my disgust. Many Democrats apparently declined to try to stop the war,
reasoning that if it achieved U.S. foreign policy goals it would be
embarrassing to have opposed it, but if it went south Trump would own it
anyway. When I open the New York Times op-ed page, and I find resident foreign policy guru Thomas Friedman cautioning against adopting any “black and white narrative” about what goes on in “a complicated, kaleidoscopic region,” I want to vomit. The moment calls for moral clarity: our country is engaged in a mass murder campaign. It must be stopped.
It is depressing to see so many debates around strategic end-goals,
congressional authorization, or the consistency of the justifications.
They take us away from the basic fact that our president, with the
blessing of his party and many members of the so-called opposition, is
gruesomely murdering children by the dozen. Every day this continues, we
are paying our government to commit some of the worst crimes humans are
capable of.
Of
course, the war is also based on a pack of lies. The Trump
administration can’t even get its story straight on why the war is being
waged and has produced no justification beyond vague invocations of National Security. (Trump says Iran was a “bad seed.”) Some Republicans won’t even admit that this is a war.
(Perhaps they might want to borrow a phrase from Vladimir Putin:
“special military operation.”) House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to
have it both ways, saying that while the Iranians “have declared war on us,” we’re “not at war right now.”
Others are tying themselves in pretzels trying to explain how this
differs from the “regime change” wars that Trump has so vocally opposed.
(Pete Hegseth:
“This is not a so-called 'regime change war.' But the regime sure did
change.”) Sometimes there are direct self-contradictions within a single
sentence, as with Tom Cotton declaring that “Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years.” This was too much for right-wing commentator Matt Walsh, who accused Republicans of “gaslighting”
for suddenly discovering that Iran has been waging a half-century of
war against the U.S. Even leading Iraq war hawk Bill Kristol is confused about the reasoning behind the war, saying there is “no coherent rationale.” (Of course, Kristol’s own favorite Middle East war was equally illegitimate, but that’s an argument for another day.)
The
idea that Iran was a threat to the United States was always laughable.
U.S. intelligence has consistently assessed that Iran is not building a
nuclear weapon. The Trump administration itself declared that it had destroyed
Iran’s nuclear program with last year’s bombings. Iran has in fact
consistently shown itself very reluctant to engage in military
confrontation with the U.S., often carefully limiting its retaliation
after U.S. provocations. To the extent that Iran did want to become a
nuclear threshold state, with at least the capacity to pursue a weapons
program if it wanted to, credible analysts believe that Iran mainly
wanted an insurance policy against potential U.S. and Israeli attacks.
North Korea has shown that the possession of nuclear weapons is enough
to make the U.S. think twice about forcible regime change, and there is a
good argument that it would have been rational for Iran to pursue
nuclear weapons for the sake of its own self-protection. As Israeli
military historian Martin Van Creveld observed,
the world “witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it
turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build
nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.” (Van Creveld is wrong that Iraq
was attacked for “no reason,” however. It was attacked for the same
reason Iran is being attacked: the establishment of U.S.-Israeli
dominance over the Middle East.) While U.S. commentators often talk as
if Iran would pursue nuclear weapons mainly in order to destroy the U.S.
or Israel (which would, of course, be suicidal given both countries’
superior nuclear forces), there’s no evidence that Iran would want
nuclear weapons for any reason beyond deterring potential external
attacks. (A fear that recent events have proven to be well-founded.)
In
fact, the entire prevailing narrative about Iran is completely
backwards. It’s the U.S. that has been a threat to Iran, not the other
way around. It was the United States and Britain that overthrew Iran’s
legitimately elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. (The New York Times was elated by the coup,
commenting that “underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have
an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their
number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.”) Since 1979, when
the Iranians ousted the dictator (the Shah) that the U.S. had helped
install and maintain in power, the U.S. has had a virtually
unremittingly hostile attitude toward Iran. This is not because of the
government’s (very real) human rights abuses, since the U.S. is happy to
support human rights abusing states that are pliant and servile (see,
e.g., Saudi Arabia and Egypt). But Iran is viewed as a threat to U.S.
dominance in the Middle East. Thus, in the 1980s, the U.S. supported
Saddam Hussein as he waged a ruthless war of aggression against Iran,
killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians including with chemical
weapons. (The U.S. concealed evidence of Hussein’s chemical weapon use from the UN,
because it wanted him to go on killing Iranians.) More recently, the
U.S. and Israel have tried to destabilize the country through
devastating cyberattacks, economy-wrecking sanctions, and assassinations. The sanctions have been explicitly aimed at harming civilians, with Mike Pompeo boasting in 2019 that “things are much worse for the Iranian people” thanks to sanctions and hoping that their suffering would lead them to overthrow their government.
Importantly,
while U.S. policymakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties
constantly affirm that “Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear
weapons,” they rarely state their implicit corollary to this
proposition, which is that Israel must be allowed to have nuclear weapons. As it happens, Iran actually agrees that it shouldn’t be allowed to have nukes, and has long supported turning the entire Middle East into an official nuclear weapons free zone,
much as Africa and Latin America have done. The problem is that the
U.S. and Israel demand a double standard, with Israel refusing to
contemplate giving up its nuclear weapons. The entire nuclear
disagreement, then, is not about whether Iran should have nuclear
weapons, but about whether Iran should hold itself to a different
standard to Israel. (Amusingly, Chuck Schumer recently accidentally
declared that “no one wants a nuclear Israel,” and had to correct himself, because he does want a nuclear Israel.)
Anyone
who values human life should treat war as an absolute last resort, to
be engaged in only once every diplomatic option has been exhausted. In
this case, it was the Trump administration that sabotaged diplomacy.
First, even though asking Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons means
imposing an unfair double standard that imperils Iran’s national
security, Iran had agreed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
to severely constrain its development of nuclear technology, and agreed
to a detailed monitoring and compliance regime. It was confirmed to be
adhering to that agreement until Donald Trump ripped it up in 2018,
subsequently criticizing Iran for failing to adhere to the agreement
that he himself had destroyed. Joe Biden declined to pursue the revival
of that agreement, even though Iran signaled that it was open to it. But
to this day, Iran has shown that it is willing to consider even highly
unfavorable agreements in order to avoid war—it has never shown any sign
of launching an unprovoked strike, only deploying military action in
response to violence by others, such as an Israeli attack on its embassy or the assassination of its allies’ leaders.
Iran has long wanted to keep a war with the U.S. from breaking out, which is why its responses to U.S. and Israeli
attacks have previously been notably measured and cautious. (This time
around, Iran reasons that unless it inflicts major damage, it will be
perceived as weak and attacked further, since previous restraint only
encouraged the U.S. and Israel to press their advantage.) Diplomatic
talks between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing, and Oman, mediating talks, saw “the
most promising diplomatic opening in years” and thought “diplomacy was
producing tangible results and that a negotiated settlement was
imminent.” The U.S. and Israel decided to sabotage diplomacy and
assassinate the Iranian head of state, possibly because they felt they
just couldn’t forgo the opportunity to
kill as many high-ranking Iranians as possible in one fell swoop. (They
killed so many Iranian government officials that Donald Trump admitted
the U.S. had killed all of the people who had been considered likely
candidates to take Khamenei’s place.) Iran professed itself baffled
as to why the U.S. attacked. “I do not know why the U.S. administration
insists on beginning a negotiation with Iran and then attacking Iran in
the middle of talks,” said the country’s foreign minister.
He told NBC: “We were able to address serious questions related to
Iran’s nuclear program. We obviously have differences, but we resolved
some of those differences, and we decided to continue in order to
resolve the rest of [the] questions.”
Because
mass civilian casualties are a predictable consequence of intense
airstrikes, to choose to unnecessarily end diplomatic engagement and
start bombing is unconscionable depravity. But it’s clear that the Trump
administration didn’t really care whether Iran was genuinely willing to
engage in diplomacy, because Trump’s position is that Iran should
simply do what we say, period. There is nothing to negotiate, because
for Trump, the only choice is whether a country is willing to comply
with U.S. demands, or whether we will have to use force to ensure their
compliance.
I haven’t even gotten to the illegality
of the war. Leaving aside the ridiculous Republican denials that this
is a war (if a country assassinated our head of state and bombed our
cities, would anyone doubt that they were waging war?), it’s plain that
all of this is unconstitutional. The Constitution vests the power to
declare war in Congress, not the president. Congress didn’t declare war,
therefore the war is illegal. Case closed. I know presidents have
stretched their powers as far as possible (Obama’s drone strikes, etc.)
but if a president has the power to wage a relentless bombing and
assassination campaign without Congressional approval, the Constitution
simply ceases to mean anything. Congress has plainly failed in its
responsibility to ensure that Trump complies with the Constitution, but
the failure of our politicians to enforce the law doesn’t change what it
says.
Of
course, it virtually goes without saying that the war violates
international law. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force (or even
the threat of force) except in response to an armed attack. Iran had not
attacked the U.S., nor was there any evidence Iran was going to attack
the U.S. Propagandists assert that Iran (and its “proxies”) have killed
“hundreds” of Americans over the years, but they decline to specify who
these Americans are or discuss the Iranians killed by the U.S. and our
own “proxies.” There’s no real point discussing international law, because Trump has made it clear he simply doesn’t care about it, saying he doesn’t need it and is unconstrained by it.
Unfortunately, other countries have been just as pathetically weak as
members of the U.S. Congress, with countries like Britain and France
issuing statements that were de facto supportive of the assassination of
a foreign head of state. (Canada issued a supportive statement and then
appeared to regret it after
noticing that letting the U.S. and Israel tear up the last vestiges of
international law might be unwise.) Germany’s chancellor has even made
the stunning statement that Iran shouldn’t be protected by international law,
waving away the obvious illegality of the attacks by saying that “now
is not the time to lecture our partners and allies.” The killing of a
head of state is a major crime, the normalization of which would open a
horrible Pandora’s box of lawless state action, and the world should be
unified in condemning U.S.-Israeli lawlessness, but even among the Arab
states there is a reluctance to antagonize the U.S.
None
of the long-term consequences of this war will be good. The Trump
administration does not appear to have any kind of strategic plan for
what will happen next in Iran. (Lindsey Graham says it’s “not [Trump’s] job”
to have a plan for what happens to the country’s government next.) We
could see the country’s collapse into civil war, Libya-style. (Obama
adviser Ben Rhodes recently admitted
that Obama’s decision to topple Libya’s dictator without a plan for the
country was a major error.) We could simply see the hard-line theocrats
be replaced by more hard-line theocrats who are more convinced than
ever that there can be no negotiating with the U.S., that the only
language this country understands is force, and that the best thing for
Iran’s safety would be for it to obtain a nuclear weapon as quickly as
possible. What we are unlikely to see is a pro-American government
emerging, and this war puts Americans everywhere in considerable danger.
(Ask yourself: if what happened to Sara Shariatmadar happened to
someone you love, would you see the country that carried out the bombing
as a liberator? Or would you want revenge?) Although plenty of Iranians
are justly celebrating the end of the Ayatollah’s rule, like the Iraqis
who celebrated in 2003, they will soon find out that the U.S. has no
interest in their well-being, and will happily watch their country slide
into civil war if this serves America’s perceived “national security”
interest.
Six Americans
have already died in addition to the 1,000 Iranians. Because this is a
war of choice, totally unnecessary and unjustifiable, their blood is on
Donald Trump’s hands, and he (as well as Congress) should be treated no
differently than we would treat someone who murdered these Americans
with their bare hands. But the costs to this country are only just
beginning. Of course, if you’re an RTX shareholder this may be a
bonanza, but the rest of us are likely to see major economic disruption,
in addition to all the resources that are put into the production of
weapons. Eisenhower famously tried to warn Americans that war spending
is an act of “theft” from the public, because it’s money not spent on
schools and hospitals, and the “opportunity cost” is therefore enormous.
But Eisenhower’s warning has largely been ignored.
Worse, as Abby Martin notes in the terrifying and important new film Earth’s Greatest Enemy,
military action has catastrophic climate consequences, since the U.S.
war machine is the world’s biggest polluter and the carbon emissions of
our vast, brutal empire are driving us toward ever-worsening climate
catastrophe. Unfortunately, that’s just fine with some in the
administration and the military—terrifying recent reporting suggests
that some evangelical Christian officers are celebrating the war as
hastening the apocalypse, claiming Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” These people would sacrifice the rest of us to the inferno to fulfill their delusional prophecies.
Of course, the war reveals that Trump and his coterie were complete frauds when they pledged to keep the U.S. out of senseless Middle East wars. Trump fooled a lot of people with this stuff, although hopefully their illusions will now be hard to maintain. (Former hardcore MAGA types like Alex Jones and Nick Fuentesare now admitting they were duped.) If there is one silver lining here, amid all of the horror, it is that because this war is deeply unpopular and Trump has no idea how to deal with its consequences,
perhaps we will finally see the MAGA movement collapse politically.
Trump’s approval rating was already in the toilet, and while I sadly
have no illusions that public opinion will be especially moved by the
bombing of a school, when the fallout in cost, lives, and global chaos
begins to come home, perhaps Americans will turn once and for good
against their warmongering president.
But
it is hard for me to think hopefully right now, as I see pictures of
the remnants of former schoolchildren, schoolchildren whose lives were
brutally extinguished with the help of my tax dollars. All I can feel is
horror and rage at the sociopaths willing to do such things, who claim
to want peace while ensuring that humanity will be consigned to a future
of endless, senseless conflict.
PHOTO: Graves being dug for the elementary school girls killed in the bombing of the Minab school. Iran Foreign Ministry.
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