Last week’s bombing of Iran by Israel and the United States marks yet another escalation as they work in tandem to batter the Middle East into submission. It is an act of naked aggression that follows 20 months of ongoing genocide in Gaza, along with repeated attacks on Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. It is not the case that Israel is “out of the control” of the United States or that the “tail is wagging the dog” as it is sometimes put. Rather, the two are collaborating to impose the will of Western imperialism and the Zionist settler colonial project on the Middle East.
There are echoes of Iraq in 2003 in the manner in which the United States has talked up the danger of non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons as justification for the bombing. When in 2003 before it invaded Iraq, the US establishment launched a major campaign to manufacture consent for the war. This time the pretext is shallow and the true intentions are fully transparent. As recently as the end of March, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence said: “The Intelligence Community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003.” A matter of months later, this is being ignored and the same old lies trotted out again.
As with Iraq and Afghanistan, we may once again hear faux concern for democracy or the plight of women in Iran to justify the bombing. Last week Senator Ted Cruz described the Iranian regime as “religious fanatics” in an interview with Tucker Carlson – the same interview in which he quoted the Bible to justify the destruction of Iran on the basis that it would “honour the people of Israel”. Far fewer people today will fall for this cynicism after the experience of the past two decades. Western imperialism will do nothing for those who have opposed the authoritarianism of the Iranian regime. In fact, it will make it more difficult for those who took part in the Women, Life, Freedom movement to organise when bombs are falling and when the state will increase its repression at home, painting all those who oppose it as agents of the West.
The context for Israel’s initial escalation against Iran was one when for the first time, major EU leaders had begun to distance themselves from the genocide in Gaza and mention sanctions for the first time. The response of European leaders to Israel’s attacks has been to park this talk and row in behind Israel once again. Focusing on Iran’s military response – the firing of a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel – the German Foreign Office restated Israel’s right to defend itself. Iran apparently does not, even though Israel’s strikes were pre-emptive and against all rules of international law. French President Emmanuel Macron did likewise and said that Iran should face international isolation. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for diplomacy and said that “Now is the moment for Iran to engage in a diplomatic solution”, before going on to say that “Iran must never acquire a nuclear bomb.” As has been the case for the past 20 months of genocide, and for decades before that, Western leaders are defending the indefensible: Israel’s settler colonialism, murder and repression of Palestinians, and ultimately its role, not just as a watchdog for Western imperialism in the Middle East, but as its attack dog.
The response of the Irish government has been similarly disgraceful. Taoiseach Mícheál Martin failed to condemn the Israeli attacks, called for “de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy” and echoed the call for Iran to “disavow the development of nuclear weapons”. Once again, he and his government are standing with US imperialism as it continues to support genocide in Gaza and war crimes in the Middle East. The continued use of Shannon Airport by the US military, the weapons that are allowed to pass through Irish airspace and the sanctioning of Israeli war bonds mean that the Irish State is already complicit in genocide. Ireland now risks being further implicated in a bloody war against Iran.
No to war with Iran. As the Iranian author Sahar Delijani said recently: “We’ve seen it happen in Iraq. We’ve seen it happen Afghanistan. I mean, how many more examples do we need to understand that wars don’t bring, also don’t bring democracy, they don’t bring freedom, they don’t bring equality.”
The people of entire region should be let decide their own fate, free from Western intervention and Israeli warmongering.
Now more than ever, as Israel’s genocide in Gaza escalates to Iran, and US involvement raising the spectre of another ‘forever’ war in the Middle East, we need to mobilise a broad anti-war movement. This movement can bring together, internationally and locally, the massive movement for Palestine with all those who are against war and create a potent social force which can bring an end to the ‘forever’ war agenda of western imperialism.
