It looks like simply yesterday that United States President Donald Trump was pushing a “diplomatic decision” to the Iranian nuclear concern.
Now, the US has joined Israel’s illegal assault on Iran, putting three Iranian nuclear websites on Saturday in what Trump has boasted was a “very profitable assault”.
As CNN dramatically put it, “a midsummer night time in June 2025 may come to be remembered because the second the Center East modified ceaselessly; when the worry of nuclear annihilation was lifted from Israel; when Iran’s energy was neutered and America’s soared”.
In fact, a “worry of nuclear annihilation” has nothing to do with Israel’s present strikes on Iran, which have been dutifully portrayed within the US media as concentrating on army and nuclear services however have in some way managed to slaughter tons of of civilians. The victims embrace 23-year-old poet Parnia Abbasi, killed alongside along with her household as they slept of their Tehran house constructing.
As is obvious as day to anybody not within the enterprise of defending Israeli depredations, the assaults on Iran are merely a struggle of comfort for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s killing all types of birds with one stone in his marketing campaign towards Iranian nuclear services.
Along with distracting the world from Israel’s ongoing genocide within the Gaza Strip, the place ravenous Palestinians continue to be massacred every day as they search meals and different support, Netanyahu has additionally managed to divert consideration from his personal embroilment in quite a few corruption prices at house.
Plus, the struggle on Iran is wildly fashionable amongst Israelis, which interprets into massive factors for a major minister who has confronted vital home opposition.
Trump’s preliminary insistence on diplomacy with Iran naturally obtained Netanyahu’s panties into a large bunch – however the state of affairs has now been rectified by the midsummer night time’s bombing, which, in line with the president, has “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear websites.
To make sure, Iran has lengthy occupied US crosshairs, with many an institution determine salivating on the prospect of bombing the nation to smithereens. Some have salivated extra brazenly than others, as within the case of John Bolton – a former US ambassador to the United Nations and briefly the nationwide safety adviser within the first Trump administration – who in 2015 took to the opinion pages of The New York Instances with the next advice: “To Cease Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”
That the editors of the US newspaper of file didn’t bat a watch in publishing such a blatant name for the violation of worldwide regulation is indicative of the extent to which Iran has been totally demonised in US society and media. Recall that in 2002, then-US President George W Bush appointed the nation to his notorious “axis of evil” together with Iraq and North Korea.
And but, apart from being a persistent thorn within the aspect of US imperialism, Iran’s behaviour has been quite much less apparently, um, “evil” than sure different worldwide actors – just like the US itself. For example, Iran shouldn’t be the one at the moment funding a straight-up genocide to the tune of tens of billions of {dollars}.
Neither is Iran the one which has spent the previous a number of many years bombing and in any other case antagonising people in each nook of the world – from backing right-wing state terror in Latin America to conducting mass slaughter in Vietnam.
Moreover, the only real clandestine nuclear weapons energy within the Center East shouldn’t be Iran however Israel, which has refused to signal the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has by no means allowed UN safeguards on its services.
Those that applaud the strikes on Iran citing the “oppressive” nature of the Iranian authorities would, in the meantime, do nicely to revisit the US observe file of fuelling oppression within the nation. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup d’etat towards Iran’s democratically elected chief, Mohammad Mossadegh, which paved the way in which for the prolonged reign of the torture-happy shah.
Historian Ervand Abrahamian notes in his e-book A Historical past of Trendy Iran: “Arms sellers joked that the shah devoured their manuals in a lot the identical manner as different males learn Playboy.” Certainly, the shah’s obsessive acquisition of US weaponry did a lot to allow his rule by terror, which was put to an finish by the Iranian Revolution of 1979. And the Iranian nuclear programme that Trump has now bombed? It was began by that exact same shah.
Now, arms sellers are presumably not too upset over the midsummer night time’s occasions and the final escalation of the disaster within the Center East. For his half, Netanyahu has gone out of his option to thank Trump for his “daring choice” to go after Iran “with the superior and righteous may of the USA”.
In Netanyahu’s phrases, Trump’s motion will “change historical past” – as if making the world secure for extra struggle is something new. And because the US media scramble to justify unlawful assaults on a sovereign nation, the sinister hypocrisy of two closely nuclear-armed nations endeavor to police nuclear “threats” can’t be overstated.
It’s anybody’s guess what Trump, who prides himself on spontaneous and manic behaviour, will do subsequent. However relaxation assured that, no matter occurs, the arms business received’t be going hungry any time quickly.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
