Israel has been itching for years to attack Iran, citing its nuclear facilities as an existential threat.
On Friday the 13th, Israel made good on its threats, plunging the Middle East into yet another war that could not conceivably produce any positive consequences.
The United States, which has been pursuing negotiations with Iran for a second nuclear deal, has dissociated itself from Iran’s “unilateral” military action. Donald Trump had indicated in recent weeks and months that he wished to avoid a war and would prefer an American-dictated agreement, while also warning of a “massive conflict”. Until Thursday, that might have been construed as a pressure tactic against Teheran. Now that massive conflict has been initiated by the United States’ chief Middle Eastern ally, and given the extent of Israel’s dependence on US largesse, only a fool would take seriously Washington’s denials of involvement.
On the eve of Operation Rising Lion, as Israel has dubbed its latest bout of aggression, it was reported that US and European officials were aware of Israeli intentions, the US withdrew the families of diplomatic staff from Iraq, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth indicated that Iran was on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons capability. Conveniently, the International Atomic Energy Agency also found that Iran had failed to meet its non-proliferation obligations – under an agreement that, mind you, Trump withdrew from in his first term.
The US and Europe’s pretense that they couldn’t have done anything to prevent Israel’s supposedly pre-emptive strikes against Iranian sites echoes their hand-wringing in relation to the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Imposing sanctions against Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the most blatantly fascistic ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, is little more than a cop-out from Western nations that, in so many other ways, continue to facilitate Israel’s relentless crimes against humanity.
Just as opponents of the genocide are defamed as antisemitic or as fans of Hamas, critics of the assault against Iran are likely to be labelled as supporters of the ayatollahs. Occasionally, the regime in Teheran is indefensible in any number of respects. Ultimately, though, it cannot be transcended by anything other than mass resistance from within Iran, and the risk is that aggression from without will only serve to strengthen it. In neighboring Pakistan, for instance, last month’s unexpectedly strident response to India’s ill-conceived attacks has served only to enhance the military’s preponderance in the political sphere.
Despite its substantial military prowess, it is unlikely Iran will be quite as successful as Pakistan in its retaliation against Israel, which has pre-emptively declared an emergency. Iran has acknowledged the assassination of Revolutionary Guard chief Hossein Salami, and other military leaders as well as nuclear scientists have been assassinated. These are the actions of a terrorist state that has plenty of form in this regard. Iran also claims that many civilians, including children, have been murdered in the Israeli strikes. Western news agencies describe such claims as unverified, but they are hardly implausible.
Iran initially responded on Friday by dispatching 100 or so drones towards Israel. They are unlikely to do much harm, given the protection Israel is more or less guaranteed by the US and other Western allies as well as its Arab neighbors. But hostilities starting from Friday portend a Middle Eastern disaster that may well eclipse the catastrophe unleashed by the George W. Bush administration’s gratuitous invasion of Iraq 22 years ago. The project of remaking the Middle East — which could be traced at least as far back as the early 20th century, but was reinvigorated a century later — continues apace. And the shape of things to come remains uncertain as well as potentially horrifying in terms reminiscent of Europe in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Back in the 1980s, the Gulf states — like the US — were broadly supportive of Saddam Hussein’s reckless endeavors against the then new Islamic Republic of Iran, until the Iraqi tyrant turned against them, invaded Kuwait, and threatened Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This time, the Saudis and Emiratis might resent the fresh instability that Israel brings to their neighborhood – not least because of the risk that Iran might lash out against US military installations closer to home if it fails to make any direct headway against Israel.
The sheer hypocrisy of Israel, nuclear-armed for around half a century (with Western connivance, of course), seeking to dampen the nuclear ambitions of another Middle Eastern nation hardly needs to be pointed out. The international drive against nuclear proliferation is commendable only if it is not selective. Nearly 80 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear armament is a travesty – not just for India, Pakistan, North Korea, but also for the US, Russia, China, France, the UK and Israel.
Apart from pursuing more religiously than ever before the long-term project of eliminating gentiles from Eretz Israel, the “Zionist state” has lately also struck at will at Lebanon and Syria, with the aim — more or less successful — of eliminating all Iranian influence in those neighboring states. It has nothing to fear from Jordan or Egypt. The Houthis in Yemen were always more of a threat to shipping than to Israel. Iran remains the only barrier to the almost total hegemony of a largely European colonial-settler state across the Middle East.
Only time will tell whether it might succeed in the short run. In the longer term, a monumental backlash will inevitably ensue. For the time being, though, the unprovoked war with Iran provides, like many of Trump’s daily antics, a useful distraction from a genocide that repels anyone who can be deemed human, but that seems to exclude most Western governments – and far too many Israelis.
Mahir Ali has worked as a journalist in Pakistan, the UAE and Australia across four decades.
This is a republication from PEARLS & IRRITATIONS website at:
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/06/israels-attack-on-iran-nothing-good-will-come-of-it/
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
