Israel's criminal attack on Iran is based on lies

But the Western media offers yet more cover for yet another obscene crime

A decade ago, an article in The Intercept noted that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned of an imminent Iranian nuclear bomb in 1992, 1995, 2002, 2009 and 2012. Finally, he has what he always craved: an unrestrained right-wing lunatic in the White House to enable an attack on Iran with this bogus pretext.

Just as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq could “deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so”, or so we were told, this time we are supposed to believe that this time Iran really is imminently on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.

Except this time, the evidence base is even weaker. In the run-up to the Iraq catastrophe, the so-called “intelligence community” played a pivotal role. This time, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, testified three months ago that the US intelligence assessment is that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”

As the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency this week said: “We did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon”.

Israel, of course, does possess nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, it is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Note that the German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, demands that Iran resumes talks over its nuclear programme and offers a commitment “not to pursue nuclear weapons capabilities.” Let’s call Germany’s behaviour what it is - deranged. Iran was at the negotiating table, with progress reportedly being made, and it had repeatedly offered commitments not to pursue nuclear weapons capabilities. Then Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, immediately targeting the chief Iranian negotiator, leaving him critically wounded.

As Donald Trump paves the way for direct US entry into the war on Iran it is worth taking a moment to absorb our descent into dystopia. Let’s not pretend there was a golden age behind us - this was always a world defined by injustice - but goodness me, our current decline is precipitous.

You will have read and watched dystopian fiction and wondered how such a nightmarish future could come into being, and now here we are, with a far-right authoritarian running the world’s only superpower, allied to a genocidal state, posting on the internet an order to the Iranian people: “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran”, in some sort of digital resurrection of the Mongol invasion.

A promise to unleash mass destruction on one of the world’s major cities, with a population of 10 million, with anyone remaining - however old, however young, however infirm, however ill, however vulnerable - judged a legitimate target in total defiance of any international laws and norms.

As justification he declares - “Simply stated, Iran can not have a nuclear weapon. I said it over and over again!” Here is this baseless pretext, mobilised in support of grave war crimes.

Now some of the commentary has focused on how this is somehow for the good of the people of Iran, that this could liberate them. Well, let’s just read this candid tweet from Israel Katz, the defence minister of Israel, who said the following:

The arrogant dictator from Tehran has become a cowardly murderer who fires targeted shots at the civilian home front in Israel to deter the IDF from continuing the attack that is collapsing its capabilities.

The residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon.

There is no room for ambiguity here whatsoever. The Israeli defence minister has declared that the civilians of Iran’s capital will be killed and maimed by the Israeli military. That is obviously in practice what that means. And that is an open confession of war crimes. Once again, as in Gaza, and indeed in Lebanon, the Israeli state is not even trying to disguise its criminal intentions.

If that isn’t enough for you, there is more. He also said: “The fate of Tehran will be like the fate of Beirut.”

Israel of course has inflicted massive destruction in Beirut and slaughtered huge numbers of civilians in multiple attacks.

Now what this refers to is something called the Dahiya Doctrine, named after an area in the southern suburbs of Beirut where the Hezbollah militia was particularly powerful.

Here was how Paul Rogers, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies, summarised the doctrine in 2023:

This was the deliberate application of “disproportionate force”, such as the destruction of an entire village, if deemed to be the source of rocket fire. One graphic description of the result was that “around a thousand Lebanese civilians were killed, a third of them children. Towns and villages were reduced to rubble; bridges, sewage treatment plants, port facilities and electric power plants were crippled or destroyed.

In other words, you deliberately inflict large scale destruction of civilian infrastructure, with the intention of hurting civilians as an intentional strategy, in an attempt to turn them against the militia or administration. Using violence against civilians in order to achieve political ends. We have a name for this in the English language. It is called terrorism. Yet the term ‘terrorism’ is politicised so that it is only applied to militants or regimes deemed hostile to Western interests, so that Western violence, even though it’s much, much more lethal and destructive, is deemed legitimate and moral.

Katz later “walked back”, in the words of Western media outlets, his comments, declaring:

There is no intention to physically harm the residents of Tehran as the murderous dictator does against the residents of Israel.

The residents of Tehran will be forced to pay the price of dictatorship and evacuate their homes from areas where it will be necessary to attack regime targets and security infrastructure in Tehran.

Well, as we know from precedent and evidence, Katz’s first comments represented the authentic position of Israel, even if his superiors decided that such honesty was inconvenient for current propaganda purposes.

In such a context, the declaration by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that "Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us" is deeply revealing. This is Germany officially supporting Israel’s war of aggression, an illegal war, as Germany continues its long and gruesome history of hideous violence.

Nonetheless, this is a confession - Israel’s crimes are indeed the crimes of the West. It is Western states who must be held accountable.

Which brings us to Israeli-British propagandist Eylon Levy, who was spokesperson for Benjamin Netanyahu before he was sacked. He posts a picture of the Middle East, highlighting the much smaller Israel versus the much bigger Iran, posting ‘Since 1967, there has never been a clearer example of David v. Goliath.’

Leave aside that Iran was an ally of Israel between 1967 and 1979: Israel is a nuclear armed power which has the total support of the United States, the world’s only superpower, as well as other Western states.

This literally criminal assault is founded on lies. Israel is the nuclear-armed state: which has committed genocide in Gaza, as well as a relentless pogrom in the illegally occupied and colonised West Bank, which it has de facto annexed. It has razed much of southern Lebanon to the ground, and repeatedly violates the ceasefire there. It has invaded and occupied Syria, repeatedly launching missile strikes against its neighbour, which barely merits coverage in the Western media. Its leaders openly talk about forging a Greater Israel which includes seizing parts of Lebanon and Syria. No country in the Middle East is as committed to aggressive militaristic expansionism.

Meanwhile, Israel is only escalating its genocide in Gaza. However limited and however late, Israel was coming under pressure over its historic crime. Its illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran has once more rallied its Western allies behind it. Massacres of starving Palestinians desperately looking for food have escalated - and become entirely normalised.

Yet the vast majority of Western media outlets have responded by becoming even more silent about Gaza - while blindly repeating the deceitful mantras underpinning the attack on Iran. We must keep the receipts for the coming reckoning.