Israel’s attack on Iran: The Violent New World Being Born Is Going To Horrify You
Twenty years ago, the US warned prematurely of the ‘birth pangs’ of a new Middle East. Now they have arrived in full force – and they will not end in Iran
Middle East Eye – 19 June 2025
Western politicians and media are tying themselves up in knots trying to spin the impossible: presenting Israel’s unmistakable war of aggression against Iran as some kind of “defensive” move.
This time there was no rationalising pretext, as there was for Israel to inflict a genocide in Gaza following Hamas’ one-day attack on 7 October 2023.
There was not a serious attempt beforehand to concoct a bogus doomsday scenario – as there was in the months leading up to the US and UK’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Then we were lied to about Baghdad having “weapons of mass destruction” that could be launched at Europe in 45 minutes.
Rather, Iran was deep in negotiations with the United States on its nuclear enrichment programme when Israel launched its unprovoked attack last Friday.
The West has happily regurgitated claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel was forced to act because Iran was on the cusp of producing a nuclear bomb – an entirely evidence-free claim he has been making since 1992.
None of his dire warnings has ever been borne out by events.
In fact, Israel struck Iran shortly after President Donald Trump had expressed hope of reaching a nuclear agreement with Tehran, and two days before the two countries’ negotiators were due to meet again.
In late March Trump’s head of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had expressly statedas part of the US intelligence community’s annual assessment: “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khameini has not authorised a nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003.”
This week four sources said to be familiar with that assessment told CNN that Iran was not trying to build a bomb but, if it changed tack, it would be “up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one [a nuclear warhead] to a target of its choosing”.
Nonetheless, by Tuesday this week Trump appeared to be readying to join Israel’s attack. He publicly rebuked his own intelligence chief’s verdict, sent US warplanes to the Middle East via the UK and Spain, demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender”, and made barely veiled threats to kill Khameini.
‘Samson option’
Israel’s engineering of a pretext to attack Iran – defined by the Nuremberg tribunal in 1945 as the “supreme international crime” – has been many years in the making.
The current talks between the US and Iran were only needed because, under intense Israeli pressure during his first term as president, Trump tore up an existing agreement with Tehran.
That deal, negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, had been intended to quieten Israel’s relentless calls for a strike on Iran. It tightly limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium to far below the level where it could “break out” from its civilian energy programme to build a bomb.
Israel, by contrast, has been allowed to maintain a nuclear arsenal of at least 100 warheads, while refusing – unlike Iran – to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and – again unlike Iran – denying access to monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The West’s collusion in the pretence that Israel’s nuclear weapons are secret – a policy formally known in Israel as “ambiguity” – has been necessary only because the US is not allowed to provide military aid to a state with undeclared nuclear weapons.
Israel is by far the largest recipient of such aid.
No one – apart from incorrigible racists – believes Iran would take the suicidal step of firing a nuclear missile at Israel, even if it had one. That is not the real grounds for Israeli or US concern.
Rather, the double standards are enforced to keep Israel as the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East so that it can project unrestrained military power across an oil-rich region the West is determined to control.
Israel’s bomb has left it untouchable and unaccountable, and ready to intimidate its neighbours with the “Samson option” – the threat that Israel will use its nuclear arsenal rather than risk an existential threat.
Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, appeared to imply just such a scenario against Iran this week in a reported comment: “There will be other difficult days ahead, but always remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
Bear in mind that Israeli governments count as “existential” any threat to Israel’s current status as a settler-colonial state, one occupying and forcibly uprooting the Palestinian people from their homeland.
Israel’s nuclear weapons ensure it can do as it pleases in the region – including commit genocide in Gaza – without significant fear of reprisals.
War propaganda
The claim that Israel is “defending itself” in attacking Iran – promoted by France, Germany, Britain, the European Union, the G7 and the US – should be understood as a further assault on the foundational principle
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