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Aghaaz sey waqif ho, anjaam bhi dekho gey? — Faiz
YES, Faiz sahib, we are indeed familiar with the outset and can’t avoid the outcome, whatever it may be and however long it might take before all the consequences become apparent.
There are several ways of looking at Israel’s unprovoked military assault against Iran on Friday the 13th. The allegation that the latter was on the verge of acquiring nuclear military capability is unverified. Iran has consistently claimed that its uranium refinement is intended solely for civilian purposes, believe it or not. However, achieving critical mass is something Israel successfully accomplished many decades ago, with Western connivance.
On what moral basis can it then challenge the right of any other regional power to acquire the same capability, especially after consistently rejecting aspirations for a nuclear-free region? And why do Western and allied nations that claim to be mortified by the prospect of a nuclear Iran rarely mutter a word about nuclear Israel — let alone the fact that the successful US-UK conspiracy to depose the Mosaddegh government in 1953 and reinstate the Shah paved the way for the Islamist takeover in 1979?
As for Benjamin Netanyahu’s aspiration for regime change, it’s his own nation that requires it. Donald Trump reportedly put the kibosh on assassinating Iran’s supreme leader, albeit only because Tehran had not so far attacked any US military assets within reach. But the early 20th-century echoes of reshaping the Middle East still resound a century later. The creation of a colonial entity called Israel was part of the project.
Nothing positive can emerge from Israeli belligerence.
The Netanyahu regime has been itching to attack Iran for decades, confident that the likes of Jordan and Egypt will kowtow to Israel. Previous US administrations served as a barrier, and the multilateral nuclear deal negotiated under Barack Obama might have been a breakthrough, but the Zionists saw it as a setback, and persuaded Trump to kill it during his first presidency. Confident in his ignorance, Trump complied, but at the same time aspired to a ‘better’ deal being negotiated in Oman until Iran was struck.
Trump has suggested, inter alia, that Israel’s belligerence might persuade Iran to accept even the most ridiculous US proposals based on a survival instinct. Iran, meanwhile, has indicated that it is well aware of American connivance in the Israeli aggression. In the hours before the assault, pizza outlets near the Pentagon realised that a spike in orders meant something was up; besides, a gay bar in the vicinity had “abnormally low traffic for a Thursday night”.
Trump has claimed both that the US has nothing to do with the Israeli aggression, and that it was well aware of it in advance. Contradictory pronouncements come naturally to him. In his first Truth Social post on the matter, the US president, fresh from his 79th birthday and a damp squib of a military parade, declared that his underlings had informed Iran that the US “makes the best and the most lethal military equipment in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come”.
Beyond that declaration, there can be little point in wondering about the degree to which America is complicit in the war against Iran, especially after Trump, refusing to sign on to a G7 statement seeking a de-escalation, left the group’s conference in Canada, and subsequently claimed he was looking not for a ceasefire but “a real end”, whatever that means. He is obviously the only leader who, if he wanted, could immediately halt the war. It might not automatically win him the Nobel Prize he aspires to, but it might help.
Netanyahu found it convenient to lash out against Iran after subduing Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. The aggression against Iran provided a useful distraction not only from the genocide in Gaza, but also from his political and judicial woes in Israeli courts and the Knesset. Above all, it drew away attention from the shadowy US-Israeli ‘aid’ hubs set up in Gaza with the connivance of terrorist militias associated with the militant Islamic State.
This fascist and habitually terrorist government is the entity that not just the US but the rest of the West continues to protect. The Iranian regime is deplorable in multiple ways, but lacks powerful defenders. Many Iranians no doubt wish that the theocracy could be transcended, but not at the behest of Israel or it chief sponsor. Trump cannot pretend that his regime is not directly complicit in the war that is killing hundreds of Iranians — mostly civilians — and a relatively smaller number of Israelis.
Notwithstanding their atrocious regime, Iranians do not deserve the abiding woes that the West has inflicted on Iraq, Libya or Syria, but it remains to be seen whether they can avoid that appalling fate.
Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2025
