Netanyahu’s bombardment of Iran has, once again, brought the merry men of the west back on side.
Just last month, Starmer and Co sought to distance themselves in words from Israel’s genocidal slaughter. Of course, this was political smoke and mirrors.
But now, as Israel threatens to set the whole region on fire, the band of brothers are back with a bang. The leaders of the G7 are back to the old, well-rehearsed script: denouncing Iran as “the principal source of regional instability and terror.” Starmer has, right on cue, spoken up for Israel’s right to ‘defend itself’ from a country it has just attacked.
Unprovoked Israeli aggression against Iran was the necessary ploy to further entangle US imperialism, and its British lackeys. It is Netanyahu’s attempt at a forever war in the region.
Netanyahu’s own political survival is staked on this gamble. Expanding Israel’s war on multiple fronts is his get-out-of-jail-free card. Quite literally.
Righteous victim
The first task of Communists is to say what is. Israel, since its very inception, has played the role of the righteous victim. It has for decades raised the spectre of an ‘existential threat’ posed by hostile neighbours. It has continually lent on the danger of the Palestinian ‘enemy within’ to justify their erasure.
Every flare-up with Iran, every land grab in the West Bank, every bombing spree in Gaza, has always been to the same end: the upbuilding of a ‘Greater Israel’, to be the unrivalled imperialist power in the Middle East.
In the last twenty months, Israel’s messaging has been clear and consistent: it is through war that we seek peace on our terms.
Iran has in fact shown tremendous restraint in the face of Israel’s strikes and assassinations on its own soil. In a desperate gambit to keep Israel on its warpath, Netanyahu and his gang have now struck again.
As Iran now justifiably retaliates, Israel points to the missile strikes over Haifa, and cries foul that it is under siege. By its own warped, twisted logic, it is looking after the ‘safety’ and ‘security’ of its citizens… by putting a target on all major Israeli cities through its bombing of Iran, Syria, and Yemen.
The most disgraceful part is that this is all parroted back, uncritically, by the British imperialists and the so-called ‘free’ press.
Nuclear threat?
The whole ‘discussion’ in Britain has been around the ‘imminent threat’ of Iran developing its nuclear programme. We have been here before. Back before the illegal invasion of Iraq, the frenzy stirred in the mainstream media was precisely along these lines.
We are not fooled. The prospect of an Iranian Doomsday has permeated Israeli politics for as long as Netanyahu’s career. Back in 1992, Netanyahu warned the Israeli Knesset that Iran was “three to five years” away from going nuclear. This has been a bread-and-butter talking point for over thirty years.
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The entire coverage of the Iran-Israel war has aimed to invert reality; to turn the facts on the ground on their head.
It is not Iran that poses a nuclear threat to anyone, it is Israel. Lest we forget that an Israeli minister threatened nuclear annihilation of Gaza as a possible path forward after October 7. Netanyahu personally issued a “nuclear” threat to Iran at the UN in 2023, which his office later scrambled to retract.
It is not Iran that refuses to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors into its country, it is Israel. Israel has broken a raft of UN resolutions in developing its not-so-secret nuclear arsenal, with the aid of western imperialism.
The bitter irony is, if the Iranian regime needed a reason to develop its own nuclear capacities, it can be found in the death camp known as the Gaza Strip – a warning of what the brutal Zionist regime is capable of.
Down with the warmongers!
British imperialism contributes to the atmosphere of impunity that Netanyahu operates within. Whenever Israel bombs Iran, threats from Starmer and Lammy are squarely aimed at Tehran. Starmer has commented that he has not ruled out military intervention to support Israel (!), and has already moved military assets to the Middle East.
It is, once again, one rule for Israel, and another for the rest. Such is the substance of their hypocritical ‘friends-based’ order.
This is another striking indication that we cannot trust a word that comes out of the mouths of the warmongers in Westminster. We cannot appeal to their conscience, or hope to move them by making pleas for peace.
Facts are stubborn things. British imperialism continues to arm and spy for the Zionist state, and even trains Israeli military personnel. Starmer and Lammy are not just complicit, they are active participants in the death and destruction stalking the Middle East.
Until we organise and overthrow the warmongers, the crimes of British imperialism will continue to mount.
That is why it is the duty of Communists to agitate against our rulers’ lies, strip the halo from above their heads, expose their double standards and doublespeak, and rally those behind the cause to end all wars: the fight for international socialism.
That’s why we say:
- Hands off Iran! Hands off Gaza! Hands off the whole Middle East!
- Down with the Israeli occupation!
- Down with the Westminster warmongers!
- For a global intifada against capitalism and imperialism!
- For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!
