By Pat Hynes with Anna Gyorgy
Economist Jeffrey Sachs calls the Israeli and American war on Iran the beginning of World War III, driven by a “madman” and know-nothing president unrestrained by “hollowed out” politicians and surrounded by “sycophants.” Some of the most cogent early coverage of the war thus frames this conflict for what it is: a lawless, soulless, brainless killing or wounding of thousands upon thousands of Iranian children and adults and displacing millions. An enduring menace to the global economy, this unnecessary and illegal war also pushes the world toward long-term environmental disaster. You will not read or hear this brutally honest coverage in any weak-kneed mainstream media or discourse, but Informed Comment will always be honest with you.
Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which 1/5th of the world’s oil passes, causing oil markets to convulse and risking collapse of the global economy. There are two paths in this war, as Sachs sees it: “a collective global intervention, or a continued slide into a war that will reshape the century.” Where are the grown-ups in this government?
Bombing Iran for Greater Israel captures the intent of this war according to Palestinian American writer and publisher Michel Moushabeck. Two nuclear powers embarked on a war against a non-nuclear Iran, just as a peace deal between the US and Iran was “within reach,” according to Omani mediators. It is a sequel to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Although many Iranians are striving for freedom from their conservative, theocratic government, they will resist any US-Israeli domination. Ironically, the reign of the ayatollahs is a direct consequence of the US and British overthrow in 1953 of democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh for nationalizing Iranian oil.
This war has taken the spotlight off Palestine as Israel halts humanitarian aid to dying Gaza, and the West Bank is being taken over by right-wing settlers. Meanwhile, a mere 1 in 4 Americans support the US missile strikes in Iran costing American taxpayers $1 billion/day. (See cost of war below)
Israeli chauvinism is based on a lie, one the world has been convinced to believe. What does Palestinian writer Abu Alya, from Gaza and now in exile, mean by this? He explains that Israel called the land of Palestine a land without a people, a barren desert that they made bloom, when the truth is that Palestine was a land cultivated by farmers for thousands of years, a literate country of newspapers and cinemas, with a “developed civic and agricultural life.” Their tragedy was to be a “people written out of history.” And the greatest tragedy is that “the world has accepted the original lie.” This made possible the war in Iran.
Netanyahu has candidly admitted that he has wanted the war with Iran for 40 years on various pretexts, including the implausible one that Iran has been close to building a nuclear weapon. It took an American president indifferent to the chaos he is creating to give Netanyahu his chance. Though Iranians live under a stifling regime, Trump and Netanyahu will never be their saviors.
Photo by Charles Causse on Unsplash
“Today we are watching Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu conduct a war that is evil,” contends former CIA analyst, national security analyst and author, Melvin Goodman. There is no banality to be observed in this war, as Hannah Arendt observed in the trial of Holocaust organizer Eichmann. He committed evil, but he was an ordinary man with an ‘“inability to think for himself.”’ This war that Benjamin Netanjahu and Donald Trump wage exhibits no ordinariness. Nor are they exactly the salt of the earth. They are evil and powerful men waging an evil war, contends Goodman.
Iran has retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz through which 20% of the world’s oil exports pass, along with medical goods, some of which are headed for healthcare facilities in Sudan for the war’s wounded there, and up to 30 percent of the world’s fertilizer, threatening 300 million people with acute food security. Iran has also responded to the US and Israel’s bombing of Iran’s oil and gas facilities with retaliatory attacks on natural gas complexes in Qatar and the United Arab Republics. By targeting fuel depots, the US and Israeli aggressors, and now Iran in retaliation, have caused immense air pollution and release of hazardous substances which poison humans and nature and accelerate climate disaster.
Building a Greater Israel is Netanyahu’s colonialist project in Palestine, now Iran, perhaps Lebanon next, Syria and the rest of the Middle East. “What the world allowed in Gaza, it is now allowing in Iran . . . and the killing it is now allowing in Iran, it will allow again,” asserts Abu Alya.
B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, has warned that, in expanding its war for Greater Israel, the crime of genocide Israel commits in Gaza will expand to “additional areas where Palestinians live under Israeli occupation; and right-wing Israeli politicians are calling for the expulsion of Palestinians citizens of Israel.” In other words, with expanded war against Palestinians and incessant war in Iran and killings in Lebanon and who knows what next Middle Eastern country, the victims of Israel and the US face the prospect of normalized atrocity, while the world stands by.
Where is the United Nations?
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https://iran-cost-ticker.com/ US War Costs in Iran
Pat Hynes with Anna Gyorgy. They are members of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice Board
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