Iranian mourners attend the funeral of Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who commands Basij forces, in Tehran on Wednesday. AFP
The unprovoked and illegal war that the United States and Israel are unleashing on Iran is escalating, drawing a stern Iranian response and turning the conflict into a battle of endurance.
The war launched by US President Donald Trump, at the behest of his alleged handler and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is unpopular not only in the United States but also across the world. A CNN report this week said US popularity worldwide had plunged by 79 per cent after the war.
Even though analysts attached to the Pentagon urge him to pursue a ceasefire and warn of costly repercussions, Trump is unable to agree with them for four main reasons.
The first is his ego, which produces endless arrogant rhetoric and highly insensitive remarks. In a recent statement, he even threatened to escalate the war by attacking Iran’s oil terminals on Kharg Island “just for fun”. War may be entertainment for him, but for the rest of the world—especially the poor—it is a matter of life and death. In recorded history, there is no reference to a national leader continuing a war he initiated purely for fun. This is a display of psychopathic behaviour. The war has driven fuel prices beyond what most developing countries can endure with their meagre foreign reserves. The fertiliser shortage, combined with rising oil prices, has triggered food insecurity, disproportionately affecting the world’s poor.
The second reason is Trump’s inability to rein in Netanyahu. Social media is overwhelmed with speculation about Netanyahu’s death in an Iranian missile attack, yet he remains in no mood to cease fire until Israel achieves its objectives: regime change and the complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
Netanyahu appears to be having a hold on Trump, perhaps due to kompromat material in his possession. Trump’s top counterterrorism advisor Joe Kent resigned on Tuesday, pointing out that Trump joined the war solely to please Israel, while Iran posed no threat to the US.
Iran is being attacked not because of its nuclear programme or missiles, but because it is the only Middle Eastern nation with the courage to challenge Israel’s hegemony.
Netanyahu wants to create a new Iran—like one of the Gulf states, subservient to Israel and the West, with no courage to resist even if Israel commits genocide against Palestinians or destroys Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, to build the Third Temple that would herald the Jewish Mashiach (messiah). Why mention Al Aqsa? Even if Makkah and Madina were occupied, these nations would not lift a stone to fight Israel.
A few Arab and Islamic nations gathered on Wednesday in Riyadh to condemn Iran for attacks on Gulf nations. Yet such urgency, gallantry, and rhetoric were nowhere to be seen when Israel was massacring Palestinians in Gaza for two long years in one of the darkest horrors in world history.
Netanyahu has even backstabbed Trump by assassinating Iran’s internationally respected security advisor, Ali Larijani—considered the last Iranian leader with whom the Trump administration could negotiate an end to the war. Though Trump is displeased, he finds himself in the unenviable position of being unable to reprimand Netanyahu.
The third reason is Trump’s subservience to powerful Israeli and white evangelical lobbies that interpret the war in biblical terms. Given his association with paedophile and Mossad operative Jeffrey Epstein and his immoral business practices, Trump cannot credibly claim to be religious or moral. Yet, as any Machiavellian ruler would do, he allowed controversial evangelical leaders—such as pro-Zionist pastor John Hagee and priestess Paula White—to surround him and perform exorcism-like rituals in the White House last week. These hijackers of Christianity flatter Trump, calling him a president appointed by God himself.
The fourth reason is the arms industry, which President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address, cautioning that the arms lobby might distort national priorities, threaten democratic freedoms, and lead to excessive military spending. As the world’s poor are strangled by Trump’s and Netanyahu’s military adventurism, America’s merchants of death rake in filthy profits.
The US and Israel are not fit to be in the United Nations. One of the main objectives of the UN is to prevent wars and resolve disputes by peaceful means. The UN Charter is the chain that holds back the beast in nations. But drunk with power, the US and Israel broke free of the chain to display their beastly behaviour in international relations.
Iran, meanwhile, is in no mood to end the war without solid assurances that guarantee peace and freedom to pursue economic policies and defence capabilities without unjustified sanctions. Ratcheting up its strategies, Iran has tightened its grip on the vital Strait of Hormuz. Years before the war broke out, Iran warned that if it were prevented from selling oil and gas, it would ensure no country in the region sold oil and gas. At that time, few took this warning seriously. Today, however, Iran has proved itself the dominant power in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran is willing to endure more hits, reflecting the DNA of its strategic culture, rooted in Quranic commands; its 6000-year history; and the martyrdoms of its revered Imams—beginning with Imam Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, and Imams Hasan and Husain, his grandsons.
Even if NATO and the Gulf nations join the war and the US puts boots on the ground, Iran will not surrender. It will continue to inflict economic pain on global markets and strike US, Israeli, and Gulf targets until a fair resolution to the conflict is reached, or for as long as it can endure. Both sides believe escalation is the only way to end the war.
As the war spreads into Lebanon, Iraq and the Gulf countries, the US dropped 5,000‑pound bombs on Wednesday on the Iranian coastline near the Strait of Hormuz while Israel set ablaze Iran’s South Pars gas field—the country’s largest. Unyielding to such pressure, Iran hit back by attacking Gulf energy fields, prompting Trump to warn of further strikes on Iran’s energy facilities.
The outcome of this tit-for-tat energy war is further escalation in oil price—perhaps all the way to $200 a barrel. It was $116 yesterday and rising. The wealthy may cushion the shock, but poor developing nations will be devastated.
Some blame Iran for attacking the Gulf nations and dragging them into the war. Iran’s actions are not incongruent with international law. Countries hosting US bases cannot claim neutrality. None of the Gulf states showed the gumption Spain did when it told the US not to use its bases.
They allow the US to use their airspace to bomb Iran.
Most Arab countries that host US bases allowed the US to use them to spy on Iran and intercept Iranian missiles in April 2024 and June last year. These bases were once again brought into action when the war broke out on February 28. According to UN General Assembly Resolution 3314, aggression is also defined as “the action of a state in allowing its territory, which it has placed at the disposal of another state, to be used by that other state for perpetrating an act of aggression against a third state.”
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