The Israeli actions also brought about an end to what appeared to be a promising way to resolve the nuclear issue through a US-Iran dialogue
It is with reckless abandon that one man who is clinging to the Prime Minister’s office by fighting wars has opened a new front in attacking Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu sees this as means to stop what Israel considers its biggest existential threat — a nuclear-armed Iran. The theocratic leaders of Iran may have spoken of nuclear bombs as a way of annihilating the Jewish state, but Iran may be some way from making the bomb and which process the Israelis may have hastened now with their attack.
Any war to stop Iran’s nuclear proliferation is an illegal and excessively ambitious attempt to forestall that nation’s programme. The Israeli actions also brought about an end to what appeared to be a promising way to resolve the nuclear issue through a US-Iran dialogue. With that avenue shutting, it needs no guessing that however weak Iran may have seemed in all the time that Israel has attacked it with bombs, missiles and drones, it is still capable of proceeding with its enrichment plans.
The Israeli attack and Iranian counterattack, which led to loss of life in Iran, including that of scientists running the nuclear programme as well as those who died in Israel when some of Iran’s missiles got through the air defence shield, represent a dramatic escalation. International attention should focus on who can best stop Netanyahu now and that man is not Donald Trump. The US President, after having appeared to cheer Israel on, still boasts he can bring about a deal with Iran in a day but what he says about his magical capacity feels like so much hot air.
The blame for starting Israel’s surprise air strikes of Friday targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure at key facilities in Natanz and Isfahan that shattered the relative peace after Iran’s proxy Hezbollah had gone quiet in Lebanon lies squarely with Netanyahu whose party’s coalition was set to lose its majority in Parliament. And to keep his government safe he may have had to keep starting wars, this time by dragging Iran into a conflict that could have grave implications for the embattled Middle East region.
The IAEA reporting Iran on not fulfilling conditions to keep its nuclear programme from progressing away from peaceful purposes and into harmful nuclear proliferation may have been the cue on which Israel acted, after keeping the US President in the loop. The gross violation of international laws could not have been starker than in Israeli action, which may have been anticipated for months but which still shocked a world that believes in a rules-based order.
Whatever justification the Israelis may have had in pounding Gaza soon after the October 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas, their subsequent retaliatory actions were seen to be disproportionate with the bombing of the Gaza Strip to smithereens and starving all its population even as its destruction continues into a third year. There is no justification whatsoever for aiming at Iran’s nuclear and oil and gas and energy infra just as political and diplomatic means were being pursued by Trump’s United States.
Trump has often bandied his first term record of having started no new wars. It would be catastrophic if the US mulls entering directly this Middle East muddle created by Hamas, Israel and Iranian proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Even his passive support to Netanyahu is guaranteed to escalate the regional war. Again, who will rein in Netanyahu remains the million-dollar question.
Benjamin Netanyahu, israel-iran conflict,
