The excuse then was the alleged presence of chemical weapons in Iraq, the so-called weapons of mass destruction, which was found to be a big hoax invoked only as a sinister plank to justify a totally unjust invasion. The alibi today is Iran's alleged nuclear weapons capability. Israel has been repeating this allegation for last thirty years, always saying that Iran is just 'a few months away' from the bomb. It does not matter that Iran has been a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and continued to comply with international inspection. That Trump's own intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testified in March denying that Iran was developing nukes before being rebuked by Trump and changing her statement. That even as recently as 19 June the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) clarified that it had no proof of any systematic attempt by Iran to build nuclear weapons.
Clearly facts do not matter for the US-Israel axis. The Trump-Netanyahu duo is driven by the single-minded drive to secure complete strategic and resource control over West Asia. Three decades ago, in the formative years of the post-Soviet world order, the US and Israel adopted a strategy to destabilise West Asia. Netanyahu had begun the first spell of his long but interrupted reign as Israel's Prime Minister in 1996 with the neoconservative blueprint known as the "Clean Break" report. From Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya and Syria, the strategy has been executed through the systematic application of terror, invasion, war, destruction, regime change and even breaking up of countries. Iran stands out as the last frontier in West Asia in the face of this sinister strategy of occupation, plunder and control. Hence the desperation of the Trump-Netanyahu combine to wage the ongoing war on Iran.
The US quest for a puppet regime in Iran - in the name of democracy, or to use the latest Trump boast, of 'making Iran great again' - is not new. It has a long history. In 1952-53, the CIA had engineered a coup in Iran to oust the elected popular National Front government led by Mohammad Mosaddegh and scuttle Iran's oil nationalization plans. The powers of the royal Pahlavi dynasty of Iran, which were getting diminished under the elected Mossadegh government, were restored under the aegis of the US and the UK, and long years of repression under the Shah and his notorious secret police followed. The 1979 Iranian revolution eventually ended this puppet rule paving the way for the current Islamic republic which combines a presidential form of government with a theocratic order. The US and the UK have ever since been looking for ways to regain their lost influence in Iran.
The current theocratic order of Iran has been evidently regressive and coercive, and the women's movement and other progressive forces of Iran have been waging a brave resistance for democracy defying severe repression. But the majority of progressive forces of Iran also remain fiercely anti-imperialist, rejecting the US-Israel agenda of regime change through war. The forces of democracy, justice and peace worldwide must come together to rebuff the US-Israel invasion of Iran and the campaign for a regime change and possible balkanization of Iran. The US is the only country which has actually used nuclear weapons, traumatising generations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and shocking the whole world with the horrors of a lethal nuclear attack. There can be no greater hypocrisy than the US now bombing the people of Iran in the name of destroying Iran's nuclear capability.
The attack on Iran also needs to be seen in the context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and continuing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. This is the worst ongoing crime against humanity rekindling horrifying memories of colonial era campaigns of plunder and extermination, the Nazi holocaust and the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. The anti-genocide voice has emerged as the loudest affirmation of humanity in today's world and the Palestinian cause is invoking greater popular support and solidarity than ever before. In the latest UN resolution, major European powers like France, Germany and the UK all voted against the genocide and the US-Israel axis found itself starkly isolated amidst calls for stopping arms supplies to Israel. By escalating the military conflict with Iran, the US-Israel axis of war seeks to overcome its isolation and reunite the West under the declining hegemony of the US.
For us in India, the refusal of the Modi government to condemn the genocide in Gaza and now the aggression on Iran by the US-Israel axis is the biggest betrayal of India's foreign policy responsibility and national interests. The foreign policy failure of the Modi government has been exposed most clearly in the international isolation faced by India in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack and the repeated humiliation inflicted on India by the Trump Administration, be it in the manner of deportation of undocumented Indian citizens, in the increasingly racist treatment of Indian origin people residing and working in the US, or the denial of visa and educational opportunities to Indian students, not to mention the adverse implications of Trump's tariff terrorism. In spite of this proven failure, the Modi regime continues to remain shamelessly subservient to the US-Israel agenda in West Asia.
Such subservience also has a great economic cost, given India's dependence on West Asia for oil and for job opportunities for a big contingent of migrant Indian workers. It will also further alienate India from our neighbours in Asia. This is therefore the moment for all progressive and patriotic Indians to demand an urgent course correction in Indian foreign policy. This is also the moment for us to forge closer anti-imperialist anti-war solidarities worldwide. Iran in 2025 is not Iraq of 2003 in terms of military strength and preparation; the situation within the US has also changed with more and more people rising in protest against Trump's tyranny; and the global balance of forces is also no longer conducive to the unilateral unipolar designs of US imperialism. As the US-Israel axis pushes the world to the brink of a major war, which may well escalate into a cataclysmic WWIII, let the world rebuff that design by decisively pushing back this axis of terror and war.
