Citizens in countries across the Middle East have been told to take cover from Iranian airstrikes in retaliation for an unprovoked attack on Iran by America and Israel.
But the shockwaves from blasts as US-made Israeli jets and American pilots unleash their bombs against Iran’s regime – and a nuclear weapons programme that Donald Trump said had already been “obliterated” in the past – will be felt from London to Bangkok.
The strikes – described by President Trump as a “major combat operation” – reaffirm a new age. A rogue order led by the US president that many nations around the world run by authoritarian thugs will relish. They will also look to many Muslims and non-Muslims as an attack on Islam itself.
After killing upwards of 80,000 people in Gaza, flattening the enclave, Israel has continued with land grabs on what small patches of territory remain to Palestinians on the West Bank. The strikes on Iran – as with the war on Gaza – will lead to a violent backlash. It will lead to terrorism.
Iran’s regime has murdered thousands of its own people just this year. It has been an evil force of instability all over the Middle East. It backed the vile Assad regime in Syria, it foments Shia hatred for Sunnis in Iraq, it backed Hamas atrocities on October 7 2023, and the years of pointless rocket attacks from Gaza against Israel before.
Since they hijacked the Iranian revolution against the monarchy in 1979, Iran’s brand of Islam under successive Ayatollahs has weaponised religion to destabilise Lebanon by backing Hezbollah. The so-called Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, which calls itself the Party of God, is anything but. It runs drugs and gold from South America and an organised criminal network that stretched across Africa into Europe, peddling narcotics, stolen cars, and weapons.
Iran has threatened the annihilation of Israel – and backed the Houthis’ racketeering and war in Yemen, as well as choking the Red Sea with mines and piratical attacks.
At home, its securocrats of the Iranian National Guard Corps control at least 40 per cent of the national economy.
So one could not mourn the demise of the Iranian government and the crooks and terrorists that keep it in power. It is a force for bad in the world and it should never get hold of nuclear weapons.
But there is a forum to stop Iran. It is the United Nations, and through its offices, Barack Obama and Iran signed a nuclear deal that, in part, put its programme back. Trump tore that up. Instead, we now have a rogue order in which it would appear more irresponsible for a national leader not to start a nuclear weapons programme.
Trump believes that Russia has earned a chunk of Ukraine just by invading it.
He has also taken control of Venezuela’s oil revenues by invading Caracas and arresting its president. He is banking the Venezuelan oil revenues in the Middle East, beyond the scrutiny of America’s legal system – or Congress.
If Ukraine had not given up its nuclear weapons – it had the third biggest stockpile on earth – it would not have been invaded by Russia. If Venezuela’s government had built a bomb, it would still be in office.
Saudi Arabia is looking at whether it should, or could, become a nuclear power.
So, the Israeli-American attack on Iran risks local instability, a wider terrorism war and a clash of civilisation of the kind that feeds the energies of Isis and al-Qaeda. It also tells the world that there is no such thing as international law and therefore, the only way to survive is to be able to threaten armageddon.
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