Newark, Delaware (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long wanted war with Iran and has all along been trying to get the U.S. involved, under different U.S. administrations.
On Friday morning, Israel launched missile strikes on military bases near the Iranian city of Isfahan.
A desperate Netanyahu, seeing Western support for his total war on Gaza collapsing, began this tit-for-tat cycle by launching an assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers at the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria on April 1st 2024. The Israeli government knew what they were doing. Netanyahu was baiting Tehran into a reaction, which he got.
Iran responded with a missile and drone barrage on April 13. Almost all these projectiles, however, were shot down by the United States, since Iran had openly telegraphed its intentions.
The context for this exchange of strikes is the Israeli assault on Gaza. Netanyahu’s government has killed more than 34,000 people. The numbers are not clear, since the ones under the rubbles of Gaza cannot even be calculated.
14,000 children.
Today, Gaza is worse than Dresden after the war.
Hamas, of course also committed atrocities against the Israeli population on October 7. Over 600 innocent, noncombatant Israelis were killed, alongside more than 400 Israeli military personnel. Many of the civilians were peace-loving people, who disagreed with their own government’s punitive policies toward the Palestinians. The response of the far-right wing Netanyahu government, however, has been vastly disproportionate.
Another issue between the two countries has been Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program to create fuel for its reactor. Netanyahu fears that it can easily be militarized, and had created a spectacle at the UN showing off Iran’s alleged nuclear capabilities.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) refuted him, insisting that Iran has no military nuclear program.
Netanyahu’s charges obscured the imbalance of power between the two countries. Considering that Israel has 300 nukes, Iran, which has none, can be wiped off the map in a matter of minutes.
The IAEA’s assurances notwithstanding, the Israeli government under various Israeli administrations has assassinated nuclear scientists inside Iran.
Israel, with the help of the expatriate Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) organization, which was until recently on the US State Department terrorism list, also stole nuclear data from Iran.
Then, Trump came along, and he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, to which Iran had scrupulously adhered, mothballing 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program for promised sanctions relief that was never granted.
The decision to rip up the deal was made in Tel Aviv, not in Washington.
Now, Mr. Netanyahu has a last chance to get his allies to rally behind him when both his support at home and internationally has dissipated. Since the war in Gaza has not gone well and has isolated his regime, his government, a very right-wing government, is looking for alternatives.
CNN Video: “Israel has attacked Iran, US official tells CNN”
The Islamic Republic has been been building deterrence by supporting the various groups in the Middle East, whether Houthis, Hezbollah or Hamas.
Several IRGC commanders were assassinated, including Ghassem Soleimani.
The shadow war has continued. Hezbollah launched missiles at the territory of Israel. Houthis fired on cargo ships in support of Gaza.
In his most recent speech at the UN, the Israeli ambassador compared the regime in Tehran to the Nazi regime. How can an educated person even compare the two? The Nazi regime eliminated millions of Jews and others.
Iran has the largest Jewish community after Israel. Khamenei is no Eichmann, despite what Netanyahu keeps alleging.
We, as Iranians and Iranian Americans wish for a better Iran without the rule of the clerics. But not at the expense of the disintegration of Iran. There is no question that has been Netanyahu’s wish.
Many years ago, at a conference at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, I remember the notorious Michael Ledeen had invited non-various actors from different ethnic minorities of Iran. Those speaking on their behalf did not even represent the Iranian minorities. At the end of the conference, where Paul Wolfowitz was also there, (the one who advised Bush to go to Iraq) all the speakers said we want a united Iran.
It was a total failure.
To this day, Iran has been a united nation and Iran is a nation state.
Iranians want a regime change but not by the help of any foreign entities, but rather with their own volition.
No war is going to solve anything. We are all united against a war on Israel or the Israeli nation and on Iran and the Iranian nation.
We need clearer, sounder voices to come to the fore.
In the words of the great Sufi poet of Iran, Rumi,
“Out beyond the idea
of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field, I’ll meet you there.”
We are for peace. But those in power in Israel and in Iran do not want peace.
They are itching for war.
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