Author: Barry

The U.S. and Israel failed to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program or achieve regime change in the first round of attacks. It is only a question of time before they attempt a second. Whether, and when, they will achieve this depends not only on Iran’s resistance but also on the solidarity and support in other countries against the U.S. and Israel. It is therefore vital that the stakes involved are understood.

The U.S. support for Israeli domination of West Asia

In their actions in Gaza and West Asia, Israel and the U.S. have shown the world their real character and plans for the region, in open contempt for the overwhelming majority of world opinion as evidenced by votes in the UN, international opinion polls, and massive international protests. Israel has carried out an openly genocidal attempt to destroy Gaza’s society, with fascist slaughter of children, women, and anyone else it chooses. These Israeli public massacres were enabled by U.S. military support.

The U.S. plan is that the tiny Israeli state—of less than 10 million, widely delegitimized around the world, and which rules by fascist methods— should be dominant in a West Asian and North African region of almost 600 million people. To achieve this, the U.S. and its Israeli client regime aims not only to massacre Palestinians but to fragment an increasing number of states in the region as carried out against Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Given Iran’s large size and population of over 90 million, Israel and the U.S. would also like to achieve this with Iran. Iran is also seen by both the U.S. and Israel as an important part of the BRICS alliance in West Asia — which the U.S. wants to weaken or demolish.

Israel and the U.S. failed in their strategic goals against Iran

Iran has been the most powerful state supporter for the Palestinian people. After the blows that Israel and the U.S. delivered against the resistance in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, they inevitably turned to Iran. But this attack did not succeed in gaining the U.S. and Israel’s strategic objectives.

The degree of damage to Iran’s nuclear programme from U.S. attacks will not become clear for some time — estimates range from relatively small to serious. But as long as Iran’s present government remains in place, this nuclear programme cannot be considered destroyed and can be rebuilt from any starting level.

The attempt by the U.S. and Israel to achieve “regime change” in Iran, with Netanyahu’s farcical attempts to present himself as a friend of the Iranian people, was a complete failure. All reports, including in the Westen media, show that Iran’s population, whatever their differences on other issues, responded to the U.S. Israeli attack with hostility and rallying around the defence of the country.

Furthermore, Iran’s missile counter-strikes on Irael did serious damage. Whatever the claimed effectiveness of Israel’s “Iron Dome” against rockets from Hamas and others, it was incapable of stopping Iran’s strategic missiles. Despite strict Israeli censorship, images from Israel, including on Western media such as CNN, revealed serious missile hits on its cities – the first time Israel’s cities have ever suffered serious damage in a war. There was no evidence that Iran’s ability to hit Israel declined during the war – Iran’s missiles were still hitting Israel on the last day of the war. Whether or not Israel was running short of defensive missiles was accurate (as claimed by U.S. pro-Israeli figures like Steve Bannon), the U.S. and Israel both clearly wanted to rapidly halt the war after the U.S. bombing attack.

The U.S. and Israel will prepare a second attack on Iran

Because the U.S. and Israel failed in their strategic objectives in the war, which they consider essential to dominating West Asia, and because of Iran’s role in BRICS, the U.S. and Israel will attack Iran again. The timing will simply be decided by the level of damage inside Israel and that done to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Victory of such a second U.S. and Israel attack would strengthen the genocidal Israeli regime, threaten all countries and forces resisting this in West Asia, and deal a major blow to BRICS. All forces in solidarity with Palestine, opposing the Israeli regime, and generally supporting progress should oppose the U.S. and Israeli preparations for a second attack on Iran.

The necessity of a nuclear free West Asia

Finally, the present situation shows the danger presented to the world by Israel’s nuclear weapons. Faced with a threat from a genocidal Israeli regime, using fascist methods in Gaza and elsewhere, countries in West Asia will inevitably conclude that the only way to deter Israel is by obtaining nuclear weapons. These countries are perfectly capable of seeing that countries which abandoned nuclear weapons programmes, such as Libya and Iraq, were attacked while those that successfully developed nuclear weapons, such as North Korea, were not. Faced with both a conventional and nuclear threat by Israel, other countries understand Israel is tiny and could be destroyed by two or three nuclear bombs. Thus, as long as Israel possesses nuclear weapons, it is only a matter of time before other West Asian countries acquire them. Thus, the only way forward is either, the preferred one, of a nuclear free West Asia and North Africa, or nuclear proliferation across West Asia and the great threat this presents to humanity in one of the world’s most war-torn regions.

By Vijay Prashad & Dae-Han Song

The atomic bomb has been humanity’s most dangerous creation; that the United States government used the atom bomb twice against Japan’s civilians in August 1945 can neither be forgiven nor forgotten. It is fitting that one of the first acts of the United Nations in January 1946 was establishing a commission to deal with the “Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy”. Yet, the resolution did not ban atomic weapons but simply sought to study its “problems”. Even after the grotesque demonstration in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States government was reluctant to permit the abolition of nuclear bombs. Having opened the doorway to Hell, there was no real desire to close it.

Creating the first major United Nations treaty to tackle atomic weapons took two decades. More importantly, the treaty did not ban nuclear weapons. While preventing further proliferation, it, nonetheless, allowed the then-nuclear powers – the United States (1945), the Soviet Union (1949), the United Kingdom (1952), France (1960), and China (1964) – to keep their nuclear arsenal. When the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) came into force in 1968, Israel likely had nuclear weapons (1967). Thereafter, despite the NPT, India (1974), Pakistan (1998), and North Korea (2006) developed and tested nuclear weapons. Of all these countries, only North Korea has been pressured to de-nuclearize by the United States and its allies. If it has refused, it is because denuclearizing would lead to its annihilation.

These facts and dynamics confirm that there are only two possible paths: the universal abolition of nuclear weapons and the threat of annihilation of countries by imperialism or the inevitable proliferation of nuclear weapons across the globe.

The attack on Iran by Israel and the United States

The Israeli and US attack on Iran’s nuclear energy facilities this June was illegal; it had neither a UN Security Council resolution nor approval from the US Congress. These two allies conducted their attack in the name of nuclear non-proliferation. They pummelled Iran’s nuclear energy enrichment sites and its research facilities to set back Iran’s nuclear energy program. In fact, the attack will have the opposite effect. From Iran’s point of view, the attacks by Israel and the US make the acquisition of nuclear weapons a rational and urgent choice.

There has been no verifiable evidence that Iran has been developing a nuclear weapon. It has been a member of the NPT since the day the treaty was opened for signatures on July 1, 1968. In 1996, Iran signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty, another indication of its lack of interest in the development of nuclear weapons. Despite the pressure campaign on Iran, it has cooperated with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – according to international law and norms – to have its nuclear energy sites inspected on a regular basis. There has been no report by an international agency that confirmed Iran having a nuclear weapons program. At most, in 2015, the IAEA suggested that Iran had shown some interest in nuclear weapons before 2003 but “did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities”. Yet, despite the lack of evidence, Iran was illegally attacked without UN Security Council approval.

After the Israeli attack on Iran, the Iranian Parliament voted to suspend all cooperation with the IAEA. Large crowds gathered across Iran to call upon their government to reject the pressure on Iran and to develop a nuclear bomb to protect the country from such wars of aggression. In other words, the tempo has begun to build up in Iran for the country to hastily develop a bomb and test it openly as immunity from a regime change war.

Logic of proliferation

Mainstream media portrays countries pursuing nuclear weapons as rogue states that threaten global stability. In this narrative, authoritarian leaders pursue nuclear weapons out of an inscrutable empty obsession for self-aggrandizement as a nuclear weapon state. Yet, recent history and the US war drive make a clear case that acquiring nuclear weapons is the most rational choice for states seeking any autonomy from US domination. This is illustrated by how Libya’s denuclearization was followed by its destruction while North Korea’s nuclearization has allowed its preservation.

In 2003, the Libyan government announced that it would no longer proceed with its nuclear weapons program. The Libyan government negotiated with Western powers to no longer be treated as a “rogue state”. Between 2004 and 2006, the IAEA came to Libya and dismantled its nuclear weapons project. But despite giving up its nuclear shield, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi continued speaking out. In 2009, he went to the United Nations and spoke openly about a private conversation in which the IAEA chief Mohamed el-Baradei had told him that the IAEA could not inspect the “super-powers”. “So, is the IAEA only inspecting us?” Gaddafi asked. “If so, it does not qualify as an international organization since it is selective, just like the Security Council and the International Court of Justice”. Two years later, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exceeded the UN Security Council mandate from resolution 1973 (2011) to create a “no-fly zone” over Libya and destroyed the Libyan state. The lesson was clear: if you give up your nuclear weapons program, you can be annihilated.

In 2006, after the US illegal war that overthrew the government of Iraq, the government of North Korea tested a nuclear weapon – the only government to do so in the 21st century. Since then, despite immense pressure, there has been reticence to openly overthrow the government in Pyongyang.

For any rational person, the example of Libya and North Korea sends a very clear message: developing nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them are the most effective deterrent. In fact, each stage in the development of North Korea’s nuclear program was precipitated by the US stalling in the peace process or failing to carry out its promises for peace and security made to North Korea. In effect, North Korea’s two-track process allowed it to pursue its security through the diplomatic path when possible and through nuclear deterrence when necessary.

Faced with existential crises, the world needs to shift its focus from war and destruction to healing the planet and taking care of its people. It cannot be dragged into an arms race. Thus, denuclearization is key. Yet, without the conditions for peace and disarmament, for some states, nuclear proliferation may be a matter of survival.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

Dae-Han Song is a part of the International Strategy Center and the No Cold War collective, and is an associate at the Korea Policy Institute.

This article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War.

By Vijay Prashad

By the end of the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in The Hague in June 2025, it became clear that everything was about money. In fact, the final communiqué was perhaps the shortest of any NATO meeting – only five points, two about money and one to thank the Netherlands for hosting the summit. The Hague Declaration was only 427 words, whereas in the previous year, the Washington Declaration was 5,400 words and ran to 44 paragraphs. This time, there was not the granular detail about this or that threat, nor the long and detailed assessments of the war in Ukraine and how NATO supports that war without limit (“Ukraine’s future is in NATO”, the alliance said in 2024, a position no longer repeated in the brief statement of 2025). It was clear that the United States simply did not want to permit a laundry list of NATO’s obsessions. It was instead the US obsession that prevailed: that Europe increase its military spending to compensate for the US protective shield around the continent.

Having agreed to increase their military spending to 5% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the European states have created a series of problems for themselves.

The first problem is that they would have to invent the money out of their tight budgets. To raise their military expenditure to 5% of GDP would require them to reduce their social spending – in other words, to deepen the austerity policies that are already in place. In Germany, for instance, 21.1% of the population faces the risk of poverty or social exclusion. The German government, led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has pledged €650 billion over the next five years to the military – an amount even the Financial Times finds to be “staggering”. To get to 5% of GDP, Germany, for instance, will have to raise about €144 billion per year out of reallocating budgets (austerity) and increased borrowing (debt); raising taxes is unlikely, even if these are regressive Value Added Taxes on consumption.

The second problem is that despite the disbursement of money to the military, Europe simply does not have the production lines ready to roll out tanks and missiles at the required pace. Unlike the United States, Europe began to deindustrialize its military sector after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It will now have to spend considerable sums of money just to recover its industrial potential. Over the past few years, European military industrial firms have struggled to meet the needs of Ukraine, with the European Union unable to meet the one million artillery shells requirement in 2024. Rheinmetall, meanwhile, is only able to produce 150 Leopard 2 tanks per year, far below what European companies built during the Cold War and far below the needs of a European army if it must be on the battlefield against Russia. Neither the Eurofighter Typhoon nor the Dassault Rafale fighter jets can be produced quickly. Procurement offices across Europe are slowed down by European Union regulations and customs requirements. No rapid growth of the military will be possible.

The 5% of GDP number is more public relations than reality.

Threats

The Hague Summit Declaration says that the Euro-Atlantic alliance faces “profound security threats and challenges”. Who threatens the Euro-Atlantic? The only adversary named in the Declaration is Russia. But around the time that the NATO members met in The Hague, US President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about de-escalation in Ukraine and ending the tensions around Europe, and the Istanbul Talks continued among the various parties involved in ending the war. If there is a ceasefire in Ukraine and if Russia and Europe agree on certain security guarantees, then what is the 5% of GDP increase in military spending about?

Even if Russia ends the war in Ukraine, there are several other concerns that the NATO members have insisted define their increase in military spending. For instance, the NATO member states in Europe have allowed their military facilities to deteriorate, which from a peace standpoint is acceptable but not from one that anticipates war (the military lobby in Europe has especially pointed to the continent’s laxity around cyberattacks and weaponized Artificial Intelligence – although how rebuilding barracks will help with this is unclear). The Baltic states have sounded the alarm against a potential Russian invasion, while the instability around Iran has alerted Europe to dangers near its borders. These are some of the reasons given by war intellectuals in Europe for the necessity of increased military spending.

But by far the most important reason has nothing to do with Europe’s borders or with threats to Europe: China. In NATO’s Strategic Concept 2022, it considered China to be “a systemic challenge to Euro-American security”. But in what way is China a threat to Europe? The United States sees China as its main rival, not in military terms, but in terms of the economic dominance of the US-based multinational corporations. Europe’s countries have only benefited from Chinese investments, such as through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Of the 44 countries in Europe, 29 have signed up to the BRI – most of these countries are in Europe’s east, and two-thirds of European countries have signed Memoranda of Understanding with China for trade and development. Italy departed from the BRI in December 2023, but the other countries remain committed to the BRI project. Of the thirty-two NATO member states, twelve have an agreement with China to be part of the BRI or some other major project (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Greece, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, and Türkiye). That these states are reliant upon China’s economic buoyancy shows that they are not threatened by China, which begs the question of what threat NATO sees in China.

The habit of austerity and war grips the NATO governments, while the Global South has committed itself to peace and development. It is striking how anachronistic The Hague Declaration sounds when placed alongside the slogan of the 17th BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in July 2025: Inclusive and Sustainable Global South (Sul Global Inclusivo e Sustentável).

NATO has no real threats, only expensive hallucinations.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

U.S. bombing of Iran, following on from and inseparably linked to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, openly shows to the world its future if the U.S. war drive is not defeated.

A crushing majority of world public opinion, as shown in repeated votes at the United Nations and opinion polls, opposes Israel’s genocide in Gaza. An Economist/YouGov opinion poll, whose sponsors cannot be accused of the slightest bias in favour of Iran, showed Americans opposed the U.S. launching a military attack on Iran by 60% to 16%.

But the U.S and Israel, totally isolated both internationally, and in terms of U.S. public opinion, decided they would attempt to rely on pure military power. It is the image of the future for the world portrayed in Orwell’s 1984: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

Needless to say, with this willingness to go against the overwhelming majority of world and even U.S. domestic opinion, the Trump administration was prepared to breach the U.S. constitution, which gives to the Congress the sole power to declare war, and to act in direct violation of international law – there has been no United Nations Security Council resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter that allows the United States to attack Iran..

The U.S. attack is also based on straight forward and systematic lying and falsification. The U.S. claim that Iran s on the brink of producing nuclear weapons is shown to be false by both the International Atomic Energy Authority and US security agencies.

Therefore, the stakes in the outcome of this war launched by the U.S. and Israel against Iran could not be higher not only for the people of West Asia, Palestine, and Iran but for the world. If the U.S. and Israel succeeds in its genocide in Gaza, and it succeeds in its attack on Iran, a major state in the Global South and part of BRICS, the U.S. will be emboldened to extend its attacks to any country in the Global South and increasingly against major powers such as Russia and China. Every country pursuing a path of national independence and development will be under threat and the risk of a World War by a U.S. attack on a major power will be moved significantly closer.

But the U.S. and Israel cannot easily defeat Iran. The fascist genocidal attack of Israel in Gaza, which was solely made possible by the U.S., was carried out against a population of two million people. But Iran’s population is 90 million – for comparison Iraq’s was 45 million, and since the US could not subdue Iraq it is unlikely that it can subdue a population twice the size and one where invasion is impossible. The belief that the Iranian people, a country with a more than a 2,000 year civilisation, want a puppet regime installed by Israel and the U.S. is as far-fetched as the provenly false view that the people of Iraq, who did suffer invasion, wanted a U.S. puppet regime.

The World Values Survey shows us that Iranians respond clearly and in large numbers to the questions that reflect national pride: 83% said that they are proud of their country, and 72% said that they are ready to fight for their country. All evidence coming from Iran so far is that the country, whatever other differences may exist, is unifying around defence of Iran against the Israel/U.S. attack. Despite strict Israel censorship the images coming out Isreal show that Iran’s missiles are inflicting significant damage in that country.

The U.S. and Israel have the ability to impose suffering on the Iranian people and will not hesitate for a second to do so – as the U.S./Israel fascist genocide in Gaza already shows – and for which the entire world should, and most of it will, condemn U.S./Isreal actions. But that is a different issue to the ability to defeat Iran. There is, certainly, no possibility of the U.S./Israel imposing a rapid defeat on Iran and therefore a prolonged period of assault by the U.S. and Israel against Iran must be prepared for – whether or not any immediate ceasefire holds the U.S. and Israel will not abandon their strategic aggression against Iran.

Faced with this  it must be the task of the international anti-war movement, and in particular the anti-war movement in the U.S., to act to impose such political isolation and damage on the Trump administration that it is forced to stop this aggression and war.

This must be the top priority of the world to achieve human progress, not only in the interests of the Iranian and Palestinian people, but in humanity’s own self-interest if every country does not wish to have the jackboot of the U.S. and Israel descend upon themselves.

By Dae-Han Song

In his inaugural speech, South Korea’s recently elected President Lee Jae-myung declared that ‘no peace is too expensive; it is always better than war’. The words capture an idealism packaged in Lee’s pragmatism. Indeed, at a time when the US Cold War against China is turning Asia into a tinderbox, when global temperatures have exceeded a 1.5°C increase, and South Korea’s economy and society are reeling from martial law, peace is the only pragmatic way forward. As such, Lee’s hesitancy in attending the June NATO Summit was a welcome contrast to former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s enthusiastic participation.

The opposite of pragmatism, Yoon was driven by a deep idealism to turn South Korea into a ‘global pivotal state’ for the US, regardless of the damage to inter-Korean stability or to South Korea’s relationship with China, a strategic trading partner. Amidst the backdrop of the chorus of editorial voices (including the conservative Chosun newspaper) from Korea’s leading media pressuring him to attend, Lee has stated that he will likely attend the NATO Summit. Yet, attending NATO exacerbates the crises facing South Korea, the region, and the world. Lee’s pragmatic foreign policy must disengage from the US-led NATO expansion into Asia that enables the US to escalate military tensions and destabilise the Indo-Pacific (the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and the Korean Peninsula).

An Atlantic offensive in the Pacific

Contrary to its original mandate, NATO has neither been about ‘collective defence’ nor about the ‘North Atlantic area’. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union (its ostensible justification for being), NATO has continued to exist, invading and waging war in Eastern Europe and West Asia to maintain its (especially that of the United States’) dominance under the rhetoric of ‘a rules-based order’. Then, starting in 2021, under the continuous urging of the US, overriding concerns about hurting ‘political and economic cooperation with Beijing’, NATO began framing China as presenting ‘systemic challenges to the rules-based international order’. Or to put it more directly, NATO feared that China challenged its ‘transatlantic values and interests’ around the world.

The heads of state of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea (collectively the Indo-Pacific 4) started attending the NATO summits in 2022. While NATO’s clause ten prevents non-European countries from joining its alliance, NATO’s expanded cooperation with these four US Indo-Pacific allies (on interoperability, joint war exercises, and ‘technological cooperation and pooling of R&D’) frees the US to intensify its Cold War against China. Furthermore, when NATO militaries make port calls and carry out exercises in the Indo-Pacific, they expand the US military footprint in the region while practising future concerted responses to a military contingency. Given the importance of military posture during peace in determining the outcome of conflicts, the entry of Atlantic elements into the Pacific is, in itself, aggressive. Ultimately, even if NATO does not intervene in a regional conflict, it can still do everything else to contribute to the US Cold War and arms race against China.

Rebalancing a lopsided foreign policy

As Lee enters office, he must extricate South Korea from former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s headlong rush into the US’s Cold War Against China. Not only did the Yoon administration enthusiastically participate in the NATO Summits starting in 2022, but it also rushed headlong to support US efforts to maintain its hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region in the Taiwan Strait, not least by entering into a trilateral security cooperation agreement with Japan and the United States.

It’s not yet clear how the Lee Administration will deal with Trump’s pressure to join its containment of China: after Lee won the election, the Trump administration acknowledged the elections as free and fair and then expressed concerns about Chinese influence, with little care to substantiate such claims. Within a Korean context, these claims are a nod to the far-right conspiracy theory that the 2020 National Assembly Elections involved Chinese interference, which Yoon used to justify calling martial law. The remarks were the diplomatic equivalent of warning shots from a gunboat against Lee’s intention to rebalance South Korea’s foreign policy by improving relations with China.

The Lee Administration faces many challenges. If Lee Jae-myung won with 49% of the vote, the pro-martial law conservative candidate nonetheless gained 41% of the vote. Thus, despite the great political mobilisations of the 2016 Candlelight Revolution and the 2024 Revolution of Lights, South Korea still struggles to break free from a Cold War framework that limits democracy to a contest between conservative parties.

South Korea’s inability to shake off this Cold War framework is partly due to the legacy of the Korean War (far-right conservative support is highest among those past 60), but it is also buttressed by the ongoing US military presence and Korea’s lack of wartime operational control of its own military. Established under US military occupation and developed under the US economic aegis, South Korea is constrained in its ability to chart an independent foreign policy based on its own national interests, such as achieving peace with North Korea. This constrains Lee’s ability to backtrack from many of Yoon’s commitments to the United States, such as the JAKUS trilateral security cooperation, intentionally designed to survive changes in administration.

Given the increasing pressure to attend NATO’s meeting, it’s likely Lee will attend. Lee’s initial reasoning that now is the time to focus on the recovery of Korea’s economy rather than on attending the NATO summit is pragmatic for Koreans. As a way of stepping out of the US-led war drive in the region, when we should be diffusing rather than exacerbating the world’s crises, it is also pragmatic for the world.

Dae-Han Song is a part of the International Strategy Center and the No Cold War collective and is an associate at the Korea Policy Institute. This article was produced by Globetrotter.

By Vijay Prashad

Israel’s attacks on Iran, backed by the US and EU, violate international law and aim to maintain regional dominance by undermining Iran’s sovereignty, despite Iran’s compliance with nuclear agreements.

Israel’s consistent attacks on Iran since 2023 have all been illegal, violations of the United Nations Charter (1945). Iran is a member state of the United Nations and is therefore a sovereign state in the international order. If Israel had a problem with Iran, there are many mechanisms mandated by international law that permit Israel to bring complaints against Iran.

Thus far, Israel has avoided these international forums because it is clear that it has no case against Iran. Allegations that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, which are constantly raised by the United States, the European Union, and Israel, have been fully investigated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and found to be unfounded. It is certainly true that Iran has a nuclear energy programme that is within the rules in place through the IAEA, and it is also true that Iran’s clerical establishment has a fatwa (religious edict) in place against the production of nuclear weapons. Despite the IAEA findings and the existence of this fatwa, the West – egged on by Israel – has accepted this irrational idea that Iran is building a nuclear weapon and that Iran is therefore a threat to the international order. Indeed, by its punctual and illegal attacks on Iran, it is Israel that is a threat to the international order.

Over the past decades, Iran has called for the establishment of a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone, a strange idea coming from a country accused of wanting to build a nuclear weapon. But this idea of the nuclear free zone has been rejected by the West, largely to protect Israel, which has an illegal nuclear weapons programme. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear weapon, although it has never tested it openly nor acknowledged its existence. If Israel was so keen on eliminating any nuclear threat, it should have taken the offer for the creation of a nuclear-free zone heartily.

Neither the Europeans, who so often posture as defenders of international law, nor the United Nations leadership have publicly pushed Israel to adopt this idea because both recognize that this would require Israel, not Iran, to denuclearize. That this is an improbable situation has meant that there has been no movement from the West or from the international institutions to take this idea forward and build an international consensus to develop a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

Israel does not want to build a nuclear-free zone in the region. What Israel wants is to be the sole nuclear power in the region, and therefore to be exactly what it is – namely, the largest United States military base in the world that happens to be the home to a large civilian population. Iran has no ambition to be a nuclear power. But it has an ambition to be a sovereign state that remains committed to justice for the Palestinians. Israel has no problem with the idea of sovereignty per se, but has a problem with any state in the region that commits itself to Palestinian emancipation. If Iran normalized relations with Israel and ceased its opposition to US dominion in the region, then it is likely that Israel would end its opposition to Iran.

Israel and the United States prepared the way

In January 2020, the United States conducted an illegal assassination at Iraq’s Baghdad Airport to kill General Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Soleimani, through the Quds Force, had produced for Iran an insurance policy against further Israeli attacks on the country. The Quds Force is responsible for Iranian military operations outside the boundaries of the country, including building what is called the “Axis of Resistance” that includes the various pro-Iranian governments and non-governmental military forces. These included: Hezbollah in Lebanon, various IRGC groups in Syria that worked with Syrian militia groups, the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, several Palestinian factions in Occupied Palestine, and the Ansar Allah government in Yemen. Without its own nuclear deterrent, Iran required some way to balance the military superiority of Israel and the United States. This deterrence was created by the “Axis of Resistance”, an insurance policy that allowed Iran to let Israel know that if Israel fired at Iran, these groups would rain missiles on Tel Aviv in retaliation.

The assassination of Soleimani began a determined new political and military campaign by the United States, Israel, and their European allies to weaken Iran. Israel and the United States began to punctually strike Iranian logistical bases in Syria and Iraq to weaken Iran’s forward posture and to demoralize the Syrian and Iraqi militia groups that operated against Israeli interests. Israel began to assassinate IRGC military officers in Syria, Iran, and Iraq, a campaign of murder that began to have an impact on the IRGC and the Quds Force.

Taking advantage of its genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel, with full support from the United States and Europe, began to damage the “Axis of Resistance”, Iran’s insurance policy. Israel took its war into Lebanon, with a ruthless bombing campaign that included the assassination of the Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, 2024. This campaign, while it has not totally demolished Hezbollah, has certainly weakened it. Meanwhile, Israel began a regular bombing campaign against the Syrian military positions around Damascus and along the road to Idlib in the north. This bombing campaign, coordinated with the US military and with the US intelligence services, was designed to open the roadway for the entry of the former al-Qaeda fighters into Damascus and to overthrow the government of al-Assad on December 8, 2024. The fall of the al-Assad government dented Iran’s strength across the Levant region (from the Turkish border to the Occupied Palestinian Territory) as well as along the plains from southern Syria to the Iranian border. The consistent campaign by the United States to bomb Yemeni positions further resulted in the loss of Ansar Allah’s heavy equipment (including long-range missiles) that fundamentally threatened Israel.

What this meant was that by early 2025, the Iranian insurance policy against Israel had collapsed. Israel began its march to war, suggesting an attack on Iran was imminent. Such an attack, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows, would help him in a domestic political fight with the ultra-orthodox parties over the question of a military exemption for their communities; this will prevent his government from falling. Cynical Netanyahu is using genocide and the possibility of a horrendous war with Iran for narrow political ends. But that is not what is motivating this attack. What is motivating this attack is that Israel smells an opportunity to try to overthrow the Iranian government by force.

Iran returned to the negotiations brokered by the IAEA to prevent such an attack. Its leadership knew full well that nothing would stop a scofflaw such as Israel from bombing Iran. And nothing did. Not even the fact that Iran is still at the negotiation table. Israel has taken advantage of Iran’s momentary weakness to strike. And that strike might escalate further.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Next week, on 24 and 25 June, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) will meet in The Hague for its annual summit – the first since Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency.

Established by the US to confront the USSR, control Germany and hold the balance of power in Europe – according to the CIA – since the fall of the USSR, NATO has been systematically widening its mandate and ambitions far beyond the North Atlantic.

As the new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in March, when visited Trump in the Oval Office, he was eager to ‘work together to ensure that [the NATO summit] will be a splash, a real success projecting American power on the world stage’.

Trump’s US is determined that the European NATO states step up their engagement with the US war drive, support the US-led cold war, and increase military preparations and spending for US-led hot wars.

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, No Cold War and the Zetkin Forum for Social Research have produced a valuable dossier: NATO: The Most Dangerous Organisation on Earth, which can be read and downloaded from here.