In his 2002 testimony to the USA Congress, then former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed US lawmakers that an invasion of Iraq was essential for successful the “battle on terror” and stopping Iraq and terrorist teams from buying weapons of mass destruction. He additional claimed that the battle could be fast and would usher in a brand new age of Western-friendly democracy, not simply in Iraq, however throughout the area, together with Iran. Neither proclamation was true.
As many specialists and officers already knew earlier than the 2003 invasion started, Saddam Hussein’s regime didn’t have weapons of mass destruction and held no ties to al-Qaeda. The battle was sure to trigger widespread devastation, instability, insecurity, unspeakable struggling, chaos and the breakdown of governance. And that’s what occurred. Iraq at the moment is at greatest a fragile state with huge financial and political challenges.
After Israel after which the US attacked Iran earlier this month, many analysts rushed to touch upon how the 2 allies have supposedly didn’t be taught the teachings of the Iraq battle and at the moment are repeating the identical errors in Iran. These analyses would have been correct had the precise objectives of the 2003 invasion been to cease the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to ascertain democracy. However they weren’t.
For the US and Israel, the specified end result of the battle was an Iraq that will not pose any resistance to the Israeli settler-colonial venture in Palestine and its function as an agent of US imperial energy within the area. That is additionally the specified end result in Iran at the moment.
Similar to the claims concerning the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq proved fully false, the claims that Iran was on the “verge of” creating a nuclear weapon don’t have any grounds. No actual proof that Tehran was in actual fact near gaining nuclear capabilities has been put ahead. As a substitute, we’ve got been introduced with a very unmatched stage of hypocrisy and lies.
Right here we’ve got a state of affairs the place two nuclear powers – one which stands out as the one state in historical past to make use of, not as soon as however twice, a nuclear weapon and one other that refuses to signal the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has a mass-murder-suicide sort of nuclear doctrine – are enterprise unlawful “pre-emptive” aggression below the guise of stopping nuclear proliferation.
Clearly, the US and Israel are usually not after Iran’s nuclear programme. They’re after Iran as a regional energy, and that’s the reason regime change has already been floated in public.
Along with a number of statements from Netanyahu, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, and different Israeli officers, US Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz have additionally known as for toppling the Iranian authorities. On Sunday, US President Donald Trump joined the requires regime change in Iran with a put up on social media.
The Iranian folks at the moment are being inspired to “get up” and battle for his or her “freedom”. However freedom and democracy in Iran are actually not what Israel and the US intention for. Why? As a result of a free and democratic Iran wouldn’t serve their pursuits and settle for the brutalities of a settler-colonial venture in its neighborhood.
They’d fairly see Iran return to the violent, tyrannical monarchy below the Pahlavi dynasty, which was overthrown in a well-liked revolution in 1979, or another political power prepared to do their bidding.
If that doesn’t occur, Israel and the US would fairly have a fragmented, weak, chaotic, destabilised Iran, marred by a civil battle. That may swimsuit their pursuits, simply as a war-torn Iraq did.
Weakening regional powers within the Center East and spreading instability via subversion and aggression is a well-established coverage aim that the political elites in Israel and the US have collectively embraced because the Nineteen Nineties.
A coverage doc known as Clear Break, authored by former US Assistant Secretary of Protection Richard Perle and different neoconservatives in 1996, outlined this technique of attacking Center Japanese states below the pretext of stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to safe Israel’s strategic pursuits.
Perle et al didn’t give you one thing radically new; they merely constructed on the well-known imperial technique of sowing division and chaos as a way to facilitate imperial domination.
However this technique is just not with out dangers. Similar to the collapse of the Iraqi state paved the best way for violent non-state actors to emerge and for Iran to solidify its place as a regional energy difficult US-Israeli pursuits, a weakened or fragmented Iranian state can lead to the identical dynamics.
On a extra international scale, the actions of the US and Israel are encouraging extra international locations to pursue nuclear weapons. The lesson that states are drawing from the US-Israeli aggression on Iran is that nuclear weapons are essential to accumulate exactly to forestall such assaults. Thus, we’re doubtless heading in direction of extra proliferation on account of this battle, not much less.
The Israeli state doesn’t appear to be involved about proliferation so long as the chaos and destruction it spreads within the area permits it to realize its strategic aim of eradicating the Palestinian wrestle as soon as and for all, and ending all resistance to its settler colonisation venture. Israel, in a nutshell, needs the whole area on its knees and can cease at nothing to realize that goal. It is because it does probably not must foot the invoice of regional instability.
Against this, US pursuits are instantly impacted when the Center East descends into chaos. A dysfunctional Iraq or a weakened Iran might serve the US within the brief time period, however in the long term, the instability can disrupt its grander plans for management of worldwide power markets and containing China.
The remainder of the world can even really feel the ripple impact of this unjustified aggression, simply because it did after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Given the brutal, decades-long fallout of that battle, the worldwide response to the US-Israeli aggression towards Iran has been self-defeatingly subdued; some European international locations have appeared to endorse the assault, regardless of the numerous unfavourable financial impacts they might face on account of this battle.
If governments really want to make the world a safer place, this complacency with imperial violence wants to finish. It’s previous time that they arrive to the sober conclusion that the US and Israel are brokers of destruction and chaos by advantage of their racist colonial design.
The Israeli settler colonial venture is an unjustifiable venture of displacement, expulsion and genocide; US imperialism is an unjustifiable venture of robbing folks of their assets, dignity and sovereignty.
To ascertain peace and stability within the Center East, the world must put strain on Israel to surrender its settler colonial venture and turn out to be a part of the area via a decolonial existence with the Palestinians in a decolonised Palestine; and to compel the US to launch its iron grip on the area, permitting its folks to dwell in freedom and sovereignty.
That is the one option to keep away from perpetual chaos, instability, struggling and ache.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.