Bombing Iran for Greater Israel

Photo by Hossein Zohrevand.
“Attack on Gandhi Hospital,” (#15) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

What is unfolding across West Asia is a colonial project that, if allowed to continue, will ultimately pave the way for a Greater Israel and end any prospects for Palestinian freedom.

In October 2003, the recently assassinated Ali Khamenei declared nuclear weapons contrary to Islamic principles. There was no nuclear weapons program in Iran.

Without the support of the American people, the U.S. and Israel—two nuclear powers—have launched an invasion of nonnuclear Iran, plunging the Middle East and the world into chaos. The U.S. has embarked on a long, unwinnable conflict, with disastrous consequences for both the global economy and American livelihoods.

The unprovoked and illegal attack of February 28th took place in the midst of the U.S.-Iran negotiations, where according to the key mediator, Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, “a peace deal was within reach.”

Iran is perceived by Israel, the United States, Britain, and the European Union as the only country in the region capable of providing an effective resistance against Israel’s occupation and Israeli plans for ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

This war on Iran would have never happened if the Western world had not allowed Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It would not have been attempted if there had been accountability for Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Iran war is enabled by the military, financial, and diplomatic support of Western governments for the apartheid state of Israel and its right-wing extremist government.

The First Casualties
On the first day, a U.S. double-tap precision strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls elementary school in Minab, Iran slaughtered 168 students.  Dozens more girls were killed by another airstrike on their volleyball gymnasium during practice.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society reports a climbing death toll in Iran of over 1,500. Nearly 30 percent are children.

All members of Congress, who voted this past week against restricting President Trump’s ability to wage wars of choice in violation of the Constitution, have betrayed their oath of office.

The U.S. and Israeli air strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran are a clear violation of Article 2, Paragraph 4, of the UN Charter, which prohibits threat or use of force against independent states. In accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, Iran is exercising its inherent and legitimate right to self-defense.

Reporting the Truth
Western corporate media is peddling lies, jingoistic propaganda, government talking points, manufactured opposition, and blatant dehumanization of the Iranian people. We’ve seen video footage of President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gloating over the U.S.’s military superiority and reveling in the devastation inflicted. “Iran is not the same country it was a week ago,” Trump told CNN on Friday. “A week ago, they were powerful, and now they’ve been indeed neutered.” In a separate interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Trump crowed “It’s gonna work very easily. It’s going to work like [it] did in Venezuela.”

Reporting and images out of Iran tell a different story—that of a level-headed leadership acting strategically, and a nation united against U.S.-Israeli aggression.

Now, even Iranians who opposed their government are rallying around it. While Iranians strive for rights and freedoms under the present strict religious administration, they resist any form of U.S.-Israeli domination.

Tehran has shown military capabilities that the U.S. and Israel have largely underestimated. Their missiles and drones that have evaded interceptors and hit the heart of Tel Aviv as well as multiple U.S. military bases in the Gulf region, causing extensive damage and casualties. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News: “We are not asking for a ceasefire, and we don’t see any reason why we should negotiate with the United States … We negotiated with them twice, and every time they attacked us in the middle of the negotiations.”

Despite decades of punitive U.S.-led sanctions, Iran has shown the world that it will not cave to foreign domination. The United States is already being defeated at the gas pump.

West Asia’s Instability—Iran or Israel?
In 1953 the CIA and MI6 overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s popular, democratically elected leader, who wanted to nationalize Iranian oil. In his place, they installed a brutal monarch subservient to the United States. A people’s revolution in 1979 replaced Shah Reza Pahlavi with the current Islamic Republic.

A factual overview:

• Iran does not have, has never had, and was not about to have nuclear weapons; Israel does—estimated between 90 and 400 nuclear warheads. Trump-appointed director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stated Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Trump commented, “I don’t care what she said.”

• Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; Israel is not.

• Iran has allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency in for inspections; Israel has not.

• Israel’s attack on Iran on June 13, 2025, code-named Operation Rising Lion, took place one day before scheduled U.S.-Iranian negotiations. It was intended to kill any deal to contain Iran’s nuclear program, and to drag the U.S. into war with Iran.

• The U.S.-Israeli joint assault on Iran on February 28, 2026 was similarly timed in the middle of the U.S.-Iran negotiations, where “a peace deal was within reach.”

• During Israel’s 12-day war on Iran in 2025, Israel intensified its mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. The strikes on Iran diluted global pressure on Israel to end starvation in Gaza.

• Immediately after the February 28, 2026 strike on Iran, Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza, intensified its attacks in the occupied territories, and struck Lebanon.

• The 2015 Iran nuclear deal had already contained Iran’s nuclear program —until it was abandoned by President Trump in 2018.

• Israel’s wars on Iran have given Netanyahu a lifeline and extended his governing coalition.

• Israeli-American wars have ravaged Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen.

• The West has killed over five million people in the Middle East since 2003, yet they call Iran a threat to peace.

• The same warmongers who pushed the invasion of Iraq based on false claims of WMDs are supporting the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran based on false claims that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon.

• When declaring victory in the 12-day war in 2025, the U.S. and Israel insisted that Iran’s nuclear capacities have been “obliterated.”

• During the 12-day war of June 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking at the G7 summit, told the largest German public television network ZDF that “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us.” This says it all: these wars of aggression, along with all the war crimes that follow, are not only tolerated by “all of us,” they are done in “our” names.

America First?
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, only one in four Americans said they back U.S. strikes on Iran.

By contrast, the overwhelming majority of Israelis support war on Iran. After promising “no more forever wars,” Donald Trump is spending over a billion dollars a day on a war the American people do not want.

Both Donald Trump—convicted of 34 felony counts for falsified business records—and wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, with an ICC warrant for his arrest and facing trial in Israel for bribery and fraud—are using the war to consolidate their powers. The state of emergency erodes checks and balances in both the U.S. Congress and Israel’s Knesset. It offers possibilities to manipulate, delay, or even cancel elections this year that are likely to end badly for both leaders.

In response to a reporter’s question about why it was necessary for the U.S. to attack Iran, Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded “Bibi told U.S. that he was determined to attack Iran with us or without us. Our intelligence told us that, if Israel attacked Iran, Iran would retaliate against American bases and interests. So, we thought it best to attack Iran at the same time as Israel.”

One wonders why the great United States of America could not have simply forbidden Israel to attack Iran. After all, without U.S. military and intelligence aid, Israel would not be able to go to war.

Bombing for Zionism
Numerous U.S. service members have reported that their military leadership is framing their deployment as a “Christian war,” “biblically sanctioned” and “all part of God’s divine plan.”

One complaint to the Military Religious. Freedom Foundation (MRFF) recounted a U.S. commander telling officers that Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus. to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

In an interview with Tucker Carlson, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee declared that Israel holds a “biblical right” to control the whole of West Asia. Referring to the land of the region, he said: “It would be fine if [Israel] took it all.”

Former Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett even accused Turkey of being the hub of a threatening axis “similar to the Iranian one.”

Palestine and Lebanon
As Tehran burns, Israelis huddle in bomb shelters, and American service members in the Gulf shelter in place, Palestinians have disappeared from Western news and minds.

Meanwhile, Israel has reimposed a total siege on Gaza. It has now closed all crossings, including Rafah, and halted the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Strip. In the West Bank, relentless ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes and land by soldiers and armed settlers has intensified.

In Lebanon, Israel has displaced over 700,000 people from their homes, and killed hundreds with bombs in the past two weeks. Bezalel Smotrich, leader of Israel’s far-right National Religious Party, publicly compared Beirut’s southern suburb to Gaza’s Khan Younis, the city that Israel flattened and burned to the ground.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement warning that Israel’s evacuation orders that forcibly depopulated large parts of the south and suburbs of Beirut “raise serious. legal and humanitarian red flags.” But we know that these are the hallmarks of Israeli plans for Greater Israel.

Another Forever War
As Americans struggle to afford rent, groceries, and healthcare, Congress is set to consider a $50 billion “supplemental” request for the war in Iran—in addition to the $1 trillion already set aside for the Pentagon. 

If history has taught us anything, we would know that it is always easier to start a war than to end one. There are moments where one must raise a bull horn and speak loudly against war, militarism, and imperialism. The moment is now.

MICHEL MOUSHABECK is a Palestinian American writer, editor, translator and musician. He is the founder and publisher of Interlink Publishing, a forty-year-old, Massachusetts-based, independent publishing house. He was Guest Editor for the Massachusetts Review special issue THE VIEW FROM GAZA. Follow him on Instagram @ReadPalestine.