Iranian children are dug out of rubble after a missile strike on their school. Sailors drown in a US torpedo attack. Nato intercepts a missile headed for Turkey. The CIA recruits Kurds to fight the Iranian regime. Iran and Hizbullah fire drones and missiles at Israel, as Israeli bombing drives hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes. Beirut’s southern suburbs “will soon look like [the flattened Gaza town] Khan Younis,” warns minister for finance Bezalel Smotrich.
Within six days, 14 countries had been attacked and more than 1,300 people had been killed. The US is spending $1 billion daily on a conflict without a time frame or clear objectives. Potential consequences of the war waged by nuclear powers with AI-enhanced weapons and stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean are terrifying.
US president Donald Trump contradicted his claim to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme last June, saying Iran was two weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon, an allegation debunked by the UN’s nuclear watchdog IAEA as well as Trump’s own intelligence agencies.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio said the US decided to fight because it knew Israel was about to attack, seemingly confirming that Israel determines US Middle East policy. Maga stalwarts Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene were outraged. US comedian Michelle Wolf invented the combined name “US-rael”. Trump denied he was following Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
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“We’re the good guys; they’re the bad guys,” Netanyahu told Fox News, a grotesque statement coming from the man who killed 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
At the end of January, the US department of justice released its biggest drop yet of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted paedophile and erstwhile friend of Trump who died in prison. Lurid headlines based on the documents followed, about foreign women allegedly buried on Epstein’s New Mexico ranch, about Epstein’s purchase of 330 gallons of sulphuric acid, and a woman who claimed Trump raped her when she was aged 13. The Wall Street Journal reported the government took 47,635 files offline “for further review”.
[ Donald Trump’s pressure-cooker approach to Iran was always going to explodeOpens in new window ]
Was it a case of “wag the dog”? A war to divert attention in the run-up to legislative elections in both countries, from Trump’s past association with Epstein, and Netanyahu’s security lapses in October 2023, when Hamas murdered 1,219 Israelis?
Iran does not have the monopoly on religious fanaticism. Extremist Jews hold portfolios in Netanyahu’s cabinet. Christian Zionists, including Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, believe the Battle of Armageddon between Iran and Israel will precipitate the return of Christ. Huckabee told Tucker Carlson last month that it would be “fine” if Israel took all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation received more than 200 complaints from US service people saying commanders are using religion to goad them into fighting Iran. One complainant said their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ”.
Trump has shredded what author Barry Lando calls ‘the architecture of civilisation’ – the Nuremberg tribunal’s prohibition on wars of aggression, the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war, the need for a UN Security Council resolution
Trump seems untethered from reality. He descended from the helicopter which brought him from Mar-a-Lago on the second night of the war to wander, King Lear-like in the darkness, around the former rose garden at the White House. Ignoring reporters’ questions about the war, he muttered: “Beautiful statues. You’ll see.” The following day, at a medals ceremony for veterans, he embarked on a long diversion about how much he liked his gold drapes.
The Roman emperor Caligula made his favourite horse a senator. Trump sent his wife Melania to chair a UN Security Council meeting on children. “The US stands with all the children throughout the world,” she said, around the time the Iranian schoolgirls were being buried.
The Trump administration is not only the most mendacious and corrupt in US history. It is also the most incompetent. FBI director Kash Patel sacked a dozen Iran experts just before the war. The state department advised US citizens to leave 14 countries but could not help stranded citizens. The Farsi-language channel of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which might have helped the Trump administration communicate with the Iranian population, had been defunded.
Trump has shredded what author Barry Lando calls “the architecture of civilisation” – the Nuremberg tribunal’s prohibition on wars of aggression, the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war, the need for a UN Security Council resolution. Trump has banned eight judges from the International Criminal Court, plus its prosecutor and his two deputies, from entering the US and imposed financial sanctions on them, because they indicted Netanyahu for war crimes in Gaza.
In Davos in January, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney advocated an alliance of progressive middle powers to counter the autocrats. French president Emmanuel Macron this week offered to protect other European countries with France’s nuclear force de frappe. But Carney and Macron, like chancellor Friedrich Merz, approved of the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as if the destruction of Iran’s despotic regime justified a reckless and illegal war.
Spain’s socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez was the European leader who objected most forcefully. But when Sánchez refused permission for the US to use Spanish airbases, Trump heaped abuse on him and said he would use the bases anyway.
Trump has turned the world into a lawless jungle where he can attack or assassinate at will. Is there any hope of returning to a semblance of normality?
