[News] Why Trump is escalating the US-Israeli war on Iran

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-trump-escalating-us-israeli-war-iran/29231?fbclid=IwAR0iPwxBugyTxtwKd2u6_HYGTsIrIw0Qy9KGte68MMlifSe4GLxKegWNzYU
Why
Trump is escalating the US-Israeli war on Iran Ali Abunimah
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> The Electronic Intifada
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada> 3 January 2020
------------------------------
[image: People demonstrate with flags and posters]

An Iranian man carries a portrait of Qasem Soleimani, in Tehran on 3
January, the day after the Iranian general was assassinated in an American
air attack on Baghdad airport.
SIPA

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-lauds-trump-for-killing-of-irans-soleimani-says-israel-stands-by-us/>
the US attacks on Iraq that killed senior Iranian general Qasem Soleimani
and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of Iraqi militias that were
instrumental in the defeat of ISIS – so-called Islamic State.

President Donald Trump “is worthy of full appreciation for acting with
determination, strongly and swiftly,” Netanyahu said
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGzQ7Krcblc&feature=youtu.be> Friday.

Other senior Israeli politicians, including supposed opposition leaders,
lauded the American attack. Among them, Amir Peretz
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/amir-peretz>, head of the ostensibly
center-left Labor-Gesher party, said Soleimani “deserved to die” and
thanked Trump.

Peretz’s hatred of Iran is perhaps understandable. He was defense minister
during Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, in which that country’s
resistance – supported by Iran – dealt Israel a humiliating defeat.

Yossi Melman <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yossi-melman>, a veteran
analyst of Israeli intelligence, called
<https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-abu-mahdi-al-muhandis-iran-kataib-hezbollah-qassem-soleimani-u-s-strike-iraq-syria-israel-1.8344495>
the US escalation “good news for Israel” because it draws the United States
even further into Israel’s attacks on Iran and its interests.

In an initial response, Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/javad-zarif> lauded Soleimani as the
head of “the most effective force” in fighting ISIS and al-Qaida, and
termed his killing an act of “international terrorism.”

There is, no doubt, great satisfaction in Israel and among its most
fanatical supporters at a move that ratchets the situation towards even
more catastrophic violence.
Unhinged jingoism

The assassination of Soleimani followed American attacks last Sunday that
killed more than two dozen members of Kataib Hizballah, an Iraqi militia
that helped defeat ISIS.

That prompted protests
<https://news.yahoo.com/iraq-protesters-attempting-storm-us-084500170.html>
that breached the perimeter of the heavily fortified US embassy in Baghdad.

The US claims
<https://thedefensepost.com/2019/12/29/us-airstrikes-kataib-hezbollah-pmu-iraq-syria/>
the group carried out a rocket attack
<https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/american-defense-contractor-killed-troops-wounded-in-rocket-attack-on-base-in-kirkuk-1.612677>
on a northern Iraqi military base days earlier that killed an American
contractor.

Senator Ted Cruz <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ted-cruz> praised
Trump’s killing of Soleimani as “long overdue justice for our Israeli
allies” – whatever that means.

Trump – who ran for office railing against the Iraq war
<https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-condemns-tony-blair-iraq-war-disaster-460564>
– is now resorting to the same sorts of lies and exaggerations all his
predecessors have used to manipulate the public into supporting their
military adventures:

There will no doubt be much more of this unhinged jingoism.
Democrats tacitly support Trump

Support for Trump from the far right is to be expected, but sadly so is
tacit support from so-called progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/elizabeth-warren> and centrists like
former Vice President Joe Biden
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/joe-biden>, both Democrats running for
president.

Their mealy mouthed criticism of the president’s killings starts from the
premise that Soleimani is a Bad Man – the villain *du jour* who deserves to
be liquidated.

But they are only worried about the timing, process and possible
consequences.

They never question the premise that the United States has the right to
send troops, aircraft carriers and drones to impose its will on every
corner of the world, to bomb and kill and install handpicked puppet leaders
in any country that fails to toe Washington’s line.

In other words, they too are committed imperialists, just liberals.

Senator Bernie Sanders <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bernie-sanders>
warned that Trump’s “dangerous escalation brings us closer to another
disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and
trillions more dollars.” But he stopped short of condemning the killing of
Soleimani itself.
Iran encircled

The reality – clear to those whose view is not obscured by devotion to US
power or to sectarian hatred – is that Iran has for decades been pushing
back against US encirclement
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2012/04/2012417131242767298.html>
and efforts at regime change.

That began after the 1979 Islamic Revolution which overthrew the Shah, a
loyal American puppet and ally of Israel
<https://lobelog.com/the-unwritten-history-of-israels-alliance-with-the-shahs-dictatorship/>
.

In 1980, the West, especially the United States, supported Saddam Hussein’s
invasion of Iran. That launched an eight-year war that is estimated to have
cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Iranian lives
<https://www.britannica.com/event/Iran-Iraq-War>.

American, British, French and German companies supplied Iraq
<https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/longroad/etc/arming.html>
with arms, including the ability to manufacture chemical weapons. (After
that war, Saddam had pretensions of becoming a regional power in his own
right – notably his criminal invasion of Kuwait in 1990. No longer serving
its purposes, the US turned on Iraq, waging decades of lethal sanctions
<https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1999/09/former-un-official-says-sanctions-against-iraq-amount-genocide>
and war.)

Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the US invaded Iran’s eastern neighbor
Afghanistan. Two years later, the George W. Bush administration invaded and
occupied Iraq, immediately to Iran’s west.

This came amid euphoria from the neoconservatives at the heart of the Bush
administration that Damascus and Tehran would be the next targets.

This all followed the script
<https://ips-dc.org/the_attack-syria_coalitions_neocon_roots/> set out by
the Project for the New American Century, a think tank pushing for regime
change across the region as a way of securing American and Israeli
domination.
Nuke Iran

Allied with American imperialists, Israel and its supporters have been the
prime backers of escalation if not outright war with Iran.

Israel, and specifically Netanyahu, took the lead in working to end the 2015
deal <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/iran-nuclear-agreement> which saw
Iran voluntarily place its nuclear energy program under strict limits in
exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions.

Israel has relentlessly
<https://thehill.com/policy/international/middle-east-north-africa/452624-trump-netanyahu-discuss-increased-sanctions-on>
pushed <https://apnews.com/986325879d8747b491e165385d67d404> for the
punishing economic war waged by Trump aimed at inflicting suffering on
ordinary people and bringing Iran to collapse.

As scholar Greg Shupak <https://electronicintifada.net/people/greg-shupak>
observes
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-israel-wants-iran-destroyed/27531>,
“US and Israeli planners despise Iran principally because it is an
independent regional power.”

“It has a strong military and a foreign policy that includes providing
material support for armed Palestinian resistance to Israel and for
Hizballah’s defense of Lebanon from US-Israeli aggressions, including the
joint invasion in 1982 and the US-backed Israeli assault in 2006,” Shupak
adds.

The hatred is so extreme that Sheldon Adelson
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/sheldon-adelson>, the pro-Israel
billionaire and top funder
<https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-adelson-reportedly-watches-election-with-trump-1.6632299>
to Trump and the Republican Party, has previously called on the United
States to nuke Iran
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/sheldon-adelson-calls-on-us-to-nuke-iranian-desert/>
.

Israel’s determination to weaken Iran – and if possible bring about regime
change – has been the motivation for years of Israeli attacks. These
include dozens of bombing attacks in Syria and Iraq
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/terrified-israel-escalates-attacks-across-region>
and the murder of Iranian scientists.

But as Shupak notes, the main Israeli strategy has been to push for Iran to
be “subjected to enough socioeconomic asphyxiation that its government will
be overthrown or it will be subjected to even greater outside control than
it was under the nuclear deal” – a deal Iran abided by until the US
withdrew from it in 2018.

This is in sharp contrast to Israel, which is widely acknowledged
<https://thebulletin.org/2014/11/israeli-nuclear-weapons-2014/> to possess
a nuclear arsenal, but which unlike Iran, adamantly refuses
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-nuclear-treaty-idUSTRE64S1ZN20100529>
to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty or to agree to any international
supervision.

It’s important to keep things in perspective: Iran’s military budget
is a relatively
modest $13 billion
<https://sipri.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/fs_1905_gulf_milex_and_arms_transfers.pdf>
.

Saudi Arabia – its implacably hostile US-backed neighbor – spends five
times as much. The United States just passed a bipartisan
<https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/12/11/house-passes-progressive-defense-bill-377-48/>
military budget of $738 billion – or 55 times what Iran spends.
Perverted logic

Still, relatively puny Iran has managed some significant achievements.

Lebanon’s Hizballah, supported by Iran, dealt Israel – and by extension the
United States
<https://www.democracynow.org/2006/8/14/seymour_hersh_u_s_helped_plan> – a
major strategic defeat when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006.

More recently, it was Iran’s support, specifically under the guidance of
General Soleimani, that rolled back ISIS across Syria and Iraq, stopping
the group from taking Baghdad
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/14/iran-iraq-isis-fight-militants-nouri-maliki>
.

The growth and spread of groups like ISIS and al-Qaida – a direct
consequence
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-us-foreign-policy-spawned-terror-and-trump/27371>
of American wars and interventions – has been a catastrophe for millions of
people across the region.

But these groups never really bothered the United States and Israel, who
just see them as more tools in their effort to impose their will.

That is why the United States sent at least a billion dollars of arms
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syria-rebel-arm-train-trump.html>
into the hands of such groups to fuel the war in Syria.

That is why Israel armed and funded
<https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/06/in-secret-program-israel-armed-and-funded-rebel-groups-in-southern-syria/>
groups linked with al-Qaida in Syria as well.

In 2014, then vice president, Biden apologized
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/10/uae-says-amazed-joe-biden-syria-remarks-20141058153239733.html>
for accidentally revealing <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOf7jzc7faY> an
unpalatable truth: It was the US’ closest allies in the region – Turkey,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – who also sent “hundreds
of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons” to groups
including Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida and “extremist elements of jihadis
coming from other parts of the world.”

Biden suggested that this support was crucial to spawning ISIS, an offshoot
<https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2013/12/27/how-al-qaeda-changed-syrian-war/>
of al-Qaida and its allies.

In 2016, Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/moshe-yaalon-0> made clear
<https://www.newsweek.com/israeli-defense-minister-i-prefer-isis-iran-our-borders-417726>
Israel’s agenda: “In Syria, if the choice is between Iran and the Islamic
State, I choose the Islamic State.”

And that is no doubt why Yaalon welcomed an apology
<https://www.newsweek.com/isis-fighters-regret-attacking-israel-apologize-defense-minister-591020>
from ISIS after it attacked Israeli forces in Syria’s occupied Golan
Heights in 2016.

This Israeli logic can be applied to the region at large, especially
Israel’s increasingly cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/saudi-israeli-relations>, which is
founded on joint enmity towards Iran.

Columbia University professor Joseph Massad
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/joseph-massad> has suggested
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/non-aggression-pacts-between-israel-and-gulf-states-would-bring-both-war-and-shame>
that recent US-backed moves to reach formal “non-aggression pacts” between
Israel and certain Gulf States may be a preparatory step for a wider war
against Iran as well as against Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Palestinians.

Understanding this perverted logic is essential to seeing why the US and
Israel appear so determined to pursue conflict with Iran no matter the
human cost.

*Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> is
executive director of The Electronic Intifada and author of* One Country
*and* The Battle for Justice in Palestine.
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