[News] The Illegal Attack on Iran

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/13/the-illegal-attack-on-iran/>
The Illegal Attack on Iran
Vijay Prashad
June 13, 2025
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Smoke from Israeli airstrike on Iran. Screengrab from video posted to X.

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 recognise that this would require Israel, not Iran,
to denuclearise. 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 normalised 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 Qassim 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 demoralise 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
<https://media.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b02aceea9cb578af543d3029c&id=be6f0288b0&e=ab710e72ba>
of the Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September 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
<https://media.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b02aceea9cb578af543d3029c&id=dce03c5e14&e=ab710e72ba>
the government of al-Assad on 8 December 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’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is The Withdrawal:
Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power (New Press, August
2022).*
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