[News] Toward the Abyss: Israel, Iran, and the Moral Collapse of the West

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Toward the Abyss: Israel, Iran, and the Moral Collapse of the WestJune 20,
2025
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Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump. (Photo: video
grab)

*By Mohamed El Mokhtar
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/mohamed-el-mokhtar>*

The crisis is not only strategic — it is moral. The United States no longer
acts out of calculation or fear, but out of a kind of reflexive obedience.
Israel dictates; Washington complies.

There are truths that power refuses to acknowledge — even when they are
glaring. The war against Iran has begun. As always, the United States is
involved, either directly or by proxy, standing resolutely by Israel’s side
and endorsing an escalation whose consequences are both unpredictable and
potentially catastrophic. Neither international law, strategic prudence,
nor the memory of the oppressed seems to restrain this commitment.

But Iran is not a mere regional actor. It is a civilization rooted in
millennia of history, a bearer of one of humanity’s oldest cultural
legacies. One can strike its facilities, assassinate its scientists, or
infiltrate its institutions — but one cannot uproot a nation that has
outlasted empires, nor fabricate a client state divorced from the soul of a
people conscious of its identity and history.

Any assault on this collective consciousness — already underway — will only
strengthen national cohesion. This was evident during the war imposed by
Iraq in the 1980s. History may yet repeat itself. For this new conflict
does not merely target a regime; it disrupts the regional geopolitical
order — from the Strait of Hormuz to the Eastern Mediterranean. Alliances
shift, balances falter, and the logic of war reasserts itself — not out of
necessity, but through reckless calculation and unchecked anxiety.

This turn toward confrontation, driven as much by Israeli panic as by
American compliance, lays bare the West’s deeper moral fracture. On one
side stand political elites captive to pro-Israel lobbies; on the other, a
younger generation — including many Jews — increasingly outraged by the
brutality in Gaza and the impunity of a state that claims every right and
acknowledges no responsibility.

The dissent is no longer confined to the radical fringes. It cuts across
traditional lines, drawing support from intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and
public figures. Individuals like Jeffrey Sachs and the founder of Ben &
Jerry’s have dared to break the silence to denounce what is increasingly
perceived as a genocidal trajectory, carried out in plain sight, under the
protection of a complacent international order.

By aligning unconditionally with Israel — a state waging a war of
destruction in Gaza while provoking open conflict with Iran — the United
States is not defending its strategic interests. It is abandoning them.
Ammunition stocks are depleted, credibility is in tatters, and strategic
coherence has collapsed — all while Washington’s ability to respond to
critical challenges in Asia, particularly vis-à-vis China, continues to
erode.

But the crisis is not only strategic — it is moral. The United States no
longer acts out of calculation or fear, but out of a kind of reflexive
obedience. Israel dictates; Washington complies.

Who mentioned the Iranian hospital was struck two days ago? Or the dozens
of hospitals in Gaza systematically reduced to rubble in a campaign marked
by both sadism and genocidal intent? Western media either remain silent or
distort the facts, depending on whether the target is Israeli or not.

It is important to recall that the Soroka Medical Center, targeted by Iran,
is not a mere civilian facility. It also functions as a medical hub for the
Israeli military — a de facto medical command center embedded within a
broader military complex. It serves personnel engaged in operations,
including those in Gaza.

This information, previously referenced in public sources such as
Wikipedia, has since been removed, though archived versions remain
accessible.

This moral duplicity is further reflected in the growing
instrumentalization of international institutions by Western powers. The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), once a symbol of neutral,
rules-based oversight, now increasingly operates as a vehicle for advancing
political and intelligence objectives. Its credibility was already
undermined during the Iraq affair. Today, its handling of the Iranian
nuclear file raises similar doubts.

Behind the technical language and procedural formalities lie the interests
of the United States, Israel, and their European allies — interests that
shape inspections, influence reports, and erode the very foundations of
institutional trust. Through this quiet erosion, the principle of
neutrality itself is being dismantled.

Complicity, double standards, strategic blindness — one is appalled by a
missile strike on a facility linked to a genocidal occupying army, yet
remains unmoved by the systematic targeting of Palestinian hospitals, where
premature infants perish for lack of power. What was once bias has hardened
into doctrine.

The United States has returned to what it has occasionally been in its own
history: a force without compass, manipulated by forces beyond its grasp. A
giant, subdued and redirected, led into yet another Middle Eastern arena
like a trained beast, bereft of agency. It is no longer servitude — the
term implies a degree of dignity. It is domestication.

Washington is no longer a seat of sovereign decision-making. It is a stage.
And the once-proud Anglo-Saxon giant circles it endlessly, muzzled and
obedient, unleashed at the whim of a master no one dares name — a master
that seeks neither peace nor security, but dominion, even at the cost of
apocalyptic disorder.


*– Mohamed El Mokhtar Sidi Haiba is a social and political analyst, whose
research interest is focused on African and Middle Eastern Affairs. He
contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.*
The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial
position of The Palestine Chronicle.
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