[News] An enormous crime against Iran

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/enormous-crime-against-iran>
An enormous crime against Iran Ali Abunimah
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> Rights and
Accountability
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 1 March 2026
------------------------------
[image: A woman embraces a portrait of Ali Khamenei]

People gather to mourn Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran’s Enghelab Square
on 1 March, after it was confirmed that Israel and the United States had
killed the Iranian leader a day earlier.
Anadolu Images

Hours before Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death was confirmed, I told the *Drop
Site News* livestream that the assassination of Iran’s leader would be an
enormous crime.

By early Sunday, Iran announced that the United States and Israel had
killed Khamenei as well as several members
<https://www.trtworld.com/article/a7c099defca2> of his family.

They join hundreds of Iranians
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/mourning-protests-erupt-in-iran-after-supreme-leader-khamenei-killed-in-us-israel-strikes/3844591>
already slain in the American-Israeli war, including scores of schoolgirls
massacred in an unspeakable atrocity
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/least-24-girls-killed-us-strike-elementary-school-southern-iran>
at an elementary school in Minab, southern Iran.

You can watch the discussion in this video, hosted by Jeremy Scahill and
Ryan Grim, and joined by Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American commentator.

Killing Khamenei, the leader of a sovereign state, in an unprovoked war of
aggression is a flagrant act of international terrorism.

Right away, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, the perpetrators of this crime, got what they asked for:
Iranians poured into the streets.

They were not there to protest their government and overthrow it – as the
warmongers had demanded – but to mourn their martyred leader and demand
revenge.
Arab and Western complicity

Before the murder of Khamenei was confirmed, Arab and Western regimes lined
up behind the Trump-Netanyahu war.

With a few notable exceptions such as Spain
<https://x.com/AliAbunimah/status/2027712295363588603> in Europe, and Oman
<https://x.com/AliAbunimah/status/2027739094193725838> among Arab states,
governments failed to criticize the attack on Iran – yet denounced Iran for
acting in self-defense against the countries from which the Americans
launched their aggression.

In a particularly perverse twist, many – including France, Germany and
Britain
<https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/e3-joint-leaders-statement-on-iran--2409132>
– called for *Iran* to resume “negotiations” – as if it was Iran, not the
United States and Israel, that had used ongoing talks as a cover to prepare
*another* surprise attack, just as they did last June.
Canada and Australia <https://x.com/AlboMP/status/2027678880220516549> went
even further, offering open support for the aggression.

So much for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s big speech
<https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/>
in Davos a few weeks ago challenging Trump and defending a world order
based on rules that apply to all.
All these countries – and their loyalist media, including their liberal
wings – have for decades demonized Iran and portrayed it as an aggressor.
But as I told *Drop Site News*, this is a reversal of reality.

It is Iran that has faced decades of aggression from them.
Iran under attack for decades

In 1980, as Iran was consolidating its post-revolutionary order after
overthrowing the brutal US-backed Shah dictatorship, Iraq invaded.

But that war was not merely Saddam Hussein’s project. It was supported and
armed
<https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/longroad/etc/arming.htm> by
the United States
<https://yris.yira.org/column/u-s-involvement-in-the-1980s-iran-iraq-war-americas-haphazard-extension-of-gulf-insecurity/>
and European powers, and funded by the same Arab regimes that are now
backing the US-Israeli aggression.

West Germany – of all countries – was instrumental in Iraq’s production
<https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/west-germanys-secret-back-channel-iraq>
of chemical weapons that were used to attack Iranians.

Iran’s formidable ballistic missile force also has its roots in this
period: Iraq’s indiscriminate Scud missile attacks on Iran’s population
centers during the “war of the cities,” killing thousands of
civilians, convinced
the country’s leaders
<https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/historical-traumas-underline-iranian-reliance-on-missiles/>
of the need for an effective, defensive deterrent.
[image: Overhead view of enormous crowd in large city square]

An enormous crowd fills Enghelab Square in Tehran on 1 March, after Iran’s
government confirmed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme
leader, had been killed a day earlier in the ongoing US-Israeli aggression.
Fatemeh Bahrami Anadolu Images

Iran has not invaded its neighbors. It has not waged wars of conquest.

Its missile strikes have come only after direct attacks, whether the US
assassination
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-base-iraq-comes-under-attack-missiles-iran-claims-n1112171>
of General Qasem Soleimani
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/qasem-soleimani> or Israeli strikes on
Iranian territory last June.

Iran survived eight years of devastation as a result of the Western- and
Arab-regime-backed Iraqi invasion.

Since then, it has faced wave after wave of assassinations
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/qasem-soleimani> and sanctions
calculated to immiserate its population, from denying them cancer treatments
<https://www.dw.com/en/iran-sanctions-mean-life-saving-medication-in-short-supply/a-74825554>
to causing plane crashes
<https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/world/africa/iran-sanctions-risk-to-air-safety-is-cited-in-report.html>
by banning Iran’s import of new aircraft and spare parts.

Despite Arab-regime hostility, Iran has supported Palestinian and Lebanese
resistance against Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide.

This is undoubtedly its main transgression in the eyes of pro-Israel Arabs
and their Western sponsors, and is spun as “interference” and support for
“proxies” rather than solidarity with peoples waging just struggles for
liberation.

US officials boast
<https://www.npr.org/2026/02/23/nx-s1-5708935/trumps-sanctions-on-iran-have-dramatically-affected-its-economy-and-led-to-protests>
that sanctions have collapsed Iran’s currency, created economic hardship
and – along with covert Israeli and American destabilization efforts –
fomented violence.

This cruelty is so normalized that even a so-called liberal, such as former
Democratic House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, can call for more
suffering with barely a murmur of protest:
Rogue power

It’s the same strategy that was used against the people of Iraq in the
1990s – once Saddam was no longer useful to his Western patrons.

Notoriously, President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
did not deny the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from
sanctions, but rather confirmed <https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1T5JRVR53Eo>
that “we think the price is worth it.”

Sanctions targeting ordinary Syrians
<https://www.unescwa.org/news/escwa-report-sanctions-unintended-effects-population-syrian-aran-republic>
were used in preparation for regime change, just as they have been
unleashed against people in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Palestinians
in Gaza.

Invariably, these nations’ unforgivable crime is demanding or defending
their own sovereignty and independence.

In the past, the United States would go to some trouble to fabricate
pretexts for its imperialist wars – think of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident
<https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/gulf-of-tonkin/> for Vietnam or
“weapons of mass destruction” for Iraq.

When it comes to Iran, the effort has appeared half-hearted, truncated and
scattershot – as Jeremy Scahill of *Drop Site News* noted in the discussion.

Trump claims to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear resources while
simultaneously portraying it as an imminent threat.

He has threatened military intervention to save Iranian lives, supposedly
from their own government, while having no qualms about the United States
and Israel killing and injuring thousands of Iranians in the June 2025 war
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/eli-gerzon/livestream-west-panic-israel-loses-narrative-war>
and this one.

But whatever propaganda the US and Israel have deployed has not worked: As
of a week ago, only a quarter
<https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54158-few-americans-support-usa-military-action-against-iran-majority-think-it-is-likely-february-20-23-2026-economist-yougov-poll>
of Americans supported a war against Iran.
US imperialism’s ultimate targets

Externally, the US feels no need to sell its aggression: Why should it,
when Israel’s genocide has swept away the last pretenses that there is any
international law and order?

The US regime-change wars in Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 – and its ongoing
targeting of Venezuela
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/eli-gerzon/livestream-us-led-aggression-gaza-venezuela>
and Cuba
<https://mronline.org/2026/02/28/cuba-will-not-fall-the-fight-against-washingtons-energy-blockade/>,
presage a new world order in which the US can plunder nations without
restraint.

Russia and China are the only nations with the potential to balance this
rogue superpower. Iran’s strategic location and vast resources make it
vital to both Moscow and Beijing, which is precisely why it is in the
sights of the United States and Israel.

Destroying Iran may be the immediate goal, but Russia and China are the
real targets of US imperial ambition. Whether they grasp the scale of the
threat is unclear, given their muted response to the assault on Iran so far.

Their failure to veto
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/eli-gerzon/livestream-arab-states-betray-palestine-un-hands-gaza-trump>
the “Board of Peace” resolution at the UN Security Council in November –
allowing Trump to crown himself a would-be world monarch – is not a
promising sign either.

While the United States and Israel are fighting a war of aggression and
choice, Iran is in an existential battle for survival.

Iran’s future belongs to Iranians. But if their country is wrecked, or
subjected to the tyranny of Washington and Tel Aviv – like so many of its
neighbors – that future will be stolen from them for generations.

If this American and Israeli aggression succeeds, no country or people will
have sovereignty or any control over their lives.
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