by Caitlin Johnstone
Iran appears to be poised to launch an attack on Israel in retaliation for the Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, which killed 16 people including multiple Iranian military officers. Iranian forces have already seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, and Tehran continues to vow that it will soon retaliate for the embassy attack at an undisclosed time.
Iran has reportedly said through Oman that the scope of the attack will be calibrated to avoid escalation into an all-out regional conflict. Reuters reports that Washington does not expect the retaliatory attack to be large enough to draw the US into war, so both Washington and Tehran appear to be saying basically the same thing about what’s coming. So as things stand right now it seems both sides see it as unlikely that this will be the spark to ignite a new war of profound horror in the middle east.
What’s really interesting about this situation right now is how western empire managers and propagandists have been framing the coming Iranian retaliation to suggest that Iran is about to attack Israel out of the blue, completely unprovoked. As though bombing an embassy would not be considered an extreme act of war by any nation anywhere on earth.
They’ve seriously just been talking about it as though the embassy strike didn’t happen, babbling about defending Israel and Israel’s right to defend itself like any attack by Iran would be coming completely out of the blue. On Friday President Biden warned Iran not to attack Israel when questioned about the coming strike, saying, “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed.”
“The threats from Iran are completely unacceptable and we, like the Americans, fully support Israel’s right to defend itself,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday.
“Australia is deeply concerned by indications Iran is preparing military action against Israel,” chimed in Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, saying Iran should “use its influence in the region to promote stability, not contribute to escalation.”
“Israel is under threat of imminent attack by Iran,” said US Senator Tom Cotton on Twitter. “President Biden needs to warn the ayatollahs immediately that the United States will back Israel to the hilt and the joint American-Israeli retaliation for any attack will be swift and devastating.”
“Iran will bear the consequences for choosing to escalate the situation any further,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said following the cargo ship seizure.
Mass media headlines have also been framing this as an attack that’s coming completely out of nowhere by an irrational aggressor.
“Netanyahu meets top officials as fear of Iran attack on Israel grows,” reads a headline from the BBC.
“Israel braces amid fears of Iranian strike; U.S. shifts forces to region,” a headline from The Washington Post says.
“Israel Bracing for Unprecedented Direct Iran Attack in Days,” blares Bloomberg.
“Major Iranian attack on Israel believed to be imminent,” warns CBS News.
The casual news consumer would see all this and assume that Israel and its allies have received some intelligence that Iran is preparing an attack without provocation, and are doing everything they can to deter this maniacal regime from doing so.
This is ridiculous. If Iran had bombed a US embassy and killed multiple US military officials, the US would be raining bombs on Tehran within hours and everyone knows it. But Israel bombs an Iranian embassy and everyone acts like it didn’t happen and starts yelling at Iran instead.
It’s like if someone ran up and sucker-punched somebody at the bar, and then everyone started screaming at the guy who just got punched that he’d better leave the other guy alone and stop being a bully.
Iran is going to attack Israel, because at some point it does have to push back on Israeli violence to create some deterrence. Hopefully it will indeed be limited, hopefully the violence will not spiral into something nightmarish, and hopefully enough people are able to see through all the propaganda spin enough to understand what’s actually happening.
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You seem to forget what an aggressor Iran is! Who finance Hezbollah? Iran. Who finance other terrorist organizations in the world. Iran. Israel would not have bombed the embassy in Iran with out a good reason. Iran want to spread Islamist state to as many countries as it can. It is already controlling Baghdad in Iraq. I know this from a member of parliament in Kurdistan. You seem to forget too who started this war. Hamas. The aid given to the Palestinians over many years got used to build tunnels and armament is stead of helping the civilians. What kind of people take women and children as hostages in a war and refuse to release them? Cowards and people fueled by hate and years of indoctrination. They only have one goal and that is eradication of Israel and genocide against all Jews. They are worse than the Nazi’s because they seem to take pride in their cruelty. May God give Israel the resilience, determination and power it needs to survive the evil that surround them!
What nonsense! Which country has Iran invaded? What action has it taken that rivals in evil the West’s immoral wars?
Hezbollah is a resistance organisation and its crime is that it booted Israel out of South Lebanon and fights NATO/Israeli proxies like ISIS.
Hamas didn’t start anything on October 7. It was all started in the 19th century with the Zionist illegal immigration project, followed by Balfours’s deal with Rothschild, and then in the 1940s when xenophobic Anglo-Saxon countries like NZ supported the establishment of a European tumour in the Middle East. This despite the numerous reports of Zionist acts of terrorism in Palestine, the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages, and the displacement of 750 people.
Nope, it’s not about “genocide against all Jews”, as Jews living in Iran will testify. https://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/11/middleeast/iran-jews-esfahan/index.html
See also https://prepareforchange.net/2024/04/12/are-embassies-off-limits-ecuadorian-and-israeli-actions-suggest-otherwise-%e2%88%92-and-that-sets-a-dangerous-diplomatic-precedent/
‘It was notable that the three liberal democracies on the U.N. Security Council – the United States, the United Kingdom and France – all refused to condemn the strike on Iran’s embassy when the issue came up before them.
‘Israel, while not officially acknowledging responsibility, argued that the Iranian ambassador’s residence was not really a diplomatic venue but “a military building … disguised as a civilian building.” As such, to Israel it was a perfectly legitimate target.
‘But by this logic, nearly all embassies would be seen as fair game. Almost by definition, the vast majority of embassies – particularly of the larger countries – are populated with significant numbers of military and intelligence personnel.’