As the United States and its client states in the Middle East escalate their drive to overthrow the Syrian state, the garrison state of Israel is once again threatening Iran with a military attack. However, the corporate media are turning reality on its head, leading their audience to believe that Iran is the aggressor and Israel the victim.
Israel, with a consistent history of aggression, has long played the role of victim in its propaganda. As a state whose entire existence is premised on the forced removal of Palestinians from their land, Israel has now compiled over 60 years of crimes against the Palestinian people.
Israel has also invaded every single one of its neighbors: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Much of the territory it has occupied it has refused to ever return. Israel’s aggression has also gone beyond its borders, including its bombing of the Osirak nuclear plant in Iraq in 1981 and its military assistance to reactionary states around the globe, including apartheid South Africa.
Recent statements against Israel by leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran are played up in the Western media as sure signs of Iran’s aggression. Among those were the words of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei: “The big powers have dominated the destiny of the Islamic countries for years and … installed the Zionist cancerous tumor in the heart of the Islamic world.”
Both Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad have also expressed the wish for, and the prediction of, the ultimate demise of the “Zionist state.” These are essentially a repeat of statements made previously by Ahmadinejad, themselves an echo of statements made decades earlier by the leader of Iran’s revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini.
In fact, these are mild words compared to ones by Israeli officials, such as a June 7, 2008, remark by Israel’s Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer: “If you so much as dream of attacking Israel, before you even finish dreaming there won’t be an Iran anymore.”
Unlike statements by Iranian leaders condemning a political system, a racist exclusionary settler state, Ben-Eliezer’s statement is about annihilating a country, not overthrowing a political system. As appalling as the Iranian statements may seem to Western audiences, given the history of Israel’s crimes, the predictions and wishes for the demise of the state of Israel reflect a popular sentiment among the people of the Middle East.
Open debate over ‘pre-emptive’ strike
But much more important than rhetorical statements and verbal condemnations is the real danger of a military attack. For months, there has been open debate in the Israeli establishment about whether Israel should launch a “pre-emptive” strike on Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu, along with Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, are reported to be in favor of bombing Iran. Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, along with several current and former military and intelligence officials are reportedly opposed to such an attack, believing that its risks outweigh the benefits. Even details of the planned attacks have been leaked.
It has reached a point that some Israeli media outlets are outright predicting an imminent attack. A recent broadcast on Israel’s main TV news program reported: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have ‘almost finally’ decided on an Israeli strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities this fall, and a final decision will be taken ‘soon.’” (Times of Israel)
The New York Times quoted Ephraim Halevy, former Mossad chief and national security adviser, saying that if he were Iranian he “would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks.”
On Aug. 17, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Khamenei’s remarks “offensive and inflammatory.” While Ban found the time to comment on verbal attacks on Israel, he had nothing to say about Israel’s actual preparation and planning for bombing Iran.
Whether Israel is actually preparing an attack or using the threat to pressure the United States into an even more aggressive stance against Iran, the fact remains that these are not political statements of opposition to Iran’s state, or the expressions of a wish that the Islamic Republic be overthrown. Nor are these idle threats. There is no question that, with the help of the United States, Israel is capable of launching a bombing attack on Iran.
On Aug. 19, commenting on tactical differences between Israel and the U.S., the chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, General Martin Dempsey, said: “We compare intelligence, we discuss regional implications. And we’ve admitted to each other that our clocks are turning at different rates. … They are living with an existential concern that we are not living with.”
The corporate media have done their share of promoting this line that Iran is an existential threat to Israel. The fact that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and Iran has none does not influence this propaganda narrative, nor does the fact that, at any given time, all of Iran is within range of hundreds of U.S. nuclear bombs.
Since the overthrow of the Soviet Union, U.S. strategy in the Middle East has been to bring down all independent states in the region. The U.S./NATO overthrow of the Libyan state, the current drive to overthrow the Syrian state, and the sanctions and war threats against Iran are all components of this strategy. Establishment of complete dominance over the region is a goal that the U.S. government is pursuing in the interests of the banks, oil giants and corporations that it serves. It is the responsibility of all revolutionaries and progressives to oppose this war drive, whatever form it takes.
