Forever At Forever War With Iran
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“We’re not at war with Iran – we’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.” – Vice President JD Vance
Where were you when America started the forever war in Iran? It’s a deceptively simple question, but I’m willing to bet that if you ask it of ten random Americans, you’ll get at least four different answers. Let’s put that question aside for the moment and talk about current events; I promise we’ll get back to it before this essay is over.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the United States is now at war with Iran. On Saturday night, Swine Emperor Trump ordered bombing runs on three Iranian nuclear facilities that our government claims are part of an Iranian uranium enrichment program to develop nuclear weapons. These strikes included deploying buster bunker bombs against the underground facility at Fordow, despite a great deal of evidence that this will have little effect on an Iranian nuclear program nobody credible actually thinks is developing nuclear weapons at all. The attacks were of course war crimes under international law, but for his part the President seemed quite pleased with himself; Trump declared the bombings a “spectacular” success despite the fact that he could not possibly have intelligence on how effective the strikes had been yet. Then he threatened the government and people of Iran with additional strikes if anyone retaliated against his again, clearly illegal act of war.
And why wouldn’t Downmarket Mussolini be pleased? Despite his carefully cultivated, and completely false, reputation as a dove, Donald Trump has lusted after a war with Iran for a long time. This is a guy who stacked his first cabinet full of Iran war hawks like Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton. One of his first acts as president was to send his unhinged Islamophobic national security adviser, Michael Flynn out in front of the media to very publicly “put Iran on notice.” Why would a President who just wants to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons rip up the Obama-era treaty the United States had with Iran that does precisely that? All of which is to say nothing of the fact that the Swine Emperor already tried to start a war with Iran to improve his 2020 election prospects when he assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani; Iran just didn’t take the bait.
Of course, if you’ve been following along on my Fediverse blog, none of this will surprise you. At the point that Israel, an American client state that could not prosecute a war with Iran without US weapons, financial support, and diplomatic support, launched a sneak attack on Iranian targets, the United States was effectively in a de facto state of war with Iran already. Furthermore, Trump talks like we’re already at war with Iran; just recently the Swine Emperor ordered more than ten million Iranians to “immediately” evacuate the city of Tehran, and then called for the unconditional surrender of the Iranian government. Surrender to whom? That was never clarified. As if to amplify the point that a US attack was coming, the Pork Reich began moving military assets into the MENA region while pulling noncombatants out. When Trump announced he’d make a decision about attacking Iran in two weeks, some folks in the credulous media took that seriously, but everyone paying attention knew he was lying. All that was left to do was make a head fake towards Guam, and the attack was launched.
So, we’re clearly at war with Iran, right? Not according to the Kelpto Kaiser’s couch-curious Vice President JD Vance; who gifted Trump’s war in Iran with its first Bushism when he confidently informed NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” moderator Kristen Welker that we’re only at war with Iran’s nuclear program. Why that isn’t a difference without a distinction, remains unclear. This naturally won’t be the last lie the Trumpenreich regime utters to justify this illegal war, nor is it the first. After all, the entire premise of the attack, to shut down the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program, is a lie. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been claiming Iran is on the verge of building a nuclear weapon without evidence for over thirty years. In March, Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard publicly told Congress that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon and wouldn’t be capable of doing so for at least three years. This has put the United States in the precarious position of bombing a country we claim we’re not at war with, while simultaneously declaring we’re at war with a nuclear weapons program that does not exist; that faint clapping sound you hear is Dick Cheney applauding the Trump regime’s chutzpah.
If all of this is starting to sound like a redux of America’s road to the invasion of Iraq to you, that’s probably because Trump and much of the larger pro-war US establishment appear to be running the same playbook to manufacture consent for military action. From nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, to wholly imaginary assassination attempts against the President, and including even the voice of God himself, the Trump regime is playing the Bush-Cheney administration’s greatest hits faithfully, while a credulous media once again paves the path to war. Furthermore, while there has been some squawking from Democrats about the Swine Emperor acting unilaterally to bomb Iran without the permission of Congress, all signs point to the President having bipartisan support in government for a war with Iran, just as Bush did in Iraq.
While keeping in mind that analysis isn’t prophecy, I don’t think it’s all that hard to figure out what is going to happen next. Why would an American president, even one as impulsive and shortsighted as Downmarket Mussolini, launch a bombing run against a nuclear facility he can’t destroy, to take out a nuclear weapons program he knows doesn’t exit? Neither Trump, nor Netanyahu are in this game to drop a few bombs and call it a day, and corporate media in the Pig Empire is already pointing out that the only way to be sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon is to remove the government. It could not be more obvious that regime change in Iran is the ultimate goal of what is now a joint American-Israeli war, just as it has been the goal for every President in American history since the Iranian revolution ousted a US-puppet monarch; a revolution that was itself created in response to the CIA’s “successful” 1953 operation in Iran to overthrow the democratically-elected left wing Prime Minister of that country, Mohammad Mosaddegh.
To call this Trump’s war alone, would be a gross oversimplification of demonstrable reality. The hard truth is that the American empire now wages war in Iran with full knowledge of our criminality and wicked intentions we’re hiding from no one. Our government brazenly lies to manufacture consent, bombs foreign lands without hesitation, and silences anyone who questions the blood price that must be paid for our arrogance. This isn’t a miscalculation or a strategic blunder by a fascist regime that represents an aberration in American foreign policy. It’s the culmination of almost seventy-five years of American imperial ambitions in Iran, and the natural outcome of a ruling class that only understands dominance through destruction. If anything, Trump’s illegal war will actually bring the Trumpenreich administration closer to the mainstream in US politics; as always, America’s imperial violence will likely be accompanied by declarations of noble intentions and thunderous bipartisan applause.
All of which brings us back to the question I asked at the top of this essay: where were you when America started the forever war in Iran? Unless you’re reading this from an assisted care facility, the correct answer is probably a thoroughly Orwellian retort that “America has always been at war with Iran.” I guess time really is a flat circle in the Pig Empire.
– Nina Illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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