The US and Israeli war on Iran is out of control. Trump has no plan. To paraphrase his own verdict on the 12-day war of 2025, he doesn’t know what the f**k he’s doing.
Israel is intent on assassinating any Iranian leadership. Those who replace them are more radical. Iranian state media has begun warning that “in times of war, traitors must be dealt with more harshly”, and three people have been hanged after confessions obtained under torture. US and Israeli warmongering may have wiped out the prospect of Iranian self-determination for the rest of living memory.
Back in 2007, a survey of Iranian labor struggles under the threat of war warned:
“One could think of Iran … as a huge prison. Inside its high walls, the inmates are trying various methods of liberation. Some dig tunnels, some gear up for a riot, others have gone on hunger strike; yet another group is studying maps of the premises to find the prison’s weak spots. Outside the walls, an army of bulldozers approaches, threatening to flatten the prison and all within it.”
The bulldozers have arrived. They didn’t seem count on Iran having bulldozers of its own.
The “international community” won’t acknowledge how we got here. In the Palestinian context, Mohammed El-Kurd calls this “starting the story with ‘Secondly’”: it’s easy to brand someone a target if you ignore the reason they threw the rock. In the opening salvos of this war, European and North American leaders, one after another, condemned Iranian retaliation while they kept silent on US and Israeli aggression.
A missile doesn’t care whether or not you’re a “legitimate target”. This week, four Palestinian women were killed when debris from a strike hit a hair salon in the West Bank. There, the war has ratcheted settler violence. CPT Palestine reports “the security situation is unpredictable, and it is difficult to know what the next day may bring.” In Iraqi Kurdistan, four were killed and 32 injured in the last week. The team reports that Iranian attacks have damaged civilian homes and civil institutions.
In the Aegean islands, meanwhile, Greece is preparing for another wave of migration into Europe: making room in the camps, putting the Coast Guard on “full alert” to “protect sea borders”, and preparing to suspend the right to asylum. It seems set on repeating the mistakes of the past decade.
It might seem that history is doomed to repeat itself, but nothing is inevitable. Honesty about how we got here is one place a different future can begin.
