Why Israel and the US are attacking Iran

[Brian D'Agostino]

Dear colleagues,

Let us be absolutely clear about what is going on now in the Middle East.  The dominant narrative in the US and Israeli media is that "We" cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.  I will address the substance of this claim, but first let us note how it functions ideologically.  Israel and the United States preemptively attacked Iran in the absence of any Iranian attack on Israel and the US.  This, by definition, is a war of aggression, which the Nuremberg Tribunal defined as "Crimes against Peace," and for which, among other heinous crimes, Nazi leaders were executed.  So Israeli and US leaders need a fig leaf of legitimacy to conceal the criminal character of their actions.  This fig leaf is the notion that their own security is threatened by the possibility that Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon and their only recourse is preemptive military action to destroy Iran's nuclear enrichment capabilities.

But are these claims true?  First, the notion that Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon would expose Israel to the threat of an unprovoked nuclear attack is complete and utter nonsense.  It is an axiom of nuclear deterrence, known perfectly well by Israeli and US policymakers, that a nuclear armed country cannot attack another nuclear armed country without exposing itself to the likelihood of devastating nuclear retaliation.  This is the famous doctrine of "mutually assured destruction," which is why the "balance of terror" between the US and the USSR remained stable for over forty years and did not degenerate into World War III.  (Actually, luck played a major role in this outcome, in addition to the efficacy of nuclear deterrence).  Since Israel is armed with dozens of nuclear weapons and the capability of annihilating Iranian cities with them, the notion that a nuclear armed Iran would expose Israel to the threat of a nuclear first strike by Iran is manifestly untrue, and Israeli and US leaders certainly know it is untrue.

Secondly, leaving aside the grotesque double standard of nuclear armed states presuming to prevent another state from acquiring nuclear weapons, pre-emptive military action was neither necessary nor effective at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  It was not necessary because Iran had agreed to forgo nuclear weapons development as part of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (the JCPOA).  This treaty provided for international inspection of Iranian nuclear facilities to insure they were only being used for civilian nuclear power.  Goaded by Netanyahu, Trump withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2017, leading to the collapse of the agreement.  Even so, US intelligence agencies concluded as recently as March of this year that Iran was not seeking to develop nuclear weapons.  While unnecessary, the preemptive Israeli and US attacks on Iran, even if militarily effective in the short term, will in the long term make it much more likely that Iran will seek to and succeed in eventually developing nuclear weapons.  The message that Israel and the US have sent is clear and unmistakable--if you don't want to be attacked by Israel and the US, you had better arm yourself with nuclear weapons.

So why the preemptive attacks?  It is another axiom of military science that nuclear armed countries can bully and dominate countries that are not nuclear armed.  An Iranian nuclear weapon would bring this asymmetrical "advantage" to an end.  But holding a nuclear monopoly is only an advantage if the holder intends to bully and dominate its neighbors.  This is clearly what Netanyahu is all about, and unfortunately, the majority of the Israeli population agrees, as indicated by their support of their government's preemptive war, at least according to some public opinion polls.  I conclude that Israeli and US leaders are war mongers and pathological liars who should be tried for Crimes against Peace under international law.  This may not occur, of course, but there is also a chance that it actually will occur when the cults of Netanyahu and Trump eventually unravel and they are no longer in power.  In any case, let us as psychohistorians at least harbor no illusions about what is really going on.

Brian

https://bdagostino.com/

[Michael Britton]

Brian,

First, let me tell you how much Liliana and I both liked your conference presentation on white poverty, both for the content and for the tone of delivery.  Really solid, measured, well-argued, well supported, compelling logic and narrative.  I should have told you so sooner.

Second, I appreciate the statement you've made in this email.  Just to add: The US intelligence community said Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, so why attack the non-weapon nuclear program, which is the question you rightly posed.  Allow me to add to your major reason some additional reasons:  because things are not going well in terms of domestic policy so time for a rally-round-the-commnader-in-chier (or the MAN in charge) to distract from what detracts from his popularity.  Nothing like B-2 delivered Bunker Busters to forget what you were unhappy about ten minutes ago.  Second additional reason:  THE PARADE was not intimidating, was not an embodiment of scary malignant hostility ready-to-go, in short not a confirmation of the President as Power and Control (over everyone) in the minds of viewers.  One military display didn't work, try another.  Arguments not as penetrating as yours:  if they got a nuclear weapon we could no longer bully them when they do things we don't like.  (except of course that maybe they were not getting a nuclear weapon -- but they could, they might, you never know..)  But I thought  I'd add my two cents!

Again, well-argued, compelling logic, measured tone, very important conclusion.  

Much appreciated,

Michael Britton

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[Rachel Youdelman]

Brian, I'm no expert, to put it mildly, but when you say that Iran has not attacked Israel, are you not considering the missile attacks of April 2024, for one instance? And of course subsequent missile and drone attacks. Also, & I don't know if this counts, but Iran has reportedly supplied arms to the Houthis in Yemen for their attacks on Israel. Then, maybe not as serious, worrisome maybe, but there are the Iranian threats ("death to Israel" and the like) and the "doomsday" clock in Tehran which counts down to Sept. 2040 when they plan to finally finish off Israel.

As I said, I am no expert, and I'm certainly no fan of Netanyahu and even less of Trump. I do follow Israeli news sources (in English), I have some family members there from whom I hear as well, and don't throw eggs at me but it appears that there was reportedly some urgent concern among the Israeli military about Iran's development of nuclear bombs. If true or not, I have no clue.  I ask the questions not for the sake of argument but because I am really curious to know your opinion.

One more thing-Israel had already partially destroyed some of the Iranian nuclear facilities but reportedly to do more effective damage to them, B-2 airplanes were needed to drop a certain type of very destructive bomb, and those planes were only available from the US, or so is the news in Israel. It was reported widely that Israel could have done serious but not definitive damage to the nuclear sites on their own, without borrowing the US planes.

By the way, an Israeli reporter when introducing the video of Trump making his speech said he was "flanked by his war boys" (Vance, Rubio & Hegseth) which I found funny, I like seeing them diminished at least verbally. It's a pity these are the brains representing US leadership.

Israelis and everyone else are certainly tired of war and everyone is super-anxious at this point, and now the entire world is on pins and needles with anxiety, so there are a lot of  theories circulating.

Thanks for your input, very much appreciated.

[Brian D'Agostino]

Thank you Michael and Rachel.  I appreciate your caveat about not having expertise in this area, Rachel, but want to commend you for forming your own opinions and participating in this discussion.  As the saying goes, war is too important to be left to the generals.

First, just to be clear about where I am coming from, I believe that the state of Israel has a right to exist and I am not making an open-ended and general defense of the Iranian regime.  No-one here accused me of being anti-Israel or pro-Iranian, but I want to proactively clarify where I stand.  

As for the April 13, 2024 Iranian attack against Israel, it was apparently in retaliation for the April 1 bombing by Israel of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, which killed two Iranian generals; see April 2024 Iranian strikes on Israel  Just as Israel has the right of self-defense under the UN charter, so does Iran.  When I said that Iran did not attack Israel, I was speaking in the context of the current preemptive strikes by Israel and the US on Iran.  No country has a right under the UN charter to attack another country preemptively; that is not self-defense, it is aggression.  It might arguably be self-defense if an attack on Israel was imminent, but no-one is claiming that in the present case.

Note that the belief of Israeli officials that Iran was close to developing a nuclear weapon, even if true, is not a justification for a pre-emptive attack.  By what moral or legal logic is Israel justified in having nuclear weapons while other countries in the region are not?  Israel has legitimate security needs, but so do other countries in the region, who are vulnerable to attack by the United States.  Israeli leaders have chosen the path of war to advance their country's security.  How is that working out?

As for Iran arming the Houthis in Yemen and other proxies in the region, I certainly don't condone this.  But it would be beyond hypocritical for me--a US citizen--to condemn Iran for arming its allies while the arms transfers of my own country to it's allies--including Israel--completely  dwarfs Iran's by many orders of magnitude. However, this raises larger questions about the theocratic regime in Tehran and how it came about in the first place.  Was Iran always a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-US sentiment and policy?  To get historical perspective on this question, we need to go back into history to the election of Mohammad Mosaddegh, a democratic reformer, as Prime Minister of Iran in 1951.  Here I would like to repost something that I wrote recently to members of an IPhA working group on religion:

"Mosaddegh was a democrat and previously a long-time member of the Iranian parliament; there is every reason to think that he would have led Iran into a new era of democracy.  Of course, such development would have encountered obstacles, like every democratizing society, but there was no reason to think that the country would have a theocratic, anti-Semitic, and anti-American regime in its future.  What went wrong?

"In 1952, the Iranian parliament voted to authorize the highly popular Mosaddegh to facilitate nationalization with compensation of the country's oil reserves.  This was unacceptable to British Petroleum (then called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company).  The British government prevailed upon US President Dwight Eisenhower to get rid of Mosaddegh. The result was Operation Ajax, a notorious CIA operation in 1953 to remove Mosaddegh, curtail the powers of the Iranian parliament, and support consolidation of dictatorial power by the monarch, Shah Reza Pahlavi.  For the next 25 years, the Shah presided over a reign of terror designed to suppress Iranian democracy, with the support of Israel and the United States.  The Shah ruled on behalf of the rich, recycled the country's petrodollars to buy weapons from the US, and repressed dissent by practicing torture on an administrative basis.  Since democratic opposition had been rendered illegal, the underground resistance to this tyrannical, pro-Israeli and pro-American regime was based largely in the mosques.  It is therefore no surprise that the Islamist movement that eventually overthrew the Shah in 1979 had become deeply anti-Israel and anti-American."

Notwithstanding the history outlined above, in 2015 the Obama Administration, acting in concert with Russia, China, and the Europeans, managed to negotiate a verifiable treaty with Iran (called the JCPOA) that would have prevented Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology.  As I mentioned previously, Trump, goaded by Netanyahu, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2017, causing the agreement to unravel.  Had the US instead continued to uphold the treaty, there is no reason to believe that Israel would be at war with Iran today.  This may be water under the bridge, but at least let us learn from our mistakes and not continue to repeat the imperialist policies of the past and expect to get different results.

Brian

https://bdagostino.com/

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[HARVEY KAPLAN]

this is a first rate explanation of how matters got worse. Many thanks Dr Richards for your insight into this matter

Harvey Kaplan

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[Rachel Youdelman]

Brian, thank you for your detailed and clear response, which I've just had a chance to read over once. Though you mention a lot of historical details with which I am unfamiliar, and I have more reading to do, it's so far quite helpful in sorting out these complex matters. I'm very appreciative. 

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[Brian D'Agostino]

Glad you find this helpful, Rachel.

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