World affairs and politics - the bombing of Iran 2026

We are now a couple of months into the US and Israeli bombing attacks on Iran (leaving aside for now Israel's attacks on Lebanon and the various Palestinian armed groups) - and there is still no resolution. Every day or so, Trump indicates that the war is going according to plan and that Iran is about to submit to all the US demands. This is quickly followed by Iran denying that they are even considering the US proposals as they cross various red lines that are not possible to accept. Meanwhile the economies of just about all countries around the world continue to suffer with oil prices through the roof along with other products like fertilisers.

A couple of things to say, here. Firstly, I think the attacks on Iran were wrong - but, from their point of view, I do understand why the US and Israel decided to go down that road. It is quite clear that Iran has been bankrolling various armed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah - and Israel would clearly like that to stop. In addition to that, it's also quite clear that Iran has been trying to develop a nuclear weapon for a long time. If you don't believe Israel and the US about that then all you have to do is look at the fact that the IAEA, under UN direction, have been trying to monitor, and prevent this, for years (and the US and Israel are currently not great fans of the UN or vice versa). The fear here is that Iran, as a fundamentalist muslin regime, might just go ahead and drop a nuclear bomb on Israel without any consideration to what the outcome might be. After all, extreme fundamentalist religions, like the one in power in Iran, seems to be associated with suicide bombers - and obliterating Israel seems to be high on Iran’s current agenda and dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel, and the repercussions of that, might be of little concern to them. Unlikely? Perhaps - but that fear, along with the bankrolling of what the US and Israel consider as terrorist groups, seems to have persuaded the US that attacking Iran was a valid way to proceed.

This is where I find myself conflicted. While opposing the actual opening of hostilities, I found myself, after they had started, hoping that the Iranian regime would be brought down and replaced by something a bit less extreme than the despotic one currently in charge there. I count Israel as an evil regime due to it's treatment of the Palestinians - but I count Iran as probably the most evil regime currently in existence. I don't like, or agree with, most Muslin governments but most are nowhere, in my view, as evil as Iran’s is. Apart from bankrolling terrorist organisations (see below), and the danger of it getting a nuclear weapon, it happily slaughters thousands of it's own citizens for protesting and it arrests foreign visitors, especially from Western block countries, and throws them in jail on trumped up spying charges, just so it can use them as bargaining chips against Western countries (although I have to wonder at the sanity of anyone from the West who decides to visit Iran: I know I wouldn't). All of those aspects, taken together, are, in my view, proof that the Iranian regime is the most evil currently in power anywhere.

Note: While describing the likes of Hamas as a terrorist organisation I also understand why such groups resort to the violence they do. What, after all, are they supposed to do when their justified objections to how Israel oppresses them, and murders their people, are ignored  by Israel and the West? Even worse is the fact that the West supports Israel and provides it with weapons? At the same time, I cannot support the killing of unarmed citizens anywhere in the World - and Hamas and Hezbollah do just that. I wouldn't mind so much if they attacked only soldiers or government buildings but the killing of innocent citizens (who might also disagree with their own government) makes them terrorists - just as Israel, in it's own way, is.

Regardless of when this war ends, it is looking very clear that the US has failed to achieve any of it's goals - apart from maybe setting back, maybe by many years, Iran's hope of developing it's own nuclear bomb. It certainly does not look like the current Iranian regime is about to be toppled. So, all that destruction, and lives lost, for next to no gain. As an aside, it does not surprise me in the least that the incompetent Trump so totally miscalculated what he could achieve but it has somewhat surprised me that Netenyahu's Israel also failed to understand how much Iran could withstand the degree of bombing it was subjected to.

Of course, there is an alternative to attempting to bomb Iran out if existence and that is for Israel to recognise a Palestinian state and stop allowing it's more extreme citizens to increasingly steal Palestinian's land (and sometimes kill the Palestinians they evict from that land). The Zionists that live in the area are convinced that all of that land should belong to Israel and that the Palestinians should just leave or be driven out. The rest of the World must not allow such a religiously racist view to succeed. The Jews, quite rightly, condemn the holocaust of the second world war - but it is depressing to now see so many of them (but by no means all) behaving exactly the same way towards the Palestinian people. It strikes me that the West's shame of what Hitler's Germany did is blinding them to the crimes of the Israeli state and a section of the current Jewish population (not to mention fearing the loss of the Jewish vote in their country).

Just think how much better a World it would be if the Iranian regime was no longer in power and Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, and all thier ilk, were all in jail for crimes against humanity.