Comrades, friends,
The United States and Israel have launched a full-scale war of aggression against Iran. This is not a distant conflict. It directly threatens international law, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and global security. I want to highlight five facts that compel us to act.
First: this war is a direct extension of the genocidal war in Palestine.
For twenty-nine months, Israel, armed by the United States, has demolished Gaza and terrorized the West Bank. After its systematic aggression in Lebanon, against Syria and Yemen, they have now expanded the genocidal war to Iran. The attacks were launched under the cover of negotiations. Hours before the bombs fell, the Omani foreign minister, who mediated the Iran-US negotiations, appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation. He announced that Iran had given unprecedented concessions on its nuclear programme. He said peace was within reach. The next round of talks, involving technical teams from both sides, was scheduled for the following week in Vienna.
Shortly afterwards Israel and the US, these two rogue and deranged states, bombed Iran. To ensure the world understood this was an extension of their genocidal war against Palestine, they deliberately slaughtered over 165 people in an elementary girls’ school in the city of Minab. One hundred and ten were children—killed in their classrooms. They also assassinated Iran’s head of state and his family as well as dozens of other Iranian leaders. This aggression is not about Iran’s non-existing nuclear weapon’s program, human rights, threats by Iran or all other pretexts the US leaders propagate and their servile mainstream media, which have been demonising Iran and Muslims for decades, simply repeat. Iran’s real crime is supporting Palestinian national rights. Iran is the only nation state that has meaningfully tried to fulfil its obligations under the Genocide Convention to defend Palestinians. For that, it is being bombed.
Second: Iran is defending itself, and has survived far worse.
The US and Israel aim for regime change and the balkanization of Iran. Against this, Iran is exercising its legal right to self-defence under international law and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran has prepared for this aggression since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Drawing on its Shia faith, which honours the model of sacrifice embodied by the Prophet’s grandson, Iran is able to endure far longer than its aggressors. Its strategy is simple: survive the initial onslaught and wait for the aggressors to exhaust themselves.
This is a republic that survived two huge assassination campaigns by the MKO cult in its early years. It survived eight years of Saddam Hussein’s war of aggression—a war in which the West provided Saddam with chemical weapons, which he used against Iranian civilians and soldiers. Hundreds of thousands died. Tens of thousands were maimed for life. Iran did not retaliate in kind by developing chemical weapons, but did manage to repel that aggression. It will do so again.
Third: Israel/US apocalyptic ideology makes this a nuclear danger.
This war is driven by fanatics. In occupied Palestine, Zionist extremists speak openly of a Greater Israel, a project supported by the US ambassador to Israel. In the United States, Christian Zionists believe war in the Middle East is necessary for the return of Jesus. US soldiers have been told they are fighting for the Second Coming. This is policy, not metaphor.
This creates an extremely dangerous situation. When Israel and the US run out of conventional options, they may contemplate the Samson option: the use of nuclear weapons. If nuclear weapons are used in the Middle East, the result will be world war and nuclear catastrophe.
Fourth: Western Nuclear Hypocrisy has already shattered the Non-Proliferation Treaty; this war may finish it.
In June of last year, during their 12-day war against Iran, two nuclear-armed states—Israel and the United States—bombed Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. These sites were under full IAEA inspection. There was no violation. There was no proliferation. Yet they bombed. The message to every country watching: if you want to survive, get nuclear weapons. If you already have them, strengthen your arsenal.
After those attacks, majority opinion among the Iranian people shifted. A majority now believed the state needed nuclear weapons for survival. A significant section of the ruling elite approached the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and urged him to change his fatwa against nuclear weapons. He refused. Israel and the US have now killed him. The new leader will face immense pressure to invoke Article 10 of the NPT, withdraw from the treaty, and build a bomb to ensure the state’s survival. If Iran goes nuclear, the Non-Proliferation Treaty is dead.
Fifth: our own government is complicit in this crime.
Instead of condemning this unprovoked aggression, the British government has given the United States full access to its military bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia. British territory is being used to launch and sustain a war of aggression. France, Italy, Greece, and Germany have also lined up behind the US, invoking the language of “collective defence.” But there is no attack to defend against. Iran was negotiating. Iran had given concessions. This is an offensive war, a war of choice, a war of aggression. Under the Nuremberg principles, it is the supreme crime as it contains all other crimes, and complicity in a war of aggression is itself a crime. Our government is committing that crime.
We must demand that the Labour government condemn this US-Israeli aggression. We must demand that it refuse US access to its military bases.
Stop the bombing. Hands off Iran. No bases for aggression. No nuclear war.
Thank you.
