How Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war based on lies could be a self-fulfilling prophecy
WE are only a couple of days into Israel’s and the Trump regime’s illegal war of aggression against Iran, so things could change, but the idiotic statements coming out of Tel Aviv and especially Washington indicate that this is not going be over anytime soon. Even though Iran is at a significant disadvantage in terms of conventional warfare – i.e., what’s been going on so far – they could make things very nasty for a very long time in that context alone. After all, this is a regime that was hardly out of its diapers when it went toe-to-toe with Iraq at the height of Saddam Hussein’s power for eight years and fought them to a draw.
Nevertheless, through attrition things are going to reach a point where the Iranian regime is going to have to resort to increasingly extreme measures to keep up the fight. (It’s not going to surrender to Israel and the US; you can just put that notion right out of your mind.) That Iran will engage in proxy and irregular warfare goes without saying, and it would be stupid for anyone in Israel or the US to not assume Iranian preparations for that are already well underway. Beyond that, however, Iran has a potential trump card (so to speak) up its sleeve, and it’s one that could make decades of fraudulent American and Zionist hysteria about Iran being a “nuclear threat” a reality.
Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and is nowhere close to being able to build one, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but it does have a uranium enrichment program, and has been actively researching nuclear weapons. That much we do know from credible sources other than the Zionist warlord and President Bobo the Simpleminded. Iran seems to have been treating that as a form of deterrence and primarily as a bargaining chip to relieve its pariah status among Western and Western-aligned countries, because until last week, the Iranian regime has always been relatively quick to agree to negotiations. Even with the likes of Trump, who signaled he was not really interested in negotiating when he unilaterally tore up the nuclear agreement signed during the Obama administration.
A day or so ago, one of Iran’s top military officers said that despite the ferocity of the attacks by the US and Israel, Iran had plenty of firepower at its disposal, and had not even yet deployed its best weapons. While that could be dismissed as the typical propaganda warring nations spread during a conflict, it is not entirely off the mark. Iran’s arsenal is much larger than the US and even Israel – whose intelligence services are rather more intelligent than their American colleagues – seem to have estimated. Whether or not any of it is any more sophisticated than what Iran has shown already is dubious, but it’s not the high-grade stuff that does the most damage, as we have all seen become apparent through four years of war in Ukraine. The Iranian general’s comment, far from being mere bravado, may have been a veiled threat.
Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, but what it does have is a considerable amount of enriched uranium, and probably smaller amounts of other radioactive and highly toxic materials that are byproducts of uranium processing and research. Far from being “obliterated” in the US air raid on Iranian nuclear facilities last year as Trump claimed, that stockpile was kept safe.
But the longer the assault from the US and Israel goes on, the risk of that stockpile of Nasty Stuff finally being destroyed grows. The Iranian leadership could very well be pushed – I think they definitely will be, whether that takes weeks or months – to a “use it or lose it” point. They have the means to do exactly that, and in such a way that is impossible to defend against.
Here’s the scenario: If Iran loads quantities of enriched uranium and other radioactive materials into its standard missiles and drones – and it wouldn’t require a large amount per weapon – all it has to do is aim them at delicate targets such as population centers. All the drone or missile has to do is get over the target; in fact, that might even be better than actually hitting it. Debris falling from intercepted drones and missiles has already caused a great deal of damage and some casualties in places targeted by Iran. If that debris included a cloud of dangerously radioactive material – a dirty bomb, in other words – the results would be very, very bad indeed.
So, by attacking Iran on the pretense that it was an imminent nuclear threat, Israel and the US may have guaranteed that it will become one. Imagine the reaction of a nuclear-armed Israel (it has about 80 nuclear warheads, as far as anyone knows, and both aircraft and missile delivery systems) if a half-dozen radioactive drones are blown up one night over Tel Aviv.
Those of us who grew up in the Cold War know what happens next. And it scares the hell out of us. It should scare the hell out of you, too.
