Swinging clubs in the nuclear age: Why Israel’s war path should alarm us all

There are many reasons why the conflict in the Middle East should not be happening. The reality, however, is that it is. Despite our great advances in knowledge, technology, and diplomacy, we are still in a world where might is right and right is whatever the mighty say it is. That essentially means that we are still primal cavemen waving big clubs at each other, and the bigger our clubs, the more we are tempted to swing them at the next person’s head. Here is the thing: killing other people is expensive.

Israel’s expenditure within the first 48 hours of the conflict has been estimated at 1.45 billion dollars. Since then, it is estimated to blow through 725 million dollars per day. This does not include the cost of the damage it incurs. For Iran, the estimates are sketchier, but one ballistic missile costs about a million dollars. Conservatively, the country is estimated to have dropped 200 million dollars’ worth of missiles alone on Israel in the last week. The extent to which we go to destroy each other is astonishing.

Is any of it worth it? There are several layers of complication to analysing the conflict. Political, religious, and romantic veneers have clouded most analyses being thrown out there. But when all these layers are pared back, the truth is that Israel’s attack on Iran is a violation of established international laws, and Israel’s argument that it is preemptively striking an existential threat holds little substance the more the evidence is considered.

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Thursday’s initial attack is a clear violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of other countries. Objectively, it cannot make an argument for self-defence under the provisions of Article 51 of the charter, either because the conditions for preemptive strikes, as laid down by international law, have not been met.

Yes, Israel and Iran are sworn enemies, but at the time of the attack, there was no evidence that Iran was planning to strike Israel. While a lot of the argument has hinged on the perceived “immorality” of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, this argument fails on multiple levels.

First, between 2015 and 2018, Iran had largely been complying with the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) until US President Trump unilaterally pulled out of the deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran. His reasons? He believed the Obama-negotiated deal with Iran was soft. But failing to replace the deal with another created a vacuum. The only reason Iran agreed to comply was to get sanction relief. With that no longer on the table, naturally, the country returned to uranium enrichment after a year, on the condition that it would return to compliance once sanctions are lifted. That seemed fair.

At the point of attack last Thursday, the data showed that Iran was at least three years away from a nuclear weapon. Negotiations were scheduled for Sunday to get the deal back on track. So clearly, Iran was making itself available for compliance. This makes Israel’s attack even more bizarre and puzzling.

Clearly, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who the International Criminal Court declared wanted for war crimes in 2024, was intent on blowing up the negotiation tables. One of its first targets was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Shamkhani, whose job was to peacefully bring Iran into compliance. Taking him out was a deliberate attempt to eliminate the diplomatic option.

By all parameters, Thursday’s attack was a crime of aggression that violates international humanitarian law by targeting civilians, scientists, and their families. Even journalists working in newsrooms were not spared, as one was almost killed live on air.

As a media scholar, what has been interesting to observe, among the many other disturbingly interesting things, is that the narrative that has focused on the immorality of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons—an immorality so abhorrent that apparently it must be stopped by all means—has conveniently ignored Israel’s own huge stockpile of nuclear weapons. What makes it justifiable for one enemy to obtain a certain weapon while depriving the other enemy of obtaining the same?

The argument here boils down to the Iranian government’s stated enmity with Israel and the “existential threat” it poses to Israel. Of course, this narrative ignores the existential threat that Israel itself, with its nuclear arsenal, poses to other countries in the region, particularly Palestine, a threat that has become even more evident in the last two years where IDF soldiers have been amply documented, and bizarrely have also documented themselves, committing genocidal war crimes against Palestinians—civilians, women, and children.

The other prong of the argument is that Iran’s regime is appalling and should not be trusted with a weapon. Netanyahu has openly called for “regime change” in Iran, and both he and Trump have discussed “killing” the political leadership in that country. For the US, that is nothing new, not even in Iran, where in 1953, the CIA’s “Operation Ajax,” in conjunction with MI6, orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh, in favour of reinstating the Shah. Perhaps if America hadn’t truncated democracy in Iran then, the 1979 Islamic Revolution might never have happened.

The CIA’s fingerprint is all over the 1961 killing of Congo’s Patrice Lumumba and the first coup in that country, the 1966 coup in Ghana that killed the famed Kwame Nkrumah, and the 1973 overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in favour of the 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. These are all democracies that have been upstaged by a country that has claimed to champion democracy across the world. The likes of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, who were not elected, were considered fair game. In both cases, the US openly campaigned for “regime change,” as Israel is suggesting in Iran today.

In recent years, we have seen that where these “regime changes” have been induced, years of instability have followed. Libya and Iraq have been real “shitholes” and breeding grounds for terrorists since American interventions in those countries. For that to happen to Iran would be a shame.

Yes, the Iranian regime might be unpopular in their country; yes, there have been protests against the government and its policies. Well, the same has been the case in the US since Donald Trump. No one has suggested regime change in the US on that basis.

If the crime of the Iranian regime, which holds regular, periodic elections by the way, is that it is a theocracy, an Islamic Republic with the largest Jewish population in the Middle East, Israel’s entire existence is based on its Jewish religion and identity. Both these countries are governed on the basis of some kind of religious zealotry. Only one of those, however, is led by a genocidal wanted war criminal who is sitting on a pile of nuclear weapons and is actively engaged in a genocide in Gaza. No one makes the argument for regime change in that case.

Israel’s strategy has been clear: start a war and drag the US into it. I have watched three senior Israeli officials, including Netanyahu himself, repeat the same line in interviews. We are attacking Iran because they pose an existential threat, and our friends, the Americans, must help us finish them off. That is the narrative that is being sold to Trump, who in previous years had argued that the US getting mixed up in the Middle East was a huge mistake and that his government would not be dragged into any war. Suddenly, he is presenting as a militaristic ruler, staging parades, openly issuing death threats to other political leaders, and threatening countries with annihilating pulverisation.

Recent history shows that no regime change rhetoric championed by the US and its allies has bettered the situation of the people they claim to be liberating. In no instance have these interventions improved world peace or international security. Iraq’s shithole became a huge black hole that sucked up the Middle East, and Libya’s collapse destabilised significant parts of Africa and emboldened ISWAP in West Africa.

The willful bending of international laws by those who claim to be peaceful countries acting in self-defence or imposing certain normative ideals on other countries might just be the greatest hoax of this century. One thing cannot be wrong when done by one group of people and right when done by another. Being victims of a genocide should not be a license to inflict the same or similar treatment on another.

The global policing mechanism, that in theory is led by the UN but in reality is operated by the US, must have the compunction to rein in the excesses of its allies. What is wrong is wrong.