https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8dzL3biesA

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Bombing Iran Is Part of the USA's Repetition Compulsion for War, War, War

BY NORMAN SOLOMON

“As we have seen yet again in recent hours, the political and media culture of the United States is heavily inclined toward glorifying the use of the US’ second-to-none destructive air power.”

Twenty years ago, one day in June 2005, I talked to an Iranian man who was selling underwear at the Tehran Grand Bazaar. People all over the world want peace, he said, but governments won’t let them have it.

I thought of that conversation on Saturday night after the US Government attacked nuclear sites in Iran. For many days before that, polling clearly showed that most Americans did not want the United States to attack Iran. “Only 16% of Americans think the US military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran,” YouGov pollsters  reported, while “60% say it should not and 24% are not sure.”

But as a practical matter, democracy has nothing to do with the chokehold that the  warfare state has on the body politic. That reality has everything to do with why the US can’t kick the war habit. And that’s why the profound quests for peace and genuine democracy are so tightly intertwined.

On Saturday evening, President Trump delivered a  speech exuding might-makes-right thuggery on a global scale: “There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”

More than ever, the US and Israel are overt partners in what the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 called “the supreme international crime” – “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression".

Naturally, the perpetrators of the supreme international crime are eager to festoon themselves in mutual praise. As Trump put it in his speech, “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” And Trump added: “I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done.”

A grisly and nefarious truth is that, in effect, the Israeli military functions as part of the overall US military machine. The armed forces of each country have different command structures and sometimes have tactical disagreements. But in the Middle East, from Gaza and Iran to Lebanon and Syria, “co-operation” does not begin to describe how closely and with what common purpose they work together.

More than 20 months into Israel’s US-armed siege of Gaza, the  genocide there  continues as a joint American-Israeli project. It is a project that would have been literally impossible to sustain without the weapons and bombs that the US Government has continued to provide to the Orwellian-named Israel Defence Forces.

The same US-Israel alliance that has been committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has also enabled the escalation of KKK-like terrorising and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people in the West Bank. The ethnocentric arrogance and racism involved in US support for these crimes have been longstanding, and worsening along with the terrible events.

The same alliance is now also terrorising Iranian society from the air.

As we have seen yet again in recent hours, the political and media culture of the US is heavily inclined toward glorifying the use of the US’ second-to-none destructive air power. As if above it all. The conceit of American exceptionalism assumes that “we” have the sanctified moral ground to proceed in the world with a basic de facto message powered by military might: Do as we say, not as we do.

While all this is going on, the word “surreal” is apt to be heard. But a much more fitting word is “real".

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction,” James Baldwin  wrote, “and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence, long after that innocence is dead, turns himself into a monster.” Now, people in the US have real-time historic opportunities – to do everything we can to take nonviolent action demanding that the US Government end its monstrous role in the Middle East.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-bombs-iran

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Brian Toohey

The US bombing of Iran violated Article One of the ANZUS Treaty which states that members should refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. That rules out aggression.

Accordingly, Australia should not have supported the US bombing of Iran.

There was no publicly released information that Iran was about to get nuclear weapons. There were plausible grounds for believing that Iran had enriched uranium to 60%. But that did not mean it was only a few days away from getting weapons-grade uranium enriched to over 90% to be turned into bombs with a reliable delivery system.

There was ample time to give diplomacy a chance. Iran had earlier agreed with other presidents to constrain their enrichment of uranium to the very low percentages used in civilian reactors. Under the Shah, the US agreed for Iran to have civilian reactors to sell power in the region and not rely solely on oil for revenue.

In all of this, hardly anyone has raised the issue of why it’s okay for Israel to have nuclear weapons and deny access to UN inspectors. It is not known outside Israel how many weapons they have produced since the first one. This was in 1996-67, according to the US Centre for Arms Control and Non-proliferation. The minimum figure is 90 nuclear weapons, The delivery system is fighter bombers, land-based missiles and probably submarines. The nuclear explosive is plutonium produced by a reactor built with French help. Some US highly enriched uranium might be available, but that is not proven.

In 1969, a declassified memo to president Richard Nixon from then secretary of state Henry Kissinger made it clear that when buying US Phantom aircraft, Israel committed “not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the near East”. Israel interpreted “introduce” to mean they could possess nuclear weapons, but not deploy, test or make them public. It’s not most people’s definition of the word “introduce".

No-one knows for certain what would’ve happened if the US and British intelligence services had not mounted of a coup against Iran’s secular, democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1953. His sin was to impose a tax on oil produced by British and US companies in Iran. Britain blockaded Iranian ports so it could not sell any oil.

The benefits from the overthrow of Mosaddegh in keeping the oil price low did not last long. The creation of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in 1960 by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela ensured over time that the price of oil was higher than many Western consumers would like, but closer to what it was worth to the countries which owned it.

Instead of maintaining a democracy, the US and the UK restored the Shah on the throne. He became increasingly corrupt and brutal and was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini who was established a theocracy. Another Ayatollah now rules Iran.

Many young people, and others, in Iran would prefer to live in a democracy. If the democratically-elected Mosaddegh had not been overthrown in 1953 by the British and the Americans they might still be able to enjoy a democracy over 70 years later.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/06/australia-should-not-have-endorsed-the-american-bombing-of-iran-nor-the-israeli-position-on-nuclear-weapons/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Albanese described the strikes as justified by the overriding imperative of nuclear nonproliferation. “What we want to see is the ceasefire announced by President Trump implemented,” he told Sky News on Tuesday. “We do want to see dialogue and diplomacy replace any escalation. And President Trump’s announcement we very much welcome.”

Asked why the endorsement of the US strikes took 24 hours – a delay that opened the door to criticism from opposition figures including former military officer Andrew Hastie – Albanese rejected accusations that his government’s response was slow or flat-footed.

“What my government does is act in an orderly, coherent way,” Albanese said. “We called for Iran to come to the table to ensure that the United States wouldn’t have to take the action which they did. The action that they took, we made clear that we supported action that would ensure that Iran couldn’t gain that nuclear weapon.”

Labor insiders push back on any suggestion the delay reflects any internal divisions over endorsement of the US action.

“The government has had no trouble to coming to its current position,” one government source tells The Saturday Paper. “This has not been a vexing issue at all.”

Albanese’s defence is grounded in consistency. Australia, he argues, has long maintained that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, and the strikes were a response to that threat. But his language is careful – less a full-throated endorsement than a conditional approval tethered to the hope that diplomacy might still prevail.

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2025/06/28/inside-labors-response-the-us-strikes-iran

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.