“TO be Iranian is to be constantly demonised,” said Maryam Eslamdoust before a crowd of several thousand, who had rapidly gathered in Parliament Square last Saturday June 14, under a baking sun.

The protest had been hastily called by Stop the War and other groups on a day when Americans in their millions were rallying for No Kings Day while Britons and tourists lined the nearby streets of Westminster to celebrate a king, specifically Charles III and his “official” birthday.

As always at such demonstrations, scores of Palestinian flags fluttered in what little breeze there was, but this time there was a new flag: the one belonging to Iran.

“We Iranians are constantly told that the crimes of our oppressors are actually our own crimes,” said Eslamdoust, general secretary of the TSSA rail union and former mayor of Camden, who was born in Iran.

“Israel secretly develops illegal nuclear weapons, but Iran is the one accused of that. Israel attacks Iran without any provocation, but the media and politicians say Israel is defending itself. Israel kills, terrorises, oppresses, but we are called ‘rogue’,” she said.

The June 14 rally was organised after word came a day earlier that Israel had launched an attack on Iran, ostensibly to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities and assassinate its top officials. But early reports from the Iranian Health Ministry said that of the 224 people killed and 1,277 badly injured in the first wave of attacks, more than 90 per cent were civilians.

“It is a declaration of war” by Israel, said Stop the War convener Lindsey German when we spoke at the rally. “What we are concerned about is the British government’s role, which is to say that Israel has the right to defend itself, when what is defensive about bombing a country 800 miles away? There’s no defensive element of that, apart from some abstract supposition that they may be developing nuclear weapons at some point in the future.”

Under the auspices of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran Deal, Tehran’s uranium enrichment programme had been carefully restricted and monitored to ensure it remained within the strictures of what is considered a civil rather than military programme. But when the first Trump administration withdrew the US from the deal, it effectively fell apart. Since then, Iran has been enriching uranium to higher levels, considered “nuclear weapons usable” but not “weapons grade.”

But amid all the alarm bells in the West about whether or not Iran is close to possessing nuclear weapons of its own, what is lost is that Israel is itself a nuclear weapons power and has been secretly developing those weapons since the 1960s.

“This is all total nuclear hypocrisy because Israel does have nuclear weapons,” said Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Sophie Bolt. “It totally refuses any weapons inspections. It refuses to admit that it has nuclear weapons. Yet no pressure is put on Israel to disarm.”

That hypocrisy was on full display at the September 2023 conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog. That’s when Moshe Edri, director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, complained that “Iran has been conducting covert nuclear activities in undeclared sites for many years.”

While professing Israel’s loyal adherence to IAEA monitoring, without once mentioning its own nuclear weapons programme, Edri warned, “Iran, equipped with nuclear weapons and delivery systems, is not an option that Israel, or the world, can, or should tolerate.”

Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that restricts its nuclear programmes to commercial use. Israel has never signed the NPT. The nuclear weapons powers that have, including Britain and the US, have never fulfilled their obligations under the treaty to reduce and ultimately eliminate their nuclear weapons arsenals.

Since Israel’s attack on Iran began, the IAEA has reported that while power to Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz has been cut off, no serious damage seems to have occurred at the facility itself.

“There has been no additional damage at the Natanz fuel enrichment plant site since the Friday attack, which destroyed the above-ground part of the pilot fuel enrichment plant, one of the plants at which Iran was producing uranium enriched up to 60 per cent U-235,” said IAEA director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi in a statement on June 16.

There has been damage at the Isfahan nuclear site, including to the central chemical laboratory, a uranium conversion plant, the Tehran reactor fuel manufacturing plant, and a metal processing facility under construction, according to the IAEA, which says it is constantly monitoring for radiation releases and “is ready to respond to any nuclear or radiological emergency within an hour.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s response has been to send more war planes and military equipment to the region because, he said, “the constant message is de-escalate.”

“Politicians here at Westminster have jumped to demand de-escalation,” responded Eslamdoust. “So far, it seems they only mean Iran should not defend itself.”

But, she said, “If you want de-escalation, stop Israel’s criminal wars. Stop the flow of arms, stop the intelligence and logistical support, and respect our rights to defend ourselves. Arrest Netanyahu. If you want de-escalation, give Iran its rights, give Iran full and equal membership of the international community, end the sanctions which have been starving and killing us for decades.”

Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal believes the timing of Israel’s attack on Iran was planned and deliberate, an effort to distract the world from its ongoing and ever-worsening atrocities against the Palestinian population in Gaza.

“This comes at a moment when Israel was becoming increasingly isolated,” said Jamal. That, he says, is all too visible through “its ongoing genocide, the rhetoric of its government, the clarity of its intentions to forcibly send all Palestinians out of Gaza and its overt, clear forced starvation of an entire population.”

Israel’s atrocities will never stop, “until Israel is treated like any state practising genocide and apartheid should be treated, a pariah state that nobody arms, nobody trades with, nobody does normal business with,” Jamal said.

“What we are seeing now, where Israel is able to launch an attack on Iran, is what happens when you give a state absolute impunity.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland. She is currently covering events in London.