FOLLOWING the unprovoked attack upon Iran by the state of Israel last week, US President Donald Trump has called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” while preparing to give the green light for overt military intervention by the US.

The US has already been covertly assisting the Israeli assault by providing back-up for its Iron Dome missile defence system, designed to intercept any Iranian missiles fired towards Israel in response. 

That the US is even contemplating military intervention in Iran, going against all the norms of international law and the so-called international rules-based order, can only be regarded as an international scandal.

Israel has a decades-long record of flouting international conventions and dismissing UN resolutions, but to be backed so overtly in doing so by its major ally and arms supplier would take the threat to world peace that Israeli action represents to a new level. 

The pretext for the action against Iran is that the Iranian uranium enrichment programme, being developed for civilian energy generation, is close to the point where it could be weaponised and Iran would have nuclear capability. None of the evidence from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or the US intelligence services suggests that this is the case. 

In fact, it is Israel that is widely known to have a nuclear capability, though, in line with its official policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” it refuses to confirm or deny the existence of a nuclear arsenal. 

While the IAEA has raised “concerns” about the level of uranium enrichment in Iran’s nuclear facilities, it has not suggested that this is at a weapons-grade level. This assessment is shared by US intelligence sources who came to the same conclusion as recently as March of this year. The fact that Iran only increased its enrichment programme because the US, in Trump’s first term as president, pulled out of the nuclear programme deal agreed in 2015 is conveniently overlooked by the media and politicians in the West. 

In spite of the evidence to the contrary, the narrative around the justification for supporting Israeli action has been the mantra that Iran must never have nuclear weapons, a position reinforced by Labour deputy leader, Angela Rayner, in the House of Commons this week. This is usually closely followed by the time-worn assertion that Israel has the right to defend itself, a platitude which, since October 2023, has been used to justify Israeli genocide in Gaza. 

European governments hung on the coat-tails of the US, confining themselves to calls for “restraint” or having “expressed concern” over rising tensions in the region, but they have not condemned Israel’s violation of Iranian territory or its blatant ignoring of international law. 

Just as there can be no justification for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the attack upon Iran, especially while the Islamic Republic was in negotiations with the US, has no legal or moral basis. 

The attack upon Iran does, however, have a clear political objective, and that is one which has been asserted more prominently in the past few days: regime change. 

We must be clear that it is not for Israel, Britain, the US or anyone else to bring regime change to Iran. The future of Iran must be for the Iranian people themselves to determine. 

Steve Bishop is a senior executive member of the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights. For more information visit www.codir.net.