ISRAEL’S extension to Iran of the military tactics it has used in Gaza and Lebanon is backfiring, but its response is a threat to the whole world.

The last few days have seen scenes of missile attacks and damage in Israel as waves of Iranian drones and ballistic missiles have penetrated Israel’s air defences.

Typically, British mainstream media has focused heavily on Israeli casualties in these strikes, but has underplayed the fact that these attacks were a response to Israel’s illegal attacks on Iranian civilians and its assassination of civilian scientists as well as of senior Iranian military leaders — and Iran’s chief negotiator in nuclear non-proliferation talks with the US, Professor Ali Shamkhani was critically injured, with some reports saying he too has been killed and others saying he is fighting for life.

According to media reports, at least 24 Israelis have been killed in the missile strikes, with over 100 more wounded. These deaths are tragic, but the scale of civilian suffering from Israel’s missile barrage on Iran has been even greater; Israeli air strikes have killed at least 244 people in Iran, with over 1,277 wounded, and over 90 per cent of these casualties are reported to be civilians, according to Iran’s Health Ministry.

However, according to analysis by Human Rights Activists, a Washington-based human rights group, since last week, Israel has killed at least 406 people in Iran and wounded at least 654 others. By the time of reading, the death toll of civilians, including children, will have likely increased in both Iran and Israel as there are no signs of diplomacy, negotiations or peace. 

Israeli and Iranian news media have reported that Iranian security services have seized some drone caches smuggled into Iran by Israeli operatives after the initial strikes. Mossad reportedly spent over a year smuggling hundreds of drones and parts into Iran, which were used to disable air defences and missile sites ahead of the Israeli air strikes.

This long-term planning for covert strikes is reminiscent of Israel’s pager attack on Lebanon last year, in which explosive-laden pagers and walkie-talkies distributed among Hezbollah operatives and affiliates were detonated. This attack, later admitted by Prime Minister Netanyahu, killed between 26 and 39 people and injured over 3,000, including civilians and healthcare workers. The operation was widely condemned by human rights organisations as indiscriminate and unlawful. Ten days later, a separate Israeli air strike in Beirut killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Perpetrated by any other country, these attacks would rightly all be condemned globally as terrorism, yet Britain and other governments continue to talk of Israel’s “right to defend itself” and to focus on Israeli casualties. The Israeli military has, of course, played up to this, setting the line it expects global media to follow and, shamelessly, going as far as to say Iran is a “terrorist state” for “targeting civilians,” despite the evidence.

But Israel clearly underestimated Iran’s ability to retaliate for the attacks and to penetrate or overwhelm the US-backed air defence systems it relies on, even after Israel’s attempted strikes on Iranian defence installations. Iranian missiles have caused significant damage to Israeli infrastructure, including the Weizmann Institute and Haifa’s oil refinery, with some missiles penetrating air defences and causing casualties and destruction in residential areas.

There are reports that Netanyahu’s official plane was moved to Athens for security reasons, and most airlines have grounded and moved their planes out of Israel.

But this institutional and political panic poses a serious danger to the whole region and even to the wider world. Netanyahu published a video over the weekend, ostensibly to wish US President Donald Trump a happy birthday and to celebrate the US armed forces, but arguably, it also appeared to be a transparent appeal to Trump to intervene directly against Iran, a sense that Netanyahu had bitten off more than he could chew.

There are some who would argue that Netanyahu did more than appeal; his speech was an attempt to manipulate a US response. The US is widely believed to have aided Israel in its attacks on Iran, both modifying strike aircraft so they could hit Iran without refuelling and providing refuelling aircraft for those that needed them, but has so far officially denied any involvement and Trump has avoided any commitment to US military action, instead emphasising the need for a diplomatic solution.

In his speech, Netanyahu appeared to “out” the US participation in the attacks on Iran, claiming to have had “the clear support of the President of the United States” in Israel’s illegal attack on Iran. Just before this speech, Iran’s leadership said that it will target US, British and French military bases in the region if those countries attack Iran; Netanyahu appeared to be trying either to provoke this response or else to trigger a pre-emptive US strike to try to limit Iran’s ability to do so.

With his enthusiasm for military intervention apparently undimmed by this danger, Keir Starmer appears to have escalated the risks by ordering British military assets to move close to Israel and refusing to rule out using them to defend it. This move comes despite oil prices already rising because of the attacks and the clear warnings of analysts of a global financial crisis if Iran attacked Western interests in the region, particularly military and oil facilities.

The danger is not just economic but nuclear.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman addressed the UN this week, calling Israel’s attacks a “war on humanity” that will “plunge the entire region into mayhem and bring many world countries into the conflict,” naming some of its innocent victims and calling on the UN to end its “dual standard” and to finally act to reign in Israel’s aggression.

That aggression poses a threat not just to the civilians of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and the region of Western Asia, but to all of us. The time for delay and double standards ended a long time ago — the world must act now.

This latest escalation is not simply a clash between two states but a manifestation of imperialism, capitalist militarism, and the ongoing subjugation of peoples across the region. The British government’s support for Israel and the broader Western alignment with militarism exposes the bankruptcy of their claims to uphold human rights or international law.

For socialists and internationalists, the task is clear: we must stand in solidarity with all victims of imperialist violence — Palestinian, Iranian, Lebanese and Israeli victims — and demand an immediate end to the war, an end to arms sales and military support for aggressor states, and a new international order rooted in self-determination, justice and peace. Only through mass mobilisation and international solidarity can we hope to break the cycle of violence and build a future free from war and oppression.

The threat is real.

Claudia Webbe was previously the MP for Leicester East (2019-24). You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and x.com/claudiawebbe.