WHEN you hear Donald Trump’s demand to the Iranian government of “unconditional surrender,” it sends a chill about the enormity of the dangers in the Middle East. When it was used by another US president in 1945, it heralded the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities. 

As Donald Trump considers whether to use a gigantic “bunker-buster” bomb on a nuclear plant in Iran, we can only fear an outcome which threatens war across the Middle East, the destruction of Iranian lives and the strengthening of Israel’s position in the region. 

It is a grotesque lie to claim, as our government and others do, that Israel is only “defending itself” with its repeated bombing and assassinations in Iran. Even US intelligence sources say that there is no nuclear bomb in Iran and that one is not being developed. How can supposedly pre-emptive strikes on a country nearly 1,000 miles away be regarded as anything but a war crime, yet another to add to the tally mounting for Benjamin Netanyahu and his genocidal gang? 

Israel could not mount this attack without US support, or without the complicity of the British and other European governments over its brutal assault on Gaza for the last 20 months. This collusion has allowed Netanyahu to continue despite worldwide opposition. 

Even Trump’s own supporters in the US fear this potential war. He stood as a man to end wars, not start them. Opposition to the “forever wars” across south Asia and the Middle East was one reason for his electoral success — now he is fuelling another “forever war” which is likely to be worse than any of the previous ones.

Keir Starmer is clearly worried about this and desperately trying to pretend that Trump really wants de-escalation when the opposite is true. But the man who grovelled at Trump’s feet to pick up trade deal papers is not going to stand up to him over war, especially when he has also said he wants Britain on a “war footing.” 

David Lammy, Starmer’s Foreign Secretary, described Trump only a few years ago as a “neonazi sympathising sociopath.” Now he says that’s old news. The new news is that Lammy is content to allow Trump’s sociopathic behaviour to extend to bombing another country in a completely illegal act of aggression. 

It is almost impossible to believe that we are here again. Over 20 years on, there’s talk of war to liberate women, to achieve regime change, and to prevent the development of nuclear weapons (read WMD). Our rulers have learnt absolutely nothing from the failed wars they have been cheerleading for decades, and are determined to do it all again with even worse potential consequences.

Time to stop. Stop arming Israel. Stop the war on Iran. Stop the genocide. Today, huge numbers will march in London around these slogans. Millions more fear what is happening and want peace, not war, and justice for the Palestinians.

The Stop the War Coalition is organising events and activities up and down the country. Do everything you can to support them, join Stop the War. We live in very dangerous times. Only a mass movement against war can prevent a much bigger conflict.  

Main protest: assemble midday, Russell Square in London to march to Whitehall — see www.stopwar.org.uk for details.