Consortium News, March 3, 2026
What long-term lessons China,
Russia and the Global South are learning from the abandonment by the
entire West of the principles of international law, we shall see in the
decades to come.
Gandhi Hospital in Tehran on Monday after
U.S.-Israeli strikes. (Hossein Zohrevand/Tasnim News Agency / Wikimedia
Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk
There has scarcely been
an attempt to pretend any justification in international law for the
attack on Iran and murder of its leader. The response
of the U.K. government, focusing almost entirely on condemning Iran for
exercising its legitimate right of self-defence, takes the Keir Starmer
dishonesty meter further off the scale.
The RAF has been actively involved in
genocide in Gaza for two years with its surveillance and logistic
support for the IDF. It is now fighting for Israel again; intercepting
Iranian missiles is not defensive; it is joining in the attack on an
already vastly overmatched opponent.
I am afraid that the truth is the Iranian
attempt to defend itself militarily will be less impactful than many
anti-imperialists hope. The astonishing amounts of money spent by the
U.S. government on military and surveillance technology simply do have
real-world effect.
Here in Venezuela, having seen the major
sites struck by the U.S. on Jan. 3, I have concluded that no act of
betrayal was needed. Just overwhelming force and precision technology
applied against a technologically unequal opponent whose key
capabilities were all on open hilltops or in unhardened barracks.
Iran is much more militarily
sophisticated, but facing exponentially more force. Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei was killed in his own home, not hiding away. He is going to
prove a lot more powerful as a martyr than as a ruler with his internal
critics.
We are facing not only a period of
unapologetic imperialism to which virtually all Western countries are
prepared to defer, but a return of medievalism, both in the sheer
barbarity and scale of physical abuse, as witnessed in Gaza and in
general Israeli brutality, and in use of kidnap and murder as methods of
high policy. Legitimising the killing and kidnap of leaders of opposing
states is of course a double-edged sword.
Having sanctioned genocide, mass killings
and deliberate destruction of medical facilities and staff, the mass
murder of children, as well as the kidnapping and murder of heads of
state, it is hard now to imagine almost any atrocity which the Western
powers are in any moral position to condemn.
The reflection of the Palestinian flag in
Ali Khamenei’s glasses at a funeral ceremony for Hamas political leader
Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Aug. 1, 2024. (Khamenei.ir / Wikimedia
Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
While Iran’s military ability to strike
back is limited, the ramifications of this attack will not be. The
rulers of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have reverted to the norm of
being not only reliable U.S. and Israeli satraps, but promoters of
atavistic hatred of Shia Muslims.
The West is deliberately exploiting the
Shia/Sunni divide, as it has for centuries; but this will now
destabilise the region for decades. Iraq in particular is going to be
convulsed, and so will Pakistan. In Bahrain, the Shia population has
been held in check by its Sunni rulers using systematic
Western-sponsored murder and torture. Using it as a base to murder the
Ayatollah is going to blow back.
It would appear that we are going to
witness an aerial campaign to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure, as
in Iraq where 65 percent of clean drinking water, 50 percent of
hospitals and clinics and 80 percent of electrical generation was
destroyed by “liberation” by the NATO powers. The object is the
destruction of Iran as a viable state.
It is worth recalling that Iran used to be
a Western-style state with a reasonable democracy. It was the election
of the Socialist Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1951, and his nationalisation of
British Petroleum, which was met by the MI6- and C.I.A.- sponsored coup
of 1953. The vicious and vainglorious rule of their puppet Shah was the
cause of the theocratic revolution.
Mohammed Mossadegh, the prime minister of
Iran who was ousted by a U.K.-U.S, coup, while under house arrest in
Ahmadabad, Iran, in 1965. (Behnam Farid /Wikimedia Commons / Public
Domain)
Escalating Western sanctions were imposed
by the U.S. or E.U. on Iran in 1979, 1984, 1995, 1996, 2010, 2012, 2015,
2018, 2019 and 2025. There were U.N.-approved sanctions imposed from
2006 to 2016. These very substantially hampered Iran’s economic
development.
The curious thing is that the founding
myth of the Western powers is that economic development leads to an
expanding, educated middle class which promotes both economic and social
liberalism and produces the conditions for democracy.
By this reading, if you wished to cement
in power an authoritarian government, then limiting economic development
is the way to do it. There is something in this reading; I do not doubt
that the West’s relentless efforts to strangle Iran – which have had
some real success – have hampered its political development.
That is not to accept all the Western
myths about Iran. Female education is very strong, and there is
extensive female participation throughout economic and governmental
institutions. Iran has an extremely good record of tolerating and even
supporting minority religious communities, including the Jewish
community.
There are plenty of women in Tehran
without head coverings – Iran is far more tolerant in this regard than
Saudi Arabia. While it retains a retrograde intolerance of gay people,
it acknowledges gender dysphoria and assists trans people.
I am not prepared to give a moment of
countenance to arguments that bombing Iran back to the 19th century is
going in any way to improve the lives of its people. It did not do so in
Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. It was a disaster which unleashed waves of
refugees upon Europe, leading directly to the rise of the far right.
I think it is unlikely to change the form
of government in Iran in any significant way. Regime change by bombing
is a highly problematic concept.
What it has done is to remove Ayatollah
Khamenei, whose fatwa on the creation of a nuclear weapon was the only
reason Iran does not have one.
It is delusional to believe that Iran,
with its excellent scientific base, could not have developed nuclear
bombs in secret away from those monitored enrichment programmes, had it
chosen to do so. What is likely to result in the medium term from this
conflict, if it long continues, is a more primitive, more atavistic and
nuclear-armed Iran.
The Iran nuclear deal torpedoed by Trump
in 2018 had provided a rare moment of hope. With sanctions easing, there
were chances of both smoother economic development and reform in Iran.
That is why Israel wanted the agreement scuppered.
U.S. team on way to Iran nuclear negotiation meeting at U.N., New York City, 2016. (State Department)
The attempted obliteration of Iran is part
of a systematic attempt to eliminate by physical force all pockets of
resistance to American hegemony.
We have seen Rubio’s astonishing assertion of Imperialism as a positive force. Matthew Lynn in The Washington Post exemplified
the new Western doctrine. He mocked China for its pacific policy. He
argued that for China to build infrastructure for the Global South was
futile because the United States might simply seize, blockade or destroy
any infrastructure by military force. This he viewed as not shameful,
but a great triumph.
What long-term lessons China, Russia and
the Global South are learning from the abandonment by the entire West of
the principles of international law, we shall see in the decades to
come. None of this is going to be good for anyone.
It is not just a Trump phenomenon. Biden
fully supported the Gaza genocide. Almost all major political parties
throughout the West are under firm Zionist control, as is all of the
significant major media and the ownership of every significant
alternative media platform.
Iran has provided, directly and through
proxies, the only military opposition to the creation of Greater Israel.
This war is for Greater Israel. But it is also a wider effort to
re-establish the failing economic dominance of the United States by
military control of key resources.
There is no part of the world which will be safe from the fallout.
Craig Murray is an author,
broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to
Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University
of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on
reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Subscriptions to keep Craig Murray’s blog going are gratefully received. Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, Murray has set up new methods of payment including a GoFundMe appeal and a Patreon account.
(Phto credit: Reuters/Amr Alfiky)
(Photo credit: Carlos Barria – Pool/Getty Images)
