Dr Habib Siddiqui
ISRAEL has done it again—dragged the United States into another war it didn’t start. For over three decades, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lobbied Washington to help dismantle Iran’s nuclear program. In April 2025, he demanded U.S. bunker-buster bombs be used to destroy Iran’s underground Fordow facility. This time, he got his wish.
As I write this on Saturday night, President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. had “completed a successful attack.” American warplanes dropped their full payload on Iran’s most critical nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan.
As is often the case in the Middle East, the escalation began with Israel. On Friday, June 13, Israel launched unprovoked strikes on Iranian soil, violating international law. According to Iran’s health ministry, the attacks have killed at least 400 people and injured over 3,000. Among the dead are ten nuclear scientists and four senior military commanders.
According to the Times of Israel, Israeli intelligence viewed the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists as the most critical element of Operation Narnia. Unlike military leaders or hardware, they argued, scientific knowledge is far harder to replace.
The ten scientists were reportedly killed in their sleep, in a coordinated strike designed to prevent any warning. “They believed they were safe at home,” a senior Israeli official told Channel 12, noting that past assassinations occurred during commutes. These targets had been marked since November 2024, tracked for months, and eliminated in a single night.
Such attacks by Israel are not new. We may recall that on 1 April 2024, Israel conducted an airstrike on the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, destroying the building housing its consular section. Sixteen people were killed in the strike, including eight officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and two Syrian civilians. On 31 July 2024, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated along with his personal bodyguard in the Iranian capital Tehran by an Israeli attack.
The UN’s high commissioner Volker Türk said it was “appalling to see how civilians are treated as collateral damage” in the latest conflict between Iran and Israel. “The only way out of this spiraling illogic of escalation is maximum restraint, full respect for international law, and return in good faith to the negotiating table,” he said.
Well, Iran was in a dialogue with the USA. The diplomats from the two countries had met five times and were preparing for a sixth round of talks when Israel launched unprovoked strikes on June 13. This wasn’t spontaneous—it was premeditated.
Within hours of Israeli attacks, President Trump, in a display of imperial bravado, claimed Iran had lost the war and demanded “unconditional surrender.” Yet Iran struck back, sending missiles deep into Israel, exposing its vulnerability and dependence on U.S. support.
Now, with U.S. bombs falling on Iran’s nuclear sites, if Trump is wishing for an Iranian capitulation, he may have forgotten that Iran is not Lebanon, Iraq, or Yemen. Narcissistic as he is, lessons from past wars haven’t tempered his rhetoric. Once a critic of endless U.S. wars and the Iraq invasion, he has abandoned anti-war conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, and Tucker Carlson, and has embraced the very lobby he once resisted. The nuclear threat? Even his former intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard says there’s no proof Iran is building a bomb.
His shift reflects the grip of the pro-Israel lobby. Trump has been in daily contact with Netanyahu, who’s long pushed the U.S. to fight his wars. Since 1992, Bibi has claimed Iran was weeks away from a nuclear bomb—yet decades later, no bomb exists, and IAEA inspectors found no evidence.
Following the utter devastation of Gaza in a genocidal campaign, Netanyahu has turned his sights on Iran, openly calling for regime change. But such ambitions are not only reckless—they’re futile. Bombing nuclear sites may delay Iran’s program, but it cannot erase scientific knowledge. History shows that assassinating ten scientists will only inspire hundreds more to take their place.
Rather than deterring Iran, these strikes may push her—and others—to follow North Korea’s path: secrecy, acceleration, and defiance. If Trump and Netanyahu believe this ends in surrender, they’ve learned nothing from history.
More revealing during this crisis, however, is the West’s Orwellian hypocrisy. EU leaders, who condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now applaud Israel’s unprovoked strikes on Iran. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reaffirmed Israel’s “right to defend itself,” while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz praised Israel for doing “the dirty work” of Europe—openly admitting Israel’s role as a Western outpost.
This isn’t new. As far back as 1986, Joe Biden declared that if Israel didn’t exist, the U.S. would have to invent it. As president, he’s taken that logic to its extreme—turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza and erasing Palestinian rights from the global agenda.
Europe’s moral and diplomatic collapse hasn’t gone unnoticed. Two respected global voices have sharply criticized Europe’s stance on Middle East violence. Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog, rebuked Germany for endorsing Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites—reminding Berlin that such actions violate both the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter. Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese, UN rapporteur for Palestine, condemned French President Macron’s selective outrage. She tweeted, “On the day Israel, unprovoked, has attacked Iran, killing 80 people, the president of a major European power, finally admits that in the Middle East, Israel, and only Israel, has the right to defend itself”—laying bare Europe’s double standards.
We are once again reminded that bombing hospitals is a red line – unless Israel is doing it. Thus, when an Iranian missile struck near Soroka hospital in Beersheba, Israeli leaders erupted in outrage. Israel’s defense chief accused Iran of war crimes and said its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be held accountable. Culture Minister Miki Zohar condemned it as an attack on “hospitalized children,” while Israel’s medical association called it a war crime. Yet these same voices were silent—or complicit—when Israeli forces bombed and dismantled Gaza’s hospitals. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has launched over 700 attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system, reducing once-functioning hospitals like al-Shifa and Nasser to rubble. The contrast is stark—and telling. Tears for Beersheba and silence for Gaza! So much for the “only democracy” in the Middle East.
And the hypocrisy deepens. As of June 20, Israel has reportedly attacked five Iranian hospitals, including two just last Friday. Strikes on Hakim Children’s Hospital in Tehran, Farabi Rehabilitation Hospital in Kermanshah, and Red Crescent facilities have killed and injured scores of patients and medical staff. Yet Western leaders remain mute.
As Israel escalates its military campaign against Iran, a familiar figure has re-emerged in Western media: Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last monarch. With polished rhetoric and appeals to democratic ideals, Pahlavi has positioned himself as a transitional figure for a post-Islamic Republic Iran. Yet, beneath the surface of this western media spectacle lies a deeper, more troubling narrative—one that reveals the contradictions of monarchical nostalgia, the fragmentation of Iran’s opposition, and the geopolitical opportunism that are more about reviving a Cold War-era political artifact.
Pahlavi’s lineage is inseparable from Iran’s autocratic past. His father, Mohammad Reza Shah, ruled with an iron fist, suppressing dissent through the SAVAK secret police and deepening socioeconomic inequalities under the guise of modernization. The 1953 CIA- and MI6-backed coup that restored the Shah to power—overthrowing the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh—remains a historical wound that Pahlavi has never meaningfully addressed
To most Iranians, especially those inside the country, Pahlavi represents not hope but regression. His alignment with pro-Zionist and pro-Trump factions in the diaspora have further alienated him from the very people he claims to represent.
This raises both ethical and strategic questions: Can a foreign-backed, ideologically hollow figure—an ‘Ahmad Chalabi’ without grassroots support—truly deliver democratic governance in a nation of 92 million with long, bitter memories of foreign interference? Or is this yet another case of regime change driven more by external agendas than internal legitimacy?
The Real Stakes
The Iran-Israel conflict is not just a regional power struggle; it is a clash of visions for the Middle East. On one side stands a nuclear-armed Israel, emboldened by U.S. backing and driven by a messianic vision of territorial entitlement—from the Nile to the borders of Iran and Turkey. In this vision, Palestinians are expendable, and regional dominance is the ultimate goal.
On the other side is Iran, a nation under siege, facing significant external threats, particularly from the two devils: the United States and Israel. They see themselves as protectors of the Islamic Republic and its ideology, emphasizing national pride and positioning itself as a bulwark against Western hegemony. As part of the so-called Axis of Resistance, Iran views its nuclear ambitions as a sovereign right—one setback won’t end that pursuit.
Only time will reveal which vision prevails: one rooted in colonial ambition—where conflict, occupation, and hegemony are inevitable outcomes—or one grounded in the ideals of justice, human fraternity, and popular resistance to foreign domination.
Conclusion: Beyond the Mirage
The media’s fixation on exiled figures like Reza Pahlavi is a distraction. The future of Iran won’t be shaped by foreign-backed pretenders or warmongers in Washington and Tel Aviv. It belongs to the Iranian people—those who continue to resist occupation, demand dignity, and fight for self-determination.
c. eurasiareview.com
