UNIVERSALLY hated and feared leaders are actively engaged in waging an unwarranted war against humanity as if it were the new normal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s obsession with Iran being just a few weeks away from having a nuclear bomb is nothing but a suspicious and vengeful act of aggression intrinsically supported by a false narrative of self-defence. The same rhetoric is echoed by President Donald Trump as if both are on the same page of ignorance and arrogance.
Ironically, seeing violations of international law and peaceful resolution of disputes, global leaders maintained a deafening silence to the moral, intellectual, and political imperatives of the governance systems. Israel, violating all the civilised norms of international systems, attacked Iran, pretending to be in “self-defence” even as Iran was engaged in dialogue with the US to resolve the issue of nuclear enrichment. We are witnessing a new world of perpetuated ignorance, dishonesty and warmongering to preserve the aggressive expansionist aims of Israel after 20 months of war against the innocent people of Gaza. Egoistic leaders appear powerless to use tyranny as a means to ambitious conquests. How does one define, condemn, or cure the pernicious consequences of unilateral actions of transgression? Are there any role models of moral and responsible leadership in the contemporary world?
President Trump demands “unconditional surrender” from Iran, although America is not a declared party to the current war. Netanyahu claims, “Israel has full control over the Iranian airspace.” The emerging conflict has caused catastrophic casualties both in Iran and Israel. Where do you draw the line between insanity and humanity? Are we living in an era of false truth, feigned piety, and alternate transient facts of human affairs?
Stephen M Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, claims that “Israel Can’t Be a Hegemon. The Israeli government is making a bid for regional dominance that’s unlikely to succeed.”
Emboldened by the chaotic US leadership, Israel’s long-awaited wish comes to reality and Iran’s nuclear sites and public are attacked under a false pretext of “preemptive strike” in self-defence. Over three decades, Netanyahu has campaigned against Iran, claiming it was making nuclear bombs in days and weeks. Rafel Grossi, the Director General of the IAEA, clarified (Al-Jazeera interview: 6/19/25): “There is no evidence that Iran has an active plan to make nuclear weapons.” Israel spared no time to target the public sectors in Iran, the national TV station, oil refineries, hospitals, and assassinated its top military leaders and nuclear scientists. This war unfolds multiple aims beyond the nuclear capability, a regime change, and the destruction of Iran as a people and an ancient civilisation. While the US and European leaders, the so-called gatekeepers of law, order, and peace, contrary to the facts of the case, aligned with Israel’s irresistible necessity of fallacy and ignored the principles of international law and the truth of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme for peaceful purposes. The facts speak loud and clear: Iran is a signatory to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), Israel is not; Iran has not developed any nuclear arsenal, Israel possesses approximately 50 -90 nuclear bombs. Any rational person could only assess performance when it is performed, not otherwise. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, a professor of international law and history at the Geneva School of Diplomacy (“Israel Is Out of Control. A Terrorist Government that Endangers International Peace” Global Research: 6/18/25) spells out the facts:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-out-control-alfred-de-zayas/5891459
Israel’s unprovoked aggression against Iran raises fundamental issues about the authority and credibility of the United Nations and, more generally, about the continued validity of international law and an international order based on the prohibition of the threat and the use of force…….He further noted that: Once again, Israel, the United States and their supporters are flouting international law and participating in a conflict that could lead to nuclear disaster…..On 17 June, 2025, the Geneva International Peace Research Institute issued this call to the United Nations and to all men and women of goodwill. “By bombing Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu has violated Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and Article 5 of the Rome Statute. This act of unprovoked aggression cannot be excused by reference to a non-existent doctrine of ‘pre-emptive attack’, which George W. Bush had invoked to attack Iraq, and does not fall within the meaning of Article 51 of the UN Charter, which allows for self-defence.
Wrong Thinking and Wrong Actions
If President Trump follows the George W. Bush lead of a false genocidal act against Iraq for the WMD and repeats the killing of three million Iraqis for his experiment without any accountability, where would the global community go to find safety and protection from terror and tyranny? The masses in the Arabian Peninsula are already victims of the pains, horrors and devastation of the Israeli war on Palestine. If there is no global vigilance and mechanism for accountability, Netanyahu and Trump could destroy humanity with a “mother bomb” on Iran. The Chris Hedges Report (“War Deja Vu”: 06/19/25), tells more: The lies told to ignite the war with Iraq have been resurrected to ignite a war with Iran. The assessments of intelligence agencies and international bodies are dismissed, replaced by hallucinations…Forget the intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003,” something reiterated by IAEA’s Grossi this week.
Watching dreadful apparatus of fire and brimstone, We, the People, are horrified by the threat of aggressive war by a few warlords. The leaders of the US and Israel lack the moral, intellectual and legal capacity to understand the consequences of their wrong thinking and unjust war against Iran. Leadership is an art, and it could be improved and changed for the good of humanity. Do intelligent leaders listen to the voices of reason and make a navigational change when facts of life warrant an urgent change in attitudes, policies, and behaviour? The Divine Revelation (the Quran: 40:21) offers a stern warning to the conscientious leaders and nations: “Do they not travel through the earth and see
what was the end of those before them? They were greater than them in strength and in impression on the land, but Allah seized them for their sins. And none had they to defend them against God.”
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Dr Mahboob A. Khawaja specialises in international affairs — global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions, knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilisations.
