The Eve Of A Radical Evil

We are on the eve of a radical evil.

Tonight Trump’s deadline for Iran to surrender or be faced with the destruction of its critical energy and national infrastructure expires.

Just the fact that the president of the United States can set a ‘deadline’ for massive war crimes which leaves the world counting down the hours and speculating about nuclear weapon use, after starting a war of aggression, should be enough to end US hegemony forever.

This kind of ultimatum should be viewed as so unhinged, so beyond the pale, so outside the bounds of anything approaching normal diplomatic behaviour that no country in the world should want anything to do with it. Embassies should be closing, US troops should be ordered to leave the nearly 800 bases in 80 countries at which they’re stationed, and these facilities shut down.

The fact none of this has ever been a possibility shows us how US hegemony is a true plague on the world. It shows us how so few states are legitimately sovereign, and how so many willingly line up behind the crimes of empire. And it shows us that those states which are sovereign get targeted for regime change precisely because they are sovereign.

This, ultimately, was Iran’s only crime. It’s original sin.

When, nearly 50 years ago, the country ended a western-backed system of dictatorial monarchism and pursued a sovereign path, it brought to life a material reality that is forbidden under US empire. The material successes Iran has created over the last near 50 years, including independent financial systems, digital systems, and military systems, all achieved while under crushing western sanctions, are not allowed. And Iran is being punished for this.

Iran is being punished for its resistance, for its ingenuity, for its sovereignty.

This is the reason the US-Israel is bombing Iran’s premier universities and research facilities, and murdering its scientists.

The MIT of Iran was bombed this weekend.

These are centres of non-western excellence and learning which produce the minds that demonstrate what can be done outside the US-Zionist orbit. These places, and the people they train, have enabled Iran to successfully decouple from western hegemony. They have enabled modern Iranians to not just inherit a proud, 6,000-year-old civilisation, but to build on the achievements of their predecessors.

And because the Persian civilisation is such a successful one, because modern Iran has shepherded that civilisation so skillfully, Trump is threatening to kill it. Literally. In the most murderously deranged turn of a murderously deranged period, Trump said this morning that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Every journalist, every politician who reproduced anti-Iran propaganda led us to this point.

Every reference to “the regime,” every reference to “peaceful protests,” every failure to mention that the protestors were armed by the west to provoke an insurrection (which Trump just admitted), every fake “internet shutdown” story, every dubious angle used to foment anti-Iran sentiment led us to this point.

And every single person, from liberal politicians to journalists at the Guardian, the BBC, CNN, the New York Times, and all those Iranian exiles who demanded Iran be bombed and helped cultivate the ground for this war of aggression, are culpable.

Yesterday an Iranian exile who writes for the BBC, Ghoncheh Habibiazad, suggested, quite unbelievably, that Iranians actually want to be nuked.

After an outcry on social media, the quote was changed, which itself raises questions about whether those words were ever said or not.

Regardless, publishing a quote from someone in a country under a murderous assault saying they hope they get nuked is an extraordinarily depraved depth to plumb. And even if it was said, it is effectively the voicing of suicidal ideation and by any journalist ethic or standard should never be printed.

But this is the sickness of imperial stenographers.

This is where we are now.

And of course there is speculation in his threat to kill “a whole civilization” that Trump is hinting at using a nuclear weapon. Maybe he is. Maybe they will. They’ve done it before, after all, the only country to have ever done so. If he does, the world should never be the same again.

But even if the US doesn’t use a nuclear weapon, even if the US-Israel ‘only’ go through with the threat to destroy all of Iran’s critical national infrastructure, the world should never be the same again.

And even if he doesn’t go through with it and an unlikely ceasefire deal is agreed, the world should never be the same again.

Enough is enough of degenerate American empire and its crazed, out-of-control genocidal Jewish colony.

The impunity of empire has to end. It has to. Because while it remains an empire, the US will always be the greatest threat to global peace and stability. No president since the US became an imperial power has been able to sit atop such a massive amount of hardware and not order the mass murder of innocent people.

Not one.

It’s baked in.

Trump, and especially the language he uses, is a particularly vile, vicious and sick example of American barbarity. But his behaviour so far has been consistent with other presidents who have bombed countries back to the Stone Age.

And even if he uses a nuclear weapon, he won’t be unique.

Thinking about the long arc of American violence for two seconds should make us incredulous that the country was ever sold to us as a stabilising force, as the leader of the “free world,” as a symbol of humanitarian values.

Anyone who ever fell for this has been utterly hoodwinked and made a fool of.

It really is time to end empire, Zionism and the control it has over the world. Whether you’re in the US, the global north or south, a central task must be to find and elevate new leaders who can extricate us from this rule.

And doing this won’t be possible without breaking people out of their legacy media bubble and educating them about the huge lies they’ve been told regarding the benevolence of the US and the evils of the official enemy.

We’re all going to suffer when the fuel starts to dry up and the economic crisis coming down the pipe as a result of US impunity really hits. The crisis is coming, and it is certain.

And now we are at the precipice of a horror being loosed on Iran that would take the country decades to recover from.

For our collective humanity, such a horror would be an everlasting stain inviting the rightful judgement and condemnation of many generations to come.

We’re on the eve of a radical evil, and whatever happens tonight, nothing should ever be the same again.

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