Rogue nuclear powers Israel and the US have illegally attacked Iran, killing at least 787 people there so far since Saturday 28 February. They have also killed 40 people in Lebanon and two in Iraq.
As the US-Israeli genocide continues in Gaza, this latest offensive looks set to continue despite increasing disruption to a region that plays a key role in the global energy industry.
US and Israel hit hospitals and schools, wounding thousands
The Iranian ambassador to the UN has said his country’s retaliations will continue until the US-Israeli attacks stop. And he clarified that:
If any base in a neighbouring country is used to attack and invade other countries, that would be a legitimate target.
Iran’s response has killed six US soldiers so far, along with 11 people in the apartheid state of Israel. With Iran targeting US assets in authoritarian Gulf states, a further eight people have also died in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman. Temporary closures to gas and oil facilities as a result, meanwhile, have sent prices soaring.
Al Jazeera has reported that US-Israeli attacks have:
- Hit nine hospitals, forcing evacuations in “the most extreme, precarious condition”. (Doctors have had to evacuate babies, for example.)
- Struck near schools and residential buildings. (An attack on Sunday 1 March killed “about 180 young children” at a girls’ school.)
- Wounded more than 5,000 people.
The US and Israel have nuclear weapons. Iran doesn’t.
One official excuse for the unprovoked, illegal attack on Iran is its nuclear ambitions. However, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency has told NBC News the organisation does not believe Iran has nuclear weapons and had not “seen elements of a systematic and structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons” there.
Israel, on the other hand, has had such weapons of mass destruction for decades now. As the Canary reported previously:
Israel is the only country in the Middle East which has nuclear weapons. But it has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and refuses to place its nuclear facilities under the watch of UN inspectors. This is unlike Iran, whose facilities are monitored constantly and which, as a non nuclear-weapon state which is a signatory to the NPT, has also agreed not to seek or acquire these weapons…
Israel is not only believed to possess 90 nuclear warheads, but also to have produced enough plutonium to produce 100 to 200 more nuclear weapons. And according to new research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), it is actively modernising its nuclear arsenal.
The US, meanwhile, has over 5,000 nuclear warheads.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has clarified that:
A single nuclear warhead could kill hundreds of thousands of people, with lasting and devastating humanitarian and environmental consequences.
This perhaps explains why the US and Israel are happy to attack Iran but not countries like Russia, China, or North Korea, which actually do have nuclear weapons. It also helps to explain why the US and Israel feel they can get away with committing war crimes against countless nations which don’t have nuclear weapons.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
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