The morning of last Friday, June 13, Israel launched an air attack against Tehran and other cities in Iran. According to the official version, the objective was to destroy military and strategic nuclear enclaves of the Islamic Republic. The Israel government declared having eliminated “nine scientists and high -level experts,” qualifying the operation as “a hard blow to the ability of the Iranian regime to acquire weapons of mass destruction.”
To understand the origin of this confrontation, it is necessary to go back to the creation of the State of Israel, in 1948. It was the result of the Zionist ideology and the colonial project that promoted powers such as the United Kingdom and the United States.
The foundation of the new State was carried out on Palestinian territory, causing the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people in an ethnic -known cleaning process such as Nakba (Arab term that means “catastrophe”).
From the beginning, many countries in the region, including Iran, showed their rejection of the UN Palestinian Partition Plan, warning about the risk of an escalation of regional violence. Iran advocated a single federal state to guarantee the rights of all inhabitants.
Subsequently, in 1953, in the middle of the Cold War, the United States and the United Kingdom sponsored a coup d’etat to overthrow the then Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. Thus the regime of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Under his mandate, Iran became an ally of the western block, and Israel benefited significantly from Iranian oil, accumulating a debt that has never recognized or resulted.
The situation changed radically in 1979, with the Islamic revolution led by Ayatolá Jomeini. Iran broke his dependence on the United States and adopted a foreign confrontation policy with respect to Israel, marking the beginning of an open enmity.
Do both nuclear arsenal countries have?
Israel has an advanced nuclear program since the late 1970 Sunday Times Information about Dimona’s facilities. As a result, Vanunu was kidnapped by Mossad in Rome and judged for betrayal and espionage. It remains practically incommunicado since then.
For its part, Iran seems to have no nuclear weapons, although its program has been subject to international controversy. Negotiations on their development have been repeatedly interrupted by geopolitical tensions, such as the recent Israeli attack.
But this is not Israel’s first direct attack to Iran in recent years. Since the beginning of the Israeli offensive on Gaza, the Hebrew State has directly attacked the Islamic Republic at least twice and has carried out multiple indirect actions.
The first direct attack took place on April 1, 2024, with the bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Syria and the murder of high command of the Revolutionary Guard. The Iranian response was limited: it launched about 300 drones, most of which were intercepted.
On July 31, 2024, Israel bombed the residence of Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas, in another episode that aggravated regional tensions.
Together with the official objective, what are Israel’s main motivations to attack now? This offensive must also be analyzed in national code, since at the moment it only benefits the Israeli government.
In this sense, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, apologizes the most radical warlike anxiety within the Zionist government, pleased the extremist politicians Bezalel Smotrich and Itmar Ben Gvir.
In addition, Netanyahu seeks to perpetuate the state of war in order to ensure its continuity at the head of the Executive and, therefore, its immunity against corruption cases that have lurk him for several years.
On the other hand, the attack occurs just when negotiations between Washington and Tehran began in relation to the Iranian nuclear program, which in practice has meant the sabotage of them.
Gaza, displaced from the media focus
Finally, the attack continued to the complete blackout of the Gaza Strip that, produced by the bombing of the last telecommunication infrastructure, isolated it even more in the world. Not surprisingly, the current confrontation with Iran has completely displaced the media focus on Palestine, which continues to suffer famine and “unprecedented massacres in the 21st century” according to Omer Bartov, Israeli historian specialized in the Holocaust.
It has not been a preventive attack, but a direct aggression that violates international consensus and the right that governs international relations. Iran had not taken any previous military action against Israel and was in full diplomatic negotiation with the United States.
There is no doubt that above other factors, the new attack responds more to internal political interests from Israel and a strategic calculation of media diversion regarding Gaza genocide than to an imminent threat of Iran.
Antonio Basallote Marín, professor of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Seville
This article was originally published in The Conversation. Read the original.
