By GHADA KARMI
The US-Israel war on Iran that started on 28 February is currently on pause for a two-week ceasefire. Whether it will lead to a permanent peace or break down into hostilities once more is unknown. But when the dust finally settles and it is time to review the lessons learnt from this illegal war, the most important must be that the state of Israel has to be dismantled as an act of political necessity and in pursuit of world peace.
The ferocious US-Israel war on Iran has lasted six weeks, raining death and destruction on its leaders and citizenry. In that time over 2000 Iranians have been killed, at least 20,000 injured, and over 3 million displaced.
Israel has assassinated scores of Iranian officials and Iranian leaders – most prominently, the Supreme leader, Ali Khamanei, the seasoned security chief, Ali Larijani, and the head of intelligence, Esmail Khatib. It is still trying to do so.
Thousands of Iranian targets have been struck, among them, and most irresponsibly, Iran’s nuclear plant. A particularly egregious attack on 8 March targeted Tehran’s oil depots, covering the city with dense clouds of toxic smoke. The environmental damage from this act is incalculable for humans now and into the far future. Tehran’s soil is poisoned, and its water supply contaminated, who knows for how long.
As could easily have been predicted, Iran shut off the Strait of Hormuz to shipping on 2 March. Consequently, this raised the global price of oil, fertiliser, and other essential commodities. Iran’s retaliatory attacks on neighbouring Gulf states’ energy infrastructure only aggravated these effects, with oil trading at $110 a barrel at one point, and some forecasters predicting a disastrous future rise to $200 a barrel. On 18 March Israel bombed Iran’s South Pars gasfield, the largest in the world, and shared with Qatar. Iran retaliated by attacking Qatar’s vital liquefied gas facility, which will take years to repair, and the energy infrastructure of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
If it restarts, the Iran war has the potential to damage or even destroy the global economy, trigger a nuclear war if Iran refuses to surrender to the attacking powers, and lead to significant political realignments in the Middle East and beyond, which could be irreversible. A recent meeting of the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt to discuss Iran may serve as an early indication of this trend.
In the storm of events since the war started Israel’s mischievous role in bringing the world to this pass should not escape attention. By his own admission, Israel’s prime minister has schemed for 40 years to achieve the destruction of Iran. For Israel, Iran’s standing as a strong, independent state with an ancient civilisation, a proud heritage, and a highly educated population, resistant to Western domination, is intolerable.
Iran forms the last obstacle to Israel’s ambition towards total hegemony in the Middle East, which it is currently imposing by destroying Lebanon, starving the people of Gaza to extinction, and ethnically cleansing the West Bank of its Palestinian population.
It should always have been clear that Israel would seize any chance to attack Iran. The US counterterrorism chief, Joe Kent, who recently resigned in protest over American involvement in the Iran war, spilt the beans in his letter to President Trump. “Iran posed no imminent threat”, he wrote. The war started “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
Looking at the list of regional disasters since Israel was created, does anyone seriously believe any of it would have happened if Israel had not existed? Or doubt how differently – and better – the Middle East might have fared if Israel had not been planted in its midst?
Since its inception in 1948, this artificially created settler colony has left a trail of destruction in its wake. Palestine’s indigenous people, who still bear the brunt of Israel’s founding, were transformed from settled communities living peacefully in their homeland into refugees, exiles, or targets of occupation. They are currently victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing. And to this day, their plight remains unresolved.
Because of Israel’s existence, five Arab-Israeli wars erupted between 1948 and 2006, all of them damaging and costly. The Arab world’s rich resources that should have gone to Arab social and economic development in the wake of decolonisation were instead diverted into military spending to defend against Israeli belligerence.
Constant Western interference to protect Israel sowed division among Arab states, often resulting in them fighting each other instead of Israel.
Generations of young Arabs have been reared on an abnormal diet of belligerency and war with Israel, inciting fundamentalism and radicalisation amongst them. Israel’s deliberate early policy of encircling the Arab world by making alliances with hostile regional non-Arab, non-Muslim states further retarded Arab development and has spread to other countries.
Put simply, Israel’s presence has conferred no conceivable benefit on the Arab world, but instead retarded its progress. It has helped maintain Arab dependency on the West and, by acting as a local agent of imperialism, has prevented progress towards Arab emancipation from it.
From the beginning of its existence, Israel has always pursued its own agenda, despite the West’s generous support, and has now inevitably brought the world to the brink. Given this dire situation, isn’t it time for Israel’s Western backers to draw the obvious conclusion and admit that Israel’s creation was a dangerous mistake? The West created a state that is neither capable of reform nor of coexistence. No efforts at accommodation and regional normalisation have succeeded in transforming Israel from a supremacist ethno-religious entity into a friendly, peaceable part of the Middle East.
In 1948, it took a coalition of Western governments to make Israel, and it will take no less than a global coalition to unmake it. That must now be the urgent task of all peace-loving governments and peoples before more blood is spilt.
It will not be easy. Dislodging from the hearts and minds of the West the conventional idea of Israel as a refuge for Jews, a path to atonement for anti-Semitic Europeans, and a local agent for Western interests is a monumental task.
But it must be attempted.
11 April 2026
Source: ghadakarmi.substack.com