AS Israel attacks Iran, we are now watching a dangerous moment in West Asia. Netanyahu has been claiming for the last 33 years that Iran is close to making a nuclear bomb. He even showed the world a cartoon graphic from 13 years back in the UN about how Iran was only a few months from the bomb. Yet again, the same statement, Iran is a few months from the bomb, is being used for its war against Iran. Each time, the attempt was to get the US to join Israel in destroying Iran, not because Iran was building a nuclear weapon but to remove any possible challenge in West Asia. The US did this by invading Iraq. Remember George Bush’s story of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as the supposed “cause”? The destruction of a secular Syria? Israel needs the US help to destroy, as Iran is too big, with about 10 times the population of Israel, and its military is too strong for Israel to do this alone.

Netanyahu believed that its attack on Iran would force Trump’s hand and force the US to join its war. It almost succeeded as Trump threatened Iran with total destruction, rushed back from G7, and met with his close advisers, and the US warships and airforce started to concentrate in the region. But as of now, the US is still playing a waiting game, either because Trump’s MAGA base is completely divided on another war in West Asia and some of his military advisers have warned him of another quagmire in the region.

If the nine-year-long Iraq war destroyed George Bush’s presidency, does Trump want to repeat the same exercise? And Iran is much bigger and militarily far stronger than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. While the US has not yet gone to war with Iran, the US is concentrating its forces around Iran, and its naval mobilisation with ships and aircraft carriers still continues. Trump may not want another war, but can he be pushed into one by the Zionists and the war lobby in the US? That question still remains. To quote Trump, “I like to make a final decision one second before it’s due, you know? Because things change, especially with war. Things change with war. It can go from one extreme to the other.” Therefore, the world, according to Trump himself, is still on a knife’s edge, only a second away from war!

Let us take up the key issue that Israel and Netanyahu have hyped: Iran is only a few weeks away from the bomb. If enrichment of uranium, from 60 per cent as Iran has done, to weapons grade, which is above 90 per cent, was the only issue, this claim would be correct. However, Iran needs to design the bomb, create the nuclear trigger, and test its design before a bomb can be considered ready for use. The US Intelligence Agencies Report, which Tulsi Gabbard, the current Director of National Intelligence, placed before the US Congress, makes clear there is no evidence that Iran is moving towards a bomb. Nor has Ayatollah Khamenei, their spiritual head, removed his ban on Iran’s production of nuclear weapons. For the US war hawks, evidence does not matter; they only want war.

Why, then, do war hawks in Israel and the US want a war with Iran? Even if earlier wars in the region – Iraq, Libya and now Syria – have resulted in only failed states? The answer is that West Asia is strategically important for the West. Its military subordination ensures that the West controls the energy resources – oil and natural gas – of the world, which shores up the US dollar. As long as the US can control the energy resources of West Asia, what the Carter doctrine called US strategic reserves, the US and its allies believe that they can control the world’s economy. Trump’s opposition to renewable energy is linked to his strategic vision of controlling the world using the dollar hegemony and its military dominance over West Asia’s oil, using Israel as the dominant power in the region.

The Western media always terms the geographical entity of West Asia as the Middle East. Right at the heart of their worldview is that the entire world must be viewed only through the eyes of the West. It is at the heart of a neocolonial worldview of the West, which has viewed West Asia as its exclusive economic zone. This is why the two major colonial powers, France and the UK, divided the former Ottoman oil-rich possessions in West Asia and North Africa among themselves. With the US emerging as the world’s largest military and economic power in the Western world, the colonial mantle in West Asia has passed on to the US. We also need to remember that it was a joint US-UK operation that overthrew Mossadegh in 1952, the democratically elected leader of Iran, and installed their puppet, the Shah, as the king of Iran.

The difficulty that Israel has with Iran is that it is a much bigger country. Its economic and industrial development has been in spite of its economic isolation after the Shah’s overthrow, the West’s support of Iraq’s war on Iran, and even supplying chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Inherent in Bush’s subsequent war on Iraq was the belief that with its military dominance over the region, it could directly control the oil reserves of West Asia. The US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the US people aware that winning battles and winning wars are quite different. As long as nations can continue their resistance against imperial powers, they cannot win. This was the lesson of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, lessons that they are in danger of forgetting again.

Let us look at the current air war that is being waged between Israel and Iran. After six days, Iran’s missiles continue to hit Tel Aviv, Haifa and other targets in Israel. While Israel did achieve some tactical surprises with drones being smuggled into Iran and delivering some decapitating strikes on Iran’s military and scientific leadership, this was a temporary setback from which Iran appears to have recovered.

Iran has started to use their hypersonic missiles against Israel, particularly on Tel Aviv and Haifa, including the biggest oil refinery in Haifa. Israel’s missile defence – Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow, bolstered by the US Thaad batteries – cannot stop missile hits if a number of missiles are fired simultaneously or if hypersonic missiles are used. Just as Israel can bomb Iran’s population centres and strategic locations – nuclear installations, missile launchers, Iran TV – so can Iran as its continuing missile strikes on Israel shows.

Again, we have to remember that Iran has to hold a lot of its missiles in reserve as it expects that the US may join Israel at some point. If the US does not, and without the US, Israel cannot take out the Fordow nuclear installations, which are deep underground, then the war boils down to who can outlast the other in a war of missiles. While offensive missiles may last longer, the anti-missile missiles, the Israeli interceptors, may not last very long. It is a simple game of numbers: for every incoming missile, at least 10-12 interceptor missiles may need to be fired for a possible interception. This is borne out by press reports, such as the Wall Street Journal “Israel Is Running Low on Defensive Interceptors, Official Says”.

If staying power is the issue, Iran and its people have shown time and again their ability to outlast their enemies. This was demonstrated during the Iraq-Iran war, in which Iraq was backed by all Western powers with weapons and money and even banned chemical weapons. Iran did not need to win; it only needed to continue its resistance to defeat the machinations of the West. Again, Iran does not need to win the war against Israel. It has only to outlast Israel’s missile air offensive and continue its resistance.

If Israel’s intention was to launch a decapitating strike on Iran and force it to surrender, such a surrender is highly unlikely to happen. If the war continues its present course, and the US does not directly intervene, at some point there will be a stalemate and a peace negotiation. A country that does not win the war is unlikely to win the peace either.

The bigger question is, what happens if Israel fails in its objective of regime change in Iran? What will be its impact on the region? And on world politics? A failure for Israel, and Iran’s ability to withstand this attack will bring back the central question in this war: can the region chalk out its future free from neocolonial interventions in which Israel is the military arm of the West? The answer to this question will change the correlation of politics far beyond West Asia, a lesson that European countries and we in India have to learn.