Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Following news of the Iranian attack on Israel and the involvement of UK aircraft in Israel’s defence, Green Party co-leader, Carla Denyer, has urged the UK not to be dragged into a Middle East war. She said:
“The Green Party condemns Iran’s attacks against Israel, which were targeted on civilian as well as military targets. This represents a concerning escalation of the current conflict in the Middle East. We call on all parties now to find ways to de-escalate this conflict, which risks spreading across the region.
“We are concerned by the use of British aircraft in the night’s events. We question why Britain should be involved in this confrontation, where there is a risk that we could become embroiled in a regional war. The record of Afghanistan and Iraq suggests that involvement in such conflict brings great risks, especially when the military and strategic objectives are unclear.”
Denyer also questioned at what level the decision to engage UK defence forces was made:
“I am deeply concerned about how this decision to deepen our involvement was made and in what further action the government proposes to involve UK armed forces. Britain’s military involvement must be scrutinised and debated by parliament. We should not allow ourselves to be dragged into a Middle East war.
Emergency and security personnel gather at the site of strikes which hit a building next to the Iranian Embassy in Syria’s capital Damascus, on April 1, 2024. (Photo: Maher al Mounes/AFP via Getty Images)
One observer said Israel is “trying to provoke a war with Iran to get the U.S. directly involved.”
Iranian and Syrian officials on Monday accused Israel of bombing Iran’s consulate in Damascus, an attack one expert called a “war-abetting escalation” that U.S. President Joe Biden “claimed he was preventing” in the Middle East.
Seven people including Iranian diplomats and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) senior commander Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi were killed in the airstrike, which according to the BBC occurred at approximately 5:00 pm local time and flattened the multistory building adjacent to the Iranian Embassy in the Syrian capital’s Mezzeh district.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian described the strike as “a violation of all international obligations and conventions.” Faisal Mekdad, his Syrian counterpart, condemned what he called a “heinous terrorist attack.”
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Footage shows the destruction of the Iranian Consulate after being hit by an Israeli Missile
Israeli officials declined to comment on the attack. Israel has increased airstrikes targeting IRGC and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants inside Syria since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks. Israeli strikes against Hezbollah have also killed hundreds of militants and civilians in Lebanon.
Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, called the consulate attack a “significant escalation in tensions.”
“This attack is viewed by some in Iran as a declaration of war by Israel against Iran,” Azizi wrote on social media. “It represents a shift from previous engagements, directly hitting Iranian soil represented by its consulate in Syria—as opposed to targeting IRGC officers in Syrian sites.”
“In earlier stages, Israel would refrain from targeting IRGC officers—only proxies and arms shipments,” he continued. “Since the Gaza war, a shift was already there to target high-ranking Iranian commanders. Some sources claim the attack was a response to an assault on an Israeli ship last night at the port of Eilat, attributed to Iraqi militias. This suggests another new rule of engagement by Israel: direct retaliation against Iran for any attacks by its proxies.”
Azizi added that the strike “is also seen as a message to both Iran and [President Bashar] al-Assad’s regime in Syria: Israel’s capability and willingness to escalate its response to the presence of Iranian forces in Syria.”
Numerous experts including Azizi wondered whether Israel informed the United States ahead of the attack. A White House spokesperson said that Biden is aware of reports attributing the strike to Israel and that his “team is looking into it.”
Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft said on social media that “this is the exact type of conduct that usually prompts the U.S. to label a country a pariah or rogue state.”
This is BIG – the kind of war-abetting escalation Biden claimed he was preventing.
Did Israel strike the Iranian embassy annex – ie Iranian territory – to elicit a response to justify a larger war?
“The U.S. accuses such states of seeking to destroy the ‘rules-based order,'” Parsi noted. “But so far, Biden has acquiesced to Israel’s conduct in this area as well as all other aspects of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.”
Parsi accused Israel of “seeking to either destroy these norms or create a new normal in which it—much like the U.S.—will be untouchable above these laws and norms.”
He also called the Damascus strike “the kind of war-abetting escalation Biden claimed he was preventing.”
Palestinian Policy Network fellow Tariq Kenney-Shawa said: “What the Biden administration means by ‘taking every measure to avoid regional escalation’ is that they’re making sure only Israel is allowed to escalate. Deploying aircraft carriers, airstrikes in Yemen/Syria/Iraq, all of that is to make sure Israel can provoke but no one can respond.”
While Parsi wondered if Israel attacked Iran’s consulate—its sovereign territory—to elicit a response to justify a larger war, Antiwar.com editor Dave DeCamp went further, accusing Israel of “trying to provoke a war with Iran to get the U.S. directly involved.”
Iranian journalist Mona Hojat Ansari wrote for the Tehran Times that the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “believes that by plunging the region into a maelstrom of chaos and entangling the United States in another pointless war in West Asia that would drain American resources, it may find a chance to survive as an apartheid establishment.”
“The attack on Iran’s consulate should particularly raise a red flag for Washington,” she added, “as it demonstrates Israel’s readiness to ignite the entire region, even if it means that the U.S. and all its traditional allies in the region would suffer devastating consequences.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) walks through the Senate subway after a vote in the U.S. Capitol on January 9, 2024. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
“After years of working to block and undermine diplomatic alternatives, these people may be closer than ever to realizing their dream of war with Iran.”
Warhawks in the United States wasted no time agitating for direct military conflict with Iran after a drone attack on a military base just inside Jordan’s border with Syria on Sunday killed three American troops and injured dozens more.
Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress called on U.S. President Joe Biden to quickly respond with strikes inside Iran, which denied any connection to Sunday’s attack.
“The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a longtime supporter of war with Iran. “Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward unworthy of being commander-in-chief.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) called Iran “an existential threat to the U.S. and our allies in the region” and said Tehran “must be held accountable for the murder of three U.S. soldiers.”
United Against Nuclear Iran, a group chaired by former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also demanded “a decisive U.S. military response against targets inside Iran.”
“The U.S. should attack and destroy Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) military and intelligence targets in Iran, as well as missile and drone bases where the Iranian regime’s proxies are trained,” the group said.
“Those who have consistently counseled only violence to address the crisis unleashed on October 7 should be ashamed of the disastrous outcomes they have so far reaped.”
Biden claimed in a statement Sunday that “radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq” were responsible for Sunday’s drone attack, but acknowledged that the U.S. is “still gathering the facts.”
“Have no doubt—we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner [of] our choosing,” the president said.
U.S. forces stationed in the Middle East have faced increasingly frequent attacks since Israel launched its large-scale war on the Gaza Strip following the deadly Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on October 7. Sunday marked the first time since October that American troops have been killed in a Middle East attack.
The Biden administration has blamed the attacks on Iran-aligned militias and responded with airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, intensifying concerns that the U.S. is fueling a regionwide conflict. The administration has also launched a series of unauthorized strikes in Yemen in response to Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
Despite the above, the Pentagon continues to insist that the U.S. is “not at war in the Middle East.”
Contrary to the growing calls for a military response to attacks on U.S. troops, analysts and progressive lawmakers have argued that the only way to halt the escalating violence in the region is to secure a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces armed by the U.S. have killed more than 26,000 people in less than four months. The Biden administration has repeatedly stonewalled international efforts to secure a cease-fire.
“I am heartbroken by the loss of the servicemembers killed in Jordan,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a U.S. Senate candidate, wrote in a social media post on Sunday. “Like I feared, the violence is spiraling out of control. President Biden must demand a cease-fire in Gaza now.”
“This is what the U.S. has been doing for literally decades in this region, responding to violence with more violence…and it has not worked,” @mattduss responds to growing calls from the GOP to attack Iran after militia groups linked to the country killed U.S. troops in Jordan. pic.twitter.com/HT3djtxDmq
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, warned in a statement Sunday that “the U.S. and Iran are now closer to the brink of being pulled into a full-blown regional war by the vortex of violence that was unleashed by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7th and Israel’s assault on Gaza.”
“Those who have consistently counseled only violence to address the crisis unleashed on October 7 should be ashamed of the disastrous outcomes they have so far reaped,” said Abdi. “We are disgusted by calls for more escalation from opportunists like Senators Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, and John Cornyn who are urging yet again for the U.S. to directly attack Iran. After years of working to block and undermine diplomatic alternatives, these people may be closer than ever to realizing their dream of war with Iran.”
“President Biden must show leadership and recognize that there is no military solution to this crisis that has only been expanded and prolonged by military escalation and a dearth of diplomacy,” he continued. “The president must calibrate his response so as not to condemn the U.S. and region to an intractable war and instead work to end this conflict. The most impactful thing Biden can do to prevent further deaths across the region and prevent a full-blown war is to secure an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Palestine.”
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, similarly argued that “to truly protect our troops and avoid both war and more needless American deaths, Biden should begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and Syria and press Israel for a cease-fire, since its slaughter in Gaza is fueling four fronts that put the U.S. at risk.”
“There will be understandable calls for revenge and counterstrikes,” Parsi said. “Biden will almost certainly go down that path. Know that this is how America gets dragged into endless war. Retaliations, which in the moment may feel justified by the unacceptable attacks of these militias, put us on a path toward a war that doesn’t serve our interests and that we cannot afford—one whose victory we cannot define and whose exit we cannot envision.”
The US assassinated Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani this morning by drone attack near Baghdad airport. I present my analysis which my be revised or extended.
Trump/US’s assassination of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani is no doubt an extremely provocative and outrageous act having little or any regard for international laws and customs and – of course – Iraqi sovereignty.
It should be recognised and accepted that US, UK and Australia are dictated to by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. National policies are decided by Neo-Con (and climate-destroyer) Murdoch in pursuit of his own interests. Murdoch exerts a veto on politicians e.g. former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and otherwise controls how senior politicians act through the power of his news empire. It is extremely unlikely that Trump would have taken this action without clearing it with or being directed to do it by Murdoch.
Trump is facing re-election is 2020. This action provides a distraction from impeachment proceedings and presents Trump as a bellicose leader.
The best resolution of this unprecedented situation would be a legal one i.e. Trump/US being held to account legally. It is unfortunate that this is unlikely to happen since US has not ratified or does not recognise such legal treaties.
2.25pm
Jeremy Corbyn MP, Leader of the Labour Party, responding to the killing of Qasem Soleimani, said:
“The US assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani is an
extremely serious and dangerous escalation of conflict in the Middle
East with global significance.
“The UK government should urge restraint on the part of both Iran and
the US, and stand up to the belligerent actions and rhetoric coming
from the United States.
“All countries in the region and beyond should seek to ratchet down
the tensions to avoid deepening conflict, which can only bring further
misery to the region, 17 years on from the disastrous invasion of Iraq.”
