An Israeli soldier carries a shell next to a tank in northern Israel, September 27, 2024
ISRAEL’S illegal and unprovoked bombing of Iran, killing military leaders, scientists and numerous other civilians, puts us on the brink of catastrophic conflict.
An attack on this scale would be treated as an act of war by any country. Nor is the Israeli strike a one-off: besides its long record of murdering scientists and bombing diplomatic premises, its strikes on Iranian territory are ongoing, with the overnight bombing of Tehran being followed up by daytime strikes on Tabriz, Shiraz and other cities.
The British government’s calls for restraint are grossly inadequate. The aggressor is Israel and its conduct puts us all at risk. Its attack on Iran must not just be unequivocally condemned: the already overwhelming case for a halt to military co-operation and arms supplies has become more urgent.
Its formal excuse for attacking Iran is illegitimate. Suspicion that Iran might be close to developing nuclear weapons is not grounds for attacking it. Only an imperialist mindset can hold the possession of such weapons by some states acceptable and by others not: and Iran has nothing like Israel’s record of routine attacks on its neighbours. The dangerous and destabilising power in the Middle East is Israel. Besides, those in Iran who say nuclear weapons are their only safeguard against attack will be strengthened today.
Could we be drawn in? Easily. Britain is already directly involved in Israel’s wars. It has bombed Yemen and conducted intelligence-sharing RAF flights over Gaza. It supplies a military committing genocide. It is not illogical for actors in the region to see Israeli allies like Britain and the US as directly culpable for its actions, especially given US President Donald Trump’s hints he is behind the attack.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
There’s a story very recently published on the BBC about UK sending military jets to the Middle-East. Keir Starmer is quoted stating that these military jets are being sent to de-escalate the situation. Is he on a different planet? Can somebody please ask him how military jets can de-escalate a conflict?
He’s taking us for fools. We know very well that these jets are going to support Israel. Keir “I support Zionism without qualification” Starmer is a total genocide-supporting mass-murdering total cnut. So, UK is going to support Israel in an illegal war after supporting Israel’s Gaza genocide from the outset.
Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP for North Herefordshire. CC image Wikipedia.
Responding to the bombing of Iran by Israel overnight, Green Party MP, Ellie Chowns, said:
“The targeted assassinations and widespread bombing of Iran by Israel represent a deeply alarming escalation.
“These actions confirm that Israel is a rogue state operating outside international law. Israel can no longer continue to enjoy the diplomatic and trade privileges they have as part of the international community.
“The UK must now urgently clarify whether it knew about these attacks in advance, urgently summon the Israeli ambassador to express the UK’s deep concern about Israel’s military actions and state unequivocally that it will cease military support for Israel, including arms sales and the training of Israeli military personnel.
She added “The unilateral bombing of Iran by Israel does nothing to make us safer and risks full-scale war.”
Rescue workers comb through the ruins of a residential building bombed by Israel on June 13, 2025 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
“Trump must act immediately to suspend all military support to Israel and stop allowing U.S. arms to fuel war crimes, mass civilian death, and regional collapse,” said one critic.
Progressive U.S. lawmakers and human rights defenders demanded an end to unconditional American armed and diplomatic support for Israel after it launched a series of attacks on Iran early Friday, reportedly killing senior military officials and civilians including nuclear scientists, women, and children in a dramatic escalation that Iranian leaders vowed to avenge.
Israeli forces carried out at least five waves of airstrikes targeting not only Iran’s nuclear facilities but also its military leadership and capabilities, Al Jazeera reported. In addition to airstrikes, Israeli and international media reported that operatives from Mossad, Israel’s foreign spy agency, also conducted assassination and sabotage attacks in Iran.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander-in-Chief Major Gen. Hossein Salami and Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major Gen. Mohammad Bagheri were assassinated, as were numerous Iranian nuclear scientists.
Israel is bombing and killing civilians across Iran
These are all apartment buildings where ordinary people lived in Tehran
IDF attacks targeted cities including the capital Tehran, Natanz, Isfahan, Arak, Tabriz, and Kermanshah. Iranian television reports showed bombed-out apartment towers and said that an unknown number of civilians including women and children were killed in the strikes.
The attack on Natanz—home to Iran’s primary nuclear enrichment facility—sparked fears of radiological contamination.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack—dubbed Operation Rising Lion—a “preemptive strike,” a dubious form of warfare previously waged by forces including imperial Japan during the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the George W. Bush administration in Iraq.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the attacks were meant to “neutralize an immediate and existential threat to our people,” an apparent reference to Iran’s nuclear program. Successive U.S. administrations including President Donald Trump’s have concluded for decades that Iran is not trying to develop nuclear weapons.
During his first term, Trump unilaterally abrogated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal.
Last year, Israel and Iran carried out limited tit-for-tat attacks following the former’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, who led the Lebanon-based resistance group Hezbollah, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
This time, Iranian leaders vowed “severe punishment,” with fears that the U.S. could be targeted due to its staunch support for Israel as it wages what the international community increasingly views as a genocidal war on Gaza. While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that his country was not involved in the attacks, Israeli officials insisted there was close coordination with the Trump administration.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said Friday that “in the early hours of today, the Zionist regime extended its filthy and bloodstained hand to commit a crime in our beloved country, exposing its vile nature more than ever by targeting residential areas.”
“With this crime, the Zionist regime has prepared a bitter and painful fate for itself—and it will undoubtedly face it,” Khamenei added.
As the world braced for Iran’s response to the attacks, U.S. progressives called for a diplomatic solution and an end to American support for Israel.
“The Israeli government bombing Iran is a dangerous escalation that could lead to regional war,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said on social media.
Tlaib asserted that Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and is facing a domestic criminal corruption trial, “will do anything to maintain his grip on power.”
“We cannot let him drag our country into a war with Iran,” she added. “Our government must stop funding and supporting this rogue genocidal regime.”
Referring to negotiations on a new Iran nuclear deal, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said: “Just as talks with Iran were set to resume, Netanyahu launches a strike and declares a state of emergency. He is provoking a war Americans don’t want.”
“We should not allow ourselves to be dragged into yet another conflict, against our will, by a foreign leader pursuing his own agenda of death and destruction,” Omar added.
The U.S.-based peace group CodePink—some of whose members held an emergency protest outside the White House in Washington, D.C.—said that it “strongly condemn[s] Israel’s unprovoked and reckless attack on Iran, which risks igniting a catastrophic regional war.”
NOW: We're protesting outside the White House to say NO WAR WITH IRAN!
Israel says these are "preemptive strikes," but the only thing they are preempting is a peaceful dialogue between the United States and Iran to come to a nuclear deal.
“This dangerous escalation threatens millions of lives across the entire Middle East,” the group added. “The U.S. must not continue to support and enable this illegal act of aggression.”
CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin said: “It’s horrific that Israel is bombing yet another country. And Trump calls himself a peace president? He knew this was coming and stood by. This is entirely out of step with the will of the American people.”
“The whole world is desperate for peace in the Middle East, and instead, Israel decides to move the region closer to World War III,” Benjamin added.
Noting that nuclear talks with Iran were set to resume this weekend, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said that “this is an attack on peace and diplomacy.”
“Israeli political officials have demonstrated that U.S. diplomacy and a peaceful resolution with Iran is what they consider to be the true threats,” NIAC asserted.
“This much is clear: This is a war of choice, and an illegal and unprovoked attack,” NIAC added. “Trump must weigh in to stop this conflict before it spirals out of control, and to preserve the chance of maintaining diplomatic offramps.”
Israel, the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons which is currently committing a genocide against Palestinians, is bombing Iran to start a war and sabotage U.S.-Iran diplomacy.
Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Israel-Palestine director at the advocacy group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), contended that “Israel deciding to launch a war against Iran at the very same time it faces unprecedented international isolation and pressure over its genocide in Gaza is a nightmarish outcome of impunity.”
DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson said that “Israel has committed an unlawful, unprovoked attack on Iran to undermine the growing global efforts to sanction it for its illegal occupation and to disrupt Trump’s efforts to independently pursue America’s interests via diplomacy.”
Nihad Awad, national executive director at the Council on American Islamic Relations, issued the following statement:
We condemn Israel’s offensive strike on Iran and the broader pattern of aggression it represents. Netanyahu is using American weapons and taxpayer dollars to launch illegal and destabilizing wars across the region. President Trump must act immediately to suspend all military support to Israel and stop allowing U.S. arms to fuel war crimes, mass civilian death, and regional collapse. Secretary Rubio’s statement confirms what we already knew—Israel is acting recklessly, and the U.S. is letting it happen.
CodePink noted that “in the past month and a half alone, Israel has bombed Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran.”
“There is no other choice,” the group added, “ARMS EMBARGO NOW!”
An Israel Defense Forces F-15 fighter takes off in this photo posted on the IDF’s website on May 19, 2025. (Photo: Israel Defense Forces)
“It would be a catastrophic mistake to be led into a war by the same neocons that claimed the Iraq war would be a cakewalk,” warned one group.
Israel is likely preparing to bomb Iran even as the Trump administration works toward a nuclear deal with Tehran, stoking fears of Iranian retaliation against U.S. military bases and other American or allied sites in an already inflamed region, and prompting calls for urgent diplomacy to avoid war.
U.S. and European officials told Western media Thursday that Israel is preparing to unilaterally attack Iran as negotiations between Washington and Tehran draw closer to a preliminary framework for an agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear development. The government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes any such deal.
“If this escalates, innocent lives will be caught in the crossfire in Iran and across the region.”
American intelligence agencies have periodically concluded over the past two decades that Iran—which has not started a war since the 19th century but supports proxy attacks on Israel—is not developing nuclear weapons.
While President Donald Trump—who has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran if a nuclear deal is not reached—has publicly opposed an Israeli attack on Iran, numerous observers are warning that Tehran and its proxies would very likely view the U.S. as complicit in any such action.
“If Israel does strike Iran in the next days or hours, and even if they do so in defiance of Trump’s warnings, the likelihood that the Iranians will perceive it as an independent act by Israel in defiance of Trump is essentially zero,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Wednesday on social media. “There is no plausible deniability.”
Vahid Razavi, an Iranian American advocate for human rights and ethics in technology and founder of ParentsPlea.com, told Common Dreams Thursday that “Israel will only attack Iran with the support and blessing of the United States.”
“The ‘good cop/bad cop’ game that Trump and Israel are playing in the region is a distraction,” Razavi added. “There is no substantial difference in U.S. and Israeli policy toward Iran.”
Iran has threatened an “unprecedented response” if Israel attacks.
“In case of any conflict, the U.S. must leave the region because all its bases are within our range, and we will target all of them in the host countries regardless,” Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said Thursday during a televised address.
Nasirzadeh’s remarks followed a Wednesday threat by an official from Ansar Allah that the Yemeni rebel group also known as the Houthis is “at the highest level of preparedness for any possible American escalation against us.”
“Any escalation against the Islamic Republic of Iran is also dangerous and will drag the entire region into the abyss of war,” the unnamed official toldNewsweek.
The Trump administration stands accused of war crimes in Yemen amid an escalation of the decadeslong U.S. bombing of the country as part of the so-called War on Terror. Successive U.S. administrations also backed a Saudi-led war on Yemen that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, while Israeli and British forces have bombed the country since 2024 in retaliation for Houthi missile attacks on Red Sea shipping and Israel.
Last October, Iran launched a limited missile strike on Israel in response to the assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah, who led the Lebanon-based resistance group Hezbollah, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. This prompted retaliatory Israeli attacks on targets in and around Tehran, including the headquarters of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The prospect of another Israeli attack on Iran prompted the U.S. on Wednesday to order the evacuation of some diplomats from Iraq and call for the voluntary departure of American military families from the region.
Meanwhile, numerous observers stressed the need for a diplomatic resolution to avoid a wider war in the Middle East—and possibly beyond.
The Iran nuclear crisis is resolvable through diplomacy, not a bloody war. It would be a catastrophic mistake to be led into a war by the same neocons that claimed the Iraq war would be a cakewalk.
There’s time for diplomacy – but hardline demands must give way to compromise. https://t.co/uNFNWr7LGR
“We must face the reality: if this escalates, innocent lives will be caught in the crossfire in Iran and across the region, and at home there may be new, dire threats to the civil liberties of our community,” the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said in a statement Thursday.
“We are working to ensure our leaders hear us loud and clear: We need diplomacy, not catastrophe,” NIAC added. “We are organizing multiple actions in the coming days against a potential war and in support of peace and ask for your support to fuel this vital effort.”Former Democratic Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner succinctly said Wednesday: “No war with Iran. No war, period.”
An Israeli soldier carries a shell next to a tank in northern Israel, September 27, 2024
