A prospective US war with Iran is pending

United States interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s far-right Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal.

The story is simple, in stark violation of international law, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers claim the right to rule over seven million Palestinians. When Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands leads to militant resistance, Israel labels the resistance “terrorism” and calls on the US to overthrow the Middle East governments that back the “terrorists.” The US, under the sway of the Israel Lobby, goes to war on Israel’s behalf.

The fall of Syria this past week is the culmination of the US-Israel campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s arrival to office as Prime Minister. The US-Israel war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. That effort finally came to “fruition” this week, after more than 300,000 deaths in the Syrian war since 2011.

Syria’s fall came swiftly because of more than a decade of crushing economic sanctions, the burdens of war, the US seizure of Syria’s oil, Russia’s priorities regarding the conflict in Ukraine, and most immediately, Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah, which was the key military backstop to the Syrian Government. No doubt Assad often misplayed his own hand and faced severe internal discontent, but his regime was targeted for collapse for decades by the US and Israel.

Since 2011, the US-Israel perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, US seizure of Syria’s oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery.

In the immediate two days following the collapse of the government, Israel conducted about 480 strikes across Syria, and completely destroyed the Syrian fleet in Latakia. Pursuing his expansionist agenda, Prime Minister Netanyahu illegally claimed control over the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and declared that the Golan Heights will be a part of the State of Israel “for eternity.”

Netanyahu’s ambition to transform the region through war, which dates back almost three decades, is playing out in front of our eyes. In a press conference on December 09, 2024 the Israeli prime minister boasted of an “absolute victory,” justifying the on-going genocide in Gaza and escalating violence throughout the region.

The long history of Israel’s campaign to overthrow the Syrian Government is not widely understood, yet the documentary record is clear. Israel’s war on Syria began with US and Israeli neoconservatives in 1996, who fashioned a “Clean Break” strategy for the Middle East for Netanyahu as he came to office.

The core of the “clean break” strategy called for the Israel (and the US) to reject “land for peace,” the idea that Israel would withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands in return for peace. Instead, Israel would retain the occupied Palestinian lands, rule over the Palestinian people in an Apartheid state, step-by-step ethnically cleanse the state, and enforce so-called “peace for peace” by overthrowing neighboring governments that resisted Israel’s land claims.

The Clean Break strategy asserts, “Our claim to the land—to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years—is legitimate and noble,” and goes on to state, “Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which the US can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon…”

In his 1996 book Fighting Terrorism, Netanyahu set out the new strategy. Israel would not fight the terrorists; it would fight the states that support the terrorists. More accurately, it would get the US to do Israel’s fighting for it.

 

As he elaborated in 2001, the first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states.… Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust.

Netanyahu’s strategy was integrated into US foreign policy. Taking out Syria was always a key part of the plan. This was confirmed to General Wesley Clark after 9/11.

He was told, during a visit at the Pentagon, that “we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

Iraq would be first, then Syria, and the rest. (Netanyahu’s campaign for the Iraq War is spelled out in detail in Dennis Fritz’s new book, Deadly Betrayal. The role of the Israel Lobby is spelled out in Ilan Pappé’s new book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic). The insurgency that hit US troops in Iraq set back the five-year timeline, but did not change the basic strategy.

The US has by now led or sponsored wars against Iraq (invasion in 2003), Lebanon (US funding and arming Israel), Libya (NATO bombing in 2011), Syria (CIA operation during 2010’s), Sudan (supporting rebels to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia’s invasion in 2006).

A prospective US war with Iran, ardently sought by Israel, is still pending.

US War on terror has killed more than 4.5 million since 9/11

A report, by the Costs of War project at Brown University in the American state of Rhode Island reveals that around 4.5 million people have been killed due to the US-led military adventurism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.

According to the research, the operations have indirectly killed millions more due to destruction of economies, public services, infrastructure, and the environment, which adds to the death toll long after bombs are dropped and increases over time.

Many long-term and under-appreciated consequences of war that was need to be studied in more detail.

The research indicates that the direct war fatalities or killing of nearly one million people is an undercount “precise mortality figure remains unknown”.

The estimates of war deaths in Iraq have been particularly controversial. A 2006 article in The Lancet estimated that approximately 600,000 Iraqis had died due to war violence between 2003 and 2006.

The controversy over the conflicting reports on the death toll in Iraq stems from news outlets that are opposed to the war, who overplayed the death toll, while those who supported the illegal invasion downplayed the death toll.

There have been various unbiased studies that concluded more than one million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011.

The Iraqi deaths can be considered an undercount because of almost daily bombings that killed hundreds of Iraqis. Add to the era of the US and Daesh from 2014 to 2017 where hundreds of thousands of others were slaughtered and it’s not difficult to imagine more than one million Iraqis have died and continue to die today as a result of the US war on terror.   

There is little doubt that the US has brought nothing but insecurity and instability to West Asia, with its military presence. In January 2018, the Leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said,

"America's corrupting presence in this region should end… In this region, they brought war, discord, sedition, destruction, destruction of infrastructure.  Of course, wherever they stepped in the world, they acted the same way... this must end."

The report put special emphasis on the effects of US wars on women and children who suffer the brunt of these ongoing impacts the most.

The report notes that while people were killed in fighting, far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of US wars, such as the spread of disease and damage to public services.

"More studies are necessary on the impact of war’s destruction of public services, especially beyond the healthcare system, on population health," the report says.

"Damage to water and sanitation systems, roads, and commercial infrastructure such as ports, for instance, have significant but less understood consequences."

The research says wars and conflicts which the US has waged or been engaged in under the pretext of countering terrorism since September 11, 2001 makes clear that the impacts of war's ongoing violence are so vast and complex that they are unquantifiable.

It should be noted that after the September 11 attacks, the US waged wars and sparked conflicts, especially in West Asia under the pretext of fighting terrorism. However, as a result of the US military adventurism, there has been an extremely sharp rise in terrorist groups that had no presence in West Asia or countries such as Somalia before Washington’s intervention in the region.

In other words, war on terror has had the complete opposite effect of the slogan under which the Pentagon waged a campaign of instability in West Asia that allowed terrorism to flourish.

Millions of people are still in distress, pain and traumatized in both current and former warzones, the study says, calling on the US as well as its allies to alleviate the ongoing losses and suffering of millions of people and provide the required reparations, though not easy or cheap. This is something imperative, the report points out.

The report focuses on Afghanistan as an example of how people, in particular women and children, the most vulnerable in society, are dying because, despite the US (shambolic) withdrawal, the damage Washington inflicted on Afghanistan’s vital services, such as the health sector and the damage the US caused to the country’s sanitation and other infrastructure in the 20 years of war and occupation means Afghans are still dying today.  

"Though in 2021 the United States withdrew military forces from Afghanistan, officially ending a war that began with its invasion 20 years’ prior, today Afghans are suffering and dying from war-related causes at higher rates than ever," the report alarmingly points out.

In the case of Somalia for example, US intervention and the war that followed has prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid, which the research says exacerbated famine; this is a natural disaster that could have been alleviated if the US instead chose to spend a vast amount of money in humanitarian assistance programs and not radicalizing the local population (and increasing terrorism and bloodshed) by bombing civilians with drones in the sky.  

Critics argue that if the United States had not waged war against countries in West Asia or provoked conflicts in the region, then other parties would not have engaged in any combat missions. In this case, the US must be solely held responsible for the disturbing direct and indirect death toll as a result of its provocative and illegal military measures.