The Twelve Day War has laid bare some of the violent contradictions that characterise the strange and dangerous historic moment we find ourselves in. Two weeks ago, when Israel launched its pre-emptive blitzkrieg against Iran, the Islamic Republic was caught off guard with its public face directed towards a diplomatic resolution. The fact that it was flat-footed signals an intelligence failure on the Iranian’s part and likely infiltration by Mossad/CIA, but it also provides confirmation that attempting diplomacy with Israel/US is fraught.
The initial success of the blitz, via a series of targeted assassinations, bombings, sabotage and much ‘collateral damage’, served to re-emphasise the steep asymmetry between the two countries. Israel’s military possesses huge amounts of high-tech weapons, receives unconditional support from the US and its sub-imperial vassals, like Australia (more on this below), which has even allowed it to conduct a live-streamed genocide with impunity. The steepest asymmetry is the fact that Israel possess nuclear bombs, Iran does not. Israel has up to 200 bombs, plus a full-spectrum means of delivering them according to unknown protocols (not to mention their biological and chemical weapons).
The presence and absence of these most terrible weapons is crucial to understanding the whole dynamic—indeed, the very nature of the atomic bomb itself is central. In short, any society that creates and possesses such a weapon is itself poisoned by it. For such an immensely dangerous weapon to exist, it demands a centralized, rigid hierarchy to control it. As Langdon Winner wrote back in the 1980s: the ‘internal social system of the bomb must be authoritarian; there is no other way’. To create a nuclear weapon demands a supreme ‘rationality’. The physics and engineering of a bomb requires teams of intellectually trained technoscientists and a military-industrial complex capable of bringing forth such an intense material abstraction. This is part of the compelling logic of exterminism. Atomic bombs do indeed provide a deterrence to other nuclear powers through ‘MAD’ (Mutually Assured Destruction), the doctrine that lead the US and Soviet Union to create the conditions where a global holocaust – meaning ‘all burnt’, and followed by a nuclear winter was, and is, an ever-present possibility. When forces of control intensify to the point they can reach into the very stuff of atoms, this simultaneously gets completely out of control, spreading the threat of death at a titanic scale across the planet. This political logic is inherent in the technology of the bomb itself.
In the current conflict, Israel’s asymmetrical power and significant advantages, have not translated into anything they could be called a ‘victory’. This is in part because of the maximalist posturing of Israeli’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This leader, who has an arrest warrant issued on him for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, has pushed for nothing short of total capitulation from Iran—what he likes to call the ‘Libya option’. His goals regarding Iran were and remain:
- The total destruction of Iran’s nuclear program, civil and any future military arm;
- The abandonment of its missile arsenal and regional alliances; and
- Regime change.
The Twelve Day War has delivered none of these objectives, indeed some may have backfired.
The enriched uranium was whisked away from the nuclear facilities before they were bombed, thus sparing the most crucial ingredient from whatever yet to be assessed damage. A debate is raging within Iran as to whether they should actually start nuclear weapons program. Arguments are currently being advanced that Iran’s co-operation through signing onto the Non-Proliferation Treaty and providing transparency to the International Atomic Energy Agency (which they have since suspended), have not brought them any security or sanction relief. This leads some to conclude that only the bomb can provide adequate deterrence from the extreme hostility. From a realpolitik perspective, a case can be made for this. They see their need for a nuclear deterrent as directly hitched to Israel’s nuclear status. This issue is far from settled.
Regardless of whether Iran overturns its long-held public expression that atomic weapons are against Islam, they will certainly making an overarching priority to massively strengthen their air defence systems, and Russia and China will be happy to assist with providing the hardware. Indeed, thousands of tonnes of ballistic missile ingredients were en route from China before the hostilities broke out. Iran will likely attempt to put its whole economy onto a war-footing, much like Russia has done since its invasion of Ukraine, working to strengthen its own sanction-born national industrial-military complex.
As many have noted, the bombing of Iran has triggered a significant rally-around-the-flag effect within the divided country. For all the deep and real disillusionment within Islamic Republic, Iranian nationalism is something larger than the current government—corrupt, violent and incompetent, as aspects of it no doubt are. It seems the Iranian people do not want to see their beloved country reduced to a collection of warring, failed, ethnic statelets, as per Israel and the US’s explicit design.
Here we come to another fundamental asymmetry, though within the same singular logic. Iran fights in order to preserve their own sovereignty and their relations with their regional allies; while Israel and the United States fight to maintain their domination. As part of this intensifying situation, Iran may well move towards creating the same terrible weapons that already poisoned Israel and the US. In both cases, the logic of exterminism frames a deepening insecurity.
The Israeli government is not satisfied with possessing overwhelming regional power. It insists on the right to preemptively attack other states, or non-state-actors within, at will. Israel’s conscripted military has been turned into an army of apartheid prison wardens and freed from constraints in regard to their treatment of those deemed ‘human animals’. This was the term used by Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on the 9th of October 2023, effectively translating Untermensch—the German word meaning ‘subhuman’—into Hebrew and applying it to the colonized Palestinians.
Outside their monstering of those deemed Untermensch in the Gazan concentration camp and the West Bank, the Israeli military’s primary means of projecting power is via raining down death from a safe distance (air strikes, missiles, booby traps and drones) and conducting high-tech slaughter via algorithms, robots, and remote denotation—all done without having to leave air-conditioned comfort. As noted in our last editorial, written on the day of the blitz, this power is supremely abstract and highly rational, yet the potential for unlimited violence means it is also gripped with a kind of self-confirming madness.
While the Twelve Day War certainly saw much more death and damage inflicted on the Iranian side of the equation, their retaliations, in the form of missile and drone strikes on Israel, have been more effective than predicted at penetrating Israel’s sophisticated missile defence system, with some of its later barrages getting 50 per cent of missiles through. Iranian strikes within Israel succeeded in grinding most of the economy to a halt, forcing people in and out of bunkers, causing power outages, destroying the country’s only oil refinery, hitting weapons factories, cancelling the vast majority of flights, and preventing cargo ships from arriving in ports. Even stark military asymmetry does not provide security.
And then, of course, US President Donald Trump crashed in with the bunker-buster bombs, driven as always by his desperate hunger for the wall-to-wall attention of the media spectacle. This was staged theatrics. Israel would not have conducted its blitz without the explicit consent of the United States. Nevertheless, Trump’s theatrical spasms culminated not only in the bombing of Iran’s three nuclear facilities, but with significant ‘collateral damage’: further battering ‘rules-based international order’, the United Nations charter, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as the USA’s own system of congress controlling the ability to declare war—to say nothing of his betrayal of the anti-war components of his MAGA base.
US interests in attacking Iran go beyond merely supporting Israel’s ability to project death with impunity, or even any of Trump’s influencer remix of Nixon’s ‘mad dog’ image. US war hawks have long dreamt of reducing Iran to a fragmented, war zone—much like the fate they handed to Iraq and Libya. This would have the effect of cutting China off from a significant part of its all-important energy imports and dealing a monstrous setback to its New Silk Road integration of Asia. It would also open-up a vast, festering war-zone in Russia’s Central Asian sphere. As such, by destroying the most independent state in the Middle East, they could also inflict major setbacks upon both Russia and China.
For its dismal part in this disaster, Australia acts like a faithful sub-imperial agent within a rapidly crumbling US global order. Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese both dutifully picked up the Trump/Netanyahu issued script and lifelessly mouthed: ‘Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon’ and that Australia ‘supports action to prevent that’.
It is obvious that this is threadbare dissembling. The International Atomic Energy Agency conducted regular inspects of all Iranian facilities—effectively spying on Iran, with their consent, for a decade—and the agency categorically stated that Iran was not pursuing the bomb. The US’s own spy agencies agree with this assessment, with the overarching Director of National Intelligence, the Trump appointed Tulsi Gabbard, declaring to Congress on 25 March that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. Confronted with this fact, Trump blithely replies: ‘I don’t care what she said’.
Far away and scrambling to try and achieve some relevance to the increasingly unstable and unreliable US, the Australian government has issued a wormy gasping sound, reaffirming ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’. To make this concrete, Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles scurried to NATO summit, trying to speak with directly with Trump, or even his Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth (he was snubbed). At this meeting, member states cravenly agreed to Daddy’s demand—NATO’s Secretary General literally called Trump ‘Daddy’—that they would drastically increase defence spending to an enormous 5 per cent of GDP (3.5 per cent direct military spending and 1.5 per cent on military-adjacent spending such as cyber-security and building bridges capable of allowing heavy war machines pass over). In Europe, the US and elsewhere, the only way for defence spending to increase that much—shy of heavily taxing the rich and pursuing armed neutrality—is via increasingly intense austerity. Trump describes this as a ‘big win’ for ‘Western Civilization’. This all fits with the US’s long-term goal of subordinating Europe in order to prepare for potential war with China.
When Labour took power in 2022, Australia’s defence spending was 1.9 percent of GDP, and they have since committed to ramping it up $20 billion per year to a projected 2.25 per cent by the end of the current term. At present, 6.6 per cent of government spending is on defence. Much of this increasing spending is locked in due to Labor’s acceptance of the tragically bad AUKUS arrangement, which, it should be added, is not at all about ‘defence’: nuclear submarines are for helping the US attack China. Trump will certainly attempt to push the Australian government to further increase its military spending, watch this space. Cheered on by the ruins of the Coalition, the Labor Party has absolutely no appetite for independent foreign policy, preferring to march towards World War III. This fits neatly with their new status as the Uniparty of the profoundly broken status quo. Labor is proving that they will do whatever it takes to keep the decaying system together as long as possible.
The Twelve Day War between Israel-US and Iran may be paused, but this conflict is far from over. It will come roaring back, potentially quite soon. The US and Israel’s descent into fascism can only mean war. Iran is battered, but far from defeated, and still holds its most powerful card: the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, thus removing 20 per cent of the flow of global oil, something that could very likely cause the immense mass of derivatives held in the hyper-financialized global economy to come crashing down in a reprise of the Global Financial Crisis.
Today marks 629 days since Hamas-led prison-break attack on 7th of October 2023. In the immediate aftermath of this attack, Israel had effectively declared ‘Totaler Krieg—Kürzester Krieg’ (‘Total War—Shortest War’). This was a slogan cooked up by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels as the tides were turning against them on the Eastern Front. Israel’s appetite for a short decisive war crashed hard on the historic material reality. Despite the incomprehensible amounts of suffering inflicted onto the people of Gaza, and far beyond, Israel has yet to defeat Hamas. In many respects, the question of Palestine burns brighter that it has for decades, possibly ever. It is noteworthy that the American military spent twenty years and $2.3 trillion attempting to defeat the Taliban and that it comprehensively failed. Gaza will not disappear. Iran will not be neatly disappeared.
This war has not been, and nor will it be, short or conclusive. Rather, it is another step in a much larger process of imperial decay as the violently ungrounded world order crumbles, ripped apart by the tension between highly abstract rational technologies and the deep derangement that goes with this. Bereft of the ability to reflect on our actions, learn from the past, or have meaningful solidarity—let along sense of our own entanglements with a common humanity within finite and critically crumbling natural world—we are listening to the overture of catastrophe.