When rich, fat, powerful white men lie, they lie big time. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are two men who have placed the world on the verge of a regional war in the Middle East that could possibly escalate into a World War.
Israel launched an unprovoked war on the Islamic government and people of Iran on the 13 June. On the 21stth June America officially joined the war by attacking the Muslim country with bunker busting bombs that it has not used on any other country before. The attacks are in clear violation of International Law, the U.N charter and the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.
Consider Netanyahu’s litany of lies about Iran’s nuclear weapons spanning over three decades in which he claimed that Iran was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.
In 1992, Netanyahu told the Israeli Knesset “Within three to five years we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb”. If we believed Netanyahu in 1992, then Iran would have had a nuclear weapon by 1995 or latest 1997. But 1997 passed and Iran did not acquire a nuclear weapon.
In July of1996, he warned a joint session of the U.S Congress about Iran building a nuclear weapon and called Europe and Asia to join efforts to Isolate Iran and Iraq and prevent them from developing nuclear capabilities that he warned will bring catastrophe.
In 2002, he advised the U.S congressional committee that Iran and Iraq were racing to obtain nuclear weapons. Here we are twenty three years later and Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.
In 2009, according to a U.S. State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, Netanyahu told members of Congress that Iran was just one or two years away from a nuclear weapon. Here we are sixteen years later and Iran has not developed a nuclear weapon.
On the 27th September 2012 at the 67th session of the U.N general assembly which is now famously referred to as the “Cartoon Presentation”, Netanyahu told the world “By Spring, at most by next summer-they would have finished the medium enrichment and moved on to the final stage”. Spring and summer came and went not once, but thirteen times and Iran has not developed a nuclear weapon.
Akiva Eldar, an Israeli scholar quipped that if ever there was an award for propaganda, Benjamin Netanyahu would win it. Netanyahu would probably win many other awards like Master of Genocide, Greatest liar in History, Greatest Islamophobe of all time and biggest baby killer in human history.
Donald Trump may well compete with Netanyahu for the greatest liar of all time. On the 19th June, he said that he was giving Iran two weeks for diplomacy but then he bombed Iran two days later. Trump claims that he is a great dealmaker but in fact he is the deal breaker who unilaterally ripped up JCPOA in 2018, a nuclear deal with Iran that America was a signatory to in 2015. Trump professed to be seeking a diplomatic solution with Iran and his emissary Steve Witkoff had engaged in five rounds of diplomatic negotiations. A few days before the scheduled 6th round of Negotiations scheduled for the 15th June in Oman, Trump told the world that a peaceful resolution is possible and Iran will not be attacked. Trump deliberately lied and used diplomacy as ruse to catch Iran off guard, having them believe that there was no pending military action which allowed Israel to launch the war, taking Iran by surprise. During the first few rounds of diplomatic negotiations, the Americans indicated that they will be agreeable to less than 4% of uranium enrichment but then flip flopped and said that they will only accept 0% enrichment. Trump never wanted a negotiated agreement with Iran, he wanted war.
The millions of Americans who voted for Trump because of his campaign promise not to lead the United States into another unlawful forever war realized on the 21st June, that their leader lied to them. And the lies flow one after the other. At the press briefing after Trump attacked Iran with bunker busting bombs, he indicated that it was a once off attack and he was not after regime change in Iran. But on the 22nd June, Trump said there he sees nothing wrong with regime change.
The lies and idiocy emanating from the White House is ground breaking. Trumps Vice President J.D Vance told ABC news after the military strikes on Iran “We are not at war with Iran, we are at war with Iran’s nuclear programme”. This statement should be one of the prime contenders for the most stupid public statement of all time. Perhaps Vance was trying to outdo Trump after America attacked Iran, the U.S. President stated that Iran must now stop the war even though Iran did not attack or start a war with America. Go figure.
It behoves, the people of the world, particularly black, native, Muslim and indigenous people to heed seriously the words of the Native Americans who advised “The White Man speaks with a forked tongue”. The Native People of America (Sioux) were annihilated and exterminated by Trumps forefathers, the white settlers. It is a deadly and war mongering forked tongue of two rich white men with a settler mentality from Washington and Tel Aviv who have lied their way to War on a people and a country that did not attack them.
Netanyahu got his first war wish when he got the U.S to invade Iraq and fight the war on behalf of Israel. In 2002 he stated that “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is wanting, and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons”.
When white men from Washington and Tel Aviv kill, they kill big time. According to the medical journal Lancet, approximately six hundred thousand people in Iraq were killed and the war created 3.9 million Iraqi refugees. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. A U.S bipartisan commission found that there was no evidence of an operational relationship between the Iraqi government and Saddam Hussein. They lied, they went to war and they got away with it.
Netanyahu has received his second war wish, with America and Trump fighting another war on behalf of Israel. Everyone knows that this war is based on a lie. Make no mistake, the Western world knows exactly what they are doing and every one of the Western Countries support this war on Iran as they have supported the genocide in Gaza.
They lied; they started this war but will they be able to finish it? Will we allow them to get away with it?
Iqbal Suleman
Suleman is a social justice lawyer and former head of the law clinic for Lawyers for Human Rights in Pretoria and Research Associate: Media Review Network