Israeli political leaders have reportedly decided on the targets of a US-backed attack on Iran that is considered imminent, with ABC News reporting Wednesday afternoon that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signed off on the plan. Public broadcaster Kan stated that the decisions were finalised by political leaders Tuesday, with an anonymous source declaring, “The targets are clear. Now it’s a matter of time.” Underlining this point, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told a Wednesday meeting of the relatives of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza that the attacks would be “precise and deadly.”
The Middle East stands on the brink of a region-wide conflagration. Acting as American imperialism’s attack dog, the far-right Zionist regime is preparing to launch an assault on Iran that will leave Tehran with no choice but to respond, marking yet another stage in the escalation of the conflict that threatens the lives of millions. Israel is being emboldened by Washington’s provocative actions, including the deployment of US troops and a missile defence battery to Israel announced Sunday, and a commitment to supply the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with tens of billions of dollars in weaponry in the coming months and years.
While the American media is full of assertions that Biden is seeking to promote a “measured response” and wants to “turn down the temperature” in the region, Washington is pushing relentlessly towards a regional bloodbath.
On Tuesday, Biden formally confirmed in a letter to Congressional leaders the deployment of 100 troops and the ballistic missile defence system to Israel announced Sunday. “Consistent with our longstanding commitment to Israel’s security and our public indication of our continuing efforts to protect Israel from Iranian and Iranian-aligned threats, I am reporting to you the posture of United States military forces to aid in Israel’s defence against these attacks and any further such attacks,” the letter, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Exposing the threadbare claim that Israel’s attack will be a “response” to Iran’s missile strikes, which Tehran had no option but to launch following a series of Israeli provocations, the letter continued,
In recent months, we have adjusted the United States military posture to improve United States force protection and increase support for the defense of Israel. These adjustments include extension of the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, along with its destroyer escorts and carrier air wing that is equipped with F-35C Lightning II Fifth Generation Fighters, to replace the previously extended USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group. We also have deployed additional destroyers, including some that are ballistic missile defense-capable; the guided missile submarine USS Georgia, the USS Wasp Amphibious Ready Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit, multiple fighter and attack squadrons of Fourth and Fifth Generation Fighters including F-22, F-15E, and F-16, as well as A-10 Attack aircraft; and other forces.
German imperialism, which is Israel’s second-largest supplier of weapons after the United States, is also on board with Israel’s escalation towards an all-out Middle East war. Addressing the Bundestag Wednesday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared, “There are deliveries, and there will always be further deliveries. Israel can rely on that.
“Israel can rely on our solidarity—now and in the future.”
US imperialism wants war to reorganise the entire Middle East in its interests, including through regime change in Iran, and by sidelining Russia and China to control the region’s rich energy reserves. Germany and the other European imperialists are determined to secure their share of the spoils. This war is one front in a rapidly escalating third world war pursued by the imperialists to redivide the world.
Amid the chorus for war with Iran, the imperialist powers’ simultaneous attempt to present themselves as the defenders of the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza in the face of Israel’s deliberate campaign of starvation and ethnic cleansing is an exercise in breathtaking hypocrisy.
At an “emergency” meeting of the United Nations Security Council Wednesday called by France, Algeria and Britain, spokesmen for governments, which have flooded Israel with high-powered weaponry during the year-long Gaza genocide and turned a blind eye to the deaths of at least 200,000 Palestinians, asserted their concern about the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza. Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward referred to the “harrowing” situation in northern Gaza, adding,
In the first half of October, no food aid was delivered to northern Gaza with Israeli authorities denying or impeding the vast majority of humanitarian movements between north and south. We expect October to see the least aid enter Gaza since the beginning of the conflict, lower even than September.
American Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield insisted that the United States is ensuring that Israel does not have a “policy of starvation” in northern Gaza, where Israel has launched new intensive ground operations in the Jabalia refugee camp over the past 12 days that have claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives.
On the contrary, Washington is overseeing and helping implement the Zionist regime’s ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, which includes a deliberate policy of denying aid to the population so as to starve them to death. The flow of 2,000-pound bombs and other high-powered munitions from the US has been uninterrupted as deaths by malnutrition and disease have spread.
A widely reported letter signed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Sunday that threatened Israel with a cut-off of arms supplies if it did not improve the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza, called merely for the allowing of 350 truckloads of aid into Gaza each day. This amounts to barely two-thirds of the total that reached Gaza on a daily basis prior to October 7, 2023.
The letter appears to have been more of an election campaign stunt than anything else, since it was not signed by either Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, neither of whom has made any indication that they would hold up weapons’ supplies for any reason. Nor did it say anything about bringing Israel’s genocidal onslaught to an end. In comments reported by Al Jazeera Wednesday, the Prime Minister of Qatar, which together with Egypt and the US was facilitating ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, said that no talks have taken place for “three or four weeks.”
Meanwhile, Israel’s barbaric massacres continue in both Gaza and Lebanon. An air strike on a municipal building in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh killed at least 16, including the mayor, and injured over 50. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), a peacekeeping force which has repeatedly come under attack by Israeli forces over recent weeks as the Zionist regime seeks to force them to leave, reported that a tank deliberately fired at a UNIFIL watchtower Wednesday morning, knocking it out of service and destroying cameras.
In Gaza, the civil defence released a statement noting that dozens of bodies are piling up in the Jabalia refugee camp that they cannot reach because of Israel’s siege. The statement added that 200,000 people languishing in the camp have been without food, water or medicine for 12 days. The organisation reported the death of five people in a separate strike on a family home in Gaza City.
Addressing the UN Security Council meeting, Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour correctly pointed out that Israel’s goal in northern Gaza is the “forcible displacement of the Palestinian people and annexation of the Palestinian territory.” He referred to the so-called “general’s plan,” a plan reviewed by Netanyahu’s government that includes the sealing off of northern Gaza from the outside world to starve its inhabitants and the transformation of the area into a free-fire zone so that any Palestinian remaining there can be exterminated by the IDF.