In a major escalation of the imperialist military offensive throughout the Middle East, Israel launched three waves of airstrikes on Iran Saturday morning in coordination with the Biden administration.

The White House quickly endorsed Israel’s illegal attack on Iran, declaring, “We understand that Israel is conducting targeted strikes against military targets in Iran as an exercise of self-defense.”

A White House official further endorsed the illegal attack in a statement to Bloomberg, calling it “targeted and proportional.” The official told Bloomberg, “The president and his national security team, of course, worked with the Israelis over recent weeks” to plan the illegal act of war.

Rather than self-defense, the attack is a calculated provocation aimed at eliciting a military response by Iran that can be used to justify further US-Israeli aggression, including the deployment of even more combat troops to Israel and a further military build-up throughout the region.

The Iranian military confirmed that airstrikes targeted bases in Ilam, Khuzestan, and Tehran provinces, and commercial flights were suspended throughout the country.

The attack follows the October 9 discussion between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which the American president signed off on the strikes, along with a series of discussions with the Pentagon and White House Friday night.

The attack took place just days after US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that US combat troops had arrived in Israel, in the role of air defense support for the operation.

The attack took place as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Middle East after extensive discussions with Netanyahu in which he reviewed both the planned attack on Iran and Israel’s so-called “generals’ plan” to starve, displace, or exterminate the remaining population of Northern Gaza.

The Israeli-US attack on Iran took place just 11 days before the November 5 US presidential election. Earlier this month, the World Socialist Web Site warned that the Biden administration was planning an “October conspiracy” to escalate the war with Iran. We wrote:

There is a long history of events taking place in October that have major effects on an upcoming US presidential election. By deploying US troops to Israel, the Biden administration is not so much seeking to impact Kamala Harris’s electoral prospects as to ensure that plans for military escalation are underway before the election takes place. Instead of an “October surprise,” it is an “October conspiracy” to massively expand US involvement in war throughout the Middle East.

These warnings have now been confirmed. While the scope of the Israeli attack is at this point unclear, it is evident that the Biden Administration is recklessly seeking to escalate war throughout the Middle East targeting Iran.

Israel’s attack on Iran is part of its rampage throughout the Middle East, supported by the imperialist powers, with the aim of reimposing colonial domination over the oil-rich region as part of their effort to dominate Russia and China.

The most horrific consequence of this imperialist offensive throughout the Middle East is the genocide in Gaza. The official death toll of the Gaza genocide stands at 42,847, with over 100,544 wounded. The real death toll is likely to be far higher, with an article in The Lancet estimating it at 186,000 or more in July.

This month, Reuters reported that Israel had suspended all commercial food shipments into Gaza, leading the availability to fall to the lowest level since the start of Israel’s onslaught, as human rights organizations warned of imminent mass starvation.

The attack on Iran follows a campaign of illegal assassinations targeting all of the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as leading Iranian figures, as the US and Israel expand their military onslaught throughout the region. On October 16, Israel murdered Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Rafah. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by more than 80 Israeli 2,000-pound bombs in Lebanon last month, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated by Israel in Tehran in July.

Israel simultaneously continued its ground invasion and daily bombardment of Lebanon Friday, with the Lebanese death toll rising to 2,634.