Netanyahu’s Iran war, global implications and AKD’s appalling policy stand

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Unprincipled, unwise, on Israel’s Iran attack

Left-leaning Governments, especially but not only in the global South, which feel compelled to adopt severe IMF stabilisation and debt repayment packages, tend to compensate in the field of foreign policy by adopting progressive stands. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s JVP-NPP administration is an exception. 

Here’s his administration’s sole statement on the shocking, momentous event of Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran:   

‘Sri Lanka yesterday expressed deep concern by recent developments between Israel and Iran and urged both to engage in diplomatic efforts for reconciliation.

“Sri Lanka is deeply concerned by the recent developments between Israel and Iran. We urge both countries to exercise restraint, engage in dialogue and pursue diplomatic initiatives to de-escalate the tense situation,” Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement. 

“The Sri Lanka Missions in both countries are closely monitoring the situation and remain in contact with the Sri Lankan nationals in the respective countries. They are advised to exercise utmost caution and remain vigilant,” it added.’

(https://www.ft.lk/front-page/Sri-Lanka-expresses-deep-concern-over-Israel-Iran-tensions/44-777709) 

 The Sri Lankan Government’s stand on Israel’s unprovoked massive aggression against Iran is contemptible in its failure to denounce the attack or even use the term, and name the attacker. 

It conspicuously fails to stand on the principles of the UN Charter, international law and Nonalignment. 

It shamefully fails to empathise if not solidarise with Iran which has been a consistent friend of Sri Lanka, not least during our 30-years war.

The statement talks of ‘recent developments between Israel and Iran’ without having the basic honesty and courage to name the ‘developments’ that have shaken the Middle East, with likely global effects. 

The terms ‘attack’ or even ‘military strike’ do not figure in the statement. There is no indication that several dozens of top Iranian leaders were slaughtered in a blitzkrieg or Pearl Harbour-type surprise attack. Future diplomatic historians will wonder what exactly Sri Lanka meant by ‘recent developments’. An earthquake? 

Five initial waves of airstrikes by Israel against Iran is not describable as ‘a tense situation’ as the AKD administration disgracefully has it.  

Is a rape or an unprovoked homicidal assault by one person on another, a ‘recent development between’ the two persons? 

With its constant unqualified reference to ‘both countries’, the Sri Lankan statement equates the victim and the violator.   

Together with international law and the principles of the UN Charter, another principle should have been taken into account here: reciprocity. Iran has been a consistent friend of Sri Lanka during the worst of times, our protracted war. Unlike Israel, from which we bought refurbished aircraft at the market value and sometimes higher, faraway Iran went out of its way to help us. 

After a visit to Iran, Iraq and Libya in 1990 by Secretary/Defence Ranjan Wijeratne and Army Chief Hamilton Wanasinghe on the instructions of President Ranasinghe Premadasa, for the purpose of guaranteed arms supplies in the face of LTTE aggression and a ‘soft embargo’ by the West, one of the three countries, Iraq, was knocked out as a supply source with its invasion of Kuwait and the retaliatory Desert Storm. Iran flew a huge Lockheed C5A Galaxy transport plane packed with ordnance every month to Sri Lanka. One shipment came right in time for Gen. Kobbekaduwe’s Operation Balavegaya which successfully relieved the siege of Jaffna Fort inflicting heavy casualties on the Tigers.  

In the recent India-Pakistan clash AKD stood fraternally with India instead of being neutral and equidistant between two friends, notwithstanding Pakistan’s staunch, unconditional wartime support of us. Now it is Iran’s turn to be betrayed by him. 

If Sri Lanka forgets a friend who helped us unconditionally in our time of need and is currently under attack; if the Sri Lankan Government is unwilling even to denounce the unprovoked attack and its perpetrator, then who will be there for us unconditionally when we need such friendship again? 

Understanding Israel’s behaviour

For clarity, here’s Senator Bernie Sanders, Jewish, a long-standing Democrat who now defines himself as an Independent, and a highly respected progressive voice in and out of the US legislature:    

…“First, he [Netanyahu] uses the starvation of children in Gaza as a tool of war, a barbaric violation of the Geneva Conventions,” declared Sanders in a statement. “Now, his illegal unilateral attack on Iran risks a full-blown regional war.” (https://www.commondreams.org/news/bernie-sanders-israel-iran-war)   

More context from the prestigious New Yorker magazine, quoting its award-winning Iran specialist Robin Wright: 

‘…We asked Robin Wright—a New Yorker contributing writer who’s been covering Iran since 1973—to explain what this means for the region. “It’s bad because Israel’s attack on Iran launched a war of choice that did not need to happen, at least not now, in the midst of U.S. diplomacy. As the Bush Administration learned in Iraq, wars of choice do not always go well after the initial ‘shock and awe’ campaign,” Wright wrote to us in an e-mail. 

“In March, Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump’s own pick to head U.S. intelligence, testified that Iran had not crossed the threshold to make a bomb, despite its advances in enriching uranium and amid new debate in Tehran about whether to take that final step. 

But Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has lusted to destroy Tehran’s nuclear capabilities—for either peaceful energy or a bomb—for more than a decade. In 2015, during a speech to a joint session of Congress, he tried to mobilize opposition to the Obama Administration’s diplomacy with Iran…But it didn’t prevent a deal four months later. 

Trump then abandoned that agreement, in 2018, during his first term, swayed in part by Netanyahu. In his second term, the President has initially sought a transactional arrangement with Tehran to limit its nuclear capabilities and stabilize the region,” Wright explained. “Instead, Netanyahu has now all but insured greater instability.”…’ (The New Yorker Daily, Friday June 13, 2025)

Israel’s quasi-genocidal conduct in Gaza, its aggression in the West Bank, its attacks over the past year on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, show Netanyahu on the march to “reshape the face of the Middle East” (Israeli President Herzog’s terminology). Despite the overthrow of the Assad regime, Israel has annexed swathes of Syria beyond the Golan Heights. The march of aggression, invasion, annexation and destruction aims to make the Zionist state the military overlord of the region right up to the borders of Turkey. 

On Tuesday June 16th Netanyahu told ABC News that assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will ‘end the conflict’, not further destabilise the region.

The question here is far simpler and clearer than in the case of Ukraine and Russia, which share a border and co-ethnics (Russians in Crimea and the Donbass), not to mention Moscow’s threat-perception of “NATO barking at Russia’s door” (Pope Francis’ phrase). The attack by Israel is on a country 8,000 miles and several countries away from its borders.  

Saudi Arabia, a US ally and former foe of Iran, condemned Israel’s attack, as has Qatar. Japan calls the attack ‘indefensible’. Turkey, no ally of Iran, has been robust in its condemnation of Israel’s aggression. Brazil and South Africa have strongly denounced Netanyahu’s attack. Anura’s administration has ignored all that.  

Oil prices are already rising due to Israel’s attack and will skyrocket if the US is suckered into bombing Iran’s Fordow underground nuclear facility, and Tehran blocks the Straits of Hormuz in response. 

NPP enables Israeli outposts 

Popular young SJB politician and Aragalaya figure Rehan Jayawickreme alerted the public in an X message about the enabling behaviour of the authorities towards Israeli expansionism locally:  

‘I spoke to the Coast Conservation Unit in Weligama, who confirmed that the site is located in the Goiyapana area, which borders Galle. After checking with the Galle unit, I was informed that approval had been granted to construct a revertment following a request made by a group of Israeli nationals. What’s even more concerning is that the individual overseeing the construction is reportedly an Israeli citizen currently in Sri Lanka on a tourist visa. To my knowledge, this is not legal. Could the relevant authorities please explain how such approval was granted and on what grounds?’

https://x.com/RehanJayawick/status/1933369314603905123?t=1l7wLMZvoMfms9vl2cLFqA&s=08 

The JVP’s emergence 60 years ago was inspired by global events and trends: the Cuban Revolution, Indonesian coup, Sino-Soviet split, Vietnam War. Today, for young Muslims the world over --including in Sri Lanka-- the Gaza genocide and the unprovoked attack on Iran by Israel would have the same impact as Vietnam. If anyone should be sensitive to this it is the JVP. And yet Anura and the JVP-NPP display total unconcern about the feelings of Sri Lanka’s Muslim citizens, risking outrage, radicalisation and militancy by its unabashed policy of hosting brutal, bullying Zionists and their Chabad Houses, among other hives.   

It is a question of ethics and conscience, of right and wrong. The Israelis are committing genocide or something very close to it in Gaza. 70% of the casualties are women and children. The IDF is savagely attacking countries throughout the region. As a country which is home to four great religions including Islam, shouldn’t Sri Lanka shun this predatory State and possible perpetrators of genocide, as long as they keep butchering children daily and wittingly? Why is our elected Government welcoming them with open arms and helping them to entrench themselves on our island? Does the ‘progressive’ JVP-NPP administration of President Dissanayake have no conscience, humanity or shame? 

Iran’s error, Hezbollah’s blunder 

The Iranians haven’t covered themselves in glory insofar as they allowed their leading politico-military-scientific cadre to be decapitated overnight by Israel. Though the US pulverised North Vietnam including Hanoi and Haiphong, including with B-52 strategic bombers, many times more intensively than Nazi Germany was bombed in WWII, not a single top North Vietnamese political leader or General was killed. 

Despite hundreds of CIA assassination plots aimed at Fidel Castro, not a single Cuban commandante was lost to enemy assassination inside Cuba. 

The biggest mistake that Lebanon’s legendary Hezbollah made was not entering the battle when the Hamas under Yahya Sinwar was offering stiff resistance to the Israelis in Gaza. The Hezbollah were held back by its iconic leader Hassan Nasrallah who thought there would be limits to Israel’s aggression and a negotiated settlement was possible. He believed in a pragmatic strategy of deterrence and didn’t comprehend that the Israelis wanted to destroy the Hezbollah and eliminate him. 

Iran held back the Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance. It failed to understand that the time it was buying by avoiding confrontation with Israel and shadow-boxing with it, was not working in its favour, and that it was actually being set up for the kill. Neither the Hezbollah nor Tehran understood the maximalist nature of the Netanyahu government, its expansionist goals and monopolist regional agenda. With Netanyahu and his extremist allies in office, the game is zero-sum.    

In modern history, nobody fought more successfully against impossibly great odds than revolutionary Communists-- be it the Soviet Red Army, China’s PLA in Korea, the North Vietnamese army, or the Cuban troops who defeated the South African forces at Cuito Cuanavale (leading to Mandela’s release). South Vietnam’s NLF (‘Viet Cong’) guerrillas never allowed themselves to be decimated through intense bombing or decapitated through assassination (by the CIA’s notorious Phoenix program) in the manner that Lebanon’s Hezbollah allowed the IDF to dismember and behead it. 

Islamic resistance movements must digest the fact that these victorious communist armies and the Israeli military have complete integration of women at all levels, while the Islamic forces fight with only 50% of their human resources.    

All that said, what Israel is doing now will radicalize the region and beyond, for years to come. 

Today’s leadership elites in the West, seem unaware that Iran’s Islamic Revolution was created by the US-UK regime change in Iran in 1953 which overthrew the democratic nationalist leader Mossadegh. Similarly, Hezbollah arose as a result of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s. 

The Wall Street Journal reports that in Gaza, Hamas currently has 25,000 fighters, a greater, more rapid influx of recruits than Hamas can financially sustain or Israel’s extermination-machine can outpace despite its AI-driven ‘Lavendar’ targeting program. 

Global stakes and Sri Lanka 

Current history’s choice is: ‘Western overlordship or a multipolar world order?’ Rejecting the deterministic notion of inevitable evolution, I’ve always asserted (in Moscow too) that multipolarity is a tendency; a potential and not an inexorable outcome. The outcome will be determined through a transitional period of intense politico-military struggle, of cold and hot wars, whereby the West goes on the offensive against Russia, Iran and ultimately China. Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan are the spearheads, launchpads, or flashpoints. 

Russia absurdly kept its strategic bombers exposed on the tarmac and not in hardened hangars, enabling the Ukrainians to inflict a dramatic blow despite the common knowledge that Israel took out the Arab air-forces in their airfields in the Six-Day War, and that Ukraine models itself as Europe’s Israel. Israel gave Ukraine Patriot missiles and probably covert advice/inputs.

The USSR which retreated from Afghanistan was ruled by the Communist Party (CPSU), but it was ideologically confused, had lost its fighting spirit. As Russia was leaving Afghanistan, unable to defeat the Mujaheddin supported by the West, the revolutionary Cubans had defeated the mighty South African military forces in Angola, and the Vietnamese Communists reduced Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge to a marginal residue, stabilizing the rule of Hanoi’s Cambodian allies Heng Samrin and Hung Sen. 

Whether in Russia, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen or Gaza today, there are no Communists in the fight. The Russian Army cannot emulate the Red Army without ‘Reds’. There will be blowback, though. The myopic Western elites who strive for Russia’s military defeat and Putin’s overthrow don’t recall that the product of Tsarism’s defeats in war in 1905 and 1917 was the Bolshevik Revolution, just as Putin was the product of Yeltsin’s failure in the Chechen wars. If defeated, or defeat appears likely, Russia will return under a tougher, more militant-militarist (‘Stalinist’) regime.

Beijing appears to have adopted the doctrine of gradual ascent to the world’s leading power by overtaking and displacing the USA through peaceful economic competition -- a doctrine first propounded in 1956 by Nikita Khrushchev and the CPSU, and searingly critiqued by Mao and the CPC in the 1960s. 

Between the Western hegemons and China is an antagonistic contradiction. Mao’s doctrine of Protracted People’s War has principles relevant and creatively applicable to a project of counterhegemonic asymmetric contestation on a world scale. But will China face History’s challenge with its greatest thinkers Sun Tzu and Mao Zedong as strategic and philosophical guides?   

If the West wins the global contest, Sri Lanka will be threatened by the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora (e.g., Gary Anandasangaree) which is growing in political strength in those states and will eventually link up with Tamil Nadu to bear down upon our island, even encircle it. 

Sri Lanka’s national interest is best served by global equilibrium. We should pivot the axis of our external relations towards the Global East and South, or Eurasia and the Global South.