Lies, liars and onlookers of a tragic drama

UN and its 193 so-called sovereign states have become just onlookers in this historic genocide in Gaza as they had been in several other tragedies before

Lies and liars holding seats of power have created a world of disorder. What is going on between Israel and Iran over the last couple of weeks which has dragged US also into this costly drama will eventually put the last nail on the so-called rules-based world order coffin. 

In the 1960s US citizens were lied to about an imminent Communist threat and their leaders in power took the country to an unwinnable war in Vietnam. The losses were colossal. In 2003 when George Bush was looking for an excuse to invade Saddam Hussain’s Iraq and he found it in the so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD), he lied to the world that Iraq in league with Al-Qaida was stockpiling an arsenal of WMD to attack US. When UN weapons inspectors reported that they had found no evidence that Iraq possessed WMD, his Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld came with a baffling excuse that absence of evidence was no evidence of absence and went on to elaborate that “there are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and effective intelligence work must consider them all”. 

A few days later and on 5 February 2003 Bush’s Secretary of State Colin Powell even gave a power point presentation at the UN in which he held a model vial of anthrax to explain its destructive power to his audience. No wonder the music maestro Harry Bellefonte called him a “house slave” for serving as Bush’s propaganda tool. Much more shocking was the justification by Madelin Albright the death of 500,000 Iraqi children as “price worth” paying for that invasion. 

Same sort of lies rehashed

US President Donald Trump

Israel Prime Minister  Benjamin Netanyahu

Now, after more than two decades the same sort of lies are rehashed to justify Israel’s bombing on Iran. It was in 1992 without even a shred of evidence Netanyahu MP spoke in Israel’s Knesset and warned that “within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb”. He repeated the same in his 1997 book ‘Fighting Terrorism’. More than 30 years on Iran still has not produced a nuclear bomb although it has nuclear facilities in three places. 

Trump also after promising in his 2024 election campaign to end a quarter century of ‘forever wars’ has bombed Iran and saying that “mullahs cannot have nuclear weapons”. When his handpicked Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reported that, “Iran is not building nuclear weapons” and its “supreme leader Khamenei has not authorised a nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003”, Trump made her a liar and countered that she was “wrong” and removed her from that position. From where did Trump get his information? From Israel or AI? The answer is obvious: Israel prompts, and Trump speaks. 

Having sabotaged the Iran-US nuclear talks in Rome by unprovoked attack on Iran, Netanyahu had succeeded in dragging Trump directly into Israel’s war with Iran. Trump has also removed Christopher Hanson, the Chairman of Nuclear Regulatory Commission for Hanson’s neutrality on Trump’s decision to join Netanyahu’s war. Global North is gutlessly supporting this costly drama with its usual rhetoric on dialogue and negotiations. Lies, liars and lunacy rule the so-called rules based international order, which is really a world of disorder. The upshot of this madness is that it would increase Iran’s resolve to produce nuclear weapons with a vengeance. 

Trump’s own imperialist agenda

Besides, Trump has his own imperialist agenda for his unprovoked attack on Iran besides supporting Israel. He is now talking about a regime change. That regime change would mean creating a divided Iran into ethnic regions so that he could play one against the other to maintain control over the entire region. The ultimate objective, as Michael Hudson the author of ‘Super Imperialism’ puts it in his latest column in ‘Counterpunch’ (23 June 2025) is for US “to control Middle East and its oil as a buttress of US economic power, and to prevent other countries from moving to create their own autonomy from the US-centred neoliberal order administered by the IMF, World Bank and other institutions to reinforce US unipolar power”. 

Among those other countries it is China that remains Trump’s chief target. Trump’s chaotic tariff war is primarily to prevent other countries from trading with China. Because Iran remains a strategic station for China’s Belt and Road program for a new Silk Road of railway transport to the West that country should be either isolated or subdued to reinforce US imperialism. Not only that, Iran sells bulk of its oil to China not for US$, which Ahmadinejad once described as “a piece of paper” but for Yuan although some of Iran’s international transactions involve dollar. According to one unconfirmed report, one of the first casualties in Israel’s missile attack on Iran was an oil exporting terminal. That makes Trump’s economic agenda very clear. Trump’s threat to impose prohibitive tariffs against BRICS members if they try to move away from US dollar was also part of this imperialist agenda. 

However, the immediate issue involving Iran is not that country’s non-existent nuclear arsenal. It is Palestine and Iran’s role as the leader of an Axis of Resistance (mihwar al-muqawama) against Israel’s genocide and settler colonialism in Palestine (See, Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, “Iran and the Axis of Resistance: A Brief History” in ‘Jadaliyya’, 19 May 2025). Endorsed by Trump, supported by his Western allies and shamelessly watched by the Arab world, Israel is allowed to continue its genocide or Nakba in Gaza that began in 1948. 

Something false and rotten in themselves

Based on an Arab source, historian Tim Mackintosh-Smith argues that it could have been stopped in 1948 itself and the Arabs could have won the battle for Palestine “had there not been something false and rotten in themselves”, and that something was “mutual distrust, resentment and fear. It was the rottenness of bad blood, and it has bubbled up time and again through Arab history” (‘Arabs: A 3,000-year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires’, Yale University Press, 2019, p. xiii). 

It is the failure of the Arab world to unite and defend Palestine that made Iran to take up the challenge and resist Global North’s grand design to control the Middle East by weaponising Israel’s military paraphernalia. The axis of resistance, which is an axis of terrorism to Israel and Global North, includes besides Iran, non-state militias like Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansarullah. Had Iran withdrew its support to these resistance groups, normalise relations with Israel like Arab regimes and let ethnic cleansing in Gaza proceed nothing would have happened. Now that Trump has bombed the nuclear facilities in Iran an escalation of the war is unavoidable. 

Besides, the freedom that the Netanyahu cabal and their killing machines enjoy in Gaza has exposed the colossal waste of time, money and human resources in maintaining an elaborate structure of international institutions under the auspices of UN. Is there any point in passing resolution after resolution which cannot be implemented or executed? The International Criminal Court for example declared Netanyahu and one of his former ministers as war criminals and issued arrest warrants. Which member of the UN dared to arrest these criminals? It is a fruitless exercise for the UN Secretary General to condemn repeatedly what is happening in Gaza. 

Not a word of protest

The UN Security Council with five countries – US, UK, France, Russia and China – holding veto power UN has become a glorified and expensive talking shop. As a result, it remains impotent to prevent even women and children getting killed in their thousands by Israel through strategically planned starvation and hunger besides targeted killings at the hands of Netanyahu’s IDF. There is not a word of protest from the celebrated liars and loonies. 

UN and its 193 so-called sovereign states have become just onlookers in this historic genocide in Gaza as they had been in several other tragedies before. 

As Vijaya Lakshmi Pundit pointed out, “the building of a just and powerful world order, the aim of the United Nations, is hampered not by a dearth of ideas, resources, and manpower but by the lack of will on the part of governments to take the required steps”. It is time Global South takes a critical look at continuing to partner with Global North in this powerless international body. Like its predecessor the League of Nations this too seems to have outlived its expiry date. 

(The writer is a retired economist, W. Australia.)