US and Israel Co-belligerents in 'Operation Scorched Earth' Against Iran
Same playbook, different decade: the recent joint US-Israeli attack on Iran marks another chapter in a long history of intervention masked as necessity. The narrative pushed by outlets like Axios, portraying a dual-track strategy culminating in war, conveniently omits the foundational context of prolonged aggression. This 'preemptive' strike, reportedly targeting Iranian leadership, follows a
well-worn path of justifications that consistently ignore the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup against Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, a historical wound that continues to dictate Tehran's foreign policy calculus. The current 'crisis' is not a sudden development but the latest iteration of 45 years of crippling sanctions and covert operations, a sustained pressure
campaign against the Iranian government. To present this as Trump's choice between diplomacy and war is a misrepresentation; the United States, by actively participating, has committed an act of war, making it a co-belligerent, not merely a supporter of Israel. Israel's declaration of an 'imminent threat' from Iran, devoid of public evidence of a nuclear weapons program setback by the 2015 Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and UN inspections, mirrors the false pretenses that led to the 2003 Iraq invasion. The asymmetry in military expenditure is stark, with the US spending an estimated $886 billion annually on defense compared to Iran's approximately $25 billion, yet Iran's resistance network, honed through decades of defending against foreign occupation across the region,