February 28, 2026.  Another attack, another breach of the United Nations Charter.  A gross violation of international law.  As usual, a violation celebrated as ethical, necessary, and high-minded in principle by the powerful who dictate such terms.  Not squalid, dangerous, destabilising.  Not, apparently, following the same pattern as before: interventions in Iraq, Libya. Not, goodness, another intervention to overthrow the regime of this same country orchestrated by the United States and Britain in 1953. 

Yes, this was Iran, bombed for a second time in under a year, its hierarchy targeted, again, only more comprehensively.  The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was slain, along with his advisor Ali Shamkhani and a number of senior officials in the armed forces, intelligence services and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This time, the joint operation between Israel and the United States took two different forms. (These distinctions seem to have eluded the inattentive press hacks.)  The Israeli side of the bargain is Operation Lion’s Roar; the American, Operation Epic Fury.  Both are equally mendacious in their justifications, the former focused on neutralising Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities, the latter more broadly on crippling Iran’s influence in funding proxies and fostering the conditions for regime change.

For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s the objective was ending “the threat of the Ayatollah regime in Iran.”  The clerical tyrants were “plotting to rebuild their nuclear and missile capabilities” and placing them “underground, where we cannot reach them.  If we do not stop them now, they will become invulnerable.”

READ: Iranian state TV says Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei killed in US-Israeli attacks

The 28th February statement from US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social justified the pre-emptive attack with some spectacular nonsense.  Tehran had decided to “rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland.”  Their ballistic missile industry would be razed, the navy annihilated, their armed proxies crippled.  Members of the Revolutionary Guard would be given........

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