There is something tragic about the present moment, a theatre of contradictions staged around the attack on Iran, so brazen that one is tempted to admire the choreography before confronting the wreckage it produces. At its centre stands Donald Trump, declaring with unflinching confidence that the war has been won, that it is being won, that it requires help to be won, and that it requires no help at all to destroy a nuclear programme he assured the world he had already destroyed last year. Language, once a vessel of meaning, now serves as a revolving door through which claims enter only to negate themselves on exit.

Hovering above this spectacle is the memory of an earlier scene, when Gulf monarchs, eager for favour and fearful of abandonment, opened their treasuries during Trump’s tour of the Middle East months ago. Vast sums were pledged, indulgences granted, and access secured. The Trump clan, ever attuned to opportunity, was handsomely enriched. Protection, it was implied, would follow. Yet protection, like so much else in this drama, appears to have been more theatrical than real. One cannot resist a touch of dark humour here. The Arab despots paid their premiums, Qatar even arriving with a $400 million airplane as a token of goodwill, only to discover that their investment ranks way below Israel in the hierarchy of American priorities. A few months later, Israel strikes at Qatar, and the invoice for misplaced confidence quietly arrives. So much for return on investment.

A state subjected to armed attack does not forfeit its inherent Charter right to respond because powerful capitals prefer silence about the initial illegality. To condemn the response while ignoring the initiating act is the normalisation of double standards.

A state subjected to armed attack does not forfeit its inherent Charter right to respond because powerful capitals prefer silence about the initial illegality. To condemn the response while ignoring the initiating act is the normalisation of double standards.

The response by Iran did not emerge in a vacuum. It began with United States and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, illegal actions that have been relegated to the margins of Western discourse. Iran’s response, by contrast, is elevated to the centre of global concern. Reaction is isolated, stripped of context, and treated as though it were the originating offence. The prohibition on the use of force is not selective, nor is the Iranian right of self defence contingent on Western approval. A state subjected to armed attack does not forfeit its inherent Charter right to respond because powerful capitals prefer silence about the initial illegality. To condemn the response while ignoring the initiating act is the normalisation of double standards.

“Either with us or against us”: Field Marshal sectarianism in the Zionist war on Iran

One is left with the striking spectacle of an international system that finds its voice when markets tremble but falls tragically silent when civilians are buried. Concern is expressed for oil prices and the stability of the global economy, yet scarcely a word of condemnation is uttered about the United States’ killing of scores of innocent Iranian children in the bombardment. There is no sustained moral clarity about the unprovoked nature of the aggression itself, only a studied anxiety about its economic consequences when the victim of armed aggression responds, especially those that ripple through markets and disturb the pocketbooks of Western citizenry. The loss of innocent Iranian lives is treated as incidental, while economic disruption is treated as intolerable.

Iran’s true crime, however, is not what is recited in Western statements. Rhetoric aside, it is not primarily about human rights, nor about the carefully rehearsed language of nuclear non-proliferation. Iran’s enduring offence is its rejection of the Zionist apartheid project. For its implacable opposition to that order, the subtext in Western capitals is unmistakable: Iran must be stopped.

The loss of innocent Iranian lives is treated as incidental, while economic disruption is treated as intolerable.

The loss of innocent Iranian lives is treated as incidental, while economic disruption is treated as intolerable.

If it is truly about human rights, this is where the hypocrisy becomes grotesque. The same Gulf family dynasties who paid fealty to Trump and enriched the Trump clan preside over systems of governance that would not survive a week under the standards the West claims to uphold. Their human rights records are appalling, their repression systemic, their accountability nonexistent. Yet they are embraced, armed, and defended. Human rights are invoked selectively, abandoned when inconvenient, and rediscovered when useful.

European states complete the tableau. Paris, London and other capitals issue calls for restraint and de-escalation, statements heavy with concern and thin on principle. Alongside them, Western members of the Security Council move swiftly to condemn Iran’s retaliation. Most refuse to state the obvious legal truth: that the initial United States and Israeli strikes were the precipitating illegality, and that the victim of an unlawful attack retains an inherent right of self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The silence is not accidental. It is curated.

At the same time, Western leaders speak with urgency about the Strait of Hormuz. The concern is explicit. Energy flows must be restored. Markets must be stabilised. The language of economic necessity displaces the language of law. Interests, not principles, take centre stage.

Contrast this with Gaza. There is no comparable urgency demanding an end to genocide, what can only be described as the crime of crimes, nor the opening of crossings for food and humanitarian assistance. No sustained insistence that human survival requires immediate action. No mobilisation of power to ensure that civilians are fed, treated, and protected. The disparity is structural. It is a hierarchy of human worth. Western commercial interests command immediate attention. Palestinian lives are diminished, and ultimately discounted. It is unprincipled. And it is unmistakably racial.

READ: Iran’s strike near Dimona raises old questions about Israel’s nuclear secrets

To understand this, one must confront what is explicit: the Western embrace of apartheid Zionism. This is not a reluctant tolerance. It is an active alignment. Israel’s actions are shielded, rationalised, and normalised, even as they engage in genocide and entrench a system of domination that fits comfortably within the definition of apartheid. The language of law is invoked selectively, its universality abandoned in practice.

At the same time, Western leaders speak with urgency about the Strait of Hormuz. The concern is explicit. Energy flows must be restored. Markets must be stabilised. The language of economic necessity displaces the language of law. Interests, not principles, take centre stage.

At the same time, Western leaders speak with urgency about the Strait of Hormuz. The concern is explicit. Energy flows must be restored. Markets must be stabilised. The language of economic necessity displaces the language of law. Interests, not principles, take centre stage.

Zionism has come to represent an ideology that privileges one people at the expense of another, that justifies exclusion, dispossession, and increasingly, destruction. It is sustained by the external support of those who claim to defend a rules based order while quietly dismantling it. Thus, the contradictions multiply. Wars are declared finished and unfinished in the same breath. Protection is purchased but not delivered. Law is invoked but not applied. Gulf monarchs grovel, pay tribute, and debase themselves in pursuit of security, only to find their interests treated as secondary to Israel’s and their investment repaid with spectacle. Europe speaks of principle while practicing exception. The West condemns retaliation while averting its gaze from the illegal act that provoked it.

None of this is accidental. It is the logical expression of a system that has abandoned coherence in favour of convenience, and principle in favour of power. The spectacle endures: a world order that speaks the language of law while practicing the politics of hierarchy, all in defence of a colonial settler apartheid project laid bare for all to see.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

© Middle East Monitor