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The Harold Wilson-ian observation that “a week is a long time in politics” could be gainfully employed to capture the tectonic destruction on West Asia wrought by the world’s most powerful and malevolent military machine propelled by a partnership forged between the malign forces of neo-colonialism and Zionism (it is West Asia, not the Middle East, a term once employed by the colonial Home Office).

So the week just ending began with Israeli F-15 jets, swoop down and render lifeless Iran’s top leadership, including its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The fogged out media did not immediately get a sense of these multiple assassinations when they took place, and even went on to issue standby notices about Khameini’s imminent address to public, possibly as part of an elaborate tactic of distraction.

It was only a day later, after the Israel Defense Forces released footage of these strikes, and an image of US President Donald Trump pumping his fist floated on television screens, that the world came to understand the full import of those unconscionable strikes which violated every canon of international law. 

On that very first day came evidence that there were to be no guardrails on the savagery unleashed by a machine that had already pulverised over 70,000 lives in Palestine. An Iranian elementary school in Minab, was incinerated killing over 168, most of whom were very young children. What followed was elaborate subterfuge.

The international media immediately out to exonerate the US-Israeli forces for the assault. The New York Times claimed that the school just happened to be next to a facility operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which was the primary target. Implicit in the reportage was the conclusion that “civilised” western forces were incapable of targeting children, an observation echoed through the US political establishment, whether in statements by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt or Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State.

Also read: How India’s Alignment with US-Israel Will Devastate Its Interests in War Against Iran

An elaborate pretence of “investigating” the incident then followed. The “we are investigating it” line was a useful one to fob off uncomfortable questions at press conferences, until six days later the admission from Washington that the US-Israeli forces were in all probability behind it.

The script conjured up by the Trump-Netyanhu combine was straightforward and TV anchor-turned-US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth summed it up succinctly: “Death and destruction from the skies, ALL DAY LONG”. It was diabolic posturing at its most mendacious which is why he is known as the Secretary of War.

Comic Dan Pulzello pleads with a straight face, “Leave Hegseth alone. He’s under a lot of pressure doing war crimes. First you do the crime, then you cover it up, gaslight the media, find a scapegoat. That is all unpaid overtime.” But really do the media need to be gaslit when they are perfectly capable of doing the gaslighting themselves?

An Iranian flag is placed among the ruins of a police station struck during the US-Israeli attack in Tehran, Iran on March 3, 2026. Photo: AP/PTI.

Iran clearly had another script in mind. It launched its own version of Operation Shock and Awe with ballistic missiles and drones tracing their path through incandescent night skies, even as glass and chrome fronted high rises collapsed like paper castles, and oil refineries were engulfed in smoke. The world to this day doesn’t know the true human costs that Israeli was paying for the Netanyahu an appetite to flatten Iran, because its censors threaten to imprison anyone found putting out footage on what is really happening over its airspace and on its streets.

So while we get quite easily the death toll in Iran – over 1,300 – and Beirut – over 217, you will be hard-pressed to come across credible data on Israeli deaths caused by Iranian bombing, just as the deaths of US military personnel have long hovered around six. Underlying this is also the racist formulation that Israeli and American lives are far more precious than Iranian and Lebanese ones. 

But what Israel cannot to do is to hide the bombed out buildings of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that are fast being rendered into the formless ghost shapes that its genocide in Palestine left behind, just as the US cannot veil the fact that its multi-trillion dollar-worth of military........

© The Wire