The future of the world rests on the goodwill of a handful of out-of-control, reckless leaders willing to do anything to cling to power, leaders unmoved by the plight of their people or international law. “I may do it, I may not,” responded Donald Trump on Wednesday June 18th, when asked about the likelihood of American military action in Iran.
In the end, Trump made up his mind and launched attacks on Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday night.
Those bomb and missile strikes followed days of very public speculation. Caught up in his own frenzy, the United States president had warned that he “likes to make a final decision a second before it needs to be made”. The US possesses the GBU-57 bomb, the only one capable of striking the Fordo nuclear site, buried deep in a mountainside a hundred miles south of Tehran under thick layers of stone and concrete.
Having already sold out to Vladimir Putin at a heavy cost to the Ukrainian people, the leader of the world’s top military power has now been willing to back the deadly escalation set in motion by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Middle East, a conflict in which the local populations are the first to suffer. Just last Thursday, the White House said a decision would be made “within two weeks”. In fact, the final decision came within just a couple of days.
The warning signs had already been there: according to flight-tracking site AirNav Radar, around 30 refuelling aircraft left the United States on Sunday June 15th and landed at Ramstein air base in western Germany, as well as at bases in the United Kingdom, Estonia and Greece.
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“This entire operation [editor's note, Israel’s attack on Iran] really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordo,” Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, had meanwhile declared on Fox News on Friday June 13th, the very day his country's offensive began, in what now appears to have been a successful effort to push Washington into action.
The nuclear decoy
Yet attacking Fordo and using the GBU-57 are just interim war aims. Buoyed by what he sees as military gains in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, Benjamin Netanyahu did not wait for the go-ahead from his loyal weapons supplier before opening the Iranian front. Convinced of his army’s strength, his goal has been to turn Donald Trump into a tool of his warmongering aims, to legitimise those aims with the West.
Believing that his retention of power hinges on his capacity to subdue his neighbours – including by massacring their populations, whom he perceives as existential threats – the Israeli prime minister wants to bring an end to the mullahs' regime. Even if this makes Iranian men and women fresh collateral victims of his personal ambitions. Ending Iran’s nuclear programme is thus just a decoy, one Donald Trump has been tempted to swallow, despite advice from his own intelligence teams.
“Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003,” the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a House committee on March 26th 2025. Experts agree: current levels of enriched uranium, while above civilian norms, do not pose an immediate threat.
But none of that matters. Asked on the plane home from the recent G7 summit in Canada, Donald Trump shrugged off Gabbard’s comments: “I don’t care what she said.” She had already been shut out of a crisis meeting held at Camp David on June 8th.
Netanyahu has been leading this dance of death, forcing the US president, who holds both his allies and his own administration in contempt, to pick between two diametrically opposed choices. He could intervene, hoping in vain to prove his effectiveness, given that he has failed so far to stop the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, despite his campaign pledges. Or he could step back and stick to the “America First” line of the MAGA movement that put him in the White House.
Adding to the madness, and limiting the prospects of both diplomatic and political solutions, this war is being waged in the name of God. As he takes on the Islamic Republic, led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose black turban indicates that he is acknowledged as a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, the Israeli prime minister is himself under pressure from messianic ministers calling on him to “fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah” and strike at “the people who walk in darkness”.
His sidekick Donald Trump is likewise influenced by evangelical Christians fiercely loyal to Israel, and none more so than the US ambassador to Tel Aviv Mike Huckabee, who believes the president is about to hear “from heaven” a “voice [that] is far more important than mine or anyone else's”.
International law cast aside
Against these egos driven by religious zeal, the force of international law is weakening. The rules forged after World War 2 to stop the unthinkable from ever happening again are being cast aside. The United Nations and its higher principles of peace and fellowship have become inaudible, its tools to enforce them lie unused. What counts now is the power of might, not the might of right.
Should one really have to point out once again that pre-emptive wars are no more lawful than forced regime change by outside powers? Territorial integrity and a people’s right to shape their own fate are meant to be inviolable.
By flouting the very rules that underpin the world order, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is responsible for the worst slaughter of Palestinians in history, and who is now facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, is hastening the rise of a world ruled by rival regional strongmen. And it is always the people who end up losing from the emergence of these spheres of influence.
But while Iran’s hardline rule is under threat from this attack on international law, that regime itself deserves no pity. Beyond crushing its own people, it has helped destabilise Lebanon and Gaza by funding Hezbollah and Hamas, and shored up the Syrian regime until the Assad dynasty finally collapsed. Iran’s people alone must shape their country’s future, especially as they have already shown their resolve in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.
“We will not liberate Iranian women by bombing their country,” said film-maker Sepideh Farsi and Aïda Tavakoli, founder of We Are Iranian Students, in Mediapart's online broadcast “À l’air libre”.
“For the Iranian that I am,” philosopher Anoush Ganjipour recently wrote, “nothing justifies violating my country's territorial integrity. As for domestic politics, the Islamic Republic should be overthrown by the Iranian people, who are the only legitimate sovereigns and masters of their fate. The leaders of this state, along with their henchmen, should be judged by the people's own court and face the punishment they deserve.”
“The people of the Middle East need an end to the devastating tensions between regional and global powers and the establishment of lasting peace; a peace under which people can determine their own destiny through organizing, mass associations, expanding protests, and direct and universal participation, ” declared several Iranian trade unions in a recent statement.
To stop this global club of criminals and yobs, we cannot rely on today’s Western democracies, who have now fallen into insignificance. By backing Israel’s “right to defend itself”, G7 members have in fact given a nod after the event to its attack on Iran.
That Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, could praise the “bravery” of a country doing the “dirty work for all of us” shows that the 2003 precedent, when the United States invaded Iraq, has taught the world nothing. With the past showing the disaster that results from outside-imposed regime change, for European powers even to leave the door ajar to such action is reckless if not criminal.
With the Gulf state now paralysed by fear, it is also dreadful that one has to turn to Beijing to find the only solid defence of international law. Itself accused of widespread rights abuses, China, which like Russia trades with Iran, said on Thursday June 19th that “ensuring civilian safety is of paramount importance”. It also said that “force is not the correct way to resolve international disputes; it only exacerbates hatred and conflict. The parties to the conflict, especially Israel, should cease fire as soon as possible, prevent repeated escalation of the situation, and resolutely avoid the spillover of the war.”
In an age of abandonment, hypocrisy and dishonour, civil societies must act if they do not wish to be party to the crimes carried out in their name. Marches, boat voyages, public interventions, written appeals; people are speaking out everywhere. Their growing numbers and the boldness of such initiatives show a stirring of conscience and justifiable anger.
Civil societies on the front line
Western leaders are not powerless to stop the genocidal operation now underway in Gaza. From halting arms deals to backing a Palestinian State, to speaking out, using the United Nations and putting in place retaliatory measures, action is possible.
It is up to the people to push for these steps to be taken now. It is up to the people, through trade unions, NGOs, charities and all parts of civil society, to forge global links and build the tools for joint action. It is up to the people to stand with the Palestinians, Israelis, Lebanese, Syrians and Iranians who are fighting for their rights on the ground.
We are staring at ourselves in the mirror, individually and collectively. Each of us must ask what we can do to help build a peace rooted in shared land and mutual recognition. If not, we shall always be the generation that stood by while the people of the Middle East were slaughtered.
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- The original French version of this op-ed article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter