US to Iran: Only Israel May Escalate

 By Caitlin Johnstone

CaitlinJohnstone.com.au

Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.

In an article titled “U.S. Warns Iran of ‘Serious Risk’ if It Conducts Major Attack on Israel,” The Wall Street Journal reports that officials within the Biden administration have been warning Iran not to “escalate” against Israel in its planned retaliatory strikes for the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran.

“The United States has sent clear messaging to Iran that the risk of a major escalation if they do a significant retaliatory attack against Israel is extremely high,” an anonymous U.S. official told The Wall Street Journal, adding that “there is a serious risk of consequences for Iran’s economy and the stability of its newly elected government if it goes down that path.”

As we sit awaiting Iran’s planned reprisal attack and hope dearly that it doesn’t lead to a major new war in west Asia, one can’t help but read such reports and think it sure would’ve been nice of the Americans to issue these kinds of warnings to Israel against escalating before it went on its insanely escalatory assassination spree in the capital cities of Iran and Lebanon.

You’ll never see Western officials so enthusiastic about the idea of de-escalation as they are in those time periods when their side has just severely escalated tensions with an extreme act of aggression, but the other side has yet to retaliate.

They remind you of a parent who lets their kid run around clobbering other children at the playground, then when another child goes to hit them back they rush in and start yelling about the need to play nice.

They’ve been doing this song and dance for the last few days, ever since it became clear that Iran was going to retaliate for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was a guest on their territory. 

“Earlier, Vice President Harris and I were briefed in the Situation Room on developments in the Middle East,” President Joe Biden’s Twitter account posted on Monday. 

“We received updates on threats posed by Iran and its proxies, diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional tensions, and preparations to support Israel should it be attacked again. We also discussed the steps we are taking to defend our forces and respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and place of our choosing.”

“Further attacks only raise the risk of dangerous outcomes that no one can predict and no one can fully control,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken proclaimed on Tuesday.

“Further escalation in the Middle East is in no one’s interests,” tweeted U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy. “I spoke to Iran’s acting Foreign Minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, and cautioned that any Iranian attack would have devastating consequences for the region. Iran and all parties must urgently and immediately de-escalate.”

Israel’s powerful Western backers are happy to let it run rampant throughout the region without making any meaningful warnings against its criminal actions or imposing any consequences on it whatsoever.

But as soon as it becomes clear that Israel has crossed a red line and is about to get hit, these Western empire managers turn into a bunch of hippies who just want peace and love.

When Iran does whatever it’s about to do, we may be certain that the Western empire and its propagandists in the mass media are going to frame it as an unprovoked and outrageous act of aggression and start babbling about “defending” Israel against its “attackers.”

Imperial history always begins right after Israel’s aggressions, and starts the clock as the retaliations for them emerge.

That’s how the imperial spin machine operates: reversing victim and victimizer, aggressor and defender, claiming to always be acting in self-defense while existing in a continuous state of attack.

When the inevitable blowback from these aggressions turns up, they stare with Bambi-eyed innocence and call it an unprovoked attack launched by deranged madmen with hatred in their hearts, and use it to justify even more mass military slaughter in the parts of the world where they already wanted to inflict it.

Are you not tired of having your intelligence insulted like this? I know I am.

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This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/12/caitlin-johnstone-us-to-iran-only-israel-may-escalate/