There can surely have been few times in recent history when Edward Said’s seminal notion of Orientalism has had more tragic and pointed immediacy and relevance than now.

For those of us whose names, religion, appearance, or skin colour make it an inescapable part of everyday life and for those among the rest for whom the mainstream media fog has lifted a little, the expression of Orientalism abounds in the unreflective and unrelenting hubris and condescension of Western societies towards the “other”, and their conspicuous disdain for the lives of people so categorised. Nowhere more so of course than in Palestine, where Said was born.

The brutal and, all too frequently, genocidal consequences of Orientalism have a gory track record that is well known, but its manifestations today are more flagrant, more brazen, and more recorded than ever. The Western-perpetrated or sponsored atrocities of the 21st century, many of which are US- and Israeli-made, all bear its hallmarks.

Following a brief reminder of the meaning of Orientalism (and its first cousin Islamophobia), this essay demonstrates how the results of the 12-day war with Iran can be used by Israel and the US to bolster and cultivate their (false) sense of superiority and entitlement and to rationalise the renewal of a war that is currently on hold.

That is to say, descent into a new phase of the war with Iran — the grounds for which are well established — will be fuelled by Orientalism, whose tenets are imprinted in the psyches of the US empire’s dictatorial, minatory and egomaniacal commander-in-chief and the coterie — the choir — of fawning and like-minded oligarchs that surround him.

The notion of Orientalism

Orientalism is a system of (irrational) beliefs that presupposes the intrinsic superiority in all respects of the peoples of the West (Europe, the US and the Anglo settler societies) and Western civilisation over the peoples and civilisations of the Orient (the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Southeast Asia) or the “other”.

Colonialism appropriated this binary divide between a “civilised” West and a “primitive” East as a pretext, and packaged its invasion, occupation, and exploitation of faraway places as a civilising mission. Colonial rule assumed that “we” (in the West) are more intelligent and rational, more knowledgeable, more cultured, more humane, more noble, more democratic, more honest, more advanced, more trustworthy, braver, stronger, and so on than “they” are.

Carried to the extreme, Orientalism casts the “other” as sub-human, or vermin that are treated with revulsion and can be exterminated or deracinated without compunction, as was the practice in the colonies, in apartheid South Africa, in settler societies such as the US, Canada, and Australia, and as is happening now in Palestine. It amounts to institutionalised racism of the most pernicious kind that is both latent and manifest.

Its close relative Islamophobia (which incorporates the idea of the Double Muslim, one who is “ordinary” or “normal” and has a terrorist DNA) has similar connotations and has been put to the same uses. Most despicably, it has been used to justify the murder by Israel (in “self-defence”) of Palestinians (including women and children) no matter who they are, a genocide committed with the material (weapons, money, intelligence etc.) and rhetorical (political endorsements, media propaganda etc.) support of the West. If for no other reason than this, there can be no doubting that Orientalism is as ingrained and prevalent in the West as it has ever been.

The meaning of the 12-day war

The familiar “waving or drowning” example that is used to illustrate the plasticity of supposedly “hard facts” shows that our perceptions of “reality” and our attribution of meaning to what we see are largely determined by the beliefs that we hold and our theories and prejudices about the world we live in.

As with any other, perceptions of war and its genesis, conduct, outcomes and participants are subject to the same influences. We argue below that the meanings attached by Israel and the US (and their dutiful corporate media) to the attacks on Iran during the 12-day war and the combatants derive from and reinforce Orientalist prejudices.

It is reported that, among others, during the war (the civilising mission), Israel “killed” (assassinated) 30 Iranian military leaders and 11 senior nuclear scientists , “Israel’s air force struck 900 targets”, and the US attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan with B2 stealth aircraft that dropped 14 guided 30,000 pound “bunker-buster” bombs and with 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a submarine.

To appreciate how the meanings of these actions can be made to reflect and reinforce Orientalism, consider the following questions. First, “why is it that ‘we’ can get away with what we did?” At least part of the answer to this question stems from and reinforces Orientalist beliefs about the general inferiority of the “towelhead” opposition: their fear and cowardliness, their corruption, their impotence, their recognition of their guilt (about nuclear weapons) and the overwhelming might and right of the US, and so on. Iran’s token and telegraphed response against the US air base in Qatar will have been taken as confirmation of these (inferior) qualities.

Moreover, Orientalists consider Muslims in particular to be richly deserving of their fates, and for those fates to be unremarkable, because either they are terrorists and religious fanatics or because, if they are not, they carry the seeds of terrorism and religious fanaticism within them.

A second, related question is, “how would ‘we’ have reacted had any of this been done to us?” Here, it is easy to imagine the shock, the disbelief, the horror, the righteous indignation, the rage, the vitriol, and the devastating response of the West if, say 30 US or 30 NATO generals and a dozen or so nuclear scientists had been assassinated by Iran or if Iran had threatened to assassinate President Trump or bombed US nuclear facilities. Yet, Orientalism somehow denies these feelings or their legitimacy to the “other” and, plainly, either cannot conceive of or discounts the tsunami of hatred it is creating among Muslims everywhere, which eventually is bound to crash upon the shores of the US and its acolytes.

The Trump regime’s unwarranted and disingenuous bragging and gloating triumphalism after the war, which were designed to appeal to an Orientalist domestic political base, are consistent with this argument.

But these “inferior” people of the Orient are also violent and to be feared and not just reviled, as expressed in the words of the spokeswoman of Israel's consulate in NY, Ariella Rada, after the attack against the two Israeli embassy staff in Washington on 22 May 2025: “When we are seeing people chanting in the streets of New York, in US campuses, calling for intifada, and chanting and calling for the murder of Jews, this is not just a problem of Israel, or the Jewish people. This is a global problem of violent people who are trying to destroy the Western world”. (emphases added)

And in the words of the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, at the last G7 summit — regarding Israel’s attack on Iran — which were quoted by Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, on 20 June before the UN Security Council when he said that Israel was doing the “dirty work… for all of us”, adding words to the effect that Israel was protecting “civilisation” from “jihadist genocidal imperialism” because Iran does not only want to destroy Israel, but to redesign the global order.

Facilis descensus Averno (Virgil, The Aeneid) 

Convinced of the necessity, and its divine right, to rule the world whatever the consequences, besotted with its self-conferred exceptionalism, and blinded, emboldened, and incensed by its Orientalism, the US Government seems destined to scorn Virgil’s wisdom and to wage what could be terminal war against those states that have the temerity to resist its advances, disobey its orders, or challenge its hegemony and economic interests.

The great and ancient civilisations of Iran (Persia), Russia and China are the prime targets.

Iran is likely to be the first casualty because it is seen by the US as the economic key to the Middle East and as a means for disrupting China’s Belt and Road Initiative and driving a wedge between Russia and China. It is therefore pivotal to the maintenance of US regional and global hegemony. But, in addition, for the (Orientalist) reasons given here, Iran is taken to be the soft (weak, corrupt, cowardly, divided, evil, fanatical) underbelly of Russia and — wrongly — as relatively easy prey.

Accordingly, even without the goading of Netanyahu and the Israel lobby’s offers that cannot be refused, its Orientalist-inspired (mis)calculation of the cost-benefits of installing a compliant regime in Iran may well prove impossible for the US to resist.

The strong likelihood that Iran will want to acquire as soon as possible the deterrent of a nuclear weapon raises the stakes and increases the urgency for the US to renew what Crooke calls “the ’long war’ to subvert Iran, (and) weaken Russia, BRICS and China…” The bloody nose that it received in the 12-day war notwithstanding, the same of course will be true for Israel who will be eager and determined to finish the job, as asserted by its armed forces chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, who is quoted as saying that a “significant chapter” of the conflict had concluded “but the campaign against Iran was not over".

This gloomy conclusion can co-exist with hope (vain though it may be) that Trump, Netanyahu and company will have an epiphany and embrace (and stick to!) a plan for a lasting peace in the Middle East such as that envisaged by Sachs. But we must set such hope against an unflinching assessment of the prevailing geopolitical environment. One in which the behaviour of the dominant actor — the US Government — faithfully mirrors that of Mearsheimer’s "offensive realism", that is, a government that is driven to maintain its national security through global hegemony, which it sees as the only means of surviving in an anarchic world.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.