Western governments, including Australia and New Zealand, have backed US and Israeli strikes on Iran. But the decision risks economic catastrophe, regional escalation and the further erosion of international law.

Western countries, including Australia and New Zealand, were quick to line up to support the US-Israeli blitzkrieg on the Islamic Republic of Iran launched this weekend. They were effectively throwing international law into a cauldron of blood and mayhem. These same Western powers – and the Gulf Arab states that stand with them – may soon come to regret it.

Should the Iranian state survive the terrifying onslaught, it has vowed to strike back in ways that could crash the global economy.

Two early signs of their potential to do so are the closure of all the civilian airports in the Gulf and the effective closure by Iran of the Strait of Hormuz. The first one stops the daily movement of 500,000 international passengers through Doha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other airports, the second cuts off the shipment of 21 million barrels of oil and gas a day (20 per cent of global daily requirements). The knock-on effects of a prolonged war are almost incalculable but as I pointed out in a recent article if Iran manages to resist the most powerful military in the world, the shockwaves will soon transfer to our own economies.

Countries like Australia and New Zealand may end up on the losing end of a bidding war for oil, LNG and agricultural petrochemicals if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. One should remember that Iran has many thousands of short range missiles and countless mines sprinkled along its coastline which will be all-but-impossible to suppress.

For the moment, the assassination of the Supreme Leader may see champagne corks popping in Western capitals but, as I warned recently, a decapitation strike could lead a furious or desperate Iran to lash out, sinking a US aircraft carrier by using their hypersonic missiles or taking out Qatar’s liquefaction trains which purify, cool and compress the LNG that is vital to many economies.

There is also a non-trivial risk that the US and Israel could use nuclear weapons if things go sideways.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” the US president gloated on Truth Social.

Ayatollah Khamenei is in reality the man who has done the most to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa (religious decree) against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons in 2003. Along with President Masoud Pezeshkian (who campaigned successfully on a platform on lowering tensions with the US) Khamenei was the target of a barrage of missiles this weekend. One Peace President trying to kill another Peace President.

So mendacious and incoherent is the western empire that Trump can tout the total destruction of Iran’s nuclear program one week and the next (on 21 February) his negotiator Steve Witkoff can tell the world that Iran is ‘one week from the bomb. Ponder that: for the past 20 years (over 1000 weeks) Netanyahu has been pointing at his little bomb diagram.

I am in the camp of those who say this was never about nuclear weapons and most ludicrously nothing to do with democracy. 150 dead Iranian schoolgirls is a grim testament to that.

The movements in Iran for women’s rights and political pluralism will be in no way advanced by this criminal attack by states currently committing genocide in Palestine. This is a forever war against a powerful sovereign Iran that could act as a major regional player capable of being a counter-balance to a supremacist Israel and the USA.

Arab leaders appear to have had second thoughts about the benefits of destroying Iran. Last week they expressed outrage after US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said he would be fine with Israel fulfilling both its Zionist project and its biblical promise (Genesis 15:18) of taking all the land stretching from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates, a land grab which would cover modern-day Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. “It would be fine if they took it all,” the US Ambassador told Tucker Carlson. Not a single administration figure took him to task for the statement which he tried unconvincingly to rewind. 

We should all fear victory by the US and Israel. Violent, tyrannical and expansionist, they will see victory over Iran as a stepping stone to yet more crimes against humanity. We truly are in the throes of a Thucydidean world where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Unilateral violence must not trump law.

The Spanish Prime Minister slammed the US and Israeli strikes on Iran. “We reject the unilateral military action of the United States and Israel, which represents an escalation and contributes to a more uncertain and hostile international order,” Pedro Sánchez wrote on X.

This marks Spain out as a rebel against a militant west that funds and fuels genocide, destroys country after country, kidnaps and kills leaders, kills negotiators in the midst of negotiations, and is the greatest killer of civilians – women, children, men and babies – in foreign lands in all the decades since World War II.

Cuba, itself undergoing a brutal blockade imposed by the Trump regime, made a valuable contribution: President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the attacks, calling them “a flagrant violation of International Law and the UN Charter.” Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated:

“Strict respect for the principles of international law and the UN Charter must prevail, in particular the sovereign equality of States, non-interference in their internal affairs, the prohibition of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, and the peaceful settlement of disputes.”

The _New York Times_ expressed surprise at the bellicose position Australia took: “Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among the few leaders who did not publicly urge restraint.” They quoted Albanese saying: “We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.”

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, a Hollow Man if there ever was one, threw his copy of the UN Charter down the lavatory when he said: “We acknowledge that the actions taken overnight by the US and Israel were designed to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security.”

The West are behaving like tyrants on a rampage. We must be stopped.