As if we weren’t already threatened by the possibility of a global war on two different fronts, namely Russia-Ukraine and China-Taiwan, now Now we stand on the precipice of a larger regional war, possibly a global war, driven by US/Israeli aggression on Iran.

For years now, Iran and its allies have been on defensive. That certainly is not what you will hear on mainstream western media, but who led the invasion of Iraq? The dismemberment and bombing of Syria? Libya? Yemen? It’s been the USA with its friends Israel and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. What wars has Syria, Iran or Lebanon launched?

This war on Gaza is massive, an unprecedented assault which is not relenting. It’s causing a major international crisis. As Iran is saying that “red lines have been crossed” To send the message, the US is moving a huge fleet of ships into the region, and bombing Syria, once again allegedly the “Iranian proxies” there – as if that legitimises everything! We are just supposed to accept that Iran = bad and that’s the end of it.

Aside from the US strikes on Syria, and Iraq, Hezbollah is continuing to exchange fire with Israel. Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza are not yielding under the assault from Israel.

Iran is not just some basket case to be dismissed. Iran trains as many engineers as the entire USA. They are a large, developed country with an increasingly impressive array of weapons, including anti-ship ballistic missiles. It’s not going to be a simple matter to subdue them.

Russia has also announced that they are patrolling the region with MIG-31 planes armed with Kinzhal hypersonic anti-ship missiles which cannot be stopped and can destroy entire ships.

And yet the talk seems to be that the US can still just do what they want. Times have changed, the rest of the world is more sophisticated now. But unfortunately an increasingly desperate US seems bent on war.

Culture of Terrorism

With the passing of Chomsky as a political commentator, who do we turn to? Well for me it’s clear, the best commentators thus far have been The Duran and Jeffrey Sachs. Even though nobody can quite match Chomsky’s erudition and insight, somebody has to step up to the plate. I’m also going to try in my capacity.

For years Chomsky has been warning about the warlike tendencies of the West. They can be seen fully on display right now. In an interview a few months ago, somebody asked him what he thought the developments would be in the next century. He said “there isn’t going to be a next century if we carry on like this.”

His book “The Culture of Terrorism” shows that the west has always had a culture of terrorism, focusing on events of 1986 but with reverberations and implications for today. Look at the way that Israel has not hesitated to use mass terror in response to the attacks of October 7.

On this program Jeffrey Sachs and the Duran comment on the current situation. I mostly agree with their comments but would like to add some of my own.

Alexander Mercouris points out that pretty much the entire world has condemned the Hamas attacks, including the whole Arab world, Turkey, China, Russia etc. Nobody likes them or seems to want to deal with them, but Hamas are not going to simply lie down, or be easily defeated. They have grown in sophistication and power, the Israeli army will take casualties if they go in on the ground, as they now have ATGMs, which have already been employed against ground incursions by the Israelis.

Hamas therefore need to be negotiated with, like it or not. It’s a similar situation to what happened in the Syrian civil war, the West simply had no appetite for talking to Assad, who, like it or not has to be a party to any comprehensive peace negotiations. Instead they wanted him gone, no negotiations, just force. This kind of approach is just not constructive.

Nobody in the US, UK, or Israel is talking about an exit strategy or long-term plan here. Just confrontation.

In contrast to the West as Jeffrey Sachs points out at the end of another conversation with The Duran, China has not got a history of aggressive imperialism. Unlike Western Europe who’s history is one of constant war, they had many stable, sustained periods of great dynasties, during which there was generally peace.

In fact he says that to his knowledge, China has never engaged in a war outside of its own borders, in its entire 5000 year history! The one exception is the attempted invasion of Japan under the Mongol empire, that’s it!

Clearly this is the way we need to go forward if we’re going to survive as a human species, not the constant drive towards war and confrontation, but peaceful diplomacy and co-operation.