West Confirms: Attack on a Sovereign Nation is OK again

The Collective West insists that Israel's attack on Iran is covered by its limitless right to self-defence.

For a brief moment in 2022, it looked as if the West had rediscovered the inviolability of state borders and the inadmissibility of foreign interventions when Russian troops started pouring into Ukraine. Luckily, we can all rest assured that that moment is over again. Yesterday, western leaders from Ursula von der Leyen all the way to the UN Security Council representative of Greece, and of course the US President have confirmed that Israel’s blatant attack on Iran is not, in fact, a breach of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force, but that it constitutes part of Israel’s limitless “right to self-defense”.

It is also telling that not only the sentence “Israel’s right to defend itself” is currently pumped into each and every statement of western leaders, we also see that most media outlets have chosen the noun “strike” to describe Israel’s grave violations of Iran’s sovereign territory, not the more accusational “attack”. The latter seems reserved to describe states that do things the West doesn’t like, while for its friends, we find much less legally charged concepts. Isn’t it lovely?

Let’s just recap for one moment what we are now learning about Collective West Lingo:

• Occupying parts of Syria and Lebanon = Self-defense

• Slaughtering Civilians in the West Bank = Self-defense

• Genocide in Gaza = Self-defense

• War of Aggression against Iran = Self-defense

More could be added. But I think you get the picture. “Israel’s right to defend itself” is like one of the lucky charms in a Super-Mario game. Once you get it, you turn super fast, and anything that hits you just bounces off and withers away. It changes the rules of the game as it makes you untouchable. For the case of Israel, the charm even works against the most binding jus cogens norms of international law, and it makes sure the UN Charter applies to anyone except Tel Aviv. It’s truly a magical thing.

Of course, this form of impunity is exactly what has led to the Genocide in Gaza and the belief that Israel can strike at Iran without consequences to itself. Iran, on its part, has made clear that it intends to break the charm by extracting a concrete price from Israel for its blatant act of war. Now the question will be if also in the West the charm will start losing its force and if the sheer audacity of this unprovoked attack on top of the already ongoing Genocide will finally be enough to lead to a substantial rethinking—if not on the political level, then at least among the general public (which will ultimately impact politics down-stream).

The danger is that the propaganda is still too strong, the demonization of Iran still sits too deep, and the powers that be manage to wield enough narrative control to massively support Israel for long enough to finally break Iran (that wet dream of the neocons), the way they managed to grind down Syria. Only time will tell. This weekend has made it clear, however, that Iran won’t go down without a substantial fight. Sad times, just very sad times.