EVEN before Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination had been confirmed, Donald Trump was describing him as “one of the most evil people in History”, underlining yet again his ignorance about the past. Since then, the lame excuse for Israeli-US hostilities has shifted from impending regime change to thwarting Tehran’s nuclear ambitions or halting its production of ballistic missiles.

In negotiations taking place in Geneva until recently, which were supposed to continue this week, Iran was willing to concede a lot on the nuclear front, but insisted on the right every other nation has to enrich uranium up to a certified level, and wasn’t willing to compromise its missile production. Anyone slightly more sensible than Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner might have pounced upon Tehran’s stance.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been claiming for almost 35 years that Iran was on the verge of going nuclear. That was nonsense. Khamenei even issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons. While that might have involved subterfuge, the current casus belli makes a mockery of Trump’s repeated insistence since last June that Iranian nuclear facilities had been ‘obliterated’. The alternative excuse is that Iran could be close to developing intercontinental........

© Dawn