Another war has broken out. Israel is the provocateur. The United States is the executioner. Israel has convinced President Donald Trump that Iran has, or has nearly completed developing, nuclear weapons and has laid out plans to threaten the United States.  However, The Wall Street Journal has reported that US officials with access to classified information have flat-out denied the alleged threats as unsubstantiated.  Yet, Mr Trump has launched a full-scale war against Iran in partnership with Israel.

The alleged threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons is of a piece with the canard that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that President Bush used to invade Iraq (2003). It is also like the canard that Muammar al-Gaddafi had planned a massacre of civilians in Libya that President Obama propagated to justify the US intervention to ‘prevent a humanitarian crisis’ (2011). Mr Trump re-invented the Monroe Doctrine to bring about a ‘regime change’ in Venezuela (2026) and has expanded the doctrine to launch a war against Iran.

These military interventions were — and are — illegal. The President of the United States cannot declare war against another country without the authorisation of the US Congress. Such interventions are also against the Charter of the United Nations. Apart from being illegal, it is illegitimate for any country to change the regime of another sovereign nation. Just as it is an illegitimate war that Russia is........

© Indian Express