There is something tragic about the present moment, a theatre of contradictions staged around the attack on Iran, so brazen that one is tempted to admire the choreography before confronting the wreckage it produces. At its centre stands Donald Trump, declaring with unflinching confidence that the war has been won, that it is being won, that it requires help to be won, and that it requires no help at all to destroy a nuclear programme he assured the world he had already destroyed last year. Language, once a vessel of meaning, now serves as a revolving door through which claims enter only to negate themselves on exit.

Hovering above this spectacle is the memory of an earlier scene, when Gulf monarchs, eager for favour and fearful of abandonment, opened their treasuries during Trump’s tour of the Middle East months ago. Vast sums were pledged, indulgences granted, and access secured. The Trump clan, ever attuned to opportunity, was handsomely enriched. Protection, it was implied, would follow. Yet protection, like so much else in this drama, appears to have been more theatrical than real. One cannot resist a touch of dark humour here. The Arab despots paid their premiums, Qatar even arriving with a $400 million airplane as a token of goodwill, only to discover that their investment ranks way below Israel in the hierarchy of American priorities. A few months later, Israel strikes at Qatar, and the invoice for misplaced confidence quietly arrives. So much for return on investment.

A state subjected to armed attack does not forfeit its inherent Charter right to respond because powerful capitals prefer silence about the initial illegality. To condemn the response while ignoring the initiating act is the normalisation of double standards.

A state subjected to armed attack does not forfeit its inherent Charter right to respond because powerful capitals prefer silence about the initial illegality. To condemn the response while ignoring the initiating act is the normalisation of double standards.

The response by Iran did not emerge in a vacuum. It began with United States and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, illegal actions........

© Middle East Monitor