Today, Friday 13 June 2025, it feels humanity has stepped closer to the threshold of World War III than at any moment in most of our lifetimes. None of us want to face that fear, but how can we avoid it, when Israel—apparently in full coordination with the United States—has escalated a horribly volatile situation in West Asia by launching what is by any measure an unprovoked attack on Iran?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the campaign would continue for as long as it took to remove the "Iranian threat to Israel's very survival", hinting the ultimate objective was regime change. With world record-level insincerity, he addressed the "brave people of Iran" saying "our fight is not with you. Our fight is with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed you for 46 years. I believe the day of your liberation is near."

In the same statement, the veteran warmonger also claimed: "In defending ourselves, we also defend others. We defend our Arab neighbours". He boasted Israel's ghastly 2024 bombardment of Beirut ("Our actions against Iran’s proxy Hizbullah" in his words) could be credited for the formation of the new government in Lebanon. More plausibly he took credit for the collapse of Assad-led rule in Syria. "The peoples of those two countries now have a chance for a different future, a better future. So, too, do the brave people of Iran," he claimed. I suppose we can be grateful he neglected to mention the bright prospects ahead for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank thanks to the Israel Defence Forces' tender and loving care.

Alongside regime change somehow conjured out of air strikes (presumably, the limit of Israel's capability vis-à-vis Iran, unless pager-style terrorism is also on the way), the beleaguered Netanyahu's other threadbare claim was that Iran was on the verge of producing nuclear weapons and Israel would never allow its enemy to benefit from such technology.

It's curious how the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction is believed to have prevented superpower conflict since the USSR developed nukes four years after the US, and how more recently, India and Pakistan's joint nuclear-armed status is viewed as a deterrent to war in South Asia—but in the Middle East, for some reason, such rules do not apply. Oh, yes, I remember why! Everyone pretends that Israel DOESN'T POSSESS nuclear arms. Iran has signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) committing it to developing a peaceful nuclear programme under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Israel belongs to the same IAEA, but hasn't signed the NPT. Normally, that'd seem a bit suspicious—but no, the country that has attacked at least 10 of its neighbours during its bloody 77-year history, that is right now committing genocide, gets a free pass on possessing the world's most destructive weapons while launching acts of aggression to prevent another state obtaining them. 

In fact, there is no evidence Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and its stated policy is that such weapons are immoral and unnecessary. If the Israeli government genuinely wanted that situation to continue, the only logical approach would be not to bomb Iran but to ensure progress in the recent US-Iranian negotiations that were due to reconvene this weekend. Meanwhile, the action taken today might be what you'd do if you were facing increasing problems at home and a chorus of criticism abroad coinciding with the collapse of your country's reputation for—among other things—using deliberate starvation as a weapon of war.

It's worth casting our minds back to the then-former Prime Minister Netanyahu's testimony to Congress in Washington in 2002 before the (unprovoked) US-UK invasion of Iraq. He claimed falsely there was "no question" the Iraqi government led by Saddam Hussein was also on the verge of producing nuclear weapons.

“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” the veteran warmonger claimed. “And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran… will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.” I wonder how that turned out.

The reality is that Israel and the US, with the help of Nato and a few acolytes, have left a trail of devastation throughout the Arab and West Asian region, where any society that stands up to the matrix of control—Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan—has been sanctioned, attacked, schismatized, pauperised, regime-changed and genocided. One by one, in varying ways and degrees, each country has been "taken out" as a threat to Tel Aviv's or Washington's interests, and Netanyahu could not have been happier to see the immiseration and destruction of his enemies. Iran is the last-country-standing and there's nothing that he would like more than to see it collapsed in the same way. But that's not something Israeli air power (and ground-level terrorism) can easily do alone. He would need to drag the US in to do the heavy work.

It's at this pivotal point that we stand today. We shall find out how Iran intends to respond to Israel opening this new front. Something must be done, as it seems clear Israel wants to add Iranian sites to the list of places like Beirut, South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, parts of Syria, Yemen, and Gaza, obviously, that it can freely bomb without consequence, keeping its enemies at bay. But having failed to unseat Hamas in Gaza during 20 gruelling months of bombardment, we will find out if Israel (with or without US assistance) is able to dominate a country like Iran, which is thousands of times bigger and far more daunting an opponent than the besieged Gaza? 

We may also find out how much ability Iran retains to punish Israel for its latest transgression. Tehran's supporters maintain it harbours a formidable ballistic missile capability that was glimpsed in the True Promise One and Two operations in April and October 2024 and has the capacity to lay waste to its puny enemy only propped up by US power. The time has come to see if Iran can walk the talk. Perhaps Israel being taught a lesson, being forced to trim its ambitions, would be the best-case scenario in the short term for an anxious world nervously awaiting developments of the Friday the 13th attacks. But if Iran or Israel inveigles the unpredictable Trump administration to become not just Israel's behind-the-scenes helper but an active combatant—then we should probably start praying.