The unprovoked criminal aggression of Israel and its US and European patrons against the Islamic Republic of Iran is a predatory war against the sovereignty of the nations of the majority world and the self-determination of their peoples. Of course, first of all it is an existential war for the Islamic Republic of Iran, but for the nations and peoples of the majority world, as others have observed, it is a civilizational war which will determine their true independence from Western rule. From another point of view, it is also the confrontation between a vision emphasizing positive solidarity and cooperation promoting the human development of the world’s peoples and the nihilistic greed of Western elites who want to hoard the wealth of the world for their own benefit.  

From the perspective of the North American and European elites, the developing new world order threatens their customary political-military dominance and their subsequent neocolonial economic control based on centuries of ruthless imperialist aggression. They believed that their political-military and socio-economic system would always be able to maintain the enormous unjust economic advantages derived from their historic crimes of genocide, conquest and slavery. They also came to believe their own propaganda that there is no alternative to the model of neoliberal capitalism and their countries’ consequent domination of the international financial system.

For the Western elites, their war against Iran is yet another gamble seeking to to reassert their political-military pre-eminence or, perhaps, to secure a stronger position from which to reach a new geo-strategic agreement with China and Russia. The strategic defeat of the West in Ukraine has generated a political and economic response from the Western ruling classes which prioritizes an even greater militarization of their foreign policies. In the case of the United States of America, a defense budget of US$850 billion has been approved for 2025.  However, in truth that amount is only 45% of the total amount available for military spending in 2025, which adds up to a total of US$1.9 trillion.

The US Department of Defense has six sub-components referred to as “agencies”. The official source USAspending.gov explains that,

“Note that outlays for any given year are not a subset of the agency’s obligations for that year since agencies can pay out funds related to obligations from previous years.”

So American military spending in a given year can significantly exceed the amount that was budgeted by Congress for that same year. However, in general terms, even the US military spending budgeted for 2025 is more than double the corresponding spending of Russia and China combined.

In the case of European countries, their military spending is similar to, or perhaps slightly higher than, the combined spending of China and Russia. However, due to the chronic inefficiency and rampant corruption of the US and European military industry, Russia’s military industrial production is several times higher than the production of the collective West. For example, by the end of 2025, US arms companies expect to be able to produce 100,000 155 mm projectiles per month. The Western consulting company Bain has calculated that in 2024 Russia was producing more than 350,000 155mm projectiles per month. This information gives some context for the urgency with which the NATO countries are going to discuss in The Hague on June 24th and 25th a possible 5% annual increase in their military spending.

On March 4th this year, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, declared:

“We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defence spending. Both, to respond to the short-term urgency to act and to support Ukraine but also to address the long-term need to take on much more responsibility for our own European security… ReArm Europe could mobilise close to EUR 800 billion for a safe and resilient Europe. We will continue working closely with our partners in NATO. This is a moment for Europe. And we are ready to step up.”

This political-military agenda is closely coordinated by the criminal, anti-democratic Western elites. On June 17th, Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, wrote an article with the title “Europe and the Moment of the Global Euro”.  There, Lagarde argues that European governments should take advantage of the international situation to strengthen their credibility and their “hard power”:

“Europe is undergoing a major shift towards rebuilding its hard power, which should also help bolster global confidence in the euro. … Strategic industries, such as green technologies and defence, should be supported through co-ordinated EU-wide policies.”

No one elected Ursula von der Leyen or Christine Lagarde. They are ciphers selected by the Western elites to maintain and coordinate Europe’s subordinate position in relation to the US, imposed since the end of the Second World War. Now, at this historical moment, it is a question of assigning a division of functions, leaving Europe to confront the Russian Federation, while the US ruling class devotes itself to developing its aggression against China.  In essence, the rearmament of the European NATO countries implies an even more intense imposition in Europe, to the detriment of the human development of their own peoples, of the destructive nihilistic vision of the US and European elites.

At a seminar of the European Parliament this past April, the economist and former Minister of the Economy of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, declared,

“The EU is now a fully-fledged War Project – a project that will either land us in permanent war, or it will bankrupt us further, or probably both.”

Yanis Varoufakis’s argument is that the indebtedness necessary to guarantee military investment, supposedly to reverse the deindustrialization of their respective economies, guarantees that Europe will be “less safe, more unequal, weaker.” In this context, the United Kingdom, Germany and France are acting as accomplices of the Zionist genocide in Palestine, the destruction of Lebanon and Syria and the blatant unprovoked aggression of Israel and the US government against Iran.

Together with President Trump’s administration, European governments maintain the transparent lie that they are worried about Iran’s nuclear program, when it is self-evident they are pursuing the overthrow of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Western elites have always treated the West Asian region as an extended colonial zone. Since the end of the Second World War in 1945, the collective West has followed the regional policy of US administrations, from Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to Presidents Nixon and Carter. In January 1980, after the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the beginning of Soviet military aid in defense of the legitimate government of Afghanistan, President Carter enunciated his so-called “Carter Doctrine”.
 
President Carter specified that “This situation demands careful thought, steady nerves, and resolute action, not only for this year but for many years to come. It demands collective efforts to meet this new threat to security in the Persian Gulf and in Southwest Asia. It demands the participation of all those who rely on oil from the Middle East and who are concerned with global peace and stability… Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

Little has changed in over forty years. Now, the US government is applying the Carter Doctrine together with its European allies and its regional proxy, Israel, to sustain an unprovoked attack on the people and government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This new nefarious military offensive is the culmination of forty-five years of economic aggression, soft coup attempts, diplomatic siege, cyber sabotage, brutal terrorism and targeted assassinations, none of which were ever going to be able to achieve their goal of overthrowing the Islamic government in Iran. This current ruthless aggression by the collective West against Iran has used alleged concerns about Iran’s nuclear program as a cynical baseless pretext while covering up Israel’s own illegal nuclear weapons development.

The fundamental motives of the Western aggression to overthrow the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran are quite different. In the short term, the US government and its allies hope to be able to put an end to the Axis of Resistance in defense of Palestine, led by Iran.  But of even greater medium and long term importance to them is the imperative for the collective West to prevent the integration of the Eurasian region promoted by China and Russia. The recent summit in Kazakhstan between June 16th and 18th, of China with the nations of Central Asia, demonstrated the tremendous progress and the progressive, practical realization of the economic potential of the region.

Along with almost all Central Asian countries, Iran is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, is an associate of the Eurasian Economic Union and is a full member of the BRICS+ group of countries. Iran has strategic agreements with the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, which provide for greater trade exchanges, major long-term investments and cooperation in all aspects of national life, including security and defense. Iran is an absolutely essential country for the implementation of the North-South International Transport Corridor connecting India with Russia and Eastern Europe.

So, it is clear that the collective West hopes to be able to destroy Iran in order to sabotage Eurasian integration and harm the interests of China and Russia in the region.  By achieving these objectives, the Western countries will be able to complete their re-colonization of West Asia and thus thwart the full development of a new world order based on more democratic and just international relations in strict accordance with the norms of international law. July 5th and 6th will see the next summit of the BRICS+ group countries in Brazil, where the position of the majority world in defense of the Islamic Republic of Iran will almost certainly be clarified.

Whatever happens, as President Vladimir Putin observed during his exchange in the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum,

“The new world order is emerging naturally, like sunrise. There is no escaping it. Our role is to help shape its contours, perhaps clearing the way for this process to become more balanced and aligned with the interests of the overwhelming majority of countries. We strongly anticipate that all nations will come to recognize and eventually understand – as I have previously stated – that this approach to finding a solution proves far superior to coercive pressure or the neo-colonial paradigm in which humanity has lived for centuries.”

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal, translated from Spanish.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from Humans Are Free

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