{"id":24300,"date":"2025-06-23T08:58:49","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T12:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=24300"},"modified":"2025-06-23T08:58:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T12:58:49","slug":"stop-netanyahu-before-he-gets-us-all-killed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=24300","title":{"rendered":"

Stop Netanyahu Before He Gets Us All Killed<\/h1>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares
\nThe Unz Review<\/p>\n

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Jewish protest against Benjamin Netanyahu, 24 March 2023. Alisdare Hickson from Woolwich, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0 https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/h5>\n
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For nearly 30 years, Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has driven the Middle East into war and destruction. The man is a powder keg of violence. Throughout all the wars that he has championed, Netanyahu has always dreamed of the big one: to defeat and overthrow the Iranian Government. His long-sought war, just launched, might just get us all killed in a nuclear Armageddon, unless Netanyahu is stopped.<\/span><\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s fixation on war goes back to his extremist mentors, Ze\u2019ev Jabotinsky, Yitzhak Shamir, and Menachem Begin. The older generation believed that Zionists should use whatever violence\u2013wars, assassinations, terror\u2013is needed to achieve their aims of eliminating any Palestinian claim to a homeland.<\/span><\/p>\n

The founders of Netanyahu\u2019s political movement, the Likud, called for exclusive Zionist control over all of what had been British Mandatory Palestine<\/a>. At the start of the British Mandate in the early 1920s, the Muslim and Christian Arabs constituted roughly 87% of the population and owned ten times more land than the Jewish population. As of 1948, the Arabs still outnumbered the Jews roughly two to one. Nonetheless, the founding charter of Likud<\/u><\/a> (1977) declared that \u201cbetween the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty<\/em>.\u201d The now infamous chant, \u201cfrom the River to the Sea<\/em>,\u201d which is characterized as anti-Semitic, turns out to be the anti-Palestinian rallying call of the Likud.<\/span><\/p>\n

The challenge for Likud was how to pursue its maximalist aims despite their blatant illegality under international law and morality, both of which call for a two-state solution.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1996, Netanyahu and his American advisors devised a \u201cClean Break<\/u><\/a>\u201d strategy. They advocated that Israel<\/a> would not withdraw from the Palestinian lands captured in the 1967 war in exchange for regional peace. Instead, Israel would reshape the Middle East to its liking. Crucially, the strategy envisioned the US as the main force to achieve these aims\u2014waging wars in the region to dismantle governments opposed to Israel\u2019s dominance over Palestine. The US was called upon to fight wars on Israel\u2019s behalf.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Clean Break strategy was effectively carried out by the US and Israel after 9\/11. As NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark revealed<\/u><\/a>, soon after 9\/11, the US planned to \u201cattack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years\u2014starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The first of the wars, in early 2003, was to topple the Iraqi government. Plans for further wars were delayed as the US became mired in Iraq. Still, the US supported Sudan\u2019s split in 2005, Israel\u2019s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and Ethiopia\u2019s incursion into Somalia that same year. In 2011, the Obama administration launched CIA operation Timber Sycamore against Syria and, with the UK and France, overthrew Libya\u2019s government through a 2011 bombing campaign. Today, these countries lie in ruins, and many are now embroiled in civil wars.<\/span><\/p>\n

Netanyahu was a cheerleader of these wars of choice\u2013either in public or behind the scenes\u2013together with his neocon allies in the U.S. Government including Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Victoria Nuland<\/a>, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and others.<\/span><\/p>\n

Testifying in the U.S. Congress<\/u><\/a> in 2002, Netanyahu pitched for the disastrous war in Iraq, declaring \u201cIf you take out Saddam, Saddam\u2019s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region<\/em>.\u201d He continued, \u201cAnd I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone<\/em>.\u201d He also falsely told Congress, \u201cThere is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards to the development of nuclear weapons<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The slogan to remake a \u201cNew Middle East\u201d provides the slogan for these wars. Initially stated in 1996 through \u201cClean Break,\u201d it was popularized by Secretary Condoleezza Rice<\/u><\/a> in 2006. As Israel was brutally bombarded Lebanon, Rice stated:<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing here, in a sense, is the growing \u2014 the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we\u2019re pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In September 2023, Netanyahu presented at UN General Assembly a map of the \u201cNew Middle East\u201d<\/u><\/a> completely erasing a Palestinian state. In September 2024, he elaborated on this plan by showing two maps<\/u><\/a>: one part of the Middle East a \u201cblessing,\u201d and the other\u2013including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran\u2013a curse, as he advocated regime change in the latter countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s war on Iran is the final move in a decades-old strategy. We are witnessing the culmination of decades of extremist Zionist manipulation of US foreign policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The premise of Israel\u2019s attack on Iran is the claim that Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. Such a claim is fatuous since Iran has repeatedly called for negotiations precisely to remove the nuclear option in return for an end to the decades of US sanctions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 1992, Netanyahu and his supporters have claimed that Iran will become a nuclear power \u201cin a few years.\u201d<\/u><\/a> In 1995, Israeli officials and their US backers declared a 5-year timeline<\/u><\/a>. In 2003, Israel\u2019s Director of Military Intelligence said that Iran will be a nuclear power \u201cby the summer of 2004<\/u><\/a>.\u201d In 2005, the head of Mossad<\/u><\/a> said that Iran could build the bomb in less than 3 years. In 2012, Netanyahu<\/u><\/a> claimed at the United Nations that \u201cit\u2019s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.\u201d And on and on.<\/span><\/p>\n

This 30-year-plus pattern of shifting deadlines has marked a deliberate strategy, not a failure in prophecy. The claims are propaganda; there is always an \u201cexistential threat.\u201d More importantly, there is Netanyahu\u2019s phony claim that negotiations with Iran are useless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iran has repeatedly said that it does not want a nuclear weapon and that it has long been prepared to negotiate. In October 2003, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding the production and use of nuclear arms\u2014a ruling later officially cited by Iran at an IAEA meeting<\/u><\/a> in Vienna in August 2005 and referenced since as a religious and legal barrier to pursuing nuclear weapons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even for those skeptical of Iran\u2019s intentions, Iran has consistently advocated for a negotiated agreement supported by independent international verification. In contrast, the Zionist lobby has opposed any such settlements, urging the US to maintain sanctions and reject deals that would allow strict IAEA monitoring in exchange for lifting sanctions.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2016, the Obama Administration, together with the UK, France, Germany, China, and Russia, reached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)<\/u><\/a> with Iran\u2014a landmark agreement to strictly monitor Iran\u2019s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Yet, under relentless pressure from Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby, President Trump withdrew from the deal<\/u><\/a> in 2018. Predictably, when Iran responded by expanding its uranium enrichment, it was blamed for violating an agreement that the US itself had abandoned. The double-standard and propaganda is hard to miss.<\/span><\/p>\n

On April 11, 2021, Israel\u2019s Mossad attacked Iran\u2019s nuclear<\/u><\/a> facilities in Natanz. Following the attack, on April 16, Iran announced that it would increase its uranium enrichment further, as bargaining leverage, while repeatedly appealing for renewed negotiations on a deal like the JCPOA. The Biden Administration rejected all such negotiations.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the start of his second term, Trump agreed to open a new negotiation with Iran. Iran pledged to renounce nuclear arms and to be subject to IAEA inspections but reserved the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. The Trump Administration appeared to agree to this point but then reversed itself. Since then, there have been five rounds of negotiations, with both sides reporting progress on each occasion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The sixth round was ostensibly to take place on Sunday, June 15. Instead, Israel launched a preemptive war on Iran on June 12. Trump confirmed that the US knew of the attack in advance, even as the administration was speaking publicly of the upcoming negotiations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s attack was made not only in the midst of negotiations that were making progress, but days before a scheduled UN Conference on Palestine<\/u><\/a> that would have advanced the cause of the two-state solution. That conference has now been postponed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s attack on Iran now threatens to escalate to a full-fledged war that draws in the US and Europe on the side of Israel and Russia and perhaps Pakistan on the side of Iran. We could soon see several nuclear powers pitted against each other and dragging the world closer to nuclear annihilation. The Doomsday Clock is at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest to nuclear Armageddon since the clock was launched in 1947.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the past 30 years, Netanyahu and his US backers have destroyed or destabilized a 4,000-km swath of countries stretching across North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Western Asia. Their aim has been to block a Palestinian State by overthrowing governments supporting the Palestinian cause. The world deserves better than this extremism. More than 180 countries in the UN have called for the two-state solution and regional stability. That makes more sense than Israel bringing the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon in pursuit of its illegal and extremist aims.<\/span><\/p>\n