More questions than answers hang in the air after the American-Israeli assault on Iran. The civilian casualties, the Tehran regime’s threats, the relentless bombardment of third countries, the levelling of Lebanon, and Donald Trump’s incoherent war-cries are not signs of strategic vision — they are signs of recklessness with catastrophic consequences.
And while Cypriot society remains preoccupied with its own small world of sirens at Akrotiri and emergency alerts, history has shown repeatedly that bombing campaigns have fixed nothing — not in the Middle East (Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria), not in Africa (Libya), and not, lest we forget, in the lives of the Serbs either.
In the middle of this chaos, the Kurds of Iraq and Iran — Bashur and Rojhelat — are showing more political clarity than most Western societies. With the memory of the US-Israeli betrayal in northern Syria (Rojava) still raw, the Kurds appear unwilling to be dragged into a war for Trump’s skin and Netanyahu’s political survival — even with all their grievances, and they have many, against the Iranian regime.
Western governments and societies, on the other hand, have largely lost their nerve. Too timid to condemn the bombardment of Iran for fear of being seen as defenders of the mullahs, they find themselves standing shoulder to shoulder with two semi-deranged monarchs who have no plan for Persia and who celebrate strikes on primary schools — 175 dead at a girls’ school in southern Iran — and blind bombardment of an already shattered Beirut.
No, we are not analysts, international relations scholars, or historians. And no, we do not believe the Tehran regime should be preserved. But we do not believe that the United States and Israel are part of the solution or the path to change in the Middle East. Quite the opposite.
Trump is consolidating an authoritarian grip at home while projecting a predatory, imperialist, murderous posture abroad — worse, in fact, than George W. Bush in 2003.
Netanyahu, propped up by his far-right government, bombs to survive — and to extinguish any remaining hope of democratisation in Israel or recognition of the Palestinian people’s right to exist.
The destruction of Gaza, the West Bank settlements, the apartheid being cemented in place — these are not confined to Palestine. They are being exported, by force, to Lebanon and Iran. They are not a solution to anything.
The bottom line is this: the attack on Iran — and on Lebanon — is a flagrant violation of international law. It is the law of the jungle, imposed by the powerful, and it will not save the admirable Iranian people. Replacing one tyranny with another will only entrench the very model of governance that Iranians — with or without Khamenei’s successors — have been risking everything to escape.
Iran will not be saved by the butcher of the Palestinian people, nor by a self-styled planetary ruler who heaps praise on Erdoğan and Putin, dismisses the courts, and mocks the law and the ballot box. Iran will be saved by the Iranians who remain in their country and rise up at enormous personal cost — whatever the admirers of Trump and Netanyahu, the applauders of death, in Cyprus and elsewhere, may say.
