Iranians have expressed mixed emotions about Israel's airstrikes on their country and regime
When Israel launched its sustained assault on Iran's nuclear programme and military leaders on Friday, Sareh began cycling through a range of emotions.
'I felt happiness,' the Iranian woman said, at the deaths of leaders who had long repressed the country's people.
'Then disbelief,' she continued from her home in
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Otago Daily Times
2 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Israel says Tehran to 'pay price' after Tel Aviv attacks
Iranian missiles struck Israel's Tel Aviv and the port city of Haifa, killing at least eight people and destroying homes, prompting Israel's defence minister to warn that Tehran residents would "pay the price and soon". The dangers of further escalation loomed over a meeting of the Group of Seven leaders in Canada, with US President Donald Trump expressing hope that a deal could be done but no sign of the fighting abating on a fourth day of war. The latest fatalities in Israel, reported by Israel's national emergency services, raised its death toll to 23 since Friday. Israeli attacks in Iran have killed at least 224 people since Friday, Iran's health ministry has said. At least 100 more were wounded in Israel in the overnight blitz, part of a wave of attacks by Tehran in retaliation for Israel's strikes targeting the nuclear and ballistic missile programmes of sworn enemy Iran. Search and rescue operations were underway in Haifa where around 30 people were wounded, emergency authorities said, as dozens of first responders rushed to the strike zones. Fires were seen burning at a power plant near the port, media reported. Video footage showed several missiles over Tel Aviv and explosions could be heard there and over Jerusalem. Several residential buildings in a densely populated neighbourhood of Tel Aviv were destroyed in a strike that blew out the windows of hotels and other nearby homes just a few hundred meters from the US Embassy branch in the city. The US ambassador said the building sustained minor damage, but there were no injuries to personnel. Guydo Tetelbaun was in his apartment in Tel Aviv when the alerts came in shortly after 4am. "As usual, we went into the (shelter) that's right across the street there. And within minutes, the door of the (shelter) blew in," the 31-year-old chef said. "A couple of people came in bloody, all cut up. And then when we came to the apartment, after it quietened down, we saw there wasn't much of it... Walls are caved in, no more glass," he added. "It's terrifying because it's so unknown. This could be the beginning of a long time like this, or it could get worse, or hopefully better, but it's the unknown that's the scariest.' The predawn missiles also struck near Shuk HaCarmel, a popular market in Tel Aviv that typically draws large crowds of residents and tourists buying fresh fruit and vegetables, and to popular bars and restaurants. A residential street in nearby Petah Tikva and a school in ultra-Orthodox Jewish city Bnei Brak were also hit. Iran's Revolutionary Guards said the latest attack employed a new method that caused Israel's multi-layered defence systems to target each other and allowed Tehran to successfully hit many targets, without providing further details. The Israeli Defence Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes. There were no reports in Israel of interceptor missiles hitting each other. Israeli officials have repeatedly said its defence systems are not 100% and have warned of tough days ahead. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement: "The arrogant dictator of Tehran has become a cowardly murderer who targets the civilian home front in Israel to deter the IDF from continuing the attack that is collapsing his capabilities." "The residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon." The death toll in Iran was already at least 224, with 90% of the casualties reported to be civilians, an Iranian health ministry spokesperson said. All the fatalities in Israel have been civilians, according to Israeli authorities. Israel's military said on Monday morning it had struck again at command centres belonging to the Revolutionary Guard and Iran's military. Group of Seven leaders began gathering in the Canadian Rockies on Sunday with the Israel-Iran conflict expected to be a top priority. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said his goals for the summit include for Iran to not develop or possess nuclear weapons, ensuring Israel's right to defend itself, avoiding escalation of the conflict and creating room for diplomacy. "This issue will be very high on the agenda of the G7 summit," Merz told reporters. Before leaving for the summit on Sunday, Trump was asked what he was doing to de-escalate the situation. "I hope there's going to be a deal. I think it's time for a deal," he told reporters. "Sometimes they have to fight it out."
NZ Herald
8 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Iranians have expressed mixed emotions about Israel's airstrikes on their country and regime
When Israel launched its sustained assault on Iran's nuclear programme and military leaders on Friday, Sareh began cycling through a range of emotions. 'I felt happiness,' the Iranian woman said, at the deaths of leaders who had long repressed the country's people. 'Then disbelief,' she continued from her home in
Scoop
10 hours ago
- Scoop
On The West's War Against Iran
Article – Gordon Campbell The world needs to stop talking about Israels right to defend itself, & start talking about the worlds need to defend itself against Israel. Gaza, Lebanon, Iran….these have become the stepping stones in Israels plan to expand its rule, Clearly, the world needs to stop talking about Israel's right to defend itself, and start talking about the world's need to defend itself against Israel. Gaza, Lebanon, Iran….these have become the stepping stones in Israel's plan to expand its rule, unrivalled, over all the land between the river and the sea. Iran was on the cusp of making a nuclear weapon? Even the crackpot American Congresswoman politician Marjorie Taylor Greene has been un-impressed by that excuse, noting that Israel 'has been saying the same thing for the past 20 years'. Donald Trump's intelligence boss Tulsi Gabbard recently testified under oath to a Congressional hearing that Iran was not engaged in building a nuclear weapon: Trump's intelligence czar Tulsi Gabbard, another anti-war figure, testified in March that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.'The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,' Gabbard said, while noting, however, that Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels, unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons. Iran is surrounded by enemies. Like North Korea, it may well regard having a nuclear weapon capability as its best self-defence against invasion. Yet even if one treated the nuclear enrichment- to-nuclear bomb progression as inevitable – which it wasn't – can Israel actually succeed in destroying Iran's well-protected nuclear facilities? Probably not. Not unless there is regime change in Teheran, which has long been the end purpose of Israel's aggression. Israel is unlikely to succeed in this aim, either. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in recent days, called once again on the 'proud people of Iran' to stand up for their 'freedom from an evil and repressive regime.' As this Al Jazeera columnist has pointed out: The assumption that Iranians would simply do Israel's bidding as it bombs them relentlessly and unilaterally, seems akin to the notion that if Israel starves and exterminates the Palestinians in Gaza to the required extent, they would rise against Hamas and remove it from power. Even if one bought the notion that all the Iranian people have been waiting for is an Israeli strike to move against the regime, Al Jazeera says, such beliefs demonstrate a profound lack of understanding of the wider historical forces that shape Iranian politics: While many Iranians undoubtedly oppose the Islamic Republic, Iranians of all political persuasions are consistently 'patriotic', committed to supporting Iranian sovereignty and independence from any attempts by external elements to impose their agendas on their country. For that reason, any invading force should be careful about what would come in the wake of their initial 'victory.' Israel, the US and any puppets they install in power would face being mired for a generation in a war of resistance that would dwarf what happened in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. Shades of 2003 Talking of 2003…Israel's decision to attack Iran (even while talks between the US and Iran on limiting Iran's nuclear ambitions were still happening in Oman) shares that equally cynical historical precedent. Back in March 2003, the US had used the 'weapons of mass destruction' excuse to justify its invasion of Iraq, an attack it launched even while the UN arms inspectors were still at work inside Iraq, looking for those mythical WMDs. Then as now, we are not talking about a pre-emptive war against an external existential threat. This is a war of aggression against a sovereign nation, and it is being waged by an expansionist Israel, with US approval and support. Israel would not have proceeded without getting a green light from the US, which began issuing travel advisories and moving its diplomats out of the region in the week before the attacks began. Beyond the US, Israel can always count on other Western nations to do next to nothing to halt its aggression, or to punish it in any significant way. All year, the West has been bending over backwards to avoid looking as though it is criticising Israel for its genocidal use of starvation as a weapon of war against the two million Palestinian civilian inhabitants of Gaza. For example: when the leaders of Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand announced sanctions against two extremist members of the Israeli Cabinet, the co-signing leaders made a truly pathetic distinction: These measures are directed at individuals who directly contribute to extremist settler violence,' said Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand. 'The measures are not directed against the state of Israel itself.' Right. So, what on earth would Israel have to do – and what would a collectively responsible Israeli Cabinet have to sign off on – before New Zealand could gather up the courage to impose sanctions on the state of Israel? To state the obvious…long ago, Israel went well past the point of proportionate retaliation for the Hamas terrorist actions of October 7,2023. Israel's subsequent actions in Gaza continue to be unfathomably cruel and evil. What mother or father, watching their sons and daughters being systematically starved to death before their eyes, would not risk crowding and jostling for the inadequate amounts of dried food (much of it useless without fuel or water) that is being dribbled out through a handful of privately-run US aid centres – and not through the far more extensive and competent UN aid facilities? Desperate Palestinians are being drawn by the hunger of their families into congregating outside these sham US aid centres, where scores of them are then being shot down by Israeli troops on a daily basis. Food is being used as a lethal magnet to facilitate further mass killings, while New Zealand – and the rest of the Western world- continue to urge both sides to show restraint. Ludicrously, we continue to call on Israel to abide by the norms of international law that the IDF has consistently flouted in Gaza for the past 18 months. Nearly 20,000 dead Palestinian children later, and with the surviving children being slowly and deliberately deprived of food and water, we are still imploring Israel to show restraint. Iran's bomb Reportedly, Israel's latest attacks targeted and killed Ali Shamkani, Iran's chief negotiator in the US-led nuclear containment talks in Oman. Israel has also killed at least six of Iran's leading nuclear scientists, including Fereidoun Abbas, the former head of Iran's Atomic Energy Association. (Back in 2010, Abbas had been seriously wounded when a motorcyclist detonated a magnetic bomb under his car.) Since 2010, Israel has been steadily murdering a succession of Iran nuclear scientists, who had been working on the country's development of nuclear energy in order to meet the country's long-term and entirely legitimate energy needs. Because of the potential that further nuclear enrichment might someday result in the development of a bomb, the Obama administration struck a deal in 2015 with the then-relatively liberal administration of Hassan Rouhani in Teheran. Under the terms of that 2015 deal, Iran agreed to desist from added enrichment, in return for economic sanctions being lifted, and for Iran being enabled to trade with the West. In the wake of this opening, a more democratic society might have been able to emerge in Iran. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at the time, Iran lived up to its side of the bargain. America, however, did not. Once elected in 2016, Donald Trump immediately scrapped this deal, and imposed even heavier trade sanctions. By doing so, Trump fatally undermined Iran's political liberals, and confirmed the predictions made by the regime's hard-liners that the US could never be trusted. By scrapping the 2015 deal, Trump also forced Iran into an enduring dependence on China as the only major market for its oil. This entirely avoidable outcome gave China a reliable proxy state in the Middle East, and a platform for influence that it had never had before. Fast forward to this year. Nearly 10 years after Iran had restricted its nuclear ambitions in return for trade advantages that it never received, Trump was back again at the bargaining table in Oman – offering Iran what one critic called 'a dime-store version' of the same deal that Trump had torn up in 2016. Regardless, Iran continued to talk, while preparing for the Israeli attack that everyone knew was coming, whatever concessions Iran offered. Few will shed tears over the likely fall of the stupidly brutal and corrupt regime in Teheran, which lost its revolutionary lustre decades ago. For example: even on the cusp of the Israeli attack, the religious authorities in Teheran were engaged in a crackdown on ordinary citizens walking dogs in public, or riding with them in cars. Allegedly, a prayer said when one has a dog hair on one's clothing will not be effective. ( I'd love to know how this was tested.) To repeat: Iran will not be an easy conquest. The country has had long experience of being subjected to external aggression and to the rule of foreign-backed puppets. For example, a US/UK funded coup in 1953 toppled the democratically elected Mossadegh government, and brought the Shah to power. As mentioned above, if Iran's current government is overthrown by external forces it will be extremely difficult to govern, given the underground resistance that will surely flourish in the wake of any foreign-led regime change. Ironically…who might the US and Israel like to install as the ruler of a newly 'democratic' Iran? That amenable puppet could well be the 65 year old Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the Shah deposed in 1979. The more things are changed in Iran, the more they are likely to stay the same. Footnote: Meanwhile, back in Gaza: to discredit and divide support for Hamas, the Israelis have reportedly armed and assisted a criminal Palestinian militia led by a Rafah resident called Yasser Abu Shabab. Reportedly, this gangster chief and his roughly 100 armed followers have – apparently with Israel's blessing – been looting aid convoys. and re-selling the food at a profit. Footnote Two: The media coverage of the Iran/Israel conflict to date has, as usual, been heavily weighted in favour of reportage from the Israeli side of the conflict. Extensive sympathetic coverage is being extended to Israeli citizens – and to embedded Western media – sheltering under Israel's extensive Iron Dome missile defence system. As well, Israelis are reportedly getting phone warnings of incoming Iranian missiles in time to move into bomb shelters that are – also, reportedly- well stocked with food and water. The citizens of Iran have no such luck – which may explain why their death toll is currently running at nearly 20 times higher – and they are certainly not getting such sympathetic treatment from our media. Al Jazeera, again: The Iranian Health Ministry said early Monday that at least 224 people have been killed, 90 percent of them civilians, and 1,481 wounded since Israel attacked Iran. Dozens of women and children were among the dead. So it goes. In the Middle East, they seem to be chronically unwilling/unable to give more than fleeting air time at best, to non-Israeli/US voices. Even the liberal voices on Israel's Ha'aretz news service are rarely called upon. True, foreign media have been barred by the IDF from entering Gaza. Yet, as this columnist in the Independent newspaper recently pointed out, it probably wouldn't have made much difference to the coverage, anyway: The truth is the coverage would have looked much as it has done for more than a year and a half, with Israel dictating the story lines, with Israel's denials foregrounded, with Israel's claims of Hamas 'terrorists' in every hospital, school, bakery, university, and refugee camp used to justify the destruction and slaughter. British doctors volunteering in Gaza who have told us there were no Hamas fighters in the hospitals they worked in, or anyone armed apart from the Israeli soldiers that shot up their medical facilities, would not be more believed because Jeremy Bowen interviewed them in Khan Younis rather than Richard Madeley in a London studio.
