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Mail & Guardian
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
Empire, knowledge and erasure: Bombing Iran is bombing memory
Iran has a long and magnificent intellectual history. Empire does not begin with bombs. It begins with stories. Before missiles strike, a narrative must be written to make the target bombable. Colonial narrative, as postcolonial historian Ranajit Guha shows in A Conquest Foretold , transforms conquest into destiny. It prepares the public to accept war as not only inevitable but righteous. It is not simply that Iran was bombed on 13 June 2025. It is that the idea of Iran and its right to hold memory, to produce knowledge, to exist as a civilisational subject was already rendered illegible. The Israeli assault on Iran was defended in familiar terms — an imminent nuclear threat, national security, surgical precision. But these are not explanations. They are scripts. Like the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the attack on Iran was rationalised through an architecture of claims that do not require evidence, only repetition. Intelligence reports denying Iran's weapons programme were irrelevant. The narrative had already been written. Guha's insight is clear — Empire writes the future in advance. The British conquest of India was not sealed at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. That battle was a minor military affair. And yet, in British imperial historiography, Plassey was elevated to a grand foundational moment, the start of British rule in India, the point at which the East India Company became a territorial power. As Guha points out, it was this narrative that was repeated in schoolbooks, official dispatches and parliamentary speeches. It provided the ideological foundation for expanding British rule. While the real event was modest and sordid, the story told about it became grand and civilisational. Guha painstakingly shows that conquest must be justified, not just enacted. He draws from the writings of figures like Robert Orme, an official historian of the East India Company, who openly declared that 'the sword is the charter'. This chilling phrase captures the heart of imperial logic — that might creates right. Violence, if victorious, rewrites itself as law. The act of domination becomes the foundation of legitimacy. What Guha reveals is that empires do not just win battles, they write the laws and the history books. They tell the story in such a way that the destruction appears noble, even necessary. The conquered are not only defeated on the ground; they are also written out of history. This symbolic process, Guha argues, is what transforms the 'instant of aggression' into the logic of rule. The colonial archive did not record India's conquest merely as fact. It reworked it as a historical necessity, a fulfilment of a moral and civilisational order. This allowed future wars, occupations and annexations to be narrated not as violence, but as destiny. Guha calls this 'a conquest foretold', a fate legitimised before it is ever enforced. This continues today. The West does not simply bomb places. It un-names them. In the mainstream media, Iran is rarely presented as a site of knowledge, history or intellectual contribution. It is a shadow space: nuclear, irrational, volatile, fanatical, alien, frightening. Colonial narratives render people fungible, bombable and, ultimately, forgettable. They reduce cities to targets, its people to collateral and magnificent civilisational archives to dust. Literary theorist Edward Said showed clearly that the Orient was never just misunderstood. It was constructed. It was imagined as timeless, barbaric, hyper-religious and fundamentally unfit for self-rule. This epistemic violence enabled actual violence. When the drones strike, they do so on the back of a long intellectual history that emptied the East of sovereignty. Said's Orientalism is a study of how European and American thinkers created a fictional image of the East, a world of despots, harems, fanaticism and mystery. This fantasy was not harmless. It underpinned policy, war and occupation. Said wanted readers to understand that power works not only through tanks and armies, but also through language, maps and books. How we speak about a place, whether on TV or in schools, shapes what we believe can or should happen to it. When the East is painted as irrational and dangerous, bombing it becomes not a horror, but a duty. Orientalism, Said shows, is not an error of perception. It is a system of power. Through universities, literature, policy and media, the West defined the East as the inverse of itself: irrational, feminine, despotic. This representation justified intervention. If the East could not govern itself, then governance must be imposed from without. Once internalised, this logic rendered bombing not only possible but legible as order, as responsibility, as peacekeeping. Violence becomes virtue. Iran has a long and magnificent intellectual history. The Academy of Gundishapur in Khuzestan, Iran, was one of the oldest universities in the world. Founded in the third century CE, it was a centre for multilingual scholarship where Sanskrit medical texts were translated into Middle Persian, Greek logic was systematised and Babylonian astronomy refined. It was here that clinical observation became a method of medical teaching, surgery was formalised and knowledge travelled across linguistic and cultural lines, centuries before Oxford opened its gates in 1096 or Cambridge in 1209. The very model of the Western university, its division into faculties, the logic of disputation, the canon of philosophy and science, was shaped by Iranian and Islamic precedents. The Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) in Abbasid Baghdad, deeply influenced by Persian scholarship, became the template for later European institutions. When Arabic and Persian texts were translated into Latin in Andalusia and Sicily, they were not curiosities, they were the architecture of another world being absorbed. There would be no scholastic tradition without al-Farabi and al-Tusi, no experimental method without al-Razi and no algebra without al-Khwarizmi. These networks extended even further south. Persian texts and Islamic jurisprudence travelled along trans-Saharan trade routes into West Africa. At Sankoré University in Timbuktu, scholars studied Avicenna and al-Ghazali alongside local astronomers and jurists. Libraries in desert towns preserved manuscripts copied in Persian script. These were not isolated developments. They formed part of an intellectual system that preceded and shaped the European Enlightenment. From Baghdad's Bayt al-Hikma to the libraries of Timbuktu, Persian and Arabic texts travelled along trade routes, translated, adapted and taught across generations. The commentaries of al-Farabi, al-Tusi and Avicenna informed the very structure of the Western university. Algebra, optics and medicine — none of these can be understood without Iran. This history was not just ignored by European colonialism. It was actively erased. During colonial rule in India, the British administration removed Persian as a court and scholarly language, replacing it with English and thereby severing centuries of transregional intellectual continuity between South Asia, Central Asia and the Iranian plateau. Persian manuscripts were stripped of context and displayed as exotic artefacts in museums. Its philosophy was recast as mysticism. Its scientific legacy was reduced to footnotes or omitted altogether. Tabriz, struck in the June 2025 attack, is not just a military site. It is the city of Shams al-Din Tabrizi, Rumi's teacher and a centre of Persian mysticism and learning. It is a node in a centuries-old network of philosophy, theology, mathematics, astronomy and poetry that spanned from Khurasan to Mali. These were not isolated traditions. They were the foundations of a civilisational archive beyond the borders and imagination of Europe. And yet, in the dominant Western imagination, Iran is nothing but a sinister, irrational enemy of the West. This is not ignorance. It is design. It is an instance of what Guha and Said both expose: the strategic construction of the South as a site of absence. A place whose people are forgettable, whose knowledge is disposable, whose destruction is thinkable. We have seen this before. Iraq's libraries were looted. Mosul's university was razed. Gaza's schools, universities and archives were bombed into nothingness. In each case, what is attacked is not just infrastructure but the right to remember, to dream, to transmit. Epistemic erasure is not collateral damage. It is the method of neocolonial domination. To centre the epistemic is not to look away from the dead. It is to insist that their lives were lived in full. It is to understand that the people of Iran are not footnotes to someone else's future. That they are authors, carriers of meaning and custodians of a world that Empire has tried again and again to silence. This war, like all imperial wars, is not just about sovereignty. It is about the terms of knowledge. Who gets to define history. Who gets to remember. Until we refuse the stories that make us invisible and tell our own stories, we will never escape the imperial forces that deny our full and equal humanity. Vashna Jagarnath is a historian, political risk and diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, labour expert, pan-African and South Asian political analyst and curriculum specialist .
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Gold Rises as US Joining Attacks on Iran Spurs Flight to Safety
Gold rose after the US joined the Israeli assault on Iran , raising the risks of a wider regional war that could push up energy prices. The precious metal climbed as much as 0.8% after the US struck three key nuclear sites in the Islamic Republic over the weekend, spurring a flight to havens. Oil prices jumped on Monday as the world awaited Iran's response, which could involve attacks on Middle East energy infrastructure or on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, both of which would be inflationary.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nations react to US strikes on Iran with calls for diplomacy
The U.S. strike on Iran fueled fears that Israel's war with Tehran could escalate to a wider regional conflict, and other countries began reacting Sunday with calls for diplomacy and words of caution. President Donald Trump had said Thursday that he would decide within two weeks whether to get involved. In the end, it took just days, and Washington inserted itself into Israel's campaign with its early Sunday attack. It remained unclear early on how much damage had been inflicted, but Iran had pledged to retaliate if the U.S. joined the Israeli assault. Some have questioned whether a weakened Iran would capitulate or remain defiant and begin striking with allies at U.S. targets scattered across the Gulf region. Here is a look at reactions from governments and officials around the world. Iraq The Iraqi government condemned the U.S. strikes on Iran, saying the military escalation created a grave threat to peace and security in the Middle East. It said it poses serious risks to regional stability and called for diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the crisis. 'The continuation of such attacks risks dangerous escalation with consequences that extend beyond the borders of any single state, threatening the security of the entire region and the world,' government spokesman Bassem al-Awadi said in the statement. Iraq has close relations with both Washington and Tehran, which it has attempted to balance over the years. The country also has a network of powerful Iranian-backed militias, which so far have not entered the fray since the outbreak of the Israel-Iran war. Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia expressed 'deep concern' about the U.S. airstrikes, but stopped short of condemning the move. 'The Kingdom underscores the need to exert all possible efforts to exercise restraint, de-escalate tensions, and avoid further escalation,' the kingdom's foreign ministry said in a statement. Saudi Arabia had earlier condemned Israel's strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and military leaders. Qatar Qatar said it 'regrets' escalating tensions in the Israel-Iran war. Its foreign ministry in a statement urged all parties to show self-restraint and 'avoid escalation, which the peoples of the region, burdened by conflicts and their tragic humanitarian repercussions, cannot tolerate.' Qatar has served as a key mediator in the Israel-Hamas war and is home to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. Oman Oman condemned the airstrikes, saying they escalated tensions in the region. The U.S. airstrikes threaten 'to expand the scope of the conflict and constitute a serious violation of international law and the United Nations charter,' a spokesperson for Oman's foreign ministry said in a statement. Oman was a mediator in the nuclear talks between Iran and the U.S. that have been upended by the Israel-Iran war. Lebanon Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said the U.S. bombing could lead to a regional conflict that no country could bear and called for negotiations. 'Lebanon, its leadership, parties, and people, are aware today, more than ever before, that it has paid a heavy price for the wars that erupted on its land and in the region,' Aoun said in a statement on X. 'It is unwilling to pay more, and there is no national interest in doing so, especially since the cost of these wars was and will be greater than its ability to bear.' Lebanon's new leadership, which came after Israel and the Hezbollah's militant group's devastating war, has urged the country to avoid being dragged into more conflict as it tries to rebuild itself and pull itself from yearslong economic crisis. Hezbollah has not taken military action against Israel in solidarity with its key ally Iran in the conflict, but has not yet commented on Washington's overnight strikes. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said that Lebanon needs to stay away from any possible regional spillover from the conflict. 'It is increasingly important for us to adhere strictly to the supreme national interest, which is the need to avoid Lebanon being ... drawn into the ongoing regional confrontation in any way,' Salam said in a post on X. European Union The European Union's top diplomat said Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon but she urged those involved in the conflict to show restraint. 'I urge all sides to step back, return to the negotiating table and prevent further escalation,' EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in a post on social media. Kallas will chair a meeting of the 27-nation bloc's foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, with the Israel-Iran war high on the agenda. Italy Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Iran's nuclear facilities 'represented a danger for the entire area' but hoped the action could lead to de-escalation in the conflict and negotiations. The Italian minister also said he will speak later Sunday with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, 'to understand the consequences that there may be from a security point of view,' after the U.S. attacks. Italy is doing everything possible to help Italian citizens who want to leave Iran and Israel amid the conflict, he said. United Nations U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was 'gravely alarmed' by the use of force by the United States. 'There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control – with catastrophic consequences for civilians, the region, and the world,' he said in a statement on the social media platform X. 'I call on Member States to de-escalate.' 'There is no military solution. The only path forward is diplomacy.' United Kingdom British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for Iran to return to the negotiating table to diplomatically end the crisis, saying stability was the priority in the volatile region. The U.K., along with the European Union, France and Germany, tried unsuccessfully to broker a diplomatic solution in Geneva last week with Iran. Starmer said Iran's nuclear program posed a grave threat to global security. 'Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and the U.S. has taken action to alleviate that threat," Starmer said. New Zealand New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters urged 'all parties to return to talks.' He wouldn't tell reporters Sunday whether New Zealand supported President Trump's actions, saying they had only just happened. The three-time foreign minister said the crisis is 'the most serious I've ever dealt with" and that it was 'critical further escalation is avoided.' 'Diplomacy will deliver a more enduring resolution than further military action,' he said. Hamas and the Houthis Both the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hamas have condemned the U.S. strikes. The Houthis vowed to support Iran in its fight against 'the Zionist and American aggression.' In a statement on Sunday, the Houthi political bureau called on Muslim nations to join 'the Jihad and resistance option as one front against the Zionist-American arrogance.' Hamas and the Houthis are part of Iran's so-called 'Axis of Resistance,' the collection of pro-Iranian proxies stretching from Yemen to Lebanon that for years gave Iran considerable power across the region. China A flash commentary from China's government-run media asked whether the U.S. is "repeating its Iraq mistake in Iran.' The online piece by CGTN, the foreign-language arm of the state broadcaster, said the U.S. strikes mark a dangerous turning point. 'History has repeatedly shown that military interventions in the Middle East often produce unintended consequences, including prolonged conflicts and regional destabilization,' it said, citing the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It said a measured, diplomatic approach that prioritizes dialogue over military confrontation offers the best hope for stability in the Middle East. South Korea South Korea's presidential office held an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss the potential security and economic ramifications of the U.S. strikes. National security director, Wi Sung-lac, asked officials to coordinate closely to minimize any negative impacts on South Korea, emphasizing that the top priority is ensuring the safety of the South Korean people and the continuation of their stable daily lives, according to the presidential office. Japan Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters Sunday it was crucial to calm the situation as soon as possible, adding that the Iranian nuclear weapons development also must be prevented. Ishiba, asked if he supports the U.S. attacks on Iran, declined to comment. He was speaking to reporters after an emergency meeting with officials from key ministries over the U.S. military action. Ishiba said officials are still assessing details and doing their utmost to protect the safety of the Japanese nationals in Iran, Israel and elsewhere in the region. While the U.S. attacks on Iran do not affect Japan's stable energy supply for the time being, Ishiba said, he has instructed officials to 'watch the development with a sense of urgency and take every precaution' to prevent an increase in oil and utility costs ahead of the summer when energy demand rises. Any conflict in the Middle East is a concern for resource-scarce Japan, most of whose oil imports come from the region. Meanwhile, Japan's largest-circulation newspaper Yomiuri has distributed an extra edition on the attack in Tokyo. Australia Australia, which shuttered its embassy in Tehran and evacuated staff Friday, pushed for a diplomatic end to the conflict. 'We have been clear that Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program has been a threat to international peace and security,' a government official said in a written statement. 'We note the U.S. President's statement that now is the time for peace.' 'The security situation in the region is highly volatile. We continue to call for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy.'
