{"id":313997,"date":"2026-03-09T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=313997"},"modified":"2026-03-07T09:45:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T09:45:57","slug":"israel-and-the-united-states-cannot-win-the-war-of-deception-against-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/03\/israel-and-the-united-states-cannot-win-the-war-of-deception-against-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel and the United States Cannot Win the War of Deception against Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the girls of <\/i>the <\/i>Shajarah Tayyebeh<\/i> <\/i>elementary school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, Iran, who were killed by the illegal Israeli-US war of aggression.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

*************************<\/p>\n

In the middle of negotiations, the United States and Israel launched a new attack against Iran based on an old, and false, argument: that Iran was going to build nuclear weapons.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

5 Mar 2026\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0On 28 February, a few hours after negotiators said that Iran had accepted many of the demands regarding its nuclear programme, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran. This was the second strike since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in June 2025. Both strikes are illegal, since they violate Iran\u2019s sovereignty, which is guaranteed by the United Nations Charter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Iran is a sovereign country and, just like the United States, a founding member of the United Nations. It is therefore entitled to all the benefits and responsibilities of the UN Charter. The United States signed and ratified the UN Charter, which means that the US government has a treaty obligation to the Charter and to the other member states. After President George W. Bush violated the UN Charter to start a war of aggression against Iraq, US President Donald Trump told Howard Stern on 16 April 2004, \u2018I think Iraq is a terrible mistake. And to think that when we leave, it\u2019s gonna be this nice democratic country. I mean give me a break\u2019. Trump is not taking his own advice.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/p>\n

Mahmoud Pakzad (Iran), Barber Shop<\/i>, 1958.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Why did the United States want to attack Iran, a country with nearly a hundred million people and a centuries-long tradition of patriotism, first in 2025 and then in 2026? In his last State of the Union address<\/a>, Trump said that the main reason was that he believed that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme. Yet Iran has repeatedly said that it does not have a nuclear weapons programme. This was laid out clearly by Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei in a fatwa<\/i><\/a> (judgment) that he first made public in 2003, but which had been written a decade earlier. In that fatwa, Ayatollah Khamenei noted that Iran\u2019s soldiers suffered from the use of illegal mustard gas and other chemical weapons by Iraq (supplied by the United States and West Germany), and that this experience and his reading of Islamic ethics made it unconscionable to use weapons of mass destruction. Leader after leader in Iran has reiterated the same view.<\/p>\n

In the State of the Union address on 24 February, Trump said, \u2018We haven\u2019t heard those secret words, we will never have a nuclear weapon<\/i>\u2019. But this is precisely what Ayatollah Khamenei had said. In fact, a few hours before Trump\u2019s address, this is exactly what Iran\u2019s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi tweeted<\/a>: \u2018Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon\u2019. On 17 February, Iran\u2019s President Masoud Pezeshkian said<\/a>, \u2018Based on the fatwa of the Supreme Leader, from an ideological standpoint we are absolutely not pursuing nuclear weapons, and however they wish to verify it, we are prepared\u2019. He asked, \u2018In what language should we say we don\u2019t want nuclear weapons?\u2019. His statement, in Farsi, was translated into a range of languages. Yet it seems that news of this did not reach the White House.<\/p>\n

In 1957, Iran and the United States signed<\/a> the Agreement for Cooperation Concerning Civil Uses of Atomic Energy, which allowed the US to transfer nuclear technology and materials through the Atoms for Peace programme created<\/a> by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1959, the Iranian government \u2013 then controlled by the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi \u2013 opened the Tehran Nuclear Research Centre. Several years later, the US provided Iran with a 5-megawatt thermal nuclear reactor that was designed for medical radioisotope production and scientific research.<\/p>\n

After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the new government shut down the nuclear energy research programme. Following the war with Iraq, which ended in 1988, and the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, Iran restarted its nuclear energy programme for electricity generation, medical isotope production, and scientific training. In 1995, Iran signed a deal with Russia to rebuild the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran (built in 1975 by the West Germans and bombed by the Iraqis using West German intelligence). Again, Iranian officials have repeatedly said, we do not want nuclear weapons ever<\/i>. The US did not seem to disbelieve the Iranians when it restarted nuclear energy programmes for these purposes.<\/p>\n

Everything changed after the US attacked Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, removing Iran\u2019s two historical adversaries (the Taliban and Saddam Hussein\u2019s government). Iran, which was previously hemmed in by its neighbours, now had the opportunity to build relations with Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. This was a shock to Washington, which had not clearly understood the ramifications of its illegal wars. To isolate Iran, the Bush administration concocted the myth of Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons ambitions and cynically used the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for its campaign.<\/p>\n

Bush, as he often did, ignored the facts before him. What were these facts?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In 2007, the US intelligence community\u2019s National Intelligence Estimate<\/a> concluded, \u2018We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme\u2019. Whether Iran actually had a nuclear weapons programme before this date is not the issue; the CIA and other agencies agreed that there was no programme after 2003.<\/li>\n
  2. In 2011, an IAEA report<\/a> suggested that Iran\u2019s actions to procure various kinds of materials (\u2018nuclear related and dual use equipment\u2019) indicated a \u2018possible military dimension\u2019, but with no evidence. Each of the accusations came with caveats. It seemed that the IAEA was under immense pressure from the US government and its European allies. The report bore all the marks of political influence.<\/li>\n
  3. In 2015, the IAEA released its Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran\u2019s Nuclear Programme<\/i><\/a>, written by its director general, Yukiya Amano. This report conclusively says that there are \u2018no credible indications\u2019 of any activities relevant to a nuclear explosion device after 2009 and no credible evidence of diversion of nuclear material for weapons.<\/li>\n
  4. In 2025, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi told<\/a> Al Jazeera definitively, \u2018We did not find in Iran elements to indicate that there is an active, systematic plan to build a nuclear weapon\u2019.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There can be no clearer statement than that of Grossi: \u2018we did not find\u2019. Put that beside the statement from President Pezeshkian: \u2018in what language should we say we don\u2019t want nuclear weapons?\u2019.<\/p>\n

    There are no nuclear weapons in Iran. To go to war on that pretext is to follow the example of Bush and his \u2018weapons of mass destruction\u2019 in Iraq. Where were those weapons? In his imagination.<\/p>\n

    \n
    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Kazem Chalipa (Iran), Reunion<\/i>, n.d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    Certainly, there are great problems within Iran. A combination of the attempt by the United States and Europe to make Iran\u2019s economy scream and poor economic management by Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Seyed Ali Madanizadeh (trained at the University of Chicago) have created serious problems for Iran\u2019s working people. But Iran cannot solve its problems without an end to the US-imposed hybrid war that suffocates its economy and its peoples.<\/p>\n

    \n
    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Sarah Issakharian (Iran), The First Supper<\/i>, 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    The Iranian people know war very well. It has been imposed on them repeatedly, from the Anglo-Persian War (1856\u20131857) to the Iraqi invasion (1980) to the current hybrid war.<\/p>\n

    In the poem \u2018Lidless Coffins with No Bodies\u2019, the Iranian poet Behzad Zarrinpour (born 1968) wrote about the terror of war, a terror that was inflicted by Bush\u2019s \u2018terrible mistake\u2019. I want to share a part of that beautiful and impactful poem with you:<\/p>\n

    The Wind has filled the city\u2019s nostrils
    \nwith destruction\u2019s odour.
    \nNo one flees the harsh sun
    \nFor the gentleness of unstable walls.
    \nSpread-out inhospitable tablecloths,
    \nEmpty promises,
    \nStomachs that instead of bread
    \nEat bullets,
    \nAnd bankrupt salt sellers
    \nWho have dispatched their gunnysacks
    \nTo the war front to be swelled with sand.
    \nGrandmother\u2019s tongue is so terror-struck
    \nShe cannot remember her prayers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    _______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at<\/em> Globetrotter. He is the director of <\/em>Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research<\/em><\/a> and a senior non-resident fellow at <\/em>Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies<\/em><\/a>, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including <\/em>The Darker Nations<\/a> and <\/em>The Poorer Nations<\/a>. His latest book is <\/em>Washington Bullets<\/a>, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Go to Original \u2013 thetricontinental.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    5 Mar 2026\u00a0–\u00a0In the middle of negotiations, the United States and Israel launched a new attack against Iran based on an old, and false, argument: that Iran was going to build nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":186469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[225],"tags":[417,100,3281,950,742,88,3925,767,475,2571,3924,818,1190,2159,880,99,249,2200,70,481,886],"class_list":["post-313997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlight","tag-bullying","tag-direct-violence","tag-evil-empire","tag-invasion","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-khamenei","tag-middle-east","tag-netanyahu","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-peace-hoax","tag-proxy-war","tag-regime-change","tag-rogue-states","tag-state-terrorism","tag-structural-violence","tag-trump","tag-us-empire","tag-usa","tag-warfare","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313998,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313997\/revisions\/313998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}