Escalating situation and Iran fights an existential war

Mar 06, 2026 Letters

---

Dear Editor,

On the last day of February, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a massive surprise attack on Iran. Hundreds of airplanes from both countries swarmed the skies and began an extensive bombing campaign. In the first hours the Ayatollah was murdered together with several of his family members and important persons in its military and government. Thus began Iran’s war for its very existence.

Iran began its retaliation almost immediately. It sent hundreds of rockets towards Israel and on the military bases of the United States that are in almost all the countries in the Middle East region.

Hundreds of civilians are being killed in the exchange. The civilians in Iran are experiencing the worst. This is because Israel is deliberating targeting residential areas and civilian social infrastructure such as hospitals and schools. Some one hundred and seventy-five little girls have perished as their school, which were targeted at the beginning of the treacherous attack.

The Iranians are concentrating on military targets in Israel and US military bases in countries of the region. Those countries have been used by the US to attack Iran, and that is why they are regarded as legitimate targets.

The attack on the civilians is a modus operandi of Israel for some time. We have seen this in every war that they have prosecuted. We have only just experienced the inhumane destruction of Gaza where almost all the residential buildings were destroyed, so too were hospitals, schools, etc. We saw it as they constantly bomb Lebanon and earlier Syria. The objective is to punish the population to try to turn them against their governments.

This is classical state terrorism.

The questions being frequently asked are how and why are we in this very dangerous situation that can spread beyond the Middle East? What are the main causes?

After all we know that Iran has never really threatened the United States. It is true that in the early period after the 1979 revolution they were shouting “death to America!” because the US was the main prop of the hated Shaw regime which ruled Iran since the US/ British intervention that removed the democratically elected Mosaddeq Government in 1953. However, that was merely sloganeering since they really never had the capacity to be considered as a threat to the USA.

Indeed, no country in the world would want a conflict with the United States. After all, it has by far the most powerful army in the whole world. Its military budget is bigger than the next ten to fifteen countries combined. President Trump has announced that in a year’s time the US military budget will reach the tropospheric figure of one and a half trillion dollars. It is just too dangerous to want to pick a fight with such a military power.

The answer lies in the strategic aims of Israel and the United States.

Israel does not regard its borders as fixed. It is working on the concept of “living borders.” They have been constantly trying to expand their landmass. That is why they are conducting genocide in the Gaza, the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. They are daily seizing the Palestinian lands.

They have occupied the Golan Heights in Syria since 1967 and have recently seized even more with the overthrow of the Asaad regime. They have seized parts of Lebanon, and their aim is to take over the whole country.  They even have parts of Egypt.

They have their eyes on Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the other countries in the Middle East.

Recall recently the courageous journalist Tucker Carlson interviewed the US Ambassador to Israel, Mr. Mike Huckabee, in which he said that he did not mind if Israel takes the whole Middle East. The justification is that the lands were promised by God.

This shows how dangerous it is to have religious fanatics in power.

Israel was able to expand and is expanding through wars. The group in power now in that country led by Benjamin Netanyahu has no interest in peace. They want forever wars. That is why every time that negotiations reach the stage of having agreements the Netanyahu clique sabotage it.

Recall that this war began when the negotiators felt that they were very close to an agreement on February 27. A meeting was set to continue the conversation on March 2 to facilitate the accord. Lo and behold on February 28 Israel and the United States attacked Iran and killed the Ayatollah, many of his family members and senior government and military officials.

Iran was taken by surprise because they thought that they were still negotiating. It was deception to lull the leaders into a false sense of security then to kill them.

This happened last year in June as well, when Iran was in negotiations with the US and again close to an agreement when it was attacked by Isreal.

Netanyahu is no stranger to this tactic. He has used it many times in his blood-stained career. It is apposite to recall that one of Israel’s greatest Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was close to an agreement with Yassar Arafat to establish a Palestinian state when he was assassinated. Guess who led the attack against him?

It was Benjami Netanyahu. According to the widow of Prime Minister Rabin, Ms. Leah Rabin, it was Netanyahu who created the atmosphere for the murder of her husband in 1995. This is how she described him “He is all political manipulation. He doesn’t really believe in anything. I don’t think he had any convictions other than staying in power.” She went on to add, “Between what he says and the truth, and the reality, there are the oceans…” (January 16th, 1998).

Over the decades Israel has made a lot of gains in its expansionist scheme. It was able to achieve this principally because of its alliance with the United States. Now the Arab states that surround Israel are all vassals of the United States. They find themselves objectively supporting Israel in many of its deadly schemes because of pressures from US and Israel it-self.

The only country in the region that is not going along with the US/Israel alliance is Iran. It has refused to bow down to the mighty US and Israel. It is the only country in the region that is strong enough to stop Israel expansionism. Iran has also supported forces in various countries in the region that resist the Israeli domination. It has stood staunchly in support of the Palestinian demand for its own state in the lands of its ancestors.

Therefore, Iran is targeted for destruction.

Israel cannot accomplish that task alone. Therefore, it needs to get the United States involved by hook and/ or crook. It was able to do so in a variety of ways.

A big part of its success in enmeshing the US in its plans is the use of the American Israel Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This organisation finances the campaign of members of the US Congress of both parties. Any Congress person that is not 100% in support of Israel is campaigned against. Its influence is not confined to the Congress but to state Congresses, Senates and on the elections of the President and those making up the Executive.

The Trump administration seem to have learnt a lot from Israel in relation to negotiations. It was the same method of deception and blackmail in International Relations. The Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in his Davos address in January pointed out that similar tactics are used in international economic relations. He said “…great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited…”

That is why the US disregard all human rights consideration and continues to arm Israel to the teeth as well as supporting its collapsing economy despite the atrocities it has and continues to commit. University students and other who speak out against Israel apartheid and even fascist activities are persecuted in the US. The US government is sacrificing all that it once stood for, free speech, human rights, etc for Israel.

Another method appears to be blackmail. The scandal of the Epstein files is beginning to show that there is an espionage side of this affair. Initial thinking is that Epstein worked for Mossad, the Intelligence arm of Isreal’s security forces. He has accumulated compromising materials on many very influential persons and use them in the interest of Isreal.

The United States, while going along with Israel has its own interests. The US wants to maintain its position as the number one economic and military power in the world. It has become very afraid of the rise of China as an economic giant. This fear was heightened since the economic crises of 2008 when China emerged as the main engine powering the global economy.

It is not afraid of China attacking them now. They know that China has no desire for war. On the contrary, China sees its economic progress as directly linked to World Peace. What the US strategists fear is that in the future, China’s economic power will turn into military power, that can challenge the US.

That is why they have adopted a policy to put a break on China’s growth. They are using their power to press countries to stop trading with China and where that is not immediately possible to curtail it as much as possible.

They have unleashed a massive propaganda campaign against China, trying to paint the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a predatory state that wants to dominate the world.

That was one of the reasons that they attacked Venezuela. At the time of the kidnapping of that country’s president, the oil industry, with the technical assistance of China was being revived. That had to be stopped to prevent China from having access to Venezuela’s oil.

The war against Iran will also disrupt the economic relations between China and Iran. China gets a large part of its energy requirement from Iran.

It is this unfounded fear that has influenced its policy to Russia as well. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the US saw it as a great opportunity to never to allow Russia to rise again as a military superpower. Therefore, it broke its promise not to move NATO an inch beyond Germany, should Russia agree to allow the reunification of Germany.

They moved NATO thousands of miles right on towards Russia and used Ukraine to fight a proxy war against Russia. Recall in 2022 how gleefully President Biden was when he boasted that they would make Russian ruble into rubble.

Things have not worked out as they expected.

The fact is that neither China nor Russia wants to harbour any hostility towards the US. They don’t want a fight with the US. Indeed, no country in the world want to clash with the US. Its military is very powerful and only a fool would want a fight with it. It is clear that no country is threatening the US.

China’s approach to international relations is that the more other countries that can become prosperous, the better it is for the PRC because it will open greater possibilities for trade. That is the philosophy behind its very bold and ambitious “Belt and Road Initiative.”

If the US can rid itself from the “fear” of China that would create a favourable atmosphere for cooperation and would bring prosperity to the whole world.

What the world needs now is more cooperation, not confrontation. This war on Iran must be brought to an end as soon as possible.

The United States has the main responsibility to stop the carnage, after all it is the US and Israel that are the aggressors. I urge them to stop the aggression now and return to diplomacy.

Regards,

Donald Ramotar

Former President

---

• Donald Ramotar, Escalating situation, Iran, Israel, Letters, United States, war

---