Unmasking Zionism and US Imperialism: The Urgency of Peace in the Middle East

By José Reinaldo Carvalho - The new military escalation in the Middle East, marked by the brutal attacks launched by Israel against Iran, represents one of the most dangerous and scandalous chapters in contemporary geopolitics. Behind the narrative of "self-defense" or "combating terrorism" and the Persian country's nuclear program, what is underway is a war of aggression planned with coldness and brazenness by the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv, with the explicit acquiescence of the United States government, now again headed by Donald Trump. This war has clear objectives, and none of them are linked to peace or security: to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, to overthrow the Iranian government, to assassinate Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to redraw the political map of the Middle East according to Israel's wishes, and to consolidate the absolute dominance of a "State" that, far from being a normal national entity, acts as a global pariah, an enemy of peaceful coexistence among nations.

The criminals unmasked 

Benjamin Netanyahu, a long-serving tyrant at the head of the Israeli government, is today the most visible face of the Zionist war machine. Using the rhetoric of survival and "Israel's right to defend itself," the Israeli prime minister fuels an expansionist, supremacist, and deeply racist strategy. The war against Iran is the most recent unfolding of this plan. It is a war proclaimed by the aggressors as existential, but which, in practice, aims to exterminate the most powerful regional adversary capable of counterbalancing Israeli and American power in the region.

Netanyahu has never hidden his objectives: to prevent Iran from developing technologically, even on peaceful grounds; to prevent Iranian influence in the region; to destroy, once and for all, any possibility of coordinated Arab-Islamic resistance against Israeli colonialism and its illegal occupations. The Israeli prime minister's obsession with Iran is accompanied by messianic delusions, leading him to believe he can kill sovereign leaders of other countries with impunity, under the false pretext of hunting terrorists. The public threat to eliminate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, is a direct affront to the Charter of the United Nations, international law, and the very idea of ​​national sovereignty.

If Netanyahu is the executor of the war, Donald Trump is his accomplice and sponsor. In his second term, the US president is re-enacting the worst moments of American unilateralism. Far from seeking diplomacy, Trump opts for "maximum pressure," a euphemism for economic blockades, extraterritorial sanctions, diplomatic sabotage, and encouragement of warmongering. It is a continuation of the policy that led to the US withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Compensation Agreement (JCPOA), violating a multilateral commitment that had been negotiated for years.

Trump not only learned of the Israeli attack on Iran but approved it behind the scenes, encouraging Netanyahu to carry out the offensive. He does not rule out the possibility of direct involvement in this war. This criminal complicity must be denounced. The US is not a spectator; it is a central actor in the ongoing aggression. What they want to impose on Iran is unconditional surrender. And this, quite rightly, the Islamic Republic refuses.

Rejecting the nuclear lie 

The nuclear pretext has always been the battle horse of Zionism and imperialism to try to isolate and subdue Iran. They accuse the Islamic Republic of developing atomic weapons, without ever presenting consistent evidence. But now, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself, through its director Rafael Grossi, dismantles this castle of lies once again. Grossi was clear: “We have no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. What exists is a monitored civilian program, with safeguards and regular inspections.”

The IAEA chief's statement exposes the falsity of the claims made by Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump. Both are making political use of the nuclear threat to justify illegal military actions and pressure the international community to adopt unilateral and illegitimate sanctions against Tehran. It is the diplomacy of blackmail and the fabrication of imaginary enemies to legitimize an interventionist agenda.

A “State” that rejects legitimate nation-states. 

It must be stated clearly: Israel is not a nation-state like any other. This is not about denying its existence, but about affirming its exceptional and criminal nature. Israel maintains a colonial occupation through violent and criminal means, similar to those of Nazism, in the 21st century, openly defying UN Security Council resolutions, committing genocide against the Palestinian people, and acting militarily in sovereign territories without any consequences.

Israel is the only country with a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East – never inspected, never subjected to international control. And it is the only one that arrogates to itself the right to decide who can or cannot have access to nuclear energy. This arrogance stems from its Zionist ideology, which was once equated by the UN itself with racism. An exclusivist, racist, and theocratic ideology that subjects all Israeli politics to the dogma of Jewish superiority and territorial expansion at any cost. Zionism is not a philosophy of liberation, but an ideology of occupation and supremacy. It is against this ideology and the politics that derive from it, and not against a people or a religion, that the legitimate resistance of the peoples of the Middle East and the world must rise.

Iran's legitimate self-defense

In the face of Israeli attacks, Iran has the sovereign right to defend itself. It has the right to protect its territory, its people, and its leadership. It has the right to maintain its civilian nuclear program, under international supervision, for energy, scientific, and medical purposes. Iran, unlike Israel, is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), submits to IAEA inspections, and cooperates with multilateral security mechanisms.

The claim that Iran is a threat is false. The country has never invaded its neighbors, unlike Israel and the US. It is a regional actor with legitimate interests, allied with countries such as Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq, a member of BRICS, and a promoter of multipolarity. Its support for groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis is part of a geostrategic alliance seeking to contain the hegemony of the Tel Aviv-Washington axis. To call this "terrorism" is to invert reality.

Immediate ceasefire: peace for the people.

Given the current escalation, governments and political forces that love peace and uphold international law must demand an immediate ceasefire. Israeli aggression against Iran is part of the same cycle of violence that underpins ethnic cleansing in Palestine. The Gaza genocide, the arbitrary executions in the West Bank, the bombings in Lebanon and Syria – all of this is part of a larger project aimed at eliminating popular resistance to Zionist domination.

Peace in the Middle East requires containing Israel and resuming diplomatic processes based on equality among nations. Peace is impossible as long as Israel is allowed to act above the law, as long as it maintains its occupation of Palestine, and as long as it remains the ultimate expression of racism, supremacism, and colonialism in the contemporary world. Peace demands justice, an end to apartheid, respect for Iran's sovereignty, and the restoration of the rights of Arab and Muslim peoples.

To stop Zionism and imperialism.

There is no way around it: current Israeli policy, with the complicit support of the US, represents a global danger. It is a toxic alliance between Zionism and imperialism, both warmongering and unilateralist, which jeopardizes world peace, destroys true sovereign states, and promotes barbarism.

Stopping this policy is the task of all nations. The world needs to stop Netanyahu, contain Trump, and ensure that Iran—like all countries—can exist, develop, and defend itself within the framework of international law.

It is not Iran that threatens the world. It is Israel. It is Zionism. It is imperialism.

The ongoing war in the Middle East is not merely a regional conflict. It is a battle between two visions of the world. On one side, imperialism and Zionism; on the other, the peoples fighting for self-determination, sovereignty, and multilateral coexistence. 

It is urgent to denounce these actors for what they truly are: fomenters of chaos, violators of international norms, criminals against peace. It is up to the countries of the Global South, social movements, defenders of international law and the self-determination of peoples to raise their voices.

It is time to stop Israel's criminal hand, demand an immediate end to the bombings against Iran, guarantee this country's right to sovereign development, and put an end, once and for all, to the massacre of the Palestinian people.