Mendacious rationales: the lies behind Operation Lion’s Roar

Many in the United States would scarcely identify the difference between Iran and Iraq, both countries based on ancient civilisations so chronologically distant as to be fiction. If not Marvel, it's not marvellous. But another fiction came into play towards the end of February as the United States and Israel reprised their role as world rogues and crockery breakers by attacking Iran for a second time in less than a year in a joint campaign called Operation Lion's Roar and Epic Fury. Following the vulgar playbook on regime change used against Iraq in 2003 by the US-led forces, a variation of the same theme is being used against Iran.

The difference here is that neither the US nor Israel are willing to commit ground forces. They will kill key leaders and figures across the Iranian regime, leaving an inchoate resistance against the clerics to seize the day. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has apparently been killed, with US President Donald J. Trump calling him "one of the most evil people in history". Israel also claims that the opening strikes killed seven senior defence and intelligence officials, including Khamenei's top security advisor Ali Shamkhani, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Mohammad Pakpour, Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh and the chief of Iranian military intelligence Saleh Asadi.

The February 28 statement from Trump posted on Truth Social as an 8-minute video declared that the objective of the attack was "to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime." This was curious given the previous US-Israeli attacks in June 2025 that had apparently "obliterated the regime's nuclear program at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan." Then efforts were supposedly made on his part to seek a deal to prevent Iran ever pursuing nuclear weapons. "We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn't want to do it. Again they wanted to."

In this haze of confusion, Trump had concluded that Tehran had, after all, decided to "rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland." Their missile industry would be razed, the navy annihilated, the proxies crippled. Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard would receive total immunity if they laid down their weapons, "or you will face certain death." As for the unspecified "great proud people of Iran", they should stay sheltered as the bombing continued. When done, the government "will be yours to take".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement also confirmed the objective of ending "the threat of the Ayatollah regime in Iran." That regime had domestically repressed its citizens, "instilled fear in the peoples of the region", created a global terror network, "invested enormous resources to develop atomic bombs and tens of thousands of missiles intended, as it defined it, to erase Israel from the map of the world." They armed "terrorist proxies".

Even more stridently, and fanatically than Trump, Netanyahu restated those themes of existential threat and untrustworthiness so characteristic of the wicked Persian. Despite "a decisive blow" being struck against the regime and its proxies last June, "the wounded predator has not ceased its attempts to recover, for the same purpose, to destroy us." (Evidently not that decisive, then.) Having stated every year for years that Iran would develop the means to destroy Israel within a short time, he came up with another fictional twist: not only were the tyrants "plotting to rebuild their nuclear and missile capabilities", they were also placing them "underground, where we cannot reach them. If we do not stop them now, they will become invulnerable."

The tissues of lies in both statements are impressive and incorrigible. Operation Midnight Hammer had seemingly not obliterated Iran's nuclear facilities, suggesting they had been ineffectual, indulgent or incompetent. And why bother keeping the US-Iranian dialogue on Teheran's nuclear program going if a military solution proved inevitable? For a President who boasts about his ability to make deals, few are being brokered of late.

Both Israel and the US used the same verbal formulae as before: exaggerate the capabilities of Iran to build consensus for an illegal war; exaggerate a military prowess of such biblical force that simply does not exist. Again, there are too many chilling parallels to the pattern followed by the George W. Bush administration leading up to the pre-emptive attack on Iraq in March 2003. Imminent threats were very much part of the hysterical argot then in justifying the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Needing justifications plucked out of thin air, the US government sought propping evidence from the United Kingdom. Prime Minister Tony Blair duly supplied the infamous 2002 dossier with the chilling claim that Iraqi forces could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of being ordered to do so. (This nicely supplemented the fabricated claim that Saddam Hussein was also pursuing a nuclear weapons program with the purchase of 500 tonnes of yellowcake uranium powder from Niger.) The key official behind the dossier, the diligent arms expert David Kelly, committed suicide in despairing disgust, having been ordered to include the 45-minute claim. No such weapons were ever found, and a central rationale of the invasion collapsed. The United States, UK, Australia and a motley crew of coalition members were found to be brigands.

There will, no doubt, be some cheer within Iran at these strikes, notably from the young who have suffered at the hands of a clerical, authoritarian regime. Washington's allies will snivel with coerced approval citing the brutality of Iran's regime while ignoring breaches of international law they are condoning. (Australia's response was particularly despicable.) The Shia-Sunni division will be tested, with various US bases and military assets already struck in the Gulf States by a regime trying to survive. The United Nations will continue being treated like a bed-ridden dowager whose influence was from another day, conduct more contemptible even than 2003 when many Western states did, at the very least, show solidarity in rejecting the use of force by the United States and its allies in the absence of a Security Council resolution. In the meantime, American diplomats who open their frontier-stretched mouths claiming interest for peace and negotiations should make everyone reach for the gun.