Why Is The US Attacking Iran?
washington : The United States and Israel launched their most ambitious strikes against Iran in decades on Saturday, with an operation that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
US President Donald Trump’s biggest foreign policy gamble of his presidency comes after he campaigned for re-election as a “president of peace” and said he preferred a diplomatic solution to the problem with Iran. Trump didn’t make a sustained case to the American people before taking action, but he briefly addressed the issue in his State of the Union address last Tuesday and then in a video message released Saturday, laying out the following key goals:
PREVENTING IRAN FROM ACQUIRING NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Trump has repeatedly said that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon and repeated this in his video message. He claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in strikes last June, but said this week that Tehran had attempted to rebuild the program. “Imagine how emboldened this regime would be if it had, and indeed was, armed with nuclear weapons to deliver its messages,” he said on Saturday. he said.
One of the reasons for the US and Israel’s June bombings was that Iran was very close to producing nuclear weapons.
The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.S. intelligence community have separately assessed that Iran halted its program to develop nuclear weapons in 2003 and has refused to seek nuclear weapons, even though Tehran has said it has the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes despite being a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Western powers say there is no credible civilian justification for Iran to enrich uranium to the levels it produces, and the IAEA says this is seriously concerning. No other country has achieved this without eventually producing nuclear weapons.
IRAN’S MISSILE PROGRAM INCLUDES
In his State of the Union address on Saturday, Trump touched on advances in Iran’s missile program, saying it was a growing threat to the United States. He said on Saturday that Iran “is now seeking to continue developing long-range missiles that could threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed abroad, and could soon reach the American homeland.”
Iranian state media claimed that Tehran had developed a missile that could reach the United States, but provided no details to support its claims.
TO ELIMINATE THREATS TO THE AMERICANS AND THEIR ALLIES FROM IRAN AND THE PROXIES
Trump said the aim of the attacks launched Saturday was to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, which is a group of very tough, scary people.”
Iran’s “threatening activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our overseas bases, and our allies around the world,” he said.
Trump cited attacks that began in 1979, including Iran’s violent seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and holding dozens of Americans hostage for 444 days; the 1983 attack on US Marine barracks in Beirut by “proxies” in which 241 US military personnel died, and “numerous” other actions against US forces in the Middle East and international shipping lanes in recent years.
He also noted Iran’s support for Hamas, which launched a deadly cross-border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
PUNITIVE TREATMENT OF PROTESTERS
In his State of the Union address, Trump repeated the charge that Iran has killed at least 32,000 protesters in the past few months; these figures could not be verified. He noted on Saturday that Iran “killed tens of thousands of its own citizens in the streets during protests.”
US-based HRANA group, which monitors the human rights situation in Iran, said in a recent report that it had recorded 7,007 confirmed deaths and 11,744 were under investigation.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran had published a “comprehensive list” that included all 3,117 people killed in the incidents. An Iranian official told Reuters last month that authorities had confirmed at least 5,000 deaths, including nearly 500 of security personnel.
REGIME CHANGE
On Saturday, Trump called on the “great proud people of Iran” to rise up and take over power from their rulers.
“Tonight I say that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” he said. “When we’re done, take over your government. This will be yours. This will probably be your only chance for generations.”
Trump, who was monitoring the operation from his Mar-a-Lago oceanfront resort in Florida, announced on Saturday afternoon that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had died in the attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously said Khamenei’s compound had been destroyed, and a senior Israeli official had previously told Reuters that his body had been found.
Iranian state media later confirmed that Khamenei was killed in the attack.
While calling on the Iranians to overthrow the government, Trump warned: “Heavy, precise bombings… will continue uninterrupted throughout the week or as long as necessary to achieve our goal of PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND REALLY THE WORLD!”
