Craig Murray: You Can’t Bomb Iran Into Zionism

Consortium News
Volume 30, Number 173 —Monday, June 23, 2025


Craig Murray: You Can’t Bomb Iran Into Zionism


The U.S. not only has zero interest in peace, it is engaging in morally abhorrent levels of dishonesty and deception, attacking under a false flag of truce

Protest in Tehran against Israeli strikes on Iran, June 20, 2025. (Avash Media/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

Israel and the USA have each attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations. Iran must not fall for it a third time. Negotiation is dead.

Israel attacked Iran during negotiations between Iran and the U.S., with the next scheduled meeting just three days away.

Trump then gave Iran a two-week ultimatum to agree a peace deal. Iran held one foreign-minister-level meeting with the U.K., Germany and France and scheduled a second meeting. Trump then attacked Iran with 11 days of the ultimatum still to run.

Plainly the Zionist West not only has zero interest in peace, it is engaging in morally abhorrent levels of dishonesty and deception, attacking under a false flag of truce. The idea that Iran should now return to “negotiation” with such appallingly deceitful interlocutors is risible.

It is also plain that the USA has no intention of stopping the attacks.

Trump’s statement said that further attacks will follow unless Iran stops fighting. Plainly the objectives of the USA are not in truth merely the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme, but total victory for Israel in the war it has started with Iran.

Trump’s demand of “unconditional surrender” still stands and the aim remains, as I have stated, regime change to install the “shah” with a Sunni prime minister.

Zionist regimes have been installed in Lebanon and Syria in the last six months. They already existed in the Gulf states and Jordan. The aim to install a Zionist regime in Tehran is overreach by Netanyahu and Trump.

You cannot bomb the Iranian people into Zionism.

The extent of bombing, and the extent of death, that would be required for regime change in Iran is astonishing.

Contrary to neoliberal expectation but obvious to anyone with a brain, the attacks on Iran have rallied support for its government. I find nothing more nauseating than the Western “feminists” who are campaigning for war against Iran to bring about regime change.

Not only would regime change involve the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women in war, there is no doubt whatsoever that Western destruction of Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq made the lives of women in those countries much worse, both in terms of infrastructure and conditions of life and also in terms of women’s position in society.


Blatant Lies & Propaganda

The attempt to gaslight the public with abject lies about Iran’s nuclear weapon capability is so blatant a repeat of the Iraqi WMD scam that I am astonished they dare to try it. The attacks on Iran are completely illegal — and I am quite sure will in fact lead to Iran changing its mind and deciding to possess a nuclear weapon, which will be achieved within five years.

You can have watched or listened to hundreds of hours of BBC broadcasting on the current war on Iran, and never have heard once that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The levels of propaganda are truly extreme.

The attacks on Iran are illegal. There is no doubt of that. Iran faces a monumental struggle, but has no choice but to fight.

In the meantime not a single day has passed when Israel has not shot and killed Palestinians in Gaza in the queues for food. The genocide goes on, and the U.S. and Israel have succeeded in turning the world’s attention and bringing their Western satraps back into line, just when the Gaza genocide was alarming politicians internationally by its blatancy.

J. A. Hobson, English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism, circa 1910. (Elliott & Fry, Wikimedia Commons)


I see much futile discussion as to whether Israel is controlling the U.S. or the U.S. controlling Israel.

Plainly the answer is both; there is a deep symbiotic relationship of the political classes in both places. The key point is that the Israel settler colony carries an insupportable weight in the policy decisions of Western politicians.

Like all colonialism — and as outlined by Vladimir Lenin and J.A. Hobson — this is because colonialism benefits the personal interests of the wealthy and military classes but is a burden on working people.

I find Hobson offers an invaluable perspective to look at the Israel settler colony. Long-term readers will know that I have stated that J. A. Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study had more effect on my understanding of the world than any other book. I strongly recommend it (there is a new edition with a foreword by Jeremy Corbyn).

I am a thinker and writer who tries to use my experience to explain and analyse what is happening. I am also a campaigner and activist. What I am not is a political organiser. Those who put together the March to Gaza or the Freedom Flotilla have my admiration, and have skills which I do not possess.

I therefore put forward this idea with no apology that I am not the man to organise it. The British sovereign base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus is fundamental to the logistics of the attacks on Iran for the U.K., USA and Israel. A gathering of thousands of activists in Cyprus to close down the base appears to me the most viable and useful option to cause real problems for the neoliberal genociders.

The Akrotiri base has a very large perimeter and far too few RAF Regiment troops to guard it against thousands of determined activists. The government of Cyprus is unlikely to defend the British sovereign base from peaceful activists. Cyprus is a very easy place to reach.

As our panicked rulers seek to ban the direct-action group Palestine Action as a “terrorist group” — despite the fact they have never injured anybody — it seems to me essential we continue and indeed increase the resistance. The very notion of “terrorism” has been debased to include journalism and peaceful protest. We must not be terrified into allowing fascism to prevail.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.