What Israel and the US didn’t achieve

The 12-day war of aggression waged principally by Israel against Iran has been fascinating for its starkness on multiple fronts. Much like Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, on open display yet unstoppable, the falsehood and illegality of both Israeli and American words and actions continued unabated throughout the war.

It was, in every way, a no-holds-barred affair: the facts, the rhetoric, the deceit. And this wasn’t about domestic politics or some marginal policy issue. This was about taking nations to war. It was about planning to tear down a country, deploying weapons and unloading tons upon tons of missiles. It was about flaunting cutting-edge technology, including 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker buster bombs, to be dropped by the B-2 bombers – the most expensive planes ever built, worth $2.2 billion each. The logistics story was made captivating, numbing the mind to more critical questions – such as what these 30,000-pounders could achieve when targeting material located more than a kilometre beneath the earth. Reports

were sent out dutifully about the unprecedented 'heroic' 37-hour-long missions of the B-2 bomber pilots, who would drop fourteen of these bombs, guaranteeing annihilation and destruction at three sites.

The power-wielding architects of this dramatically worded bombing mission spread their ‘faith’ with conviction. The shrill messaging around this unprecedented, colossal task was delivered in fascistic simplicity: that the ‘noble’ objective was to