- US modus operandi is now well-known: first, it goads conflicts into being.
- Then any response by the goaded party is declared an “unprovoked” attack
- The west then claims justification for war under UN Charter 51
- The result is armed conflict – and greatly increased spending on weapons
The sudden change of narrative in the killing of the Hamas leader in Iran indicates the journey towards a Western war on Iran is more advanced than most people realize. Phill Hynes reports.
IN THE EARLY HOURS of 31 July 2024, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated at his home in Tehran, Iran.
He was killed “in a Zionist airstrike on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of Iran’s new president,” Hamas said.
Iran did not officially confirm the airstrike—understandably, since it would have serious implications regarding the state of the country’s air defenses. But it did say the attack was from the firing of a projectile with a seven-kilo warhead.
But such an airstrike would likely have been carried out by American F-35 fifth generation fighters, which have advanced radar-evading stealth capabilities, optimized to penetrate multi-layered air defense networks.
RIGHT OF RESPONSE RECOGNIZED
However, this article is not about the flaws, weaknesses or possible failings of the Iranian air defense network, this article is about something much more nefarious and dangerous. The story changed dramatically. The way the facts were altered and what that implies is revealing—and concerning.
In looking at this incident, we need to consider one short document: Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.
In short, a country can respond to an external attack. If Haniyeh was executed with an aerial-launched GPS guided missile, then such an attack would without question require the attacker to have breached Iranian airspace, evade air defense systems by means of sophisticated stealth capabilities, and thereby have conducted an attack on a sovereign nation state.
Iran would therefore have total justification under Article 51 to defend itself, including the taking of retaliatory actions.
THE STORY CHANGES
However, less than a day later, stories started appearing in Western mainstream media alleging the attack was actually executed internally by use of a remotely detonated IED.
A bomb had been positioned in the apartment that Haniyeh would be staying in to attend the inauguration of the new Iranian president, an event quickly organized as elections had to be called because of the former president dying in an accidental helicopter crash.
The UK Daily Telegraph says Iranians were recruited by Mossad and placed three devices in the apartment in three different rooms (allegedly within minutes of each other).
MOSSAD SUPERPOWERS
If Western mainstream media reports on this are to be taken at face value (their track record suggests a large dose of caution of advisable) then this implies that as soon as the former president died, the unknown perpetrators of this attack, a 5th column as such, began their preparations with knowledge of when an election would take place, when the subsequent inauguration would take place and who would be staying in that apartment on that day.
The replacement narrative says spies or traitors were recruited, locations were identified, and three bombs, evidently somewhat sophisticated, were constructed, tested, placed, primed, and hidden – all within a day or two after the Iranian leader’s untimely death.
Sounds like the stuff of crystal balls or Mystic Meg? That is because it is.
It is difficult to avoid sounding facetious when noting that this requires that we, the unwashed masses, are to believe the argument that the legendary Israeli Mossad have somehow managed to regain those mystical superpowers they held up to October 7th. On that notorious day, they somehow, along with every other Israeli intelligence agency, had a catastrophic loss of their powers, failing to see or read a single combat indicator that Hamas was about to essentially launch the largest attack on the State of Israel since the Six Day War.
But now they are fine again. We are being asked to drink the Kool-Aid and accept this incredible narrative. Sorry, I can’t buy it. If you can, I’ve an apartment block in Gaza to sell you.
IRAN’S REPORT
Here’s what the Iranians said: “The operation to assassinate Haniyeh was carried out by firing a short-range projectile with a seven kilo warhead outside the guest house.”
Such an attack would make sense in terms of localized execution. But it refutes the Western media’s tale of a bomb placed on an unknown date much earlier in the room where Ismail Haniyeh stayed.
Why the alternative narrative? The pre-placement narrative is essentially designed to deflect implicating a nation state on a direct attack on a separate sovereign state – and giving the victim the power to resort to Article 51. It would provide a justification of self-defense.
Let’s return to Article 51: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
Well, we know the structure of the UN Security Council, with certain nations having veto power, and we know that unity cannot be attained there.
THE ‘UNPROVOKED’ TECHNIQUE
This part of Article 51 unambiguously grants the right of retaliatory actions if any member state is subjected to an unprovoked attack. This is precisely why the collective West, their organs, their media, and their vassals, consistently employ the terminology of describing all conflicts they goad into being as “unprovoked” attacks. Consequently, the narrative construction of the pre-placed device is designed to mitigate the justification by Iran to retaliate under the terms of Article 51.
At the same time, it allows for the Israeli and Western governments to claim any response by Iran is “unprovoked” – airstrike? What airstrike?— thereby leaving them the moral right to respond.
This is, to call a spade a spade, an attempt to trigger a larger response from Iran than the previous response in April to the missile attack on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus in Syria. Whenever something unexpected like this happens, we must ask cui bono – who benefits?
Let’s look at the history of this system.
The technique is to stage provocative actions, military or otherwise, to escalate a conflict. And then to misrepresent the adversary’s response as an act of aggression on their part.
Three cases come to mind.
ONE: Serbia was in 1999 portrayed in the West as rejecting peace because it refused to sign the Ramboulliet accords, which helped justify a Western assault on the country from March that year.
Left out, however, was the fact that the accords had sought to force the country to accept unrestricted access to the country’s territory for Western forces – a highly provocative step.
TWO: China in late 1950 was portrayed as attacking U.S. forces during the American-led invasion of North Korea.
But the Chinese had in fact deployed a line of personnel across the Yalu River to protect their industrial assets, long before the U.S. and its allies arrived.
But this was not mentioned in press reports, in order to make the defensive actions of Chinese forces appear to be an offensive thrust into Korea.
THREE: In Vietnam in the first week of August 1964 the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Maddox was reported to have been attacked unprovokedly by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin triggering a massive American escalation and the start of full-scale involvement in the Vietnam War.
This was framed by President Lyndon Johnson as “open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America.” Not mentioned was that the USS Maddox had been tasked with simulating attacks on the North Vietnamese coast as part of the effort to “locate and identify all coastal radar transmitters” to support major South Vietnamese offensives, and was thus actively taking part in hostilities and operating far closer to North Vietnam’s coast than claimed.
(And all this was aside from the fact that a North Vietnamese military response, however justified, never happened, a fact that was later confirmed by US signals intelligence and other declassified sources.)
All the above examples are described in “Atrocity Fabrication and its Consequences“, a superb book by A. B. Abrams detailing geopolitical disinformation techniques.
IRAQ WAR DISINFORMATION
And of course we can look at the pretext for the Iraq war, a well-known example. December 1998 saw Washington and London claim that Baghdad had expelled weapons inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission, which Western-drafted resolutions at the United Nations Security Council required to be deployed to disarm the country.
The alleged expulsion was used as a pretext to launch Operation Desert Fox, which added to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed over the past seven years by Western attacks with a further 2,000 Iraqi lives taken.
The pretext for the attacks proved to be fabricated, with head weapons inspector Richard Butler revealing years later that it was the U.S. ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on orders from Washington, who suggested inspectors be pulled out of Iraq to protect them from planned U.S. and British air strikes.
The withdrawal of inspectors was done in order to pave the way for attacks, and was then used to justify those same attacks which the withdrawal had been carried out to facilitate in the first place!
In 2003 U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated multiple times that Iraq had forced inspectors to withdraw. This, he claimed, proved Baghdad held malign intentions regarding weapons of mass destruction—and justified the illegal U.S. invasion then being planned. The nature of the withdrawal was only later made public.
USE AND ABUSE OF ARTICLE 51
The consistent historic actions of the West in this regard have established precedents for their repetitive and consistent use and abuse of Article 51 over decades as the justification for striking, attacking and initiating wars across much of the world as and when they deemed fit.
This is happening again, at the moment—and it matters. Events are being shaped and framed with Iran for war, just as they are with China; and just as they were with Ukraine.
And of course there are other conflicts which the west goaded into being, including the Sunflower Revolution in Taiwan, and the protests in Hong Kong – Occupy Central in 2014 and the 2019 extradition protests in Hong Kong.
But that’s not all. We can all see that new conflicts are being stirred into existence, this time in the Philippines and the South China Sea.
These are conflicts portrayed as being between China and others. Western mainstream media are careful to omit any suggestion of US involvement.
But to get the real story, one has to think about the rivalry between superpowers, and ask a single question.
Cui bono?
Phill Hynes is a specialist in international geopolitics of east and west. His reports are widely shared.
Artwork at the top of the page by fridayeveryday.