Civilian destruction in Tehran from the recent bombings; almost 1000 Iranians were killed, nearly all of them civilians with no connection to Iran’s nuclear program. Photo by Calla Walsh, used with permission
On June 21, 2025, “pro-peace” President Donald Trump announced to the world that the United States had (illegally) bombed Iran. After decades of bloodlust, Israel had finally gotten the war in Iran that it desperately craved.
Israeli prime minister and the butcher of Palestine, Benjamin Netanyahu, attacked Iran without any legal or moral basis. Israel’s violence against Iran, which eventually grew into the “Twelve-Day War,” was surely conducted with America’s permission, if not direct coordination. Israel would not dare cross its political master, the world’s leading supplier of weapons and political aid to the apartheid state in the Middle East.
In the text on the photo at left, “the family bids goodbye” to the young man killed in his home behind him. Photo by Calla Walsh, used by permission
The latest in a series of Israeli aggressions killed Iranian civilians via unprovoked rocket fire. Among the barrage of missiles, some hit labs that the Israeli government claims were used to further Iranian nuclear weapons enrichment. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that an Iranian centrifuge manufacturing facility was hit, despite no nuclear materials being present at the site.
This decades-old smear of Iran, that it is covertly developing a nuke, is a lie.
Israel’s leaders despise Iran. It is the only country in the region that could ever rival their influence. Iran is a nation of more than 90 million, enriched by oil and other natural resources, highly educated and governed by rulers who hate Israel. It has been a political dream for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to topple its government for his entire career.
The goal of this bombing campaign is the furtherance of Western interests, namely regime change in Iran and the preservation of Israel as the bully of the Middle East.
But that cynical, self-interested rationale doesn’t sell; it doesn’t justify the use of deadly force to the world’s watching eyes. Here lies the utility of the “Iran has a nuke” scam that Israel, and now America, have cited as cause for war.
Simply put: Iran does not, nor did it, intend to produce a nuclear weapon. Trump’s own intelligence director’s testimony to Congress mere months ago affirms this fact.
Despite repeated attacks by Israel, the 2018 US abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal which explicitly banned Iran from nuclear weapons development, and Trump’s illegal killing of a high-ranking military official that same year, Iran still does not possess a nuclear weapon.
Israeli and American flags. Photo courtesy of Ted Eytan used under Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0
This is the “weapons of mass destruction” pretext for armed conflict of our time. Much like George W. Bush and Tony Blair touted their fictitious pretext for violence against Iraq two decades earlier, Netanyahu and Trump have used the baseless “they have nukes” claim against Iran for years. For a number of days earlier this year, it was the excuse for countless missiles to fly into civilian areas and kill innocent human beings in Iran.
How can the mere possibility—however unlikely that was before Israel’s strikes—of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon be more of a threat to world security than Israel’s vast stockpile of nuclear weapons? Israel’s nukes, all illegally obtained, held without any of the international inspections that international law demands, are clearly a threat—possessed by a country whose leaders have made it clear they have no reverence for innocent lives.
Why should Israel—the country committing genocide in Gaza, recently at war with Iran, and illegally occupying both Syria and Lebanon—be allowed to lawlessly possess nuclear weapons, while Iran cannot even use the form of energy that makes the development of weapons possible, even when no evidence is presented that they are attempting to take that next step?
In a world of my creation, nobody would have nukes. The use of even one such bomb would kill an unimaginable number of people, likely sparking the mutually assured destruction that proportionate retaliation would guarantee.
But in 2025, with terrorist states like Israel in possession of such weaponry, how can America draw blood from another country on this basis? No nukes, no intent—just violent attacks on rival Iran’s soil.
This dangerous series of attacks by Israel and the United States makes the possibility of Iranian nuclear weaponry—nonexistent just weeks ago—probable. The argument for Iran’s need for nuclear deterrence (e.g., to prevent non-nuclear attacks) has been made on Iran’s behalf through these illegal bombings.
A banner affixed to the ruins of a residential building laments the loss of a father, mother and daughter in the summer’s bombing on Tehran. Photo by Calla Walsh, used by permission
As Israel and America continue their campaigns of terror across the region, who could reasonably fault Iran for imagining an alternate reality where their possession of a nuclear weapon deterred Western aggression, saving the lives of its citizens and insuring the international community’s respect of its sovereignty?
The United States government, namely Donald Trump and his military leadership, have made a monumental mistake in their attacks on Iran. While the “Twelve-Day War” has transitioned back to a less kinetic proxy war, the purportedly “pro-peace” US president has endangered his country and put innocent peoples across the Middle East in his crosshairs, while gambling with the prospect of reigniting an enlarged conflict—a third world war in waiting. At least Benjamin Netanyahu is happy.
No more Israeli terror. No more American bombing. No war with Iran.
Grant Chassy is a lifelong Champaign-Urbana area resident. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Illinois State University. He serves as Communications Director for State Representative Carol Ammons and he is a former deputy Champaign County Clerk and Recorder. Opinions expressed are his own.
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