By Akbar Eissa Zadeh
It is now one month since the American president launched his unjustified and illegal aggression against Iran, and in his first address to the nation since that fateful Thursday morning of 3 April, he saw fit to recycle baseless claims about the consequences of this imposed war. Once again, he declared that should no agreement be reached with Tehran, American strikes would continue – and in such an event, the United States would unleash devastating attacks on every single power plant in Iran. Over the past four weeks, Donald Trump has set multiple targets and timelines for bringing this military onslaught to an end. In the same speech, he warned that further strikes against Iran would be carried out within the next two to three weeks.
However, it was one particular phrase that laid bare an unvarnished confession of wartime cruelty and barbarism: “We will hit Iran so hard,” the president said, “that it will be sent back to the stone age.” That turn of phrase reveals more than perhaps intended. For it suggests that the man uttering it belongs, in truth, among the most savage leaders of that very stone age. It was the stone age’s chieftains, after all, who believed that everything from the dawn of creation – the sciences and the arts, universities and centers of learning and industry, steel mills, cancer vaccines, pharmaceutical factories, bridges – that every thing and every person beyond their grasp deserved nothing but annihilation.
The joint military strategy of the United States and the Zionist regime has been drawn up according to a new map for global domination, and within it the war aims against Iran have been arranged in three stages. The primary objective of this unjustified aggression is nothing less than the subjugation of Iran. But to reach that summit, a secondary goal has been set: the fragmentation of Iran into smaller pieces. And beneath that lies a third, lower-order aim: the total destruction of the country’s infrastructure. The facts on the ground suggest that, thanks to the magnificent military defence of the Iranian nation and its remarkable national awakening, the primary and secondary objectives have so far proved unattainable.
What remains is only the lowest tier: ruin and devastation of infrastructure. The idea, presumably, is to leave Iran uninhabitable – to make of it another Gaza – in the desperate hope that outright conquest might yet follow. However, Iran cannot be sent back to the stone age. The history of this land bears witness: again and again, through crisis after crisis, this country has emerged victorious. Civilizational continuity, national consciousness and cohesion, reliance on its own military capabilities, and the unshakeable conviction of nationhood – these are the elements that sustain Iran. And it is an undeniable fact that this great nation cannot be erased from the face of the earth by bombs. Iran’s civilization will endure and shine.
The anxiety ought instead to belong to America: how did its own thought and reason get pushed back from the twenty-first century to the stone age? Trump and his secretary of war have now adopted the phrase “sent back to the stone age” for Iran. In military parlance, this means the systematic, unrestrained destruction of a country’s infrastructure – electricity, water, communications, roads, hospitals. It is a window into how the United States is tearing up the very laws and customs of war. Such statements and threats from the American president stand in complete opposition to international law and the established rules of armed conflict. The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols require respect for the principle of proportionality.
That principle demands that during military operations, harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure must be avoided unless justified by direct military advantage. The phrase “sent back to the stone age” means nothing other than destruction on a vast and indiscriminate scale. To devastate the basic infrastructure of a nation of many millions for the sake of limited military gains is plainly disproportionate, unjustified and illegal. To put it clearly: such damage to a country’s infrastructure runs directly counter to Article 54 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits attacking objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.
The American president’s statement about sending Iran back to the stone age is not mere political rhetoric. It is a reflection of a global ideology, and a calculated plan of war crimes and savagery. The world’s leaders sat silent and idle before the destruction of Gaza. Today they sit silent again before this barbarism against Iran. That silence will carry terrifying consequences for the future of humanity. Iran’s foreign minister has forcefully responded to the targeting of a bridge in the city of Karaj, insisting that striking urban infrastructure will not force the Iranian nation to surrender. Such actions, he added, reveal the enemy’s moral failure, its desperation and its degradation. Bridges and buildings can be rebuilt – better than before. However, the damage done to America’s standing, its credibility and its honor? That cannot be repaired. Not by any means.
(The writer is a Consul General of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Karachi, a political analyst, and a career diplomat, can reached at editorial@metro-morning.com)
