Kenny MacAskill: Donald Trump bombing Iran is illegal and insane

The National

6 days ago

The greatest Scottish football player of my lifetime was more noted for his reticence rather than his eloquence, instead, letting his feet do the talking on the pitch and his tactics when in management.
But it sure isn't funny when the president of the United States, a nuclear power with a formidable arsenal, states 'maybe I will, maybe I won't' when playing as a cat would with a mouse but about a strike on Iran. Now he's gone and done it let's be clear this is both illegal and insane. It's a clear breach of international law and threatens all of humanity with destruction.
This wasn't an off-the-mike gaffe as with Ronald Reagan and his crass quip about commencing bombing Russia in FIVE minutes.
READ MORE: John Swinney calls for 'diplomatic solution' after US bombs Iran
Trump's was a premeditated statement seeking not just to put pressure on the Iranian regime but to demand its unconditional surrender. It was playing with the lives of tens of millions of people both in Iran and around the globe.
Bullying and bombastic just doesn't cover it. Those in this country who have been craven or sycophantic to the US president are finding that they get nothing in return from him or his oligarchic mates.
The office of a democratically elected president has to be respected even if he demeans it. But no more than that. State visits, let alone invites to his supposed ancestral lands are simply humiliating.
No evidence has been found that Iran is planning to create a nuclear bomb. That doesn't come from me or even from international agencies but instead from US military intelligence.
Of course, the Iranian regime isn't pleasant and many there, if not most, yearn for change.
No doubt there's a few in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who would love to have a nuclear bomb but the fact of the matter is they don't, and the evidence shows they're not even planning it. The rhetoric from US hawks and neo-cons is false and about endless war and US domination.
Forcing regime change is wrong and illegal. US American intervention may simply stiffen the regime as folk rally to the flag.
Israel's attacks are not on the ayatollahs but on the people of Iran. They're the ones suffering and any regime change would likely be for the worse. There's plenty of evidence for that across the Middle East.
Moreover, the art of diplomacy is also about dividing your enemies, but this is uniting Shia and Sunni. As with Iraq disaster beckons for both the Middle East and the world.
Of course, the Israeli playbook was to try to tip the United States into the war it started but cannot win on its own, and to take the eyes of the world off the genocide it is perpetrating in Gaza.
Time will tell if they succeed with the former but it's working on the latter. News coverage on the BBC has been about attacks on Israeli hospitals causing no deaths while civilians die by the hundreds in Iran and life as we know it ended in Gaza. Job half done for Netanyahu and his cronies. What's happening in Iran isn't just a worsening of the risk but part of the Israeli plan. It's why the independence movement must be unequivocal in its opposition to the American escalation and increase its calls for an ending of the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing throughout the Occupied Territories.
Starmer's Labour Government is the most supine and craven in living memory. Harold Wilson at last had the courage to reject Lyndon BJohnsons requests and probably demands for even a token force in Vietnam.
Blair was joined at the hip with Bush in a shared enterprise for which the UK received nothing other than scorn in the US and contempt around the world.
Now Starmer simply submits the news clips showed him scrambling to pick up papers which Trump had dropped. He's have been as well prostrating himself and licking Trumps boots. Condemnation not endorsement of Trumps actions is what's required.
But what's happening in Scotland? The SNP were to be commended for their voice in Westminster on Palestine. But on Iran things have become strangely muted.
Meanwhile, as the barbarity on the ground in Gaza worsens, the UK Government seeks to proscribe protesters while aiding the genocide enablers. Holyrood should be speaking out loud and clear – not in our name.
It's not Kneecap (above) or Palestine Action who are the threat to our society and planet but those complicit and colluding in the genocide and war. We should be ceasing fuelling US war planes at Prestwick not deplatforming an Irish rap band at a music event.
The old SNP and CND were once almost synonymous. Sadly, in many cases now war hawks have supplanted the old stalwarts. The united opposition to nuclear weapons is now questioned by some and even abandoned by a few.
But the wider Independence movement remains true to the maxim of Bairns not Bombs. It must speak out ever louder now – no war for Trump and Israel.