What long-term lessons China, Russia and the Global South are learning from the abandonment by the entire West of the principles of international law, we shall see in the decades to come.
March 3, 2026
Phrases in bold have been set by PAJU and do not appear as such in the original article.
There has scarcely been an attempt to pretend any justification in international law for the attack on Iran and murder of its leader. The response of the U.K. government, focusing almost entirely on condemning Iran for exercising its legitimate right of self-defence, takes the Keir Starmer dishonesty meter further off the scale.
The RAF has been actively involved in genocide in Gaza for two years with its surveillance and logistic support for the IDF. It is now fighting for Israel again; intercepting Iranian missiles is not defensive; it is joining in the attack on an already vastly overmatched opponent.
I am afraid that the truth is the Iranian attempt to defend itself militarily will be less impactful than many anti-imperialists hope. The astonishing amounts of money spent by the U.S. government on military and surveillance technology simply do have real-world effect.
Here in Venezuela, having seen the major sites struck by the U.S. on Jan. 3, I have concluded that no act of betrayal was needed. Just overwhelming force and precision technology applied against a technologically unequal opponent whose key capabilities were all on open hilltops or in unhardened barracks.
Iran is much more militarily sophisticated, but facing exponentially more force. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in his own home, not hiding away. He is going to prove a lot more powerful as a martyr than as a ruler with his internal critics.
We are facing not only a period of unapologetic imperialism to which virtually all Western countries are prepared to defer, but a return of medievalism, both in the sheer barbarity and scale of physical abuse, as witnessed in Gaza and in general Israeli brutality, and in use of kidnap and murder as methods of high policy. Legitimising the killing and kidnap of leaders of opposing states is of course a double-edged sword.
Having sanctioned genocide, mass killings and deliberate destruction of medical facilities and staff, the mass murder of children, as well as the kidnapping and murder of heads of state, it is hard now to imagine almost any atrocity which the Western powers are in any moral position to condemn.
While Iran’s military ability to strike back is limited, the ramifications of this attack will not be. The rulers of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have reverted to the norm of being not only reliable U.S. and Israeli satraps, but promoters of atavistic hatred of Shia Muslims.
The West is deliberately exploiting the Shia/Sunni divide, as it has for centuries; but this will now destabilise the region for decades. Iraq in particular is going to be convulsed, and so will Pakistan. In Bahrain, the Shia population has been held in check by its Sunni rulers using systematic Western-sponsored murder and torture. Using it as a base to murder the Ayatollah is going to blow back.
It would appear that we are going to witness an aerial campaign to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure, as in Iraq where 65 percent of clean drinking water, 50 percent of hospitals and clinics and 80 percent of electrical generation was destroyed by “liberation” by the NATO powers. The object is the destruction of Iran as a viable state.
It is worth recalling that Iran used to be a Western-style state with a reasonable democracy. It was the election of the Socialist Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1951, and his nationalisation of British Petroleum, which was met by the MI6- and C.I.A.- sponsored coup of 1953. The vicious and vainglorious rule of their puppet Shah was the cause of the theocratic revolution.
Escalating Western sanctions were imposed by the U.S. or E.U. on Iran in 1979, 1984, 1995, 1996, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2025. There were U.N.-approved sanctions imposed from 2006 to 2016. These very substantially hampered Iran’s economic development.
The curious thing is that the founding myth of the Western powers is that economic development leads to an expanding, educated middle class which promotes both economic and social liberalism and produces the conditions for democracy.
By this reading, if you wished to cement in power an authoritarian government, then limiting economic development is the way to do it. There is something in this reading; I do not doubt that the West’s relentless efforts to strangle Iran – which have had some real success – have hampered its political development.
That is not to accept all the Western myths about Iran. Female education is very strong, and there is extensive female participation throughout economic and governmental institutions. Iran has an extremely good record of tolerating and even supporting minority religious communities, including the Jewish community.
There are plenty of women in Tehran without head coverings – Iran is far more tolerant in this regard than Saudi Arabia. While it retains a retrograde intolerance of gay people, it acknowledges gender dysphoria and assists trans people.
I am not prepared to give a moment of countenance to arguments that bombing Iran back to the 19th century is going in any way to improve the lives of its people. It did not do so in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. It was a disaster which unleashed waves of refugees upon Europe, leading directly to the rise of the far right.
I think it is unlikely to change the form of government in Iran in any significant way. Regime change by bombing is a highly problematic concept.
What it has done is to remove Ayatollah Khamenei, whose fatwa on the creation of a nuclear weapon was the only reason Iran does not have one.
It is delusional to believe that Iran, with its excellent scientific base, could not have developed nuclear bombs in secret away from those monitored enrichment programmes, had it chosen to do so. What is likely to result in the medium term from this conflict, if it long continues, is a more primitive, more atavistic and nuclear-armed Iran.
The Iran nuclear deal torpedoed by Trump in 2018 had provided a rare moment of hope. With sanctions easing, there were chances of both smoother economic development and reform in Iran. That is why Israel wanted the agreement scuppered.
The attempted obliteration of Iran is part of a systematic attempt to eliminate by physical force all pockets of resistance to American hegemony.
We have seen Rubio’s astonishing assertion of Imperialism as a positive force. Matthew Lynn in The Washington Post exemplified the new Western doctrine. He mocked China for its pacific policy. He argued that for China to build infrastructure for the Global South was futile because the United States might simply seize, blockade or destroy any infrastructure by military force. This he viewed as not shameful, but a great triumph.
What long-term lessons China, Russia and the Global South are learning from the abandonment by the entire West of the principles of international law, we shall see in the decades to come. None of this is going to be good for anyone.
It is not just a Trump phenomenon. Biden fully supported the Gaza genocide. Almost all major political parties throughout the West are under firm Zionist control, as is all of the significant major media and the ownership of every significant alternative media platform.
Iran has provided, directly and through proxies, the only military opposition to the creation of Greater Israel. This war is for Greater Israel. But it is also a wider effort to re-establish the failing economic dominance of the United States by military control of key resources.
There is no part of the world which will be safe from the fallout.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
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