Richard Cullen says Pentagon launched illegal attack on Iran while Trump claimed commitment to diplomacy

From its inception, America has been intensely critical of treachery (or perfidy, as it is sometimes known) directed toward the United States. However, this is not always a two-way street. Premeditated US deception underpinned Washington’s gaudy celebration of its recent, massive, illegal attack on Iran.

Sean Watts, a professor at the Military Academy at West Point in the US, published an interesting paper about a decade ago, which began by asserting that “Perfidy and treachery are amongst the gravest law-of-war accusations.” He next explained how such betrayals of good faith ultimately “inflict systemic harm on the law of war as a guarantee of minimally humane interaction”.

Watts then observed how Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the US and the primary author of the American Declaration of Independence, cited English treachery “among the grievances justifying full-scale revolt, violent war, and permanent secession from the British monarchy”.

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Over 150 years later, Japan launched a massively damaging, surprise attack on the huge US Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii on Dec 7, 1941. Emphasizing the treachery involved, then-US president Franklin Roosevelt declared, immediately afterward, that this is “a date which will live in infamy”.

Revelations since the massive, combined US and Israeli assault on Iran that commenced on June 13 confirm how exceptionally well-prepared this strike was, over a long time frame, and how it relied fundamentally on deliberately deceptive US conduct to ensure it would be an unexpected, devastating attack.

Consider the formidable planning. In a recent interview with the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, the former British diplomat (and former MI6 operative) Alastair Crooke explained how “cyberattacks, drones flown in from Azerbaijan and American military software served as crucial elements” in preparing for the Israeli-American strike on Iran.

According to Crooke, it was a very complicated setup. Mossad (the Israeli CIA) had taken “months if not years to put (everything) into position” for this attack. He added that Mossad had to infiltrate people and pre-position them in Iran and pre-position weapons in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and Azerbaijan. And when the attack began, preplaced Israeli special forces in Iran used American Battlescape software to guide ballistic missiles onto chosen assassination and infrastructure targets.

Next, consider the posture Washington adopted toward Teheran before June 13.

The leading international affairs commentator Patrick Lawrence quoted US President Donald Trump, communicating on his Truth Social platform shortly before this meticulously planned attack: “We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue! My entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran. They could be a Great Country, but they first must completely give up hopes of obtaining a Nuclear Weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Lawrence also highlighted the Jerusalem Post report advising that “The round of US-Iranian nuclear negotiations scheduled for Sunday was part of a coordinated US-Israeli deception aimed at lowering Iran’s guard ahead of Friday’s attack.”

The Times of Israel, in their admiring June 13 report, confirmed “How an Israeli-American deception campaign lulled Iran into a false sense of security”. The paper detailed a range of coordinated, duplicitous actions, noting that “US President Donald Trump was an active participant in the ruse”. The report advised that the president knew at least five days beforehand that the strike was locked in. Yet on the day before the attack, Trump was still saying: “We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue!”

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported this story under the headline A Miscalculation by Iran Led to Israeli Strikes’ Extensive Toll, Officials Say. As Lawrence says, “Those foolish Iranians: They took the Americans at their word.”

A week after the attack, Craig Mokhiber, an American and former United Nations human rights official, argued that: “The US-backed Israeli regime’s unprovoked attack on Iran was a crime under international law. Indeed, it was a treacherous attack, launched in the middle of ongoing US negotiations, and even targeting the Iranian official in charge of the negotiations.”

At about the same time, Wellington, New Zealand-based writer Eugene Doyle cogently explained the real purpose of this assault by first noting that former CIA officer Ray McGovern, who wrote daily intelligence briefings for the US president during his 27-year career, reminded Doyle when he interviewed McGovern that the assessment of the US intelligence community has been for years that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and had not recommenced since. The departing CIA director, William Burns, confirmed this assessment recently. Doyle concluded that: “What we are witnessing is the racist, genocidal Israeli regime, armed and encouraged by the US, Germany, UK and other Western regimes, launching a war that has no justification other than the expansion of Israeli power and the advancement of its Greater Israel project.”

Doyle also quoted an Iranian friend, who noted how the attack had deliberately and lethally struck civilians by destroying “entire apartment buildings”. After scanning social media, this friend found, “people were upset, angry and overwhelmingly supportive of the government”.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Trump’s swaggering defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, led the triumphant initial reports on the US bombing (since acutely questioned), explaining that: “The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.”

The Guardian reported how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel stressed the adverse personal impact of this war (that he has so long relished). He complained that Iran’s military response had forced him to postpone the wedding of his son, Avner, prompting an acute assessment, in Israel, that Netanyahu was a “borderless narcissist”.

After the attack, in a visibly measured response, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the United Nations Human Rights Council: “We were attacked in the midst of an ongoing diplomatic process. We were supposed to meet with the Americans on June 15 to craft a very promising agreement for peaceful resolution of the issues fabricated over our peaceful nuclear program. It was a betrayal of diplomacy.”

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Another leading international commentator, former US ambassador Chas Freeman, noted how the collapse of trust in the US arising from the deceit involved in this attack on Iran will have wide consequences.

As it happens, an exceptional voice from American history adds weight to this assessment of the consequences of treachery. President Roosevelt, in that famous speech after the strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941, stressed how America had been ruthlessly duped by Japan’s treacherous conduct before that attack: “The United States was at peace with Japan and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.”

The author is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.