With Israel and the US engaged in an escalating battle with Iran, Western leaders are utilizing phrases that sound all too acquainted from the lead-up to the Iraq conflict.
“At the moment, we have now the higher energy to free a nation by breaking a harmful and aggressive regime. With new techniques and precision weapons, we are able to obtain army aims with out directing violence in opposition to civilians.”
That will sound like one thing said yesterday, following US strikes on Iran.
However it wasn’t.
These phrases have been delivered by United States President George W Bush on board the USS Abraham Lincoln on Could 1, 2003, as he marked the top of main fight operations in Iraq.
Now, with Israel and the US engaged in an escalating conflict with Iran, world leaders are utilizing language and rhetoric that sound all too acquainted, drawing eerie comparisons to the lead-up to the Iraq conflict greater than 20 years in the past.
Acquainted warnings, comparable justifications
Israel and the US have claimed their army strikes are geared toward stopping Iran from creating a nuclear weapon. Iran, for its half, insists its nuclear programme is totally peaceable and meant solely for civilian functions.
For greater than three decades, a well-recognized chorus has echoed from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran is on the verge of creating nuclear weapons. In 2002, he urged the US Congress to invade Iraq, claiming Baghdad was creating weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). He additionally claimed Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons. The US invaded Iraq in 2003, however no WMDs have been discovered.
The most recent surge in inflammatory rhetoric from American and Israeli officers goes past Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions and missile capabilities. More and more, it hints at the potential of regime change, a path the US has a protracted and controversial historical past of pursuing within the area.
Historical past repeating?
The conflict led by the US and its “coalition of the prepared” left Iraq in ruins, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, about 4,500 American troopers lifeless, and the nation destabilised by deepening sectarian battle.
Wanting again, the rhetoric that paved the way in which for that invasion appears unsettlingly acquainted. The US, together with the UK, tried to persuade the world that Iraq had WMDs because the conflict progressed.
How properly are you able to inform the distinction? Learn these 10 statements and resolve: have been they made within the lead-up to the 2003 conflict or in 2025?
