Shock and Awe, but for Who?

Smoke over Tehran. Flame at Natanz. Jets screaming overhead in the small hours. Israel calls it Operation Rising Lion. Some will call it righteous. I call it what it is: the open performance of military supremacy by a nuclear-backed settler state, justified in the language of moral necessity and executed with the precision of a long-prepared campaign of domination. This wasn’t a single strike. It was a broadcast. A message. Over 200 aircraft. More than 300 munitions. Around 100 targets. Drones launched from inside Iran. Commandos on the ground. Sabotage teams laying charges and disabling air defences. Assassinations of generals, scientists, commanders—people named and targeted in dossiers compiled over years. The technology of empire, operationalised in the dead of night.

And yet it’s being sold not just as defence, but as benevolence. As though Israeli bombs were dropped for the benefit of the Iranian people. As though this is what liberation looks like: explosions in the capital, homes reduced to ash, jets overhead at 3am. But for all the hatred of the regime, it’s still the people who are under attack. As two Iranians told the BBC:

“I’m not pro-Islamic Republic, but this issue is about Iran, it’s about home. See how they are attacking us, destroying our infrastructure, killing our people,” said another.

The Islamic Republic is no ally of the Left. It jails trade unionists, represses women, executes political dissent. But no one should mistake what happened here. This was not solidarity with the Iranian people. This was domination. This was military pre-eminence weaponised to send a signal. Not only to Tehran, but to the region. And to us.

It’s not just the jets or the drones. It’s the tone of the coverage. David Patrikarakos, writing in the Mail, can barely contain his admiration. It’s chutzpah, he says. It’s a “monument” to Israeli ingenuity. He imagines the reaction from inside Iran: “Thank you, Uncle Netanyahu.” That line alone should disqualify the article from being considered journalism. It’s not reporting. It’s propaganda.

You can almost hear the echo of Baghdad 2003 in the reporting: the breathless admiration for logistics, the embedded awe, the strange detachment from civilian death. The missile knows its target. The general dies. The journalist cheers. There is no time for legality. No time for mourning. Just the rhythm of escalation, with the narrative ready to go.

The Israeli government says this is about safety. That Iran cannot be allowed to develop the bomb. That this is a necessary pre-emptive act. But what does pre-emption mean in a world where Israel already has nuclear weapons, is outside the NPT, and faces no accountability? The right to defend becomes the right to destroy.

Iran fired back. Hundreds of drones, ballistic missiles. Some intercepted. Some not. Civilians injured in Tel Aviv. The war is on. But it never really ended. It’s just been managed, postponed, advanced by other means. This strike escalates what was already a low-intensity regional conflict into something much wider.

And the hope. Again barely concealed. Is that Iran lashes out in force. That it overreaches. That it creates the pretext for the next wave. This is not a war to avoid war. This is war to secure dominance. This is the logic of the unipolar moment dragged into multipolar collapse.

What’s being sold here is not just security but order. Imperial order. The idea that some states get to decide who can enrich uranium, who can have sovereignty, who can live without the permanent threat of airstrike. And some don’t.

No-one mourns the IRGC. But this isn’t about the IRGC. It’s about a country being bombed by a regional hegemon, backed by a global one, and told it should be grateful. “Thank you, Uncle Netanyahu.” As if the Iranian people, who have risen up again and again against their regime, now need the boots of a foreign army on their neck to complete the job. It’s fantasy. Worse—it’s projection.

And yet liberal opinion stays quiet. The same politicians who clutched pearls over Gaza have fallen silent. The Trump administration blesses the operation. The UK backs “Israel’s right to defend itself.” The media moves from moral outrage to moral sedation in a matter of hours. As long as the target isn’t white, isn’t European, isn’t an ally. The law does not apply. It never does.

And still, nobody is asking the obvious question: when did it become acceptable for a state to murder scientists? Not generals. Not battlefield commanders. Scientists. Working in offices, in labs, in universities. Marked for elimination, not because they fired a weapon, but because they had knowledge the West deemed too dangerous. No trial. No evidence. Just the announcement: they’re gone. And instead of outrage, there’s applause. The same people who panic over academic freedom at home have nothing to say when it’s obliterated by missile abroad.

It’s not even being denied. Israel lists them like notches on a belt. Declares their deaths a ‘real blow’ to the programme, as if that sanitises the killing. As if being clever in the wrong state makes you fair game. The lesson here isn’t about deterrence. It’s about impunity. That knowledge itself can now be criminalised. That to build, to think, to engineer—if you do it under the wrong flag—means you forfeit your life. And the so-called civilised world shrugs, turns the page, moves on.

There will be more strikes. More retaliation. The war has moved into a new phase, and there’s no real off-ramp. The only certainty is that civilians will pay for it, on both sides. But we’re not meant to think about them. We’re meant to cheer the operation, admire the drones, and clap along with the choreography.

The mask has slipped. Brigadier General Effie Defrin, IDF spokesperson, now declares “aerial freedom of action from western Iran to Tehran.” The capital, he says, is “no longer immune.” Netanyahu has gone further still. “We will hit every site, every target of the ayatollah regime,” he vowed in a video message. Not defensive. Not conditional. Every target. He boasts of having eliminated nine nuclear scientists. He promises Israeli jets will return to Tehran’s skies “very soon.” This is not the language of security. It is the language of total domination.

And who’s backing it now? Britain, naturally. RAF jets have now been scrambled to the Gulf “in a contingency capacity,” to “defend British interests.” Maybe used to defend Israel. The phrasing is always the same. We’re not at war—we’re just defending assets. Standing by allies. Projecting calm. The weasel words of empire, dragged out once again for a conflict that Britain has no business fuelling but every interest in managing.

But make no mistake, this is alignment. This is imperial choreography. The IDF drops the bombs. Britain scrambles jets to “protect interests.” Washington offers its blessing. No one uses the word occupation, but that’s what it is. Tehran under permanent watch, its skies no longer its own.

But we shouldn’t. We should call it what it is. An imperial strike. The action of a rogue state. A premeditated escalation. Shock and awe for empire. Not a war of necessity, but a performance of power. One that will be felt most not by the mullahs or the generals, but by the ordinary people caught between governments, between missiles, between lies.

And the worst part is—we’ve seen it all before.

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