Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
We seek peace in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan, the DRC and elsewhere, but we’re ignored. History will damn the warmongers
“The protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world.”
Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers retells the story of the outbreak of the first world war. Mapping a multipolar world enthralled by imperialism and paranoia, Clark refuses to pin the blame on a single power. Instead, he explains how political leaders narrowed the prospects for peace one misstep at a time, and sleepwalked into a global catastrophe that left around 20 million people dead.
Today, once more, our political leaders are stumbling through crisis after crisis to convince themselves that war is the only solution. The principal difference is that this time they are not sleepwalking into war. They are doing so with their eyes wide open.
For months, millions of us have demonstrated for a ceasefire in Gaza to stop the loss of life, end the perpetual cycle of violence and prevent a wider escalation. We have been ignored, maligned and demonised. Last week, Israel conducted missile strikes against Iran in a fast-widening conflict across the Middle East. Even without the involvement of more global players, the human, economic and environmental consequences of all-out war with Iran would be catastrophic for the entire world.
We need not imagine the worst-case scenario in order to put the brakes on. As the Israeli government weighed up its options in response to Iran’s attack on 14 April,bombs continued to fall on Palestinians in Gaza. Over the past few months, human beings have been forced to endure a level of horror that should haunt us for ever. Entire families have been wiped out – and survivors will face lifelong mental health consequences for generations to come. Neighbourhoods have been completely obliterated, strewn with corpses and limbs. Doctors are performing amputations without anaesthesia. Children are gathering sticks and leaves from the ground and fashioning “bread” from animal feed to stay alive. If the unfolding genocide of the Palestinian people does not already constitute a worst-case scenario, what does?
War porn: Smoke rises from a Houthi position after US and UK strikes in Sana’a, Yemen on Saturday. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA
Joint statement says 18 sites across eight locations were targeted, including missile storage facilities
The US and UK carried out strikes against 18 Houthi targets including underground weapons and missile storage facilities in Yemen on Saturday in the latest round of military action against the Iran-linked group that continues to attack shipping in the region.
The strikes were against Houthi targets across eight locations and also included air defence systems, radars, and a helicopter, officials said.
War porn: RAF Typhoon FGR4 and an RAF Voyager take off to conduct the strikes against Houthi targets. Photograph: Cpl Tim Laurence RAF/UK MoD
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said: “Four Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4s, supported by two Voyager tankers, again participated in a deliberate coalition strike on Saturday 24 February against Houthi military facilities in Yemen which had been conducting missile and drone attacks on commercial shipping and coalition naval forces in the Bab al-Mandab, southern Red Sea, and Gulf of Aden. The RAF aircraft were allocated multiple targets located at two sites.
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War porn: Technicians load weapons to the RAF aircraft ahead of the strikes on Saturday. Photograph: Cpl Tim Laurence RAF/UK MoD
War porn image provided the Ministry of Defence, an RAF Typhoon FRG4 aircraft prepares to take off to conduct further strikes on Yemen, from RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, February 3, 2024
Speaking on NBC the day after separate overnight US and UK airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, Sullivan three times rejected a chance to rule out strikes on Iran itself, which would be a major escalation that the US has so far been determined to avoid.
We’re going to war against Iran for Israel. Israel has wanted war on Iran for decades. USUK are attacking Houthis who are fighting for Gaza. USUK say that it’s not about Israel but that’s not possible while that is their opponent’s purpose. While the Houthis are fighting over Israel’s continuing genocide in Gaza how can it be about anything else?
A spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi-led government, Yahya Saree, said the capital Sana’a and other rebel-held areas were targeted.
Mr Saree said on X that “these attacks will not deter us from our stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” which Israel invaded late in October following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
He said the latest strikes “will not pass without response and punishment.”
Top Yemeni diplomat Mohammed Abdulsalam said that the attacks by Washington and London will only serve to pull them into a quagmire in the region.
“Instead of escalating and opening a new war front in the region, America and Britain should listen to international public opinion, which is calling for an immediate halt to the Israeli aggression, lifting the siege on Gaza, and ending protection to Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people,” he said.
The crew of a U.S. aircraft carrier direct warplanes conducting airstrikes against Houthi fighters on January 22, 2024. (Photo: U.S. Central Command)
“We urge you to prioritize diplomatic pathways to de-escalation, which must include urgently pressing for and securing a permanent cease-fire in Gaza,” the groups said in a letter to the president.
As U.S. forces on Friday launched intense airstrikes against Syria and Iraq in retaliation for this week’s deadly drone strike on an American outpost in Jordan, scores of advocacy groups urged President Joe Biden to avoid a wider Mideast war by pressing Israel for a cease-fire in Gaza.
According to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), American warplanes struck Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and “affiliated militia groups” in Syria and Iraq—countries that have suffered various degrees of U.S. bombardment since 2014 and 1991, respectively.
This, after U.S. and U.K.-led airstrikes last month targeted Houthi fighters in Yemen amid attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
“We fear that, as tensions continue in this escalatory spiral, the U.S. could become engaged in a protracted new war that spans across the entire region.”
“U.S. military forces struck more than 85 targets, with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from United States,” CENTCOM said Friday. “The facilities that were struck included command and control operations, intelligence centers, rockets and missiles, unmanned aired vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities of militia groups and their IRGC sponsors who facilitated attacks against U.S. and coalition forces.”
Anti-war voices condemned the latest bombings in the 22-year, open-ended U.S. War on Terror, during which millions of lives have been lost and trillions of dollars spent. A coalition of 80 advocacy groups sent a letter to Biden imploring his administration to eschew war by “leading with diplomacy.”
“We fear that, as tensions continue in this escalatory spiral, the U.S. could become engaged in a protracted new war that spans across the entire region,” the groups wrote. “To avoid such an unacceptable outcome, we urge you to prioritize diplomatic pathways to de-escalation, which must include urgently pressing for and securing a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.”
Stephen Miles, president of Win Without War—one of the signatories to the letter—said that “while these strikes come in response to the recent tragic loss of three U.S. service members, there is little reason to believe that they will be any more successful at halting the growing spread of violence across the Middle East than multiple previous rounds of similar U.S. bombing.”
“Instead, the president should do everything in his power to immediately secure a cease-fire in Gaza, the fire at the core of this regional inferno, while leading robust, regional diplomacy aimed at a genuine de-escalation of violence,” he continued. “More war will only put U.S. forces and people in the region at greater risk than they already are.”
“Finally, we remain concerned about the clear lack of appropriate legal authorization for this prolonged military engagement,” Miles added. “While the president always retains the constitutional right to engage in self-defense, planned retaliation and prolonged bombing campaigns are not self-defense.”
As the U.S. and its allies drop bombs on Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, and beyond, remember that the U.S. military routinely covers up civilian casualties by labeling innocent people as "militants" or covering them up altogether. pic.twitter.com/q3rZzsp1I8
Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have been demanding that Biden attack Iran in retaliation for Sunday’s drone strike on the Tower 22 outpost in northeastern Jordan that killed three soldiers serving in the Army Reserve’s 718th Engineer Company and wounded dozens more.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI)—a coalition of Shia Islamist militant groups backed by Tehran—said it carried out the attack on the U.S. base. Iran denies any involvement in the strike, and the Biden administration admitted Monday that it has no proof that Tehran ordered the attack.
U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza—which has left more than 100,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing—has stoked intense outrage throughout the Muslim world. IRI warned following Sunday’s strike that “if the U.S. keeps supporting Israel, there will be escalations.”
“Nothing in the region is likely to de-escalate unless there is de-escalation in Gaza.”
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the letter signer Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Friday that “Biden’s strategy appears more focused on reducing the militias’ capability to strike the U.S. than reducing their interest in targeting Americans.”
“This is ultimately a suboptimal strategy. It would be more effective to reduce their interest in striking against the U.S. since that would render their capacity a lesser problem,” Parsi warned. “What would reduce their interest? A cease-fire in Gaza.”
“But Biden is doing everything he can to avoid putting any real pressure on Israel. He is accepting significant risk to U.S. soldiers—even willing to risk a regional war—just to make sure he doesn’t cross the Netanyahu government on the issue of a cease-fire,” Parsi continued, referring to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Regardless of how Biden’s campaign is choreographed and calibrated not to elicit lethal retaliations from the militias or Iran itself, there is no escaping this reality: Nothing in the region is likely to de-escalate unless there is de-escalation in Gaza,” he added.
A Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4 takes off to carry out air strikes against Houthi military targets in Yemen, from RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, January 22, 2024
BRITAIN faced condemnation today after carrying out further bombing raids with the US over Yemen.
Royal Air Force jets took part in a second wave of joint US-British action against Houthi forces on Monday night after the movement’s attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden continued.
Four RAF Typhoons and a pair of Voyager tankers were involved in the latest action.
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A summary of the British government’s legal position said the nation is permitted under international law to use force “in such circumstances where acting in self-defence is the only feasible means to deal with an actual or imminent armed attack.”
Stop the War Coalition national officer John Rees said that the action was the “largest raid so far on Yemen,” adding: “We were told there was no need for a vote in Parliament because [January 11] was a one-off raid. Well, this is now the second one-off raid.
“We should be under no illusion that we are not at war with Yemen. We are.
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“The violent repercussions of Israel’s war on Gaza are spreading across the Middle East and west Asia, threatening a much wider conflict. We must stop bombing Yemen.”
