The US and Israeli war of aggression against Iran continues the ecocide committed against the people of the region.
“Many more people will die, If this story's not told, but it may be too late. When it's over I won't be around, See the trees as they fall to the ground. You could say that I warned you of this in the past…and you hide in the shadows they cast. Oh, the Chemical War Brigade, Three men tall, expecting it all - Oh, the Chemical War Brigade, This is there for our future. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, Backs on the wall, there's only one way out of here” - The Disco Biscuits
Last weekend the zionist entity continued its unprovoked war of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran with its largest benefactor and partner in imperialism and international gangsterism, the United States. The tactics utilized by the zionist entity against Iran were and have been similar to those used against all of the nations and peoples it has attacked and continues to attack including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine (both Gaza and the Occupied West Bank). Yet for all these tactics, there is one that even caught the attention of mainstream, bourgeois media outlets like the New York Times even if they won’t name the tactic what it is - Ecocide.
Launched in November of 2020 by the parliamentarian parties of the Swedish government, the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide developed a working definition of the term in June 2021, “ecocide means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” It is incontrovertible that the zionist entity’s intentional strikes against Iran’s oil facilities qualifies as an act of ecocide. For instance, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, expressed concern that the strikes, “could have negative effects on public health, with Iranian children and the elderly among the most vulnerable,” and further noted, “damage to Iranian petroleum facilities “risks contaminating food, water and air.”
These risks were apparently founded based on reports by the New York Times who were told by a resident of Tehran, “The night turned into morning and the morning into night,” and continued, “With the fire, it felt like night became day, and then with all the smoke the day turned back into night again.” Moreover, per statements from local Tehranians, “Black rain fell from the sky, as airborne oil droplets mixed with precipitation and coated streets, cars, plants and pets.” Residents also stated that they were “feeling sick almost immediately after the attacks, including people who said, “their eyes were burning. Some reported migraines, dizziness and coughing…”
It should be noted that the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide stipulate:
- “Wanton” means with reckless disregard for damage which would be clearly excessive in relation to the social and economic benefits anticipated;
- “Severe” means damage which involves very serious adverse changes, disruption or harm to any element of the environment, including grave impacts on human life or natural, cultural or economic resources;
- “Widespread” means damage which extends beyond a limited geographic area, crosses state boundaries, or is suffered by an entire ecosystem or species or a large number of human beings;
- “Long-term” means damage which is irreversible or which cannot be redressed through natural recovery within a reasonable period of time; and
- “Environment” means the earth.
Based on this specific criteria, it’s clear that the zionist entity knew exactly what it was doing and the specific impacts associated with the intentional strike on Iran’s oil facilities. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “Exposure to oil refinery explosions causes severe immediate and long-term health, environmental, and safety risks, including respiratory distress, skin/eye burns, and, in some cases, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).” They continue, “Explosions release toxic pollutants like benzene, SOx, and NOx, causing acute respiratory problems, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.” And given that the zionist entity’s medical science is heralded as among “the best in the world,” due specifically to it being especially prolific, “...in clinical sciences, including patient-centered medicine, as well as oncology and carcinogenesis, microbiology, genetics, cardiovascular medicine and hematology,” it can be concluded, with warrant, that it knew of the health impacts to public health that would result from striking and igniting Iranian oil facilities.
And it’s not so much that the zionist entity knew what it was doing because of its medical and scientific prowess, but more because it has done this before and very recently. As we reported last year, “Israel’s Perpetual War Machine Demonstrates that Environmental Warfare is a Tool, Not a Consequence of Genocide and Settler Colonialism,” the zionist entity has utilized environmental and chemical warfare against the Palestinian people. The more recent attacks on Iran’s oil infrastructure follows the same trend and praxis. The world is well aware that Nazi Germany utilized “poisonous gas to murder people en masse in gas chambers. The Nazis murdered Jews, people with disabilities, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others…” What Nazi Germany utilized to exterminate Jewish people as part of its final solution for them was rooted in an ideology that is no different from that applied to Palestinian people by the zionist entity per the words of its own leaders who consider Palestinians inhuman and, therefore, disposable, as well as “Amalek,” or those who should be “blotted out” according to the Torah’s Book of Deuteronomy. This same approach is now being applied to the Islamic Republic of Iran by the zionist entity, who we now know “pressured” the United States to assist it with ecocide and unprovoked aggression based on yesterday’s resignation of Joe Kent, a top counter-terrorism official.
There is a sadistic and sinister irony associated with the zionist entity utilizing the same tactics against Iran and Palestine that Nazi Germany used against Jewish people and others considered undesirable for “the Reich.” More sadistic still because Nazi Germany was directly influenced by the U.S. treatment of Indigenous peoples when developing laws and pogroms to subjugate and oppress Jewish people in its short-lived empire. As professor Robert Miller points out, “the leaders of the Third Reich were turning racist ideas into official German policies, Nazis were carefully studying United States federal Indian law and state laws that discriminated against Indian nations and American Indians,” and continues, “the Nazis carefully studied American federal and state laws which discriminated against Black Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, and other racial groups.
But it should come as no surprise to “Americans” that the U.S. settler-colonial experiment, in the context of ecocide, is the progenitor of Germany’s psychopathic approach to Jewish people as well as the zionist entity’s psychopathic approach to Palestinian, Lebanese, Iranian people. From Indigenous people to the people of Vietnam, the U.S. has perfected the use of chemical and biochemical warfare to vanquish those who stood in the way of its conquest to increase its grip of imperialism through empire building and dispatch of those it deemed enemies - both foreign and domestic. For just as the zionist entity exercises ecocide via chemical warfare against Palestine and Iran, the U.S. exercises similar methods against frontline Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities - see also Cancer Alley, a community also being subjected to fossil fuel ecocide. And when the U.S. isn’t using fossil fuels as a direct weapon to poison and kill people, it uses them as a weapon of soft imperialism as we are witnessing with the Revolutionary Republic of Cuba whose entire grid system has collapsed due to the draconian international and imperial gangsterism of “America’s” military that is blocking the delivery of oil and other critical supplies necessary to sustain everyday functions of the island.
WIth the U.S. and the zionist entity, we are observing the same tactics utilized during the era of Nazi Germany imperialism - the only difference being that the swastika has been replaced by Stars of David and Stars and Stripes.
This moment elucidates the need for, and duty of, the global climate community to embrace and promote a lens and paradigm of anti imperialism as part of any pushback against war and militarism. While an anti war lens is imperative, it runs the risk of limiting the discussion to one of emissions and fossil fuels, as many climate/environmental groups tend to do, in lieu of centering People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs), which, in essence, approaches fossil fuels and the climate crisis in a way that contemporaneously condemns the profligate emissions that result from the war machine of militarism, as well as the use of military forces to carry out ecocide.
Next month the Colombian and Dutch governments have an opportunity to center ecocide and militarism during the first ever Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. For this conference to be a success, it’s imperative that it build off the COP 30 People’s Summit Declaration, which lifts up the key demand of, “an end to the exploitation of fossil fuels and call on governments to develop mechanisms to ensure the non-proliferation of fossil fuels,” while also naming the U.S.’s imperial presence in the Caribbean Sea and declaring solidarity with, “...all peoples who are being cruelly attacked and threatened by the forces of the US empire, Israel and their allies in Europe.”
In the meantime, the community of nations must commence an immediate investigation and bring the zionist entity to account for demonstrable acts of using oil as a weapon to commit ecocide, and the U.S. for its complicity in these crimes and its own crimes of denying Cuba its self-determination and PCHRs by weaponizing oil to plunge the revolutionary republic into a grave humanitarian crisis. Should the global community and the United Nations fail to act, it will be further proof that these governmental bodies are arbitrary, capricious, and too impotent for the masses to depend on them for collective liberation of oppressed and colonized people - which means they will have to take matters into their own hands by any and all means available, appropriate, and necessary to enjoin ecocide and the larger weaponization of fossil fuels and petro-capitalism.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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