This is the first in an occasional series

These quotes say it all …

“The language president Trump used was that of cultural genocide when he said that he would erase a whole civilisation.”

“Iran won this war. Iran did not fold …” — Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector and former US Marine

“Iran is now emerging as the fourth centre of world power …” — Robert Pape, political scientist, Chicago University

“We attacked Iran for Israel …” — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House

“Enough of the US. We are doing our own bilateral discussions with Iran … Donald Trump has lost the plot, he’s lost the war and he has lost his damn mind.” — Emmanuel Macron, president of France

“Iran has been winning this war.” — The Hebrew Press, Tel Aviv

There is an unabashed threat to freedom of speech and expression in the West. Authoritarianism and a renewed appetite for war are accompanied by a resurgent ideology informed by notions of White supremacy found on both sides of the Atlantic. Imperialism and neocolonialism among Western political and financial elites is on the rise and immorality in matters of war and peace is now normative. All signs of an empire’s decline.

The smallest coffin …

We live in a predatory system propounding predatory behaviour in the West. Front and centre is the renewed quest of the neocolonial and imperialist capture of the global south and its resources, which have been on the Western menu for roughly four centuries. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, some months ago at the Munich Security Council and actually to a standing ovation by European, American and other elites, asserted that colonisation was not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, he did so — to a welcome reception from a packed hall. He said it with a straight face.

Even genocide has been normalised over the past three-plus years and by some Western financial, political and some fundamentalist protestant religious elites in America — even celebrated. As long as it’s not their people. In their minds it’s just the price of doing business. Whether it is associated with the military-industrial complex or their religious allies on a messianic mission such as to create a Greater Israel or the return of Christ himself.

This is why Iran and Russia are despised on the one hand and coveted by the West on the other. Russia is the wealthiest country on earth in terms of natural resources. Iran is the fifth wealthiest when it comes to natural resources. Call them autarchies. This is how they were able to withstand decades of US sanctions. After the failure of sanctions, they then proceed to Plan B, resulting in US-generated coups and military actions undertaken directly or in concert with their proxies such as Israel and Britain.

And once those resources are extracted and the magic words value-added are produced, that wealth is distributed through the architecture of Western-dominated financial systems in places such as the City of London, its golden mile, New York’s Wall Street, Cayman and the BVIs of this world, to name a few. That is why the terms Anglo-American can also be a term to define this empire.

This is the financial architecture of these financialised economies that constituted a globe-spanning system that emerged, with the rise of the global economy during the late 1990s with the end of the Cold War as a uni-power or hegemonic empire. But this is an empire that is now on the wane. Its decline is not a pretty picture. It never is.

The more that decline is manifested, the more those weapons consisting of sanctions and hot, endless wars on the part of the US directly or of its proxies take centre stage. Naturally, with the right false narrative attached to project, a perception of virtue to their actions where none exist such as in the high-seas robbery that took place in Venezuela.

According to Alex Krainer, a Croatian-born geopolitical and market analyst, one should “never ascribe to incompetence what can be adequately explained by malice”, such as the murders of whole families including children who are now apparently eligible for assassinations without a blink of an eye. Something is deeply wrong with our system.

Did you see the smallest coffin at the state funeral of the assassinated Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei? That coffin contained the remains of his youngest grandchild, who was only 14 months old when she was “assassinated” with her grandfather. Ali Khamenei’s wife was also seriously injured. His son and now newly installed Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was similarly wounded during that attack.

Al-Monitor, a Washington-based publication, reported that Mojtaba would also witness the murder of his sister, his wife and brother-in-law.

Another sign of the world we now live in. Imagine that only days ago the president of the United States, Donald Trump, requested to meet with Iran’s Supreme Leader. The same Supreme Leader whose father and other family members including that 14-month-old baby that were assassinated at the orders of Trump himself and Netanyahu only months ago. His request, of course, received the contempt it deserved.

The sound of silence

More than 160 Iranian primary school girls would join them on that list of martyrs engineered by those same belligerents in an illegal war of choice.

Amid all of this, I am compelled to exercise my conscience, such as it is, and display some degree of courage in submitting this series. I will let you be the judge of that.

A final word here. Someone needs to inform Trump and Netanyahu in particular that when you lose a war, as they have done at the strategic level, you do not get the privilege of imposing the terms of your defeat upon the victor. Don’t be sore losers. That is the prerogative of the nation that defeated you. Its name: Iran.

To the biggest losers here, the US and Israel in particular, they must learn to get along with their neighbours. Even with those as in this case you view with your European-derived distinct sense of superiority as beneath you …

• Rolfe Commissiong is the former MP for Pembroke East