Israel and the United States have intensified their radical destabilization of the Middle East by launching a military offensive in Tehran that appears aimed at toppling Iran’s leadership.

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” US President Donald Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’ Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.”

In a series of strikes on the Iranian capital that began on Friday, Israel assassinated Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s key nuclear negotiator who had been conducting talks with US officials on Tehran’s uranium enrichment program. Iran has long insisted it has a right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes and was seeking an end to crippling sanctions levelled by Washington.

In March, US intelligence and other experts asserted that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, and until last week Washington appeared to support negotiations with Tehran. But on Monday, Trump reversed course, claiming that Iran was indeed weaponizing its uranium. He warned Iranians to evacuate the capital and implied that the US would join its ally Israel in launching an imminent attack. The US has meanwhile moved additional ships and tanker aircraft into the Middle East.

Israel has killed senior Iranian military figures and several nuclear scientists, while also targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities—Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow—over the last several days. The strikes triggered radioactive and chemical contamination but reportedly had little effect on Iran’s underground enrichment facilities, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. On Tuesday, in renewed strikes, Israel said it was on the verge of destroying at least 10 nuclear targets in the Iranian capital.

Meanwhile, Iranian authorities said more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, had been taken to hospital across the country, of whom 224 had died in Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure. An emergency doctor at Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran described the scene as a bloodbath.

Iran has retaliated by launching a salvo of missiles and drones against Tel Aviv and Haifa, in northern Israel. Israel said at least 24 people, including women and children, have been killed in Iranian attacks. On Tuesday, Iran claimed to have hit the Mossad headquarters near the capital, and also launched a barrage of kamikaze drones across the country. Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal is considered one of the largest in the region.

Israel’s blatant violation of Iranian sovereignty, which has received Trump’s unqualified support, means the spectre of widespread carnage across the Middle East has edged closer to reality.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II called Israel’s war with Iran a global threat.

“With Israel’s expansion of its offensive to include Iran, there is no telling where the boundaries of this battleground will end, and that is a threat to people everywhere,” Abdullah told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

“Ultimately, this conflict must end. If the world fails to act decisively, it will be complicit in Israel’s crimes,” the Jordanian king said.

On Monday, 22 largely Islamic nations, including Turkey and Pakistan, issued a joint statement warning that Israel’s military aggression could ignite a broader regional conflict and destabilize the Middle East. Many of these states have maintained close ties to Israel as it wages a genocide against Palestinians, and very few, with the exception of Iran and Yemen, have attempted to stem Israeli atrocities in Gaza or defend Palestinians against Israel’s military onslaught.

Though many have speculated that Israel’s offensive against Iran is meant to distract from the genocide it is committing in Gaza, there is little evidence for this. Israel has faced no meaningful sanctions by the United Nations for its crimes and violations of international human rights law. The US is the principal weapons provider to Israel, supplying hellfire missiles and precision guided munitions, medium range missiles, Apache helicopters and armoured vehicles. Other countries that sell arms and munitions to Israel as it massacres and starves Palestinians are Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada and India.

What seems likelier is that the prospect of destroying Iran’s clerical government and installing a Western puppet regime would secure the most important oil transit chokepoint in the world—the Strait of Hormuz—for the US and its allies. Iran is one of the world’s top oil and gas producers, holding the second largest proven natural gas reserves, and the third largest crude oil reserves.

While warmongers worldwide are jubilant at the thought of profiting from the geopolitical upheaval, a spiral of violence would be devastating for the Iranian people and the entire region, as were the US-led regime change wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. A wider conflict would devour the Middle East and could spread beyond that region in terrifying ways.

Moreover, it is hypocritical and ahistorical for the US, the only country to have used atomic weapons in warfare, and Israel, a certifiably genocidal state, to attack Iran on the grounds that Tehran is enriching its uranium for civilian purposes or developing nuclear weapons.

In a just world, the US and Israel would be prevented from unleashing more bloodshed or at least held accountable for their crimes. In the real world, we can only hope that pressure from political or economic blocs be brought to bear against Washington and Tel Aviv before another round of human suffering ensues.

Judi Rever is a journalist from Montréal and is the author of In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.