PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT

INVOLVEMENT IN IRAN WAR AT ANY LEVEL A TERRIBLE IDEA

Involvement by the Australian Government in the US and Israel’s war on Iran is a terrible idea, which we urge Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese to dismiss immediately. 

While Penny Wong has said there would be no involvement in ‘offensive’ operations against Iran but only in ‘support’ for various gulf states, involvement by Australia at any level whatsoever:

(a)Lends credibility and respectability to what is an unambiguously illegal attack by two countries (US and Israel) on a third country (Iran). It lends credibility also to Donald Trump’s repeated statements that international law, and the ‘rules based order’, painstakingly established in the aftermath of WW-II, do not matter and are best done away with. These are the very arguments used to argue AGAINST Russias invasion of Ukraine – that Russia’s invasion is is unambiguous violation of the rules based order. It is the crime of aggression. Yet somehow when the US does exactly the same thing, because they are supposedly our ‘ally’ invasion is OK. Invasion or attack is in all cases, whoever does it, NOT OK.

(b) Involvement does indeed, notwithstanding comments by some, involve the risk of ‘mission creep’. Having been involved a little bit we may get to be involved a little bit more, and then some incremental bit more.

(c)The Trump administration is insisting that it will all be over in weeks if not days. Yet there is little actual evidence, short of ‘boots on the ground’, and soldiers coming home in plastic bags, that this is so. While Trump has explicitly refused to rule out boots on the ground neither has he ruled them in and its a fair bet that he will seek to avoid them. The likelihood of a prolonged quagmire in Iran, a significantly larger country than Iraq, is there. Australia should have nothing to do with such a possibility.

Australias so-called ‘ally’ has under the Trump administration, displayed a contempt for the very idea of international law and the very idea of norms of international conduct that bluntly place in question the very idea that it is an ally – that it stands at all for the values most Australians think apply to international conduct. Australia should be following the example of Canada, not seeking to curry favour with a government that is increasingly falling into the role of a rogue state and a threat to global security.

John Hallam

People for Nuclear Disarmament

Human Survival Project

0411-854-612

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