The Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) condemns in the strongest possible terms the bombing of Iran by, firstly Israel, and now by the United States too.
The bombings by both nations are illegal, reckless, destabilising, and a snub to the efforts that were being made by European nations to de-escalate this crisis rather than escalate it.
Far from complying with the stern warnings of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – whose reports are used as a pretext for the attacks – the US and Israel have disregarded them.
On 13 June the Agency stated that the crisis must be resolved diplomatically, and that nuclear facilities must never be attacked, no matter the circumstances, citing the risk of radioactive contamination “with grave consequences within and beyond the boundaries of the State which has been attacked.”
The reality of nuclear war has just come much closer. The immediate and short-term consequences of the use of even a single nuclear weapon on a city would be tens or hundreds of thousands of people killed or critically injured, with little help available for the latter as medical services and other critical infrastructure are also destroyed.
In the longer term, a regional nuclear war would be likely to cause nuclear winter, failed crops globally and mass famine.
This is the reality that drove nations globally to utterly condemn all nuclear weapons and in 2017 achieve the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Shamefully, the Australian Government is yet to sign it.
Western double standards about nuclear weapons have rarely been in such overdrive as they are now.
Two nuclear armed nations – the US with over 5,000 nuclear weapons and Israel with approximately 90 – are attacking Iran, which has none.
In 2003, the nuclear-armed US and UK, with Australian support, attacked Iraq, which had none. Human catastrophe unfolded, as was predicted.
MAPW calls on the Australian Government to unequivocally condemn the attacks on Iran.
Repeated assertions that ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’, when that nation conducts acts of aggression against others, make a laughing stock of Australia.
Our leaders must do far more diplomatically rather than issue mixed messages that convey implicit support for illegal actions.
MAPW calls on the Government also to assert that Australia refuses to provide any military support to the US in its illegal attacks on Iran, including a refusal to allow US bombers to launch from or transit through Australian military bases.