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The US had claimed that its current invasion of Iran is over nuclear talks, but these fell apart given the contradictory statements by Trump and leading members of his administration. These include claims that the talks were stalling, which was a lie, to claims that Iran had developed a nuclear capacity to strike US. The lie in the latter is in the fact that the same US claimed in June, 2025 that it had destroyed Iran’s nuclear programme.
The on-going invasion of Iran by the United States (US) and Israel, coupled with the zeal of the European Union and Britain to appease President Donald Trump as he turns the international world order upside down, reminds me of Adolf Hitler.
After the First World War in 1917 in which about 20 million died, the leaders of the human race vowed that such carnage would not be allowed to repeat itself. They developed a world order with emphasis on peace, international rules of engagement, social justice, and the sovereignty of peoples. These were contained in the 28 June, 1919 Treaty of Versailles and they led to the establishment of the League of Nations.
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However, when Hitler, the democratically elected president of Germany, began to violate these international rules, the world powers merely watched and made excuses for him. Then on 12 March, 1938, he annexed Austria, and the world merely continued to watch. Seven months later, he seized Sudettenland, a border region of Czechoslovakia, and excuses were still made for him. Then, on 23 March, 1939, he took the whole of Czechoslovakia, and Europe thought the best thing to do was to appease him. That same day, he marched on Memel, a region of Lithuania, and his fellow European leaders merely watched. It was when Hitlerite Germany, on 1 September, 1939, invaded Poland, that other European countries, conscious that unless confronted, Hitler would overrun and colonise them, decided to stand up to him. But it was too late to stop the catastrophe. Over 60 million human beings were killed in the resultant Second World War, before international order could be restored.
So, the international world order in place today, including the United Nations which Trump has weakened and threatens to replace with a nebulous “Board of Peace,” cost humanity some ninety million lives.
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But, Hitler was no Devil strutting around like a huge monster, trampling the earth. He was a human being who, like all others, walked not on his head, but on two feet. The Cornell Law Library, in publishing the summary of a personality profile on Hitler stated: “Adolf Hitler’s personality was characterized by extreme narcissism, intense paranoia, and a volatile, authoritarian nature, combining charismatic public leadership with a private tendency toward cruelty, rage, and social withdrawal. He was deeply insecure yet possessed an unshakable self-belief in his messianic destiny.”
If in reading this ninety-year character sketch, you replace the name Adolf Hitler with Donald Trump, you get a perfect match. I may also add: you get the same politics of appeasement, rationalisation and duplicity by Britain, France and leading European countries, with the exception of Spain.
Even Germany, which produced Hitler and his fascist movement, and is also the ancestral home of Trump, pretends not to know better than appease him.
The US had claimed that its current invasion of Iran is over nuclear talks, but these fell apart given the contradictory statements by Trump and leading members of his administration. These include claims that the talks were stalling, which was a lie, to claims that Iran had developed a nuclear capacity to strike US. The lie in the latter is in the fact that the same US claimed in June, 2025 that it had destroyed Iran’s nuclear programme.
Canada is a country threatened by Trump and should ordinarily be worried about his administration. But its Prime Minister, Mark Carney, would rather blame the victim and praise the aggressors as the liberators of humanity. Carney declared: “the Islamic Republic of Iran is the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East, has one of the world’s worst human rights records, and must never be allowed to obtain or develop nuclear weapons.”
The fact is that Iran was invaded as international negotiations proceeded with announcements of progress made, including far-reaching compromises by Iran on its nuclear programme.
Two countries, without declaring war, decided to obliterate another member of the human community. Two countries, for no coherent reason, decided to murder Ali Hossein Khamenei, the 87-year old leader of a sovereign state, along with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, and all what civilised Western Europe could say is that Iran has no right to self-defence.
On 28 February, families of over eighty elementary school children in Tehran, bathed their wards and sent them to school, only for the adult leaders of the US and Israel to target their school and turn it into rubbles, with the children buried underneath. Yet, civilised Europe has no nerve to condemn such barbarism. All it does is to chorus that Iran should not have retaliated by attacking US targets and Middle East countries providing military bases to the invaders. In fact, some European countries, rather than work for ceasefire, are adding petrol to the raging fires by sending combat aircraft to the region. They blame Iran for its retaliatory attacks, rather than try to stop the US and Israel from further attacks.
The invasion of Iran is not an isolated one. Since last year, the US has attacked at least six countries, including Venezuela, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria.
The US had claimed that its current invasion of Iran is over nuclear talks, but these fell apart given the contradictory statements by Trump and leading members of his administration. These include claims that the talks were stalling, which was a lie, to claims that Iran had developed a nuclear capacity to strike US. The lie in the latter is in the fact that the same US claimed in June, 2025 that it had destroyed Iran’s nuclear programme.
…if the US attacks against Iran have been planned for decades, the talks about nuclear weapons are a pretext. The White House’s reasons for this invasion includes an American revenge for the November 1979 Iranian students seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran, which led to a 444-day standoff. This kind of childish reason is as silly as Israel today going to bomb Germany for the Holocaust of the Second World War.
The White House has come out with what it says are the real reasons for the attacks. It stated that: “For nearly half a century, the Islamic Republic of Iran — the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — has killed and maimed American citizens and service members through its own forces and proxy militias. More Americans have been killed by Iran than any other terrorist regime on Earth. President Donald J. Trump is doing what Presidents over the last five decades have refused to do — eliminate the threat once and for all.”
So, if the US attacks against Iran have been planned for decades, the talks about nuclear weapons are a pretext. The White House’s reasons for this invasion includes an American revenge for the November 1979 Iranian students seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran, which led to a 444-day standoff. This kind of childish reason is as silly as Israel today going to bomb Germany for the Holocaust of the Second World War.
Clearly, the Trump administration, which is declaring wars without constitutional Congress approval, disregards judgements of the US Supreme Court, is turning the international order upside down, is unhinged and a danger to the human race.
European countries like France and Britain, which, as usual, are playing the ostrich may, as in the case of Hitler, become the main victims of Trumpism.
Given human development, the rule of might over right and a descent to anarchism will do incalculable damage.
Collectively, we, including the US citizenry, have a duty to return the world to order so we do not again, sacrifice tens of millions in order to restore sanity in the international system.
Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.
