Dusting Off the Old “Weapons of Mass Destruction” Excuse

By Tiernan Cannon | June 19, 2025 | 10:18am

White House photo by Paul Morse

International Affairs Iran

Dusting Off the Old “Weapons of Mass Destruction” Excuse

It is time, once again, to reach for that dusty old quote usually attributed to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” It is a good one. A neat utterance to capture the endless cycle of bullshit that our species remains trapped in. Lies are told and hate is fanned. Wars are launched and genocides unleashed. Aggressors claim righteous self-defense and victims are declared less-than-human. A bitter end eventually comes, and, long after it’s over, lessons are learned and the maxim “never again” takes its place as the sensible consensus. And, eventually, new lies are told. Hate is fanned. Wars are launched and genocides unleashed. The cast of characters may be different this time around, but the basic dynamics of the story remain the same. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

The phrase “weapons of mass destruction” was well-worn throughout the early 2000s. Spewed ceaselessly from the mouths of George W. Bush and his demonic British lapdog Tony Blair, the words appeared frequently in the old media of those strange, post-9/11 days. I was about seven at the time, and, even though I didn’t quite understand what the phrase really meant, the grim tone with which it was deployed was unmistakable. Weapons of mass destruction were scary, and there was a weird, mustached man far away who wielded them. It was right that he should be destroyed.

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The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is believed to have killed more than 250,000 people. Millions more were displaced. In the chaos that resulted, ISIS rose and, in turn, unleashed their own particular flavor of terror and death. The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was of course toppled, but his weapons of mass destruction were never discovered—because he never had them to begin with. Bush, Blair and all their cheerleaders had been lying, and, even though their lie unleashed death and misery at a scale that is difficult to truly conceptualize, they never faced consequences for it. An aging Bush paints his paintings now, and Blair enjoys his lofty status as a knight of the British realm. The quarter of a million people they killed remain stone-dead.

It is not difficult to detect the rhyme with Israel’s new war on Iran. Israel is bombing its arch enemy now, backed by the giddy support of its U.S. master along with its craven European allies, and it is doing so based on the same old lie: that the enemy will soon bear weapons of mass destruction. Iran, we are told, is on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons, and so any and all action to stop that from happening is justified. Even it means killing yet more children along the way.

Iran is considered a nuclear “threshold state”—that is, a nation that has developed the capacity to weaponize its nuclear program without yet having done so. But it is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and, as such, it allows its nuclear facilities to be inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA recently expressed concern about developments in the country’s nuclear program, but as Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, recently told The Financial Times, it would take “months, possibly up to a year” for Iran “to convert weapons-grade uranium to fit it with an explosive package, then actually be able to deliver it via a missile.” In plainer terms, “there was no imminent threat of a nuclear bomb.”

Israel, as it tends to, claims it is acting in “self-defense” by launching an unprovoked war against Iran. Its justification is an Iranian nuclear bomb that does not exist. It’s the same old bullshit that was peddled in the build-up to America’s war in Iraq, and, as in that instance, the consequences could prove disastrous. If anything, Israel’s assault actually increases the possibility of Iran developing nukes, given that it may reasonably conclude that attempts to deter Israeli aggression by diplomatic means are bound to fail. First Trump tore up Obama’s Iran nuclear deal in 2018, and now, days before fresh nuclear talks were set to take place, Israel has launched its bombardment and purposely destroyed any progress on that front. The U.S. and Israel are clearly untrustworthy partners, so Iran, fearing for its survival, may now actually go for it and weaponize its nuclear technologies. In perpetuating this fantasy of an Iranian nuke, and by acting as if it was imminently on the cards, Israel may just have laid the groundwork for it actually coming into existence.

More to the point, the nightmare prospect of nuclear war erupting in the Middle East is not presently being driven by Iran. How could it be? It doesn’t actually have any nukes yet. But the one country in the region that does have them is Israel. It is Israel that is thought to possess 90-plus nuclear warheads, not to mention the capacity to deliver them by land, air and sea. It is Israel that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and which does not open itself up for inspection. It is Israel that, while never officially admitting to possessing nukes, likes to occasionally imply that it would be happy to use them.

As we in the West condemn Iran and sow fear of the nuclear threat it poses, an actual nuclear power wages war and repeatedly demonstrates its disregard for human life and international law. Israel commits genocide, expands it borders at will, and has revealed international norms to be farce. Yet again it is those who actually have weapons of mass destruction that inflict chaos and death, all while blaming the violence on those who don’t. History, as ever, does have its rhymes.