TEHRAN - Talking in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak doubled down on London’s backing for Israel after Iran launched a legitimate retaliatory attack on Israel on Saturday night for its April 1 deadly air raid on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria.

Sunk claimed the “reckless and dangerous escalation” by Iran risked plunging the region into a deeper crisis.

In fact, it was Israel that acted dangerously by attacking the Iranian consulate, which is considered part of the Iranian territory. Even British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer was more critical of the original Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate. “Diplomatic premises should not be targeted and attacked,” the Labour leader said, according to the Guardian. “That is a point of principle.”

Also contrary to Sunak’s claims, it is Israel that is seeking “chaos” in the region in order to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their motherland.

Sunak also said Israel’s security “is non-negotiable” as part of a “fundamental condition for peace in the region”. 

The prime minister must also be reminded that the security of Iran is also non-negotiable. But there is a major difference. Iran is seeking a stable and secure region while Israel is seeking superiority over other regional nations and forcing them into submission by relying on the West’s unwavering support.

Iran was forced to take military action against Israel. The Israeli regime has been targeting Iranian military advisors in Syria for some years. However, this time it crossed Iran’s red line by assassinating seven Iranian military commanders among them a brigadier general in the diplomatic premise.    

Add to these terrorist attacks in Syria the assassinations of five Iranian nuclear experts and sabotage attacks at the nuclear sites and its complicity with the Trump administration in assassinating the IRGC Quds Force chief Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020.

Sunak also claimed that the security of Israel is a “fundamental condition” for peace in the region. The bitter point is that Israel is not seeking peace.

If has it really been seeking peace why has it been refusing to return to the 1948 borders based on the UN Security Council resolutions and instead is annexing more and more Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank?

And why in the midst of its genocidal war on Gaza has it decided to seize 800 hectares of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank to build Jewish settlements? And has it been killing all diplomatic efforts to create an independent Palestinian state and numerous other anti-peace efforts? 

Even Saudi Arabia, the most important country in the Arab world that is cherished by the West, has conditioned a normalization of relations with Israel to the formation of a Palestinian state based on the 1948 borders.

Israel has also annexed the Syrian Golan Heights occupied in 1967 and astonishingly former U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Golan as part of Israel in violation of international law and moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their future capital.

By describing Iran’s retaliatory and legitimate attacks on Israel as reckless and expressing Britain’s “full support”, Prime Minister Sunak is most probably seeking to vindicate the Israeli regime which has been committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by using arms provided by Britain and some other Western countries.

He is reprimanding the victim instead of the offender.

Iran just simply responded to the deadly attack on its consulate in Damascus which is part of its land and choreographed its drone and missile attacks on Israel in a way that it would not cause damage to civilian and economic infrastructure. And more importantly, Tehran said it is not seeking to widen the scope of the war.