Arrest of Iranians as Israel seeks war – are we seeing a repeat of 1994 set-up of Palestinians?

Is someone looking to provoke war, or seeking justification for it and for more repression in the UK?

In 1994, two bombs detonated outside the Israeli embassy in London and another Jewish-run building in the capital. The embassy’s security camera facing the location of the bomb was, curiously, not working. Nobody was killed and the ‘Palestinian’ group that claimed responsibility for the bombing – the ‘Jaffa team’ of the ‘Palestinian resistance’ – had never been heard of before and was never heard of again.

In December 1996, two young Palestinians were convicted of conspiracy to plant the bombs, even though they could prove they were nowhere near the locations at the time. The bombings are now widely believed – including by UK intelligence services, according to former MI5 agents David Shayler and Annie Machon – to have been ‘controlled explosions’ set off by Israel to trigger a police crackdown on Palestinians in the UK, with the two unfortunate victims convicted of the bombing set up by a man they knew as Reda Moghrabi, believed to have been an Israeli agent.

Police originally charged two other Palestinians with the bombing, claiming to have found traces of explosives, but then dropped all charges against one and the other was acquitted of all charges by a jury. In the later trial of the two defendants ultimately convicted, Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh, the police withheld extensive evidence that may have exonerated the pair and an Israeli reporter was caught offering information and contact numbers to jurors in what appeared to be an attempt to increase the chances of a guilty verdict – yet was still allowed to continue attending and reporting on the trial.

The pair’s appeal against their conviction was held in secret and only one of their defence lawyers was allowed to attend – on condition that he did not disclose what was said, even to his clients. The appeal released just one piece of information that had been withheld – a note showing that police and intelligence services had been informed of the bomb ‘plot’ beforehand but did nothing. Alami’s and Botmeh’s appeals were unsuccessful, with judges ruling the convictions were not unsafe and the pair had not been denied a fair trial.

This morning, state broadcaster the BBC has published information, reportedly leaked from the Met Police, that five Iranian men arrested on “suspicion of preparing an act of terrorism” were targeting, not British establishment buildings, but the Israeli embassy. The Iranian government, which has denied any involvement, demonstrated last year that it is perfectly capable of mass strikes directly on Israel in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Iran – and said earlier this week that it will do so again if Israel attacks it:

Israel, meanwhile, has bombed civilian targets in Yemen, continues to starve and bomb Gaza and to bomb Lebanon, has occupied large parts of Syria and is desperately trying to provoke the US to enter a war with Iran in its pursuit of its ‘Greater Israel’ expansion project. Iran has so far been careful not to give the US an excuse to attack, even after Israel has bombed Iranian cities – and US president Donald Trump’s circle is divided over whether to back Israel’s calls for war with Iran, while Trump is pushing for a deal with Iran over its nuclear programme and has been faced down by Yemen this week, announcing an end to US bombing there, which the Yemenis have said will mean no more attacks on US naval vessels while they will maintain their attacks on Israel.

Iran has little reason to trust Trump after he unilaterally scrapped the agreement he made during his first term in office, but similarly would be considered by most analysts to be unlikely to give him any excuses unless forced to by Israeli aggression. Israel, meanwhile – particularly with Trump’s climbdown over Yemen – has ample reason to want to provoke Trump, while the Starmer regime in the UK is likely also to welcome excuses to join in any eventual US attack on Iran, just as it did in the recent bombing raids on Yemen.

Israel has a long record of alleged ‘false flag’ attacks, from the 1994 bombings, to the well-known and proven ‘Lavon affair‘ to bomb western interests in Egypt and blame it on Muslim groups and its 1967 bombing of the USS Liberty in an attempt to provoke the US against Egypt.

And just in February, it was accused of false-flag attack to justify a mass assault on the occupied West Bank, after bombs went off in three separate buses with no casualties – ‘Jewish Israelis’ were subsequently arrested

In 1954, Israeli Military Intelligence (often known by its Hebrew abbreviation AMAN) activated a sleeper cell that had been tasked with setting off a series of bombs in Egypt. In this risky operation, a small number of Egyptian Jews were to bomb Western and Egyptian institutions in Egypt, hoping the attacks could be blamed on Egyptian opponents of the country’s leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood or the Communist Party. The ensuing chaos, it apparently was hoped, would persuade Western governments that Nasser’s regime was unstable and, therefore, unworthy of financial and other support.

Leonard Weiss, Sage Journals (The Lavon Affair: How a false-flag operation led to war and the Israeli bomb – Leonard Weiss, 2013)

The UK government, for its part, has been accused of involvement in the Douma chlorine attack, notoriously invented a ‘dodgy dossier’ to support its war on Iraq based on unjustified claims of weapons of mass destruction, and has serious questions over its involvement in the 1994 bombing, given the refusal to disclose information or properly investigate the identity of Moghrabi. Particularly given the known dishonesty of its current PM, this country does not have a government it can simply trust.

At the same time, the Starmer government is engaged in a war on pro-Palestine journalism, speech and protest, is misusing anti-terror laws to harass, raid and criminalise journalists, has demonstrably lied about protests to arrest and criminalise protesters – and is now unlawfully banning even Jewish anti-genocide protesters from large areas of London to protect Israeli interests in the capital. A ‘bomb plot’ against the Israeli embassy would doubtless be used to justify even greater repression.

All these factors raise serious concerns about sudden accusations of a bombing plot by Iran aimed at the Israeli embassy, just at the moment when the Israeli regime wants US (and therefore UK) support in war on Iran and to stiffen the resolve of a vacillating Trump.

The UK public must not be lied to or fooled, as it has been so often by governments seeking to create or shore up excuses for illegal war or repression. Independent scrutiny of the case against those arrested this week and of any prosecutions is essential.

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