THE US HAVE ANNOUNCED THAT THEY ARE SENDING 500 ADDITIONAL US MARINES IN SAUDI ARABIA WHERE THEY ARE ALSO INSTALLING THEIR NEW PATRIOT SYSTEM OF BALLISTIC MISSILES. But all this was already in train, well before the 20 July 2019, date when Iran seized the British tanker Stenna Impero in the Straight of Hormuz.
On 4 July 2019, the UK had already impounded the Iranian-flagged tanker ‘Grace1’ (in Gibraltar) and the United States have just claimed to have brought downed an Iranian drone over the Hormuz straight. But as much in this case, as in that of the US economic sanctions, Iran has done nothing other than defend itself from the attacks of world imperialism.
The US administration started this by breaking the nuclear pact signed with Iran in 2015. Now, the US sanctions are throttling Iran and impose on their European capitalist allies that they follow suit.
Because of their historic and common class interests, the European countries are lining up behind the USA, but they do it with much reluctance and mistrust. Iran is perfectly right to seek to use the divisions this creates between the USA and their allies like France and Germany.
The European bourgeoisie is particularly distrustful of the Trump leadership. It sees itself drawn into new and costly ruptures, not only with Iran but in the wider Middle-East. And it sees itself dragged into a probable total war regarding which it does not feel over-consulted. In Britain and the United States, press articles appear that do not look kindly on war with Iran.
As long as the Pentagon is not launching total war against Russia and China, the Trump government attacks in places, here and there, to make sure no one underestimates the power of capitalism, or that of Donald Trump. The intention being to crush the revolution in all the countries that resist, like Venuela, Syria, Iran.
Wherever the US and NATO launch their attacks, however, they come face to face with Russia and China. They find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to visit ‘regime change’ within countries without involving all the world. It is true that Russia and China display great social limitations internally, but the big capitalist sectors that develop inside them do not decide at foreign policy level. The opposite being the case, since the world policy of Russia and China allows countries to defend their national sovereignty, as in Venezuela and Iran. Permitting even these to help each other, as in the case of Iran and Syria for instance.
The way world imperialism hesitates to attack Iran shows that it is afraid of what may come out of its confrontation with Russia and China. It is afraid of itself, of its nature, not really knowing where it goes. It is not short of military means, but it knows that having blocked the anti-capitalist development of Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya did not grant it the historic ability to have capitalism flourishing there.
The key role of Russia and China
It is the Soviet Workers State that crushed nazism in the last war, and not ‘the allies’. It was the triumph of the Soviet Union in the last war that created the conditions for the emancipation of most of the colonies. Now imperialism cannot roll back countries without finding Russia and China in the way.
With its firm and resolute stance, Iran demonstrates that humanity is not afraid. The one that shows itself irresolute, hesitant and cowardly is world imperialism. Although imperialism (led by the US and NATO) needs a final showdown with Russia and China, it does not read ‘victory’ in the tea-leaves. In the case of Iran, any war which it launches is going to involve the whole of the Middle East, China, Russia, Israel, the world. But it is going to launch that war, however, because it needs it, from that part of the world or from anywhere else. It is obviously preparing for it. It wavers, seeing how much it is hated everywhere and how it loses the respect even of those who serve it. Meanwhile, Iran makes audacious use of the vacillations.
The tasks for the Left
One must defend Iran, Venezuela, Syria, the Donbas. In the places where capitalism intervenes, it does not do so for the sake of progress or of human rights. It does it to stop the progress of the anti-capitalist, revolutionary and socialist struggle.
One must denounce the counter-revolutionary and nazi measures that imperialism uses increasingly for that purpose, as in Ukraine. What it does in Ukraine proves that it is not looking for any kind of progress there, but only for the survival of its regime.
No war on Iran! In every country and internationally, one must make common cause with the anti-war and anti-imperialist movements who say the same. Advantage must be taken from imperialist dithering over Iran and the Middle East; it gives us time to encourage everywhere the greater penetration of the power of the working class in its political leaderships. Let us shout: “Don’t attack Iran!”. In explaining this slogan – and its huge echo even in the United States – one will help bring closer together the workers parties, the workers’ struggles, the trade unions and the anti-war movements.
Posadiststoday.com – 22.7.19
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