November
7, 2023
After
millions worldwide protested Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza this weekend, US
Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Baghdad Sunday. In the Iraqi capital,
he denounced pro-Iranian militias that have been active in Iraq since
Washington illegally invaded the country, toppled its government and occupied
it from 2003 to 2011.
The USS West Virginia, one of the nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed Ohio class of of US Navy submarines.
Blinken
accused these militias of firing on US military bases in Iraq and Syria after
the Gaza war began. He said, “(T)o anyone who might seek to take advantage of
the conflict in Gaza to threaten our personnel here or anywhere else in the
region: Don’t do it. … (T)he threats coming from the militia that are aligned
with Iran are totally unacceptable, and we will take every necessary step to
protect our people. We’re not looking for conflict with Iran—we’ve made that
very clear—but we’ll do what’s necessary to protect our personnel …”
Blinken’s
argument is a political lie: Iran is not looking for war with the United
States, but Washington is looking for war with Iran. Blinken is unmistakably
threatening Iran or pro-Iranian forces in Iraq, Syria and across the Middle
East.
The
Palestinian uprising against Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza began a month
ago. Since then, over 10,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been
killed. Israel has bombed Gaza’s refugee camps, hospitals and schools; cut off
its food, water and electricity; and destroyed half its buildings.
Washington
did not try to urge restraint to calm the crisis but inflamed it, setting
course for war. While the Iranian regime warned that it might intervene
militarily to try to protect the Palestinians from genocide if Israel invaded
Gaza, Washington treated global anti-war protests with contempt, embracing
Israel’s genocidal policies and claiming Israel has a “right to defend itself.”
It also sent to the Middle East two aircraft carrier battle groups and
anti-missile batteries, weapons useful only against other major powers like
Iran.
US
threats to Iran emerged clearly this week, with the unusual public announcement
of the sending of a US nuclear missile submarine to the Central Command, which
oversees the Middle East. Such a ship can carry either 154 nuclear-tipped
Tomahawk cruise missiles or 20 nuclear ballistic missiles. This gives it a
total destructive power of either 23 or 28 million tons of TNT—about 1,900 or
2,300 times the power of the atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.
The
US news channel CNN commented, “The announcement is a clear message of
deterrence directed at Iran and its proxies in the region.”
Let
us speak plainly: Washington is threatening Iran and its allies with nuclear
war. The support of Washington and its European imperialist allies for Israel’s
genocidal war on Gaza not only implicates them in Israeli crimes against
humanity. It is also a warning: The imperialist powers will not hesitate to
take similar action against Iran or any other power in the region.
US
officials see this war as a part of a world conflict for global hegemony and
will stop at nothing to dominate the Middle East.
An
example of the criminal war hysteria infecting imperialist ruling circles is an
article, “The China-Russia-Iran Axis Is a Clear Threat to America,” by Ariel
Cohen of the influential Atlantic Council. Denouncing Russian and Chinese ties
to Iran, Cohen treats Israel’s war on Gaza as a golden opportunity to destroy
Iran in order to intimidate Russia and China: “The current crisis provides a
unique opportunity for Washington to send an unequivocal message to Moscow and
Beijing: Back off—or lose Iran.”
Action
by Iran, Cohen insists, should lead to the annihilation of its armed forces,
major industries and government. “If Iran does not heed warnings from
Washington and (causes) unacceptable damage to Israeli civilians, it needs to
be severely punished, and its nuclear program, military posture, and possibly
oil terminals destroyed. The kleptocratic Shia jihadi dictatorship is unlikely
to survive this. That will be the message Moscow and Beijing will not be able
to ignore.”
While
this policy is insane and criminal, it nonetheless describes the course
Washington and its European imperialist allies are taking, as well as their
fascination with nuclear weapons. This is rooted in the deep crisis of American
and world imperialism that has developed over decades since the time of the
1991 Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union.
By
going to Baghdad to threaten Iran, Blinken took a well-worn path of US
imperialist diplomacy. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, US officials
repeatedly traveled to Iraq to encourage Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to wage
war on Iran. Donald Rumsfeld, the future US defense secretary during the 2003
invasion of Iraq, went to Iraq in 1983-84 as a US envoy to encourage Hussein to
use poison gas against Kurdish troops allied to Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq
war.
Today
US imperialism and its European allies face very different conditions, however,
than during that war or the 1991 US-led Gulf War on Iraq. In the intervening
decades, freed from the military and political obstacle posed by the existence
of the Soviet Union, they launched regime-change wars across this resource-rich
region—in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and beyond. But despite the
deaths of millions and the spending of trillions of dollars, these unpopular
wars ultimately undermined Washington’s position.
First
of all, Washington is today in a desperate military crisis. Its Ukrainian
allies have suffered a defeat in the war on Russia in Ukraine. US forces in the
Middle East face a network of hundreds of bases that Iran, Russia or their
allies built in Syria and across the region—as Moscow and Tehran intervened
against the war for regime change NATO launched in Syria in 2011. Moreover,
China’s 25-year $400 billion treaty and infrastructure plan with Iran in 2021
also reportedly offers Iran a military alliance.
The
military crisis, however, by itself only provokes greater recklessness in
Washington. With 40,000 troops left in the Middle East, far from the 200,000
that invaded Iraq in 2003, Washington cannot, for now, invade and occupy Iran,
a country four times larger than Iraq, or fight Iranian, Russian and Chinese
forces in conventional wars. This underlies Washington’s politically criminal
resort to threats of nuclear war, even though this risks provoking a
conflagration between the world powers.
The
decisive issue, is that imperialism faces a rapidly-growing global movement of
workers and youth against war and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In the weeks since
the Israeli onslaught began, millions have protested on every continent. The
key question is on which perspective this vast movement can be unified and
politically armed to stop the genocide and the emerging third world war before
it escalates into nuclear Armageddon.
US
threats against Iran reveal how the bombardment of Gaza is part of a global
war, led by the imperialist powers, to re-divide and plunder the world’s
resources and markets. These wars cannot be stopped by appeals to one or other
capitalist government or politician. The problem is rooted in the world
capitalist system itself. The genocide in Gaza can be halted, as can the threat
of a global conflagration. But that requires the development of a consciously
united, international movement to transfer power to the working class, abolish
capitalism and replace it with socialism.
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