As this is being written, it looks possible, or even likely, that Donald Trump will give the go-ahead for the US to bomb Iran, thereby directly entering the war on the side of Israel. He may only be waiting while US military assets gather in the region. Even if the US does not bomb Iran, it will continue to arm Israel. Either way, there will be serious implications for the Middle East and US politics.
Socialists do not support the repressive regime of the mullahs in Iran, and neither do they support the genocidal government of Israel. But that does not imply any kind of ‘equivalence’ in the war that erupted last Friday. We unequivocally condemn the Israeli attack which threatens to plunge the whole Middle East into a new and even more bloody war.
Labour Party meetings and trade union meetings should pass resolutions demanding an end to the assault on Iran and further demanding that Britain should play no role in the attack on Iran, either directly or indirectly and socialists should support demonstrations, lobbies and rallies to that effect.
Israel has chosen this particular time to attack Iran for several reasons. In the last year Israel has severely weakened Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy force in Lebanon, although without eliminating it entirely. The regime of Bashir Assad, also having been supported by Iran, has fallen. Israeli military superiority is such that it has been able to destroy on the ground all of the remaining military infrastructure left by Assad, without the new Syrian government able to lift a finger in opposition.
Israel has also chosen this moment because it hopes to draw the world’s attention away from the genocide in Gaza. Here, even now, dozens of Palestinians are being murdered by the IDF every day, for the ‘crime’ of being desperate to get at the limited food available. It is an ethnic cleansing that is not yet completed, but is ongoing. At the same time, pogroms against Arabs in the West Bank continue, assisted by the IDF.
Israeli propaganda machine has gone into overdrive
Every single step Israel has taken in its relentless onslaught on the Palestinians has been supported by US presidents but most enthusiastically by this one. Netanyahu clearly decided the time to act was now.
As a result of its murderous treatment of the Palestinian people, Israel has suffered the greatest political and reputational setback in its 77-year history. A big majority of workers and youth around the world – now including the USA – no longer see ‘poor little Israel’ defending itself. They see a monstrous militarised state, triumphantly and boastfully deploying its enormous arsenal of explosives and bombs across the whole Middle East.
It is the express strategy of the Israeli government to widen the war they have just started, by involving the USA in the assault on Iran. Israel has a huge superiority in air forces – “control of the skies over Tehran”, as they boast – but by itself it is incapable of completely destroying Iran’s nuclear programme. The uranium enrichment plant in Fordow, in eastern Iran, is buried half a mile into a mountainside and only the US ‘bunker-buster’ bombs have any chance of damaging it.
The first casualty of war is always the truth and the mainstream media have been full of the ‘danger’ of a nuclear-armed Iran threatening poor little (but nuclear-armed) Israel. The Israeli propaganda machine, which has a powerful influence on western politics and media has gone into overdrive.
But we should be clear that Iran has not been attacked because it developed a nuclear industry and is enriching uranium to a high level of purity, which gives it the possibility of building a nuclear weapon. Israel itself has probably the fifth largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. Even Saudi Arabia, for all its oil wealth, and despite being the most important US Arab ally, is discussing the possibility of having a nuclear reactor.
Iran is being attacked because it has refused to follow the dictates of the USA and the west, because it has helped to arm Russia in its war against Ukraine, because it has supported proxy forces in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, and, not least, because it has supported the Palestinian people, at least in words, far more vigorously than any of the Arab states.
‘Conventional’ bombing has no moral superiority over the nuclear kind
We should also understand that there is no moral or principled difference between ‘conventional’ and nuclear weapons. The latter are more destructive in a shorter period of time, and a single nuclear bomb can wipe out a city. But is the obliteration of Gaza – rendering over two million people homeless and killing 60,000 – somehow more ‘moral’ because it was done with ‘conventional’ explosives? The idea is absurd.
If Iran was building a nuclear bomb – and US intelligence before the Israeli attack believed it was not (see article here) – it was as a response to years of threats from Israel and the USA.
Iran is being attacked for one reason only: because it will not bow to the overweening military superiority of Israel, armed to the teeth by the USA. To the USA and the west, it is a ‘rogue’ regime that has to be brought down.
In launching a bombing blitz on Iranian military sites, Israel is acting as a proxy for the United States, and is supported by all the main European capitalist powers in trying to prevent the development of an Iranian nuclear industry. Despite being the only overwhelming super-power in the region, Israel has always used the pretext of “self-defence” in its long record of assaults, bombing and territorial expansion at the expense of its Arab neighbours. In taking on Iran, however, Netanyahu may well have bitten off more than he can chew.
Before the 1979 revolution, Iran was a neo-colony of the USA, as it had been for a prolonged earlier period of Britain. Iran’s oil was plundered by British and US companies for decades, and when a radical Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, nationalised the oil industry in 1953, the CIA, with British intelligence, organised a coup against him. In his place, the US installed the repressive regime of the Shah, which was eventually toppled by the 1979 revolution.
The USA and the West supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq
Soon after the 1979 revolution, western powers armed and supported the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who launched an unprovoked invasion of Iran. In the eight year war that followed, between half a million and a million were killed, proportionally more Iranians. The Iranian people, in other words, have been given no cause to trust western governments or intentions.
Socialists should not for one moment accept the mountain of hypocrisy poured out over the nature of the Iranian regime. We are opposed to its repressive character and we support the rights of Iranian workers to fight for a change of their society on their terms.
Even in the recent past there have been strikes against the lowering of living standards. Three years ago, hundreds were killed by the regime after mass protests, under the banner “Woman, Life, Freedom” erupted over the death in detention of a young woman, arrested by the ‘morality’ police.
But these same western governments calling for regime change now, were happily supporting the old government of the Shah, as its secret police, Savak, did much the same thing to students and workers. Western governments can give us no lessons in the ‘legitimacy’ of this or that government.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump have more than hinted at ‘regime change’ in Iran, in the hope that the devastation wrought by a prolonged bombing campaign will bring about an uprising against the mullah’s regime. Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz has said that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei cannot “continue to exist”.
A convenient distraction from the genocide in Gaza
Socialists would support any revolt of workers against the theocratic regime of Tehran, should it happen. But it is by no means certain that an uprising would take place while the war is on. It is just as likely that they will rally around the government as long as the crisis persists.
Between Netanyahu’s hubris and Trump’s empty-headed narcissism, these two leaders, therefore, may have seriously miscalculated the reaction of the Iranian masses.
Netanyahu may hope to win back some favour with western politicians who, because of the pressure of public opinion, have not wanted to be seen supporting the genocide in Gaza, but who nevertheless support efforts to deny Iran a nuclear capability. The problem is that Netanyahu is good at starting wars, but he has no political strategy for ending them, and no ‘solutions’ acceptable to anyone else in the Middle East. It is not for nothing that he has been accused over and again of launching ‘forever wars’ just to hang onto power in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu’s “forever wars” have no purpose or end point
Like all wars, this one will end sooner or later and another big question will be, what will be the mood of Israeli workers when the dust settles? What will be the result when they count the cost of Netanyahu’s reign as prime minister in terms of lives lost and the huge economic cost, which, despite US financial assistance, Israeli workers will pay.
Although there is a huge disparity between the effectiveness of Israeli air power and Iranian missiles, some of the latter are getting through defences and devastating parts of Tel Aviv and other cities.
Above all, Israeli workers will take stock of the hostility of the Arab masses (despite their ‘leaders’) and the views of workers and youth across the world, who despise Zionism and the state of Israel for its genocide in Gaza. Netanyahu’s “security through strength” is an open-ended commitment to war and nothing else.
The repercussions of the war will extend far away from the Middle East. If Trump decides to participate in the attack on Iran, the US will become embroiled in a war far more unforgiving than even the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It will have serious implications for Trump’s support in the USA, especially in the event of a long war, with significant US military casualties.
Trump, has called for “complete surrender” by Iran. Ironically, what is probably more likely to guarantee an uprising against the Iranian government would be if there were a humiliating ‘surrender’. “Crawling to the White House” as the Iranian representative put it, would show such weakness on the part of the government that it would be almost inviting an uprising, and it is for that reason that they are not likely to throw in the towel.
Modern politics is more volatile than ever before, so it is a fool’s game to try to predict what will happen even in the coming few weeks. But Iran is a nation of over 90 million, with a proud history of civilisations going back millennia. It still has extensive resources and capabilities, so it is seems highly unlikely it will be bombed into a quick surrender.
The longer the war goes on, the more profound and shattering will be the implications for world and Middle East politics. Israel and the USA want a quick win, but will they get one?
