क्रान्तीकारी नेपाल

The following pamphlet is a slightly compilation of a series of five articles that
appeared in A World to Win News Service from 29 May-26 June 2006, along
with a new introduction. AWTWNS is a free electronic weekly put out by A
World to Win magazine, a journal inspired by the Revolutionary International
Movement, the embryonic centre of the world’s Maoist parties and
organizations.
A World to Win magazine: www.aworldtowin. org
To subscribe, go to www.aworldtowin. org or
http://uk.groups. yahoo.com/ group/AWorldToWi nNewsService/
Introduction
This series of articles sought to analyse the political, economic and especially
geo-strategic reasons why the US chose to manufacture a crisis around
Iran’s nuclear programme. Even in the short time since they appeared, the
world has undergone tremendous turbulence and developments, including
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. However, the objective contradictions that created
the threat of another, even bigger war against Iran have not essentially
changed. In fact, these developments confirm the seriousness of the threat –
the unrelenting determination of the US and its allies to impose more direct
domination on the people of the Middle East – as well as the obstacles and
limitations these imperialists are faced with.
The foreign ministers of the “5 plus 1″ countries (the five permanent members
of the United Nations Security Council – the US, Russia, Britain, China
and France, plus Germany) approved a package of incentives devised by the
European Union which EU foreign policy chief Xavier Solana presented to
Iran’s head of national security Ali Larijani on 6 June. Although the contents
of the offered deal are secret, it seems that its provisions would have allowed
both sides to claim some victory. The presentation of this package and its
American approval prompted the idea that Washington was seeking a peaceful
outlet to the current crisis. Contrary to the past, the US even suggested that
it would take part in the negotiations along with the other five big powers, on
the condition that Iran first suspend its enrichment of uranium. But in fact the
European offer was meant to control and slow down the US in its press to
intensify its contradiction with Iran. While the US had to approve of the
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package in words, it sought an excuse to regain the initiative. The Islamic
regime welcomed the suggestion and Larijani called it “encouraging” . Iran
said it would give its response on 23 August. This was enough of an excuse
for the US to outmanoeuvre the EU initiatives by calling this delay unacceptable.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Iran had only “weeks,
not months” to reply.
But long before August, a new development in the Middle East changed
the whole scene and in a matter of hours the idea of a peaceful outlet to the
current crisis in the Middle East looked a lot less likely. In retaliation for the
snatching of two Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese organization Hezbollah, the
kind of operation that has been occurring regularly over the last few years,
Israel launched a full-scale war. The Zionists could not convince many people
of the honesty of their explanation for inflicting so much destruction on
Lebanon. On the contrary, many more people all over the world saw this war
as linked to the US imperialists’ plan for restructuring what they call the
Greater Middle East and as part of their quest for a New World Order. Rice
more or less admitted it when she scorned the suffering of the Lebanese people
as just “the birth pangs of the new Middle East”. More specifically, many
people saw it as a first step in preparing for a possible war on Iran as part of
that process.
The American journalist Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker
magazine (21 August), “According to a Middle East expert with knowledge
of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had
devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah – and shared it with Bush
Administration officials – well before the July 12th kidnappings. `It’s not that
the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,’ he said, `but there was a
strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going
to do it.’”
The reasons behind the attack on Lebanon – and the results
But why choose Lebanon as a window through which to attack Iran? As the
gendarme of US imperialism in the region, Israel has been at war with
Lebanon since 1970, sometimes in a high intensity conflict and sometimes in
a low one. Israel shared American interests in trying to smash Hezbollah for
two reasons. First, that organization had developed as the main barrier to
Israel’s ability to invade at will and control Lebanon. Second, one of the
Iranian Islamic regime’s most effective ways to respond to a US attack on Iran
would be through Hezbollah. Washington military planners have been quite
concerned by Hezbollah’s long and medium range missiles, and they fear that
it could organize guerrilla warfare inside Israel itself. At the same time, the US
and Israel counted on this attack on Hezbollah to set off another ethnic/religious-
based civil war in Lebanon, similar to the one they inflicted on Lebanon
in the 1970s or what is going on in Iraq today. Such a war would not only weaken
Hezbollah but could serve as an excuse for some kind of more long-term
Israeli or even US intervention or presence.
When it became evident that the air bombardment that killed as many as a
thousand civilians was not enough to reach their aim, Israel invaded by land.
But the war planners failed to achieve their objective. Hezbollah, whose military
arm is far more like an army than the informal Palestinian fighting
groups, put up much stronger resistance than expected. The Lebanese people
did not turn against each other but became more united against Israel and the
US. Hezbollah is a religious and ethnic-based organization and not anti-imperialist
– that is, its aims are not to free Lebanon from the worldwide spider
web of imperialist- dominated economic and political relations, but to reconfigure
the political landscape within Lebanon. Nevertheless, this war boosted
Hezbollah’s morale and prestige as a fighting force against Israel. America’s
ruling class was left disappointed at their inability to make a breakthrough in
their plan for the Middle East and to prepare war against Iran.
The Hersh article quoted above goes on to make the following comments:
“According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in
Bush’s first term – and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah `may be the A team
of terrorists’ – Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties
and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the
White House about Iran. `If the most dominant military force in the region –
the Israel Defence Forces – can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population
of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to
Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,’ Armitage said.
`The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population
against the Israelis.’”
This war also heightened the inter-imperialist contradictions. The EU saw
this war as a US/Israeli attempt to crush the European initiative on the Iran
nuclear issue, and pressed for a ceasefire, using the suffering of the people of
Lebanon as a pretext for their own manoeuvres.
These recent developments seem to have emboldened the Iranian regime’s
approach. On 22 August Iran responded to the so called “5 plus 1″ incentive
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package. By now it was clear that, influenced by developments in Lebanon,
Tehran had concluded that the US and Israel would not necessarily respect or
recognize any deals between Iran and Europe, and that any concessions made
by the EU would not lead anywhere. The recent statement of an Iranian official
(according to the BBC Persian Service) blaming the US for sabotaging the
negotiations between Iran and the EU supports this assessment. Further, this
statement seems directed at launching another round of efforts to play off the
US, Europe and Russia against each other, given Russian and Chinese opposition
to sanctions and EU opposition to a war against Iran. The Islamic
regime seems to hope that the results of the Lebanon war have made France,
in particular, a little bolder in standing up for its interests against the US.
However these various positions are not necessarily frozen. There will be
more changes in tactics according to different developments until finally a
decisive act settles the situation for a period of time.
The North Korean nuclear test and the Iranian nuclear issue
The recent developments around the North Korean nuclear test interact
with the Iran situation.
Though the major powers, including China and Russia, condemned or
strongly criticized North Korea for carrying out this test, they have adopted a
very particular attitude. The American position is especially peculiar and has
revealed a lot about Washington’s geopolitical strategy and objectives. After
all, the US had unleashed its biggest war since Vietnam with the pretext of the
Saddam Hussein regime’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.
The evidence used to argue for this invasion turned out to be completely
fabricated by the US and UK. Then, more recently, Bush and other high
American officials announced that they would never tolerate the acquisition
of nuclear weapons by North Korea. Now that North Korea has tested one,
while the US would like strong economic sanctions applied against
Pyongyang, it accepted a resolution adopted by the UN Security Council that
excluded the direct use of force. Yet the US attitude toward Iran, which according
to American intelligence reports is five or tens years from being able to
do what North Korea has already done, is far more confrontational.
In fact, it seems that the US is trying to use then North Korea bomb test to
step up threats against Iran. Bush declared 10 October, “The North Korean
regime remains one of the world’s leading proliferators of missile technology,
including transfers to Iran and Syria. The transfer of nuclear weapons or materiel
by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave
threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable
for the consequences of such action.” In other words, the danger from North
Korea, Bush says, should be seen in light of what the US considers its immediate
problems: Iran and Syria. This is even being used as a pretext for possibly
intercepting Iran’s shipping, supposedly to prevent it from receiving
nuclear and other material from North Korea.
In short, nuclear proliferation is not the main concern of the US or any of
the major powers. And as a result, the US is willing to make concessions to
China and Russia on how to deal with a nuclear North Korea in return for their
concessions to the US on the Iranian nuclear dossier.
It is clear that the Middle East is the main priority for US imperialism.
Again and again American actions, as well as foreign policy documents, have
shown that it considers control over this region as a whole of strategic, central
importance to US interests. Any course of action that would mean giving up
on this goal seems impossible and unimaginable for the US.
What will emerge from this chaos?
Developments in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East have gone very
badly for Washington. These difficulties and dangers have also heightened the
contradictions between the US and its rival imperialists who are trying to take
advantage of the superpower’s being bogged down in Iraq and to challenge
American strategic goals by disrupting the American plan or not cooperating
the way the US wants them to.
This present moment is one of debate and even crisis among reactionary
strategists of the Republican and Democratic parties about how to achieve
their regional goals in light of their difficulties. There are very important voices
in the US ruling class calling for adjustments in the way the US is dealing
with Iraq. Serious differences over Iran also emerged within the US ruling
class months ago, even before the current debate about Iraq and Hezbollah’s
stalemate of the Israeli invasion. This was most dramatically illustrated with
the publication of a speech entitled “Do not attack Iran” by Zbigniew
Brzezinski, one of American imperialism’ s leading foreign policy advisors,
who certainly does not speak only for himself. It is possible that US’s difficulties
could force a recognition of its limits and a reconsideration of how and
when it will deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran. But there is no real debate
on the greater strategic goal of American control of the Middle East; the ques-
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tion is how to serve this greater goal. Further, it would be a big mistake to
conclude that the danger of an outright US attack on Iran has disappeared or
even necessarily receded into the far future. “Bush has also vowed privately
not to leave office with Iran’s nuclear programme intact,” The New Republic
reported 2 October 2006. We can’t predict the future, but we can say with certainty
that the present situation is volatile and extremely dangerous.
Avery powerful voice from among US ruling circles is declaring that since
there are no good solutions for the US in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle
East under present conditions in the region as a whole, the only way forward
is to take an “all or nothing” approach. Since events in Iraq, Lebanon,
Palestine and Iran are so bound up with one another, this approach would seek
to get rid of what the US considers problematical regimes and forces all at
once. This would be a desperate gamble, but it could also seem like the best
available option for them. As potentially disastrous as attempting an even
greater rash advance in the Middle East might be for these imperialists, some
of their strategists believe – and not without reason – that the situation will
only get worse for them if they fail to act decisively and soon. While the debates
in imperialist circles are driven by a real need to deal with the situation in
the Middle East as it has actually developed – and has proved, so far at least,
way beyond their ability to control, that is only one side of the necessity they
are faced with. The other side is that failing to decisively establish US control
in the region could bring even more certain disaster for them: their bid for
world domination could fail, and rival imperialists have their day instead.
The anti-people Iranian regime is fighting to survive the US’s attempted
restructuring of the region. The mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran have
been and will continue manoeuvring in the imperialists’ game, in hopes of finding
a place for themselves in the imperialist economic and political system.
At the same time, they seek to take advantage of the anti-imperialist hatred of
the Iranian people and in the region to ensure their survival, and will try to
take an anti-imperialist posture to deceive the people of their own country and
the world in order to win their support.
The oppressed peoples of the Middle East have long been victims of imperialist
domination and intervention, and millions want to fight to put an end to
it all. But reactionary forces and reactionary ideologies such as religious fundamentalism
that are particularly strong in the Middle East region at this time
are taking advantage of these sentiments for ends that can only leave the people
more enslaved. There is an urgent, vital need for a worldwide antiwar
movement to oppose the imperialists and support the masses and real revolutionary
forces in the region. Without revolutionary change, there can be no
resolution in the interests of the people to these powerful contradictions and
the potentially catastrophic armed clash of reactionary interests.
PART 1: What the US wants
The threat of American aggression against Iran has alarmed people everywhere.
Right now the US is engaging in sabre-rattling, threatening Iran with
military action, while, for the time being, pressing ahead with its efforts to
impose economic and diplomatic sanctions. But as recent events (Iraq) and
history have shown, such sanctions are often the prelude and even the path to
a more violent settling of the issue. There is a real possibility of another war
in the Middle East.
In April, the New Yorker magazine, the Washington Post and the UK Sunday
Times each independently reported on US preparations to attack Iran, based on
interviews with unnamed high-level American military and intelligence officials.
The New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh said that the US government
is considering not only conventional military strikes but also the use of tactical
nuclear weapons. The Sunday Times wrote that the British armed forces have
taken part in a mock invasion of Iran led by the US. The London Sunday
Telegraph revealed a secret meeting between British cabinet officials and generals
to discuss a possible attack on Iran and its consequences.
These reports were published at a time when the UN Security Council had
given Iran 30 days to stop the enrichment of uranium. Iran had resumed this
process a few months earlier following the collapse of its negotiations with
Britain, France and Germany. This led to the matter being removed from the
hands of the International Atomic Energy Agency and sent to the Security
Council, which has the authority to take punitive measures. In retaliation, the
Iranian government cancelled permission for UN snap inspections of its
nuclear sites. Then the Islamic Republic announced it had succeeded in enriching
uranium. Throughout April the drumbeats of war grew loader almost
daily.
US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, in a speech to the annual convention
of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, said: “The Iran regime
must be made aware that if it continues down the path of international isolation,
there will be tangible and painful consequences. ” He warned that the
United States was prepared to “use all the tools at our disposal to stop the
threat”.
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Yet at the same time, in the face of world concerns, US officials denied that
they are preparing for a war and instead insisted they are still seeking a diplomatic
solution. What do those contradictory signs mean? There is no doubt
that the US is playing a hide and seek game, openly building a political climate
in favour of war while also trying to hide just how concrete the danger
is. In fact, as White House officials have frankly admitted on occasion, the
illusion of seeking a diplomatic solution is a necessary requirement to prepare
American and European public opinion for war.
The Iran government, meanwhile, has tried to hide the seriousness of the
situation from the Iranian people, downplaying the American threats as mere
psychological warfare.
What is the US seeking in this game?
The US asserts that its main objective is to ensure compliance with the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It claims that the Iranian regime is
pursuing the ability to build nuclear bombs. Iran says that the aim of its nuclear
programme is to produce atomic energy and not nuclear weapons. The US and
its allies have not been able to prove their accusations, despite sending UN inspectors
to Iranian nuclear sites, setting up permanent camera surveillance all
over these sites and making Iran accept snap visits whenever these inspectors
want. In addition, they put their entire intelligence apparatus to work in an
effort to find the smallest evidence to back up their claims, but there has been
none at all. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s report said there was no
proof that Iran is or is not working towards nuclear weapons. But that has not
stopped the US and its big power allies from finding the accused guilty. Now
they are discussing the sentence, the kind of punishment to impose on the
Islamic Republic, threatening to repeat the tragedy and crime they committed
against Iraq with the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” .
Western experts have estimated that even if Iran is seeking nuclear weapons,
it doesn’t have the necessary materials, tools and technology, and it
would take Iran at least five to ten years to reach that point. With the prevailing
mood in Western official circles, this estimate is likely to be too low.
One question that should lay bare much of what’s really going on is this:
how can the US claim to care so much about preventing the spread of nuclear
weapons when it is the only country in history that has ever used atomic
bombs – with hundreds of thousands of dead and the after-effects still reaping
victims from following generations? Why, over the six decades since the bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has the US always rejected calls to at least
express regret for this crime against humanity? Why has it manufactured
many thousands of nuclear warheads and repeatedly refused to reduce its
nuclear arsenal? Why does the US blatantly threaten other countries with
nuclear weapons?
As for the UK, the British government is currently determined to upgrade
its Trident submarine nuclear missiles, in breach of the NPT. Last January,
French President Jacques Chirac also shamelessly threatened to use nuclear
weapons if needed to further his country’s interests. What’s more, the US and
its allies helped bring about the world’s most flagrant violation of the NPT:
the nuclear arming of Israel, a country whose very existence is based on the
occupation of other people’s land and threatening and invading other countries.
Israel has refused to sign the NPT and ignores UN Security Council
resolutions, but this still goes without even diplomatic condemnation, let
alone international punishment by the UN. The only thing that concerns the
US and its allies is how to arm the Zionists even more.
If the US were so concerned about the NPT, why did it recently agree to
provide new nuclear technology to India, another country that has rejected the
NPT and developed and tested nuclear weapons – a country that has often
intervened in neighbouring countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka
and Kashmir, not to mention its wars with Pakistan and China? The most
outrageous part is that states who themselves are in breach of the NPT or have
refused to signed the NPT are members of the main body of the International
Atomic Energy Agency with the power to judge whether other countries comply
with the NPT.
Obviously, the problem with the Islamic Republic, in the eyes of the US
and the other countries who referred Iran to the Security Council and are
trying to punish it, has nothing to do with enforcing the NPT. Certainly there
must be other interests that they are pursuing.
When Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, was visiting the north
of England in early 2006, she was asked to admit that the occupation of Iraq
was a mistake. She replied that the US made many tactical mistakes but that
the invasion was strategically correct, because building a new order in the
Middle East was not possible with Saddam. The same logic applies to the
Islamic Republic of Iran. Last March, she explained: “We may face no greater
challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed
at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the
Middle East that we would like to see develop.” There might be an exaggera-
10 11
tion of the degrees of difference, but certainly that is the US’s real concern.
This was verified recently when a reporter asked her if the US would promise
not to invade Iran if the Islamic Republic gave up its nuclear programme.
Absolutely not, she said. “Iran is a troublemaker in the international system…
security assurances are not on the table.” (Associated Press, 22 May).
Henry Precht, a Mid East expert who headed the US State Department desk
on Iran in 1978-80, pointed out in the Foreign Service Journal (October
2005) that many regimes seek nuclear weapons, deny rights to their people
and especially women, and commit other crimes of the kind carried out by the
Islamic Republic of Iran – and are rewarded by the US as loyal friends. The
one and only real reason for the current campaign against Iran, he said, is “animosity”
toward the regime. In an interview on the BBC Persian Service (3
April) he argued, “Let’s say the Iranians admit that they made a mistake and
they no longer want to pursue nuclear energy … and they abandon this programme.
I will assure you that the [American] agenda would be that Iran is
the main sponsor of terrorism, Iran sabotages Arab-Israeli peace, Iran violates
human rights… As long as the Iranian Islamic regime has not disappeared
from the Middle East, they will not be happy.”
These are the strong arguments from supporters of American imperialist
interests that the US’s main concern is not the NPT but the existence of the
Islamic regime, at least in its present form.
US policy statements have discussed a Greater Middle East that would
extend from Morocco to Afghanistan. The US needs to reconfigure this region
to achieve global domination. The Middle East has the world’s biggest oil
reserves and is home to the biggest oil producers, too. It is also a main source
of natural gas. The majority of the globe’s fuel passes through the Persian Gulf
and Arabian Sea to the world market. Oil today has so much strategic importance
that control over this commodity is key for controlling the world, including
the European countries, Japan, China, India and others whose economies
depend on the uninterrupted flow of oil. So for the US, the importance of
grabbing up the Middle East is not the immediate profit it might gain. It needs
the oil as a lever to use against its main rivals, even if obtaining it might mean
losing money in the short or medium term. As V. I. Lenin pointed out in
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, “an essential feature of imperialism
is the rivalry between several Great Powers in the striving for hegemony,
i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as
to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony.”
Further, the importance of the Middle East is not limited to oil. The region
is geographically situated at the intersection of three continents and in fact is
the gateway to them, including militarily. As one of the most important Middle
Eastern countries, Iran has attracted the attention of imperialists and colonial
powers for centuries. In addition, because of its long common border with the
ex-Soviet Union, it has played a very special role for the West and US.
The 1979 Iranian revolution was a costly blow to US imperialism. The
overthrow of the US and British-installed regime of the Shah meant the loss
of a main pillar of American power in the region, even though the Islamic leadership
of the revolution softened this blow to some extent. Working mainly
through Europe, the Western imperialist bloc headed by the US successfully
contained the Islamic regime and prevented it from falling into the Soviet
imperialist bloc orbit. They kept Iran as mainly a Western client, and, most
importantly, helped the Islamic regime suppress the revolutionaries and execute
tens of thousands of them.
However, with today’s new world situation following the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the emergence of the US as the only superpower, the US can
no longer rest content with the old order in the Middle East forged under different
conditions. This is what has changed the Islamic Republic of Iran in
American eyes. A regime that was acceptable in the previous situation has
become completely unacceptable, not because of any change in the regime
itself, but because the restructuring of the Middle East that the US believes is
now possible and necessary requires regime change in Iran.
What the US seeks is far more than just the regime’s fall. The most important
question is what will replace it. Certainly a real revolution would be at
least as unacceptable as the Islamic Republic. The US seeks to install a regime
that would give it the freedom American imperialism deems necessary to
obtain their objectives in the region, including stationing their armed forces in
the country. This is what the US considers a positive settlement of the Iran
situation in line with America’s new status following the change in the balance
of forces after the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
As Lenin wrote, “Finance capital and the trusts do not diminish but increase
the differences in the rate of growth of the various parts of the world economy.”
In this case, while the economies of the US’s rivals in Europe and Japan are
rapidly overtaking that of the US, suddenly the US no longer has any current
military rivals. The configuration of imperialist spheres of influence in the
world based on the balance of power between the two rival imperialist blocs
headed by the US and the formerly socialist USSR has lost its reason to exist.
Lenin continued, “Once the relation of forces is changed, what other solution
12 13
of the contradictions can be found under capitalism than that of force?” The
US’s efforts to turn Iran into an American neo-colony are at the heart of a struggle
to re-divide the world according to this new balance of forces.
PART 2: Possible US tactics to serve its strategic goals in Iran
What are what the US authorities like to call the “options on the table”?
Sanctions
The US at first held off on asking the UN Security Council to apply diplomatic
and economic sanctions against Iran, largely because of Russian and
Chinese opposition. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to sound
reassuring in March when she stated “Nobody has said that we have to rush
immediately to sanctions of some kind.” But this is the road the US set out on,
and, in fact, the US seems to have had its own timetable all along.
Although details are still secret, reportedly some initial sanctions were
agreed to at the 1 June Vienna meeting between the US, the other four UN
Security Council members (the UK, France, Russia and China), Germany and
the European Union diplomacy chief. Now, however, exactly what they really
agreed to is a matter of dispute, with Russia complaining that the US is trying
to take more drastic steps than were agreed upon at that time. The US’s
“menu” of penalties if Iran does not agree to accept the US-led ultimatum
range from travel bans for Iranian officials to an arms embargo. Such an
embargo could conceivably mean drawing an armed ring around Iran. In this
scenario, step by step, sanctions could set the conditions for war, even if other
powers involved were reluctant or opposed. Looking back at the US-led war
against Iraq, it is clear that diplomacy, sanctions, manoeuvring in the UN
Security Council, etc., did not prevent war but paved the way for it to happen.
The US plan this time, set by Rice, is to try and minimize big power public
squabbling along the way.
An arms embargo would greatly reduce the Iranian regime’s ability to
defend itself, since the country imports much of its advanced weaponry from
Russia and China. More generally, the Islamic Republic of Iran is extremely
vulnerable to outside pressure because its economy is so closely linked to the
world market. The huge increase in oil prices over the last decade has not
made Iran more economically independent, but rather much more reliant on
oil exports. Iran’s oil revenues have nearly tripled since 1997. They now
amount to at least three-quarters of the government’s income. Further, a
blockade of imports, including machinery and technology, could cripple Iran’s
entire economy quickly. This disruption alone would greatly weaken the
regime’s military capabilities, not to mention the consequences for its political
stability. While Russia and China have resisted agreeing to sanctions that
would stop them from buying Iranian oil, American and European gunboats in
the Gulf waters might persuade them otherwise.
The decade-long embargo against Saddam Hussein’s regime weakened it
so much economically and militarily that Iraq was ripe for defeat even before
the US invaded. The embargo was the US’s first (but not only) weapon of
mass destruction. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the US would sit through
another decade of embargo this time.
Occupation
No one should mistake the American offer of direct negotiations with
Tehran as an indication that the US has decided not to take the route of military
action. Whether or not talks between Iran and the US eventually take
place, and without being able to predict the results, it can be said with certainty
that a unilateral act of war against Iran would require a previous process
of diplomacy to create the necessary political conditions, both in terms of
preparing public opinion at home and abroad, and bargaining with and strongarming
(or out-manoeuvring) the other big powers.
In an article examining why the US made the offer, The New York Times (2
June) explained, “Few of his aides expect that Iran’s leaders will meet Bush’s
main condition”: that Iran, alone among all the countries on Earth, accept the
US imposition of a total ban on enriching or reprocessing uranium, even under
international inspection. This would amount to explicitly surrendering national
sovereignty to the US. Bush might as well have offered the Iranian regime
a chance to lick his boots in public and commit political suicide – “an offer
intended to fail”, the newspaper continued. As for the US’s real intentions, an
insider source was quoted as saying, “`If we are going to confront Iran, we
first have to check off the box of `trying talks’.”
BBC analyst Paul Reynolds (2 June) suggested a blunter explanation: “the
hawks in Washington have gone along with the move in the belief that an offer
of direct talks now will improve their arguments for military action later. It
also helps to keep Russia and China on board… when [the talks break down],
they would then press for a mandatory Security Council resolution ordering
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Iran to suspend enrichment, and then, if Russia and China blocked sanctions,
they would call for unilateral measures by the US and its allies. If that failed,
then eventually there would be discussion of a military strike.”
If the US does decide to move militarily against Iran, the form of attack
would depend on many factors, including the differences among the big
powers, mass opposition to the war and the political situation in general, and
American military capabilities.
There is no doubt that in order to achieve its strategic objectives in the
region and the world, which necessitate that Iran be seized and turned into a
US neo-colony, the US would prefer a full scale occupation of Iran – something
like the occupation of Iraq or at least like Afghanistan. But it is widely
believed that such an operation would be very close to impossible.
The American military is bogged down in Iraq and faces increasing difficulties
in Afghanistan. Plans to draw down the number of American troops in
these two countries have had to be abandoned. The US has figuratively and
literally exhausted its military reserves. Furthermore, Iran is a much larger
country than Iraq, with three times the population. Its uneven terrain would
provide obstacles for American tanks and other US military machinery. Even
in the more favourable terrain of Iraq, US armour has proved quite inefficient
in fighting against the kind of war that resistance forces are waging. It would
seem that the US just doesn’t have what it would take to directly achieve its
aims in Iran, despite the Bush regime’s arrogant threats.
Airstrikes
Another option publicly discussed in the US is a military strike on Iranian
nuclear sites and selected military and political targets. That, incontestably, is
within the capacity of the US, despite its weaknesses. It would be the kind of
war the US likes to fight, relying on economic/technologi cal power (”death
from above”) in extremely unequal combat. The question is, what would be
gained politically and militarily by such an action?
Many imperialist strategists say it would be easy to deal a devastating setback
to the Islamic regime’s nuclear programme using missiles and/or aircraft
alone. But that programme is not the US’s main concern. Such a strike might
inflict military and political blows on the Iranian regime, but would probably
not directly achieve American objectives in Iran and the region. The idea that
it might help topple the regime seems unrealistic. In fact, it could help Iran’s
ruling circles close ranks. Such an attack might help the isolated regime gather
more popular support on a nationalist basis.
Further, what was intended to be a limited action might not necessarily
remain limited, because the US might have to face Iranian regime retaliation
in other areas. For example, it might seek to block the straits of Hormuz
through which the region’s oil passes every day, or fire on US bases in the
region, or try to strike back through its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan or Lebanon.
An air attack on a few targets might well expand into a full military conflict
between Iran and the US. Even worse for the US, it might inflame the whole
Middle East, creating a situation well beyond the US’s military capacity to
deal with it.
Finally, a limited strike against Iran – as opposed to a decisive blow –
might increase the tension between the imperialists. In addition, while the
military and political gains of a more limited attack on Iran might not achieve
US aims, its outcome would likely include an enraged mass opposition on a
world scale. As in the run-up to the Iraq war, this could interact with the
efforts of the other imperialist powers to pursue their own interests as long as
the question of who controls Iran remained unsettled.
Dismembering Iran
Apart from the above options, there are other possible forms of US intervention
not as widely talked about. One is the invasion of a part of Iran in an
attempt to sever it from the rest of the country. In that scenario, Iran’s southern
province of Khuzestan could be the most likely US target. Most of Iran’s oil
resources are located in Khuzestan. During the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, seizing
Khuzestan was Saddam’s strategic goal – and one the US encouraged.
Khuzestan has important advantages for the US from a military point of
view. It has a long border with Iraq, and the terrain is flat, so an American
military invasion could be mounted and carried out relatively swiftly. It is a
short drive from Basra, the main city in southern Iraq, to Ahvaz, the
Khuzestan capital. The US could carry out this kind of partial invasion in the
name of “stabilizing” Iraq. To reduce the political cost of such a move, the US
is already building a case against Iran for intervening in Iraq’s affairs.
An American occupation of Khuzestan province would do more than
inflict severe economic pressure on the Iranian regime, possibly paralysing it
and accelerating its downfall. It might also work as an opening wedge in the
cracks created by ethnic oppression in all corners of Iran. About half of the
country’s population is made up of nationalities oppressed by the central
government that mainly represents the dominant Persian nationality. The US
could justify an invasion by claiming it was helping the province’s largely eth-
16 17
nic Arab population, who would be said to have “invited” the US to come to
their aid.
In his New Yorker article on US preparations to invade Iran (17 April
2006), journalist Seymour Hersh wrote, “I was told by the government consultant
with close ties to civilians in the Pentagon, the units were also working
with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis,
in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast.” The inflammable character
of Iran’s minority nationalities was brought out again in May by mass protests
that exploded in Azerbaijan province in response to newspaper cartoons
depicting Azeris as cockroaches. There have also been incidents in
Baluchistan over the last few months. Already some Iranian Kurdish forces
are setting out on the path taken by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, the
Iraqi Kurdish leaders who have become the most reliable US allies in Iraq.
These Iranian Kurdish leaders have been visiting the US regularly and taking
part in discussions at American foreign policy think tanks.
Ahvaz has seen disturbances for more than a year. Undoubtedly there has
been genuine mass protest against the Tehran regime’s oppressive measures,
but bomb explosions in crowded urban areas raise questions about the nature
of the perpetrators. The Islamic regime has accused the US and UK of involvement.
The fact that Hersh’s American government informants don’t discuss
Iran’s Arab minority does not mean that the US is not working on this front as
well.
If an invasion were limited to Khuzestan, it might not require such a large
military force. But it is not clear whether the US is capable of deploying even
that many additional soldiers. Further, it is impossible to predict exactly what
might follow an occupation of that region. It might still pull the US into the
kind of unfavourable circumstances it is seeking to avoid.
Is the use of nuclear bombs against Iran just an empty threat?
The revelation that the US military is discussing the use of “tactical”
nuclear weapons against some targets in Iran alarmed and shocked the world
when the Hersh piece was published. The article also disclosed that “US carrier-
based attack planes have been flying simulated nuclear-bomb runs within
range of Iranian coastal radars.”
Some people dismissed this as only an empty threat. Jack Straw, the UK
Foreign Minister at that time, called the whole idea simply “nuts”. But insane
or not, the discussion is real enough so that even some imperialist politicians
such as American Senator Edward Kennedy publicly demanded that the US
use only conventional weapons and not nukes against Iran. Straw was recently
sacked, even though he was one of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s few prominent
ministers not involved in some sort of personal scandal. The British press
speculated that Straw lost his job for saying publicly that military action again
Iran is “inconceivable” . Apparently Bush and Blair have no trouble conceiving
it at all. Bush has very pointedly refused to promise that the US won’t do
so. As the UK Guardian reported (4 May), “When asked last month whether
U.S. options regarding Iran `include the possibility of a nuclear strike’ if
Tehran refuses to halt uranium enrichment, Bush replied, `All options are on
the table.’”
When US imperialism deliberately bares its teeth, that should be taken
seriously. Faced with a contradiction between its desperation to advance
towards its objectives in the Middle East and its inability to deploy enough
troops to do so, it might seek to resolve this problem in the most dangerous
manner imaginable. Nukes are an “option”, nukes are “on the menu” – imperialist
strategists use harmless-sounding words for great crimes. Certainly at
least some forces in the Bush regime and more broadly in the US ruling class
see America’s nuclear arsenal as the way to overcome their limitations and
reassert their strength as a superpower. The outcome could be immediate
death for hundreds of thousands of people and slow death for many more. But
the US rulers have shown over and over again, from Hiroshima to Vietnam to
Iraq, that there is no limit to the amount of bloodshed they are willing to inflict
if they believe it necessary to attain their objectives and serve their interests.
Bloodshed is what they do best. In fact, the arrogance of US civilian and military
officials about their capacity to crush the Iranian regime is based on at
least the possibility of a nuclear attack – as Bush himself plainly says.
PART 3: The Iranian regime
The Iranian regime has changed course over the last year or so. After
announcing that it would resume uranium enrichment in defiance of the
European and US threat to send the issue to the UN Security Council for possible
action, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, “They can’t do
anything to hurt us – They need us more than we need them.” He was clearly
talking about Iranian oil and its influence over the Iraqi Shia establishment
and the Hezbollah organization in Lebanon. The Iranian influence that is helping
to stabilize the occupation of Iraq and to some degree the situation in
Lebanon could equally be used to make things worse for the US. Ayatollah
18 19
Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, threatened that
in the event of a US military attack his country would retaliate with every
means at its disposal throughout the world.
After the collapse of negotiations between Iran and the three European
countries (the UK, Germany and France) and the hardening European stance,
Iran seems to have shifted its policy away from seeking to play off Europe and
the US, and instead is trying to pit the East, especially Russia, against the
West. Iran recently asked to be admitted to the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, an economic and increasingly political grouping led by Russia
and China.
In addition, Ahmadinejad’ s recent speeches have been deliberately provocative.
His anti-Israel remarks can be seen in that light. So can his announcements
regarding the progress of Iran’s nuclear programme. While the Islamic
Republic has insisted that its only goal is to generate electricity and not make
nuclear weapons, the Iranian authorities have been exaggerating their progress.
For instance, at a critical juncture of the negotiations in April of this
year, the regime unexpectedly asserted that they had been able to reach a uranium
enrichment level of 4.8 percent. This is very far from the level needed
to make nuclear bomb materials (closer to 90 percent). But even at that, some
Western experts suspected that the regime had inflated its achievement.
Further, while the regime claimed to have successfully used 164 centrifuges
working in cascade, there were reports that the machines collapsed and fell
apart in the course of the enrichment. Nevertheless, the regime announced it
would put some 5,000 centrifuges to work. It deliberately sought to create the
impression that it can quickly make a large amount of fissionable material.
The regime’s threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
seems to have followed the same logic.
The Western media have attributed the recent stance of the Iranian regime
to the newly elected Ahmadinejad. While there might be some truth to that,
the shift is mainly a reaction by the whole Iranian ruling class to the new situation
in the Middle East. It has to do with the concerns shared by all the different
factions in the regime. Whatever differences they may have, they closed
ranks in the face of US threats and the apparently tougher attitude of the
European Union toward Iran. Ahmadinejad’ s defiance and the provocations
that the Western powers have used to demonize him are a product of that
change rather than the cause of it.
Consequently, Iran’s ruling class has opted to take a defiant stand toward
the West and threaten retaliation. They seem to believe or at least hope that
because of its problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US is currently in no
position to attack Iran. But given the American attitude toward the Islamic
Republic, they also feel that if the US is determined to attack anyway, it would
be best to provoke the US and accelerate this process. Since the US is in a
weak situation now, they seem to think, if there is going to be a war, it would
be best to have it now before the US can free itself from Iraq.
The Iranian regime has come to the conclusion that the US is not going to
accept its survival in its present form. The US rejected the Khatami faction
that had a much more conciliatory approach towards the West. The United
States did not offer even verbal support to Mohammad Khatami and his socalled
reformists when most of their candidates for parliament were simply
eliminated by the Council of Guardians, a body of conservative mullahs that
is supposed to oversee the Islamic purity of elections, among other things.
Even after weeks of sit-ins in front of Parliament and other forms of protest,
the US failed to come to Khatami’s aid. Nor was there much Western protest
against the widely reported fraud in the last presidential elections from which
Ahmadinejad emerged victoriously.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is possibly counting on these advantages:
1 - The US is bogged down in Iraq and caught in a deteriorating situation
in Afghanistan.
2 - The mullahs can now unite their ranks and reduce the chronic internecine
fighting that reached a high point in the last few years with reported
mutual murders, bringing them to the verge of paralysis.
3 - At a time when they are more isolated from the country’s people than
ever, they hope that war or the threat of war would enable them to mobilize
the masses on their side, on the basis of national pride and sovereignty. This
is the tactic they have been using to ensure the survival of their regime over
the last 27 years. Of course, their public anti-American posture has not stopped
them from relying on other imperialists and even at some points entering
into secret relations with the US.
4 - They would use this war to further their attacks on progressive and
revolutionary forces and the rights of the people, suppressing women, minority
nationalities, students, workers and other just struggles in the name of the
need for national unity. They could label any protest or struggle as sabotage
instigated by foreign forces.
5 - They could use the situation to inspire Islamic revolution in the region.
Theocratic rule in Iran has been undergoing a crisis after a quarter century of
oppression, and a great many people are disappointed and fed up with it. The
20 21
rise to power of the Shia clergy in Iraq – thanks to the US – has come to the
rescue of Islamic theocracy to some extent. (A joke circulating in Tehran these
days: since the American army has brought Islamic republics to Afghanistan
and Iraq, why would they bother to invade Iran?) But this has not solved the
crisis in Iran. The IRI is trying, through its confrontation with the US, to stir
up support among the people and especially the youth of the Islamic countries
in the region.
6 - Also in this way they are trying to win the support of at least some sections
of the anti-war movement in the West.
7 - By adopting this policy, they want to find a refuge for themselves in the
cracks between the imperialists, especially the US and Russia – in other
words, to “play the Russian card”. This is what the Islamic regime might be
counting as their advantage or salvation if the US attacks Iran.
In short, a large part of Ahmadinejad’ s provocations have been meant for
internal consumption. The Iranian ruling class is trying to use the situation to
save its regime and get out of the most difficult situation they have found
themselves in since the revolution.
Areport by Professor Paul Rogers, Iran: Consequences of a War, published
by the Oxford Research Group, explains that Iran would be unable to prevent
an aerial strike by the US, since it has only a limited air defence system. But
he believes that Iran has a large arsenal of other possible responses.
“It could: encourage retaliatory action against Israel by the Lebanese-based
Hezbollah group, which has missiles capable of hitting Haifa and several other
Israeli cities; close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the main access routes for oil
from the Gulf; send Iranian paramilitary units into states such as Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; or order Iranian Revolutionary Guards to
step up links with insurgents in Iraq. ” (Guardian, 13 February 2006)
While the Islamic regime is counting on this situation to mobilize a large
section of the people and on that basis suppress the just struggle of people
against theocratic rule, the US is also counting on the people’s hatred for the
Islamic regime. They hope that the Iranian people will come under their wing,
welcome US attacks and roll out a red carpet before the American soldiers and
generals. That hope might be even more unfounded than what US analysts had
expected from the Iraqi people on the eve of the American invasion.
Many Iranians, especially the youth, are fed up with the theocratic regime
and are looking for a better life, an alternative way of life. Some sections of
the people might have been keen on the only alternative that they see, in the
Western films they watch on satellite TV, but many have also seen how that
way of life shown in the movies and television series has been applied in Iraq.
Moreover, the Iranian people have had the bitter experience of the 1953
CIA-sponsored coup d’état that overthrew the nationalist government of
Mohammad Mossadegh and brought back the US puppet Shah. The people
will not forget or forgive what they had to endure during the 25 years of
bloodthirsty absolute monarchy. Also, many Iranians believe that the Islamic
regime came to power with US help. There is some truth to that. In order to
prevent the deepening of the Iranian revolution in 1979, the US cut a deal with
the mullahs in a secret meeting conducted by US General Huizer who led a
mission on behalf of president Jimmy Carter. The US let the mullahs come to
power because they were afraid that if the revolution continued, it would give
rise to the growth of more radical forces, including the communists. Suspicion
towards the US is strongly rooted among Iranian people, not because the
Islamic regime has been preaching anti-Americanism, but on the contrary,
because many people think the regime is a product of the imperialists.
This has been well understood by some people in imperialist think tanks. For
instance, Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst and Iran expert at the Brookings
Institution in Washington, writes that while many Iranians have a positive attitude
towards the US, they still remember their history. Agreat many know about
the overthrow of Mossadegh and the Huizer mission in 1979. This, he believes,
makes it unlikely that the people would favour the US against the regime in the
event of an American attack on Iran. (BBC/Persian website)
The US is also trying to influence some of the opposition movements,
especially among the minority nationalities. It might have a chance among
some backward forces. But overall they do not seem to constitute a considerable
force, as was the case with the Kurds in Iraq or the warlords in
Afghanistan.
The Iranian regime, for its part, has done very little to prepare the people
for a possible war. It has carried out war preparations in secret in order to
avoid panic. The Islamic Republic has no plan to rely on the people or protect
them. Its plan is to use the people as cannon fodder in case of a US attack and
do everything it can only to save itself. They are willing to sacrifice everything,
including the people and the country, for their survival.
PART 4: The US plan and its contradictions
The US plan concerning Iran and the region was discussed earlier, but it is
worth examining two of the various problems it faces in more detail.
22 23
One is the opposition from the masses of the world as well as at home. The
people of the world and the US have already experienced the lies about weapons
of mass destruction. Since the start of the war on Iraq, more people have
grasped the Bush regime’s objectives and intentions. Things are not going
well for the US and its allies, and the hell the American-led occupation has
created for the Iraqi people is there for everyone who has eyes to see. This
makes it harder for people to swallow more US falsehoods.
Apart from that, a new generation of politicised youth, opposed, among
other things, to wars of aggression, has emerged in the political life of the
Western countries and the world as a whole. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq,
a London student expressed her feelings of “devastation about the way world
politics are heading”. This is a very sincere and strong statement that represents
the sentiments of a great many. Then there are the millions of youth and others
in the oppressed countries, especially those that are predominantly Moslem,
who are outraged and furious with American subjugation and humiliation.
The other main US concern is to make all the other big powers fall in line
behind its plan, or at least accept it. However, that may not be so easy either.
The differences between them are not just differences in views but reflect
conflicting interests. The US managed to achieve a diplomatic united front
against Iran with Europe last year in a behind-the-scenes deal. The contents
have never been made public, but it is not hard to guess that the agreement
involved horse-trading at the expense of the people. Nevertheless, so far, the
US has not been able to get the degree of acquiescence it seeks from Russia
and China. (The latter is not a monopoly capitalist/imperial ist country, but has
its own big power interests). Russia and China refused to sign the draft of a
resolution that might have imposed immediate sanctions on Iran. John Bolton,
the US ambassador to the UN, threatened that “the US and its European allies
could go it alone on sanctions.” (Guardian, 4 May) In the case of sanctions
against Iran, Europe would be a great loser too. Would they trust the US to
adequately compensate them and satisfy what they perceive as their own interests
in the Middle East?
Further, the cooperation between the US and EU will not necessarily last
forever, and their cooperation so far doesn’t necessarily mean that they would
go along with the US all the way to war. There are signs of opposition or at
least disagreement between Europe and the US concerning the use of force
against Iran – if, when and how it should be used. After all, in the main the
big European powers are far from eager to see the US achieve its goal of turning
Iran into an American stronghold in the region. The US has tried to keep
them in line by arguing that since they can’t stop the US, they had better join
it. If they oppose a US attack on Iran, they fear getting left out entirely when
it’s time to divide the spoils, including oil contracts and influence.
The UK, because of its highly intertwined economic and political interests
with the US, is somewhat different than continental Europe. Prime Minister
Tony Blair has seconded Bush in refusing to rule out such an attack on Iran.
Nevertheless, even after the sacking of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw,
who publicly maintained that a military attack against Iran is “inconceivable” ,
this view is not at all isolated among the British ruling class and even the Blair
government itself. France, while hardening its tone against Iran, has stressed
its opposition to a military action. French Prime Minister Dominique de
Villepin told a 4 May news conference, “My conviction is that military action
is not the solution.” (Guardian) Germany has taken even a more cautious
stand against military action against Iran. A journalist for the International
Herald Tribune wrote, “Nonetheless, with many Germans and others alarmed
by reports that the US has envisaged a possible military strike on Iranian
nuclear facilities, [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel emphasized a need for
patient diplomacy. `It is crucial if one wants to see this matter through to a
diplomatic success to actually do this on a step by step basis,’ she said. `Quite
often, attempts are being made to rush matters to actually pre-empt what
should be at the end of the process.’”(5 May 2006).
The German Chancellor was deliberately ambiguous. On one hand, she
seems to be saying, yes, we need a war, but not yet. But on the other, she may
be trying to use unity with the US on diplomacy as the only way to slow down
or stop an attack. Diplomacy can be a two-edged sword, both a way for the
US to get European imperialist support and a way for Europe to try and
influence the US.
These differences will interpenetrate with the political developments on a
world scale that would follow any unleashing of another war.
Differences within the US political establishment
There are also differences on Iran policy within the US ruling class. They
are of a different nature, reflecting not conflicting political or economic interests
but rather disputes about what policy and approach would best serve the
interest of US monopoly capitalism as a whole.
When George Bush, in his 2001 State of the Union speech, included Iran
along with Iraq and North Korea as the axis of evil, all of official Washington
24 25
enthusiastically applauded for several long minutes. Yet while the US ruling
class seemed very united in going to war against Iraq, the voices of different
sections of US imperialist political circles are far from a united chorus regarding
military action against Iran. While some are pushing for a quick start of
war, others suggest a more cautious approach, and some are clearly warning
against the consequences. Opposing views and plans regarding Iran and the
region are beginning to appear in print, driven to a large degree by the obstacles
the US has run up against in Iraq.
All the factions are united on one thing: that the only issue that matters is
how to pursue American interests on a world scale. They share the same starting
point: The US must bring about dramatic changes in the situation in the
Middle East, especially in Iran, in order to consolidate and ensure its world
domination and beat back any threat to that, whether from oppressed peoples
or other imperialists or reactionary forces – all in the name of protecting peace
and democracy.
The dissent within American ruling circles became apparent with the publication
in April of this year of the New Yorker article and other reports detailing
secret US military preparations to attack Iran. These leaks were meant to
signal the gravity of the situation to those clinging to the idea that the possibility
of such an attack was too far-fetched to be taken seriously.
But US policy advisors have been floating out the idea of such an attack
for several years now and warning that any delay could go against American
interests. For instance, in an article “The Mullahs’ Manhattan Project” appearing
in June 2003, right after the US invasion of Iraq, Reuel Marc Gerecht of
the American Enterprise Institute argued that if the US shrank from quickly
launching a “pre-emptive strike against (Iran’s) nuclear facilities.. . then the
`axis of evil’ doctrine is over.” Very significantly, he also said the US should
face the fact that an air strike might lead to a full-scale war lasting many years,
because once “wounded”, the Iranian regime might be even more desperate
and dangerous. (aei.org) Gerecht recently repeated this idea, saying that the
probability that an air strike on Iran would develop into a full-scale war is a
reason for the US to get prepared for such a war, not to hold off any longer.
(BBC/Persian Web site, 9 April)
This call for war is increasingly being directed at public opinion in general.
Bush’s appointment of John Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN had this
purpose. Also associated with the American Enterprise Institute, Bolton is
known as a point man for regime change. He was so extreme in pushing for
an early confrontation with North Korea that he was removed from the US
negotiations team when a decision was made to go after Iran instead. In a
speech to the annual convention of the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee, he said:
“The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more
intractable it will become to solve… We must be prepared to rely on comprehensive
solutions and use all the tools at our disposal to stop the threat that the
Iranian regime poses.” (Guardian, 6 March) A “comprehensive solution”
means the use of force, and “all the tools at our disposal” includes nuclear
weapons. As far as the alleged Iranian threat is concerned, even if Iran really
seeks to make a few nuclear bombs in a decade or two, that is not much of a
threat to the US, or to a world already menaced by more than 25,000 nuclear
warheads in the hands of proven warmongers. In fact the threat he is referring
to is the obstacle that the Islamic Republic of Iran in its present form poses for
US interests in the Middle East and the way the US inability to achieve a
“comprehensive solution” so far has emboldened the challenge to American
interests by rival imperialists.
A similar call has been heard from Newt Gingrich, a former US
Congressional leader and now member of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy
Board: “Every year that we wait, the risk increases… I would hope that the
administration would decide to do something decisive… We have the military
power in the region if we need it. It’s a question of whether we have the will.”
(Washington Post, 13 March)
These public hawkish statements have sparked a range of different degrees
of concern among US ruling class representatives. Some reports suggest that
there are differences between the Pentagon and the State Department. For
example, a British parliamentary foreign affairs committee that visited
Washington in the beginning of March this year “encountered sharply different
views within the Bush administration. The most hawkish came from Mr
Bolton. According to Eric Illsley, a Labour committee member, the CIA
appears to be the most sceptical about a military solution and shares the State
Department’s position, say British MPs, in suggesting gradually stepping up
pressure on the Iranians. The Pentagon position was described, by the committee
chairman, Mike Gapes, as throwing a demand for a militarily enforced
embargo into the Security Council `like a hand grenade – and see what happens’”.
(Guardian, 6 March)
The British weekly magazine The New Statesman believes that “Nuclear
weapons, however, are another matter. Whether they might be used against
Iran is a critical issue in the struggle underway between foreign-policy prag-
26 27
matists and ideological zealots. Washington is divided between these two
camps… Even Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, has fallen out with
Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary.” One of the strongest indications of
dissent came in an open letter signed by several Western former foreign ministers,
including ex-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. It warned: “the
Bush administration may be actively planning to launch military strikes soon
against possible nuclear weapons facilities in Iran… it is doubtful that a `surgical’
air strike could succeed in destroying all of Iran’s nuclear assets, while
a large-scale invasion and military occupation of the country is widely recognized
as unmanageable. … The potential risks of using force are sufficiently
grave that we instead urge the US to pursue a bold nonmilitary option first.”
Concern about a rush to military action has been publicly raised even
within Bush’s own Republican Party by Senators Sam Brownback and
Richard Lugar and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
One source of particularly sharp opposition has been Zbigniew Brzezinski,
National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and a leading figure
among US imperialist policymakers, especially during the Cold War. In a
public talk later published in the International Herald Tribune (26 April)
under the headline “Do not attack Iran”, he warned President Bush and his clique
about the consequences and dangers. “There are four compelling reasons
against a preventive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities”, Brzezinski
argued. One, since Iran is years away from making a bomb, there is no “imminent
threat”. Two, given the US situation in Iraq and Iranian leverage in an
already difficult region, “a conflict with it would make the misadventure in
Iraq look trivial”. Three, there would be another oil crisis, and “the world economy
would be severely impacted, with America blamed for it.” Four,
“America would become an even more likely target of terrorism, with much
of the world concluding that America’s support for Israel is itself a major
cause of the rise in terrorism. America would become more isolated.”
He concludes: “In short, an attack on Iran would be an act of political folly,
setting in motion a progressive upheaval in world affairs. With the US increasingly
the object of widespread hostility, the era of American preponderance
could even come to a premature end. Although the United States is clearly
dominant in the world at the moment, it has neither the power nor the domestic
inclination to impose and then to sustain its will in the face of protracted
and costly resistance. That certainly is the lesson taught by its experiences in
Vietnam and Iraq.”
To understand Brzezinski’s perspective, it should be recalled that during
the Iranian revolution of 1979, he was an “advocate of the iron fist” who urged
the Shah to “crack down” and kill as many people as necessary to stay in
power. (See The Iranian Revolution: An Oral History, by Henry Precht, the
US State Department’s Iran Desk chief at that time). Brzezinski took that position
in large part because of US interests in using the Shah’s regime to help
contain the Soviet Union. His position on Iran today is no less motivated by
his conception of the overall interests of the US Empire.
Brzezinski’s concern with the question of “domestic will” seems to be a
reference to the need for massive conscription in the US to double, triple or
more the number of troops. This could trigger an enormous shift in the domestic
political situation faced by the Bush regime. While recognizing that would
be politically very difficult right now, Brzezinski himself points to a possible
solution to this problem: “If there is another terrorist attack in the United
States, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be also immediate charges
that Iran was responsible in order to generate public hysteria in favour of
military action.”
Brzezinski himself believes in the strategic validity of the two foundational
arguments of the Bush policy he criticizes tactically. In an earlier talk in
October 2003, he said, “In the case of Iran it is also in our interest that the
theocratic despotism fade.” He also recognized that the old world order that
emerged from the Cold War is no longer acceptable and it would be wrong to
seek peace and stability until a new one is consolidated. “We are going to live
in an insecure world. It cannot be avoided. We have to learn to live in it with
dignity, with idealism, with steadfastness. ” (Remarks from the conference
New American Strategies for Security and Peace, The American Prospect
Online, 31 October 2003.)
While there is a strong tendency compelling US imperialism to rush to a
military solution to its problems in Iran and the Middle East before it’s “too
late” for them, it would be wrong to completely ignore the contradictions and
limitations they face, and the countervailing tendencies that arise out of an
awareness of them.
For example, as Brzezinski and Albright, among others, point out, while a
military strike is certainly within US imperialism’ s reach, the results in this
explosive region could easily be far beyond anyone’s capabilities to handle.
The impact might be on a scale much wider than a full-scale war in Iran. The
unpredictable outcome is exactly what worries those imperialist thinkers who
argue that an attack on Iran would be “an act of political folly” that might well
bring to an end the “era of American preponderance” .
28 29
After all, the US was unable to achieve its aims in the Korean war in the
1950s. As Brzezinski alludes to, the US was determined to win in Vietnam. It
sent more than twice the number of troops currently in Iraq and expanded the
war into Cambodia, but this didn’t save it from defeat at the hands of the people
of the region, with the antiwar movement, especially in the US armed forces,
also playing a vital part.
The consequences of this humiliating defeat were to become more evident
as time passed. It facilitated the advance of Soviet social-imperialism (socialism
in words but capitalist/imperial ist in fact) on a world scale. It also helped
give rise to a new generation of anti-imperialist people, many of whom joined
the communist movement, and gave vital impetus to revolutionary people’s
struggles everywhere. This defeat was a big blow to the credibility of US bullying
and even more a big blow to the confidence and ability of American
imperialism to wage another war like Vietnam. For years the “spectre” of
Vietnam stole the sleep from the eyes of the US imperialists. It took them
decades to regain their confidence, and that was only after the collapse of the
Soviet bloc. The shadow of their defeat in Vietnam still darkens the skies of
US imperialism.
Nevertheless, despite its efforts to exorcise this memory and avoid becoming
bogged down in local wars, the US now faces the same problems in
Afghanistan and Iraq. The main difference, and an extremely important one,
is that the forces involved in the Iraqi resistance are very different and have
serious inherent weaknesses. Because of the preponderance of very backward
and reactionary forces, this resistance has not been able to unite the people and
rely on their organized and sustained support, and in fact does not even seek
to do so, no matter how much the people hate the occupation. The people’s
unwillingness to help the occupiers is a main reason why the US has resorted
to torture and attempts to terrorize the population as a whole. Even so, it
seems that the US is facing a long war in these two countries. When concerned
imperialists like Brzezinski hearken back to Vietnam and warn that in
Iran, “the United States has neither the power nor the domestic inclination to
impose and then to sustain its will in the face of protracted and costly resistance,”
they are referring, among other things, to the danger of political instability
in the US itself.
While not unaware of the dangers, the US imperialists overall, especially
those running the American government right now, seem to feel that war is the
only way to break decisively with the “Vietnam syndrome”. They seem to
believe that the collapse of the Soviet bloc and their unique situation as the
only superpower gives them the opportunity and enough spirit to see their
campaign for world hegemony through to the end. This result, they believe,
would more than compensate any cost. It is a matter of life and death for US
imperialism.
PART 5: What the people need to do
The outcome of a US “pre-emptive” war against Iran could be death and
destruction on a vast scale, even if the war remained within the borders of Iran
itself. Given the seriousness of US determination to restructure the Middle
East and the necessities that compel them, the world should take warning.
The warmongers are already using every opportunity to prepare politically
and militarily. The people of the world and their political organizations, including
the Maoist forces, also need to start preparing politically right now.
A big part of that preparation is getting clear on and fighting for a correct
orientation. This means an orientation that, because it reflects reality, including
the interests of the world’s people, can unite all those who can be united
to advance those interests amidst what will undoubtedly be a complicated and
confusing political situation.
Here we’ll focus on two key issues: how to assess the danger of a new war,
and the question of friends and enemies in opposing that war.
Is the danger of a new war real? Is it inevitable?
One big obstacle for the antiwar movement is a tendency to underestimate
or deny the danger of US intervention in Iran. It is true that the US is bogged
down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and faces other obstacles to a new war as well,
as this article has tried to bring out. But it would be very wrong to make an
absolute out of those weaknesses. The determination of the American ruling
class to expand and secure their world dominance might impel them to take
what they consider necessary risks. They do have some ability to manoeuvre.
This is what they are doing now, for instance, by conducting diplomacy, not
aimed at avoiding war but at seeking to lesson opposition to it from the people
and the other major powers. We can’t fail to understand the desperation
and thus cruelty of US imperialism and its proven willingness to massacre as
many people as it believes necessary.
Another apparently opposite but quite related wrong view is to panic in the
face of the US threat and argue that nothing can be done to stop another war.
30 31
It could be argued, for example, that the anti-war movement did not prevent
the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. But as a 14 April 2003 AWTWNS article
said at that time, “The US rape of Iraq proved once again that `Political
power grows out of a barrel of a gun.’ But international public opinion does
matter and can help transform the whole war situation. During the Vietnam
war, a powerful movement in the whole world and in the US itself played a
vital role in bringing about the defeat of the American imperialists.
“In almost every country public opinion was almost unanimously against
the US/UK invaders. The whole region was aflame with anti-US hatred.
Under the pressure of the mass movement and trying to protect their own
imperialist interests, even some of the traditional allies of the US such as
France and Germany opposed the war. These factors would have become
more and more of a difficulty for the US the longer the war went on.”
The development of an antiwar movement and the way it interacts with the
unfolding of other contradictions in the world cannot be predicted in advance.
When the unprecedented global antiwar movement burst upon the international
scene in early 2003, it surprised and worried every government and marked
the emergence of a new element in the world situation. The importance of
building the antiwar movement now should not be underestimated. For those
who oppose a new war of aggression against Iran, the worst mistake would be
to fail to do everything possible with the excuse that such a movement might
not succeed.
While it didn’t prevent the war, the movement on the eve of the invasion
of Iraq helped create a political situation that actually placed practical obstacles
in the way of the US war machine. For instance, the US was not able to
invade Iraq from the north as well as the south. Opposition to the war in
Turkey was so strong that any attempt to go ahead with the original American
plan might have destabilized the US-friendly regime. As a result, the many
thousands of American troops and armoured vehicles and so on that landed in
Turkey had to be reloaded onto ships as well as airplanes and much time was
lost. Opposition to the war in other countries of the region such as Egypt also
came close to being a material factor impeding the invasion. One reason was
that those ships had to pass through the Suez Canal. The opposition to the war
in these countries was part and parcel of the worldwide movement against the
war, which would not have had the same strength without it. If Saddam
Hussein’s regime had not folded so quickly in the face of the American onslaught
and the war had gone differently for the US, the antiwar movement
could conceivably have gone much further and played even more of a role.
Further, the global movement awakened millions upon millions of people
to political life in opposition to imperialist politics, a factor that is still very
much in play on a world scale. Opposition to another war would not start
from zero but in the context of these new conditions.
If those opposed to a new war of aggression do not understand both sides
of the contradictory situation faced by US imperialism, its strengths and its
weaknesses, they could become paralysed until it’s too late.
Friends and enemies
Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are part of the same US worldwide
offensive and share the same strategic aims, the opposition to them can be
combined and become even stronger based on common advances and experiences.
That makes it all the more important to examine some of the weaknesses
the antiwar movement has already shown and how they could take new
forms.
Some imperialist forces opposed attacking Iraq. This was the case to a
small extent in the US and much more broadly within the British ruling classes,
as well as on the part of the governing parties in France, Germany and
other countries. That was an important element in bringing forth and swelling
the antiwar movement. But a wrong understanding of this situation also inflicted
great damage on the movement. In the UK, for instance, leaders of the
Liberal Democrat Party, the country’s third largest, were prominent speakers
in the antiwar demonstrations. Yet the day that the US/UK coalition actually
invaded, they decided to support the war in the name of supporting Britain’s
“boys”, as Charles Kennedy, the party leader at that time, put it. In Italy, some
parliamentary parties opposed the war, but they also held back the development
of a movement that could burst out of the boundaries of politics as usual
and take effective action. The sit-ins on train tracks to stop troop movements
provided an example of what could have become more widespread and massive.
In both countries, the governments went to war against the expressed
will of the people. One factor in this was that mainstream political parties (and
a fear of alienating them among others) helped prevent the development of
greater mass militancy.
In the oppressed countries, particularly in the historically predominantly
Muslim countries, religious fundamentalists had the initiative and leadership
in general. They subordinated opposition to the war to their reactionary agendas.
In many cases, such as in Pakistan, they sought to avoid a political
confrontation with governments with whom they have ambiguous or even
32 33
friendly relations. Giving a small glimpse of what could have been possible,
in Egypt particularly significant protests were led by secular forces, in
contrast to the often government-tolerate d Muslim Brotherhood. This was at
a moment when US actions were putting great strains on all the region’s ruling
reactionaries. In Iraq itself, the main factor favouring the US occupation turned
out to be the fundamentalist forces, both those who became pillars of the
puppet regime and those who oppose it in a way that sabotages the unity of
the people of Iraq and the world against the imperialist aggressors.
As the US invasion of Iraq turned into a long-term occupation, in order for
the antiwar movement to continue developing, the class nature of these fundamentalists
needed to be understood, taken into account and broadly explained,
along with an understanding of the nature and aims of the US-led war
itself and the interests of the people in this situation. (This does not mean that
the movement could be kept at the same pitch indefinitely, regardless of developments
in the war.) Unfortunately, many people were afflicted by the idea
that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. This falsely “practical” approach
blinded them to the facts and worked against the antiwar movement. One form
was to support Saddam Hussein. Another form has been to try and support
Iraqi fundamentalists like Moqtada Sadr who speak out against the US while
sustaining the puppet government, and other, more forthrightly pro-occupation
clerics also allied with the Iranian regime. Some people who oppose
American domination of Iraq have also been unable to grasp the reactionary
nature of pro-Al Qaeda forces.
As another war looms, a tendency to support the Islamic Republic of Iran
and wrongly assess it as anti-imperialist can already be seen. This view might
oppose the war, but it is far from internationalist in character. In fact, it, too,
amounts to seeking friends among the most apparently powerful forces at the
expense of the interests of the people of Iran. It skips over a basic fact defining
the situation: While the immediate US goal is regime change, the broader
aim is to subjugate nations and peoples. Supporting the IRI goes against
the struggle of the people of Iran for their liberation. It goes against Iran’s
women who have been suppressed by a theocratic regime by more than a
quarter of a century, and the struggle of the Kurds, Baluchs and other minority
peoples who have been the victims of the regime’s national chauvinism
and religious sectarianism. It means supporting the regime’s crackdown on the
people in the name of unity against “foreign forces”.
It is vitally important to unite the broadest possible range of forces in an
antiwar movement, but reactionaries, even those who oppose a particular war
at a particular moment, can’t be allowed to set the terms and boundaries of
that movement. The question of women’s liberation has become a touchstone
for this.
The oppression of women - a touchstone
in distinguishing friends and enemies
During the march organized by the Campaign for the Abolition of All
Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation and Punitive Laws in Iran that ended
in The Hague last 8 March, the question of what attitude to take toward the
Iranian regime was widely debated, especially in Germany. Many European
organizations failed to support the campaign against the Islamic Republic’s
oppression of women because they thought that doing so would help the US
build its case for an invasion.
It is true that US imperialism is the main enemy and its threats represent
the main danger. But it’s not correct to conclude that people should unite with
the Iranian regime as long as the danger of an American invasion exists. This
amounts to arguing that the rights and interests of the people, including
women, half of Iran’s people, have to be sacrificed for the sake of a false unity
with “friends” in power (again, with the idea that “the enemy of my enemy is
my friend”) who seem – quite falsely, as we’ve seen with Saddam – able to
stand up to the US.
Rather than go along with or cover up the anti-woman nature of the Iranian
regime in the name of a supposed anti-US unity, it would be far better to
expose the hell American invasions have brought to the women of
Afghanistan and Iraq, and the demonstrated extreme anti-woman character of
the Bush regime in general. What is more in the interests of the world’s people:
uniting with some mullahs in power or working to unite the world’s
women and all those who oppose their oppression?
Communists in Iran have bitter experience with this problem of confusing
friends and enemies. In the tactics they adopted during the upsurge against the
Shah in 1979, they failed to be vigilant about the independent interests of the
people. When the Shah was overthrown, it didn’t take long before the Islamic
regime that replaced him massacred tens of thousands of people, including
thousands of communists, and imprisoned many more to impose their rule,
suppressing the Kurdish movement for self-determination and subjecting
women to medieval oppression. How could the Iranian communists, who did
not sufficiently value their independent struggle and did not take their inde-
34 35
pendent path to revolution, make that same mistake again and lead the people
to put their necks under the blades of those same butchers? The misguided and
even suicidal approach some people objectively, if not always consciously,
want to impose on the oppressed in Iran has already been tried and failed in
far too many places.
In a debate on the 8 March demonstration that raged on the ZNet Web site
before and long after that date, one of the rally’s speakers, Radha D’Souza,
wrote that the boycott of that march by some European organizations and antiwar
figures “touches on an issue of considerable importance that goes to the
heart of the struggles against imperialism, a subject of considerable importance
in contemporary politics of resistances everywhere.” (9 April posting)
The contention that in the face of the US/UK threat of another invasion, it is
not right to oppose the Islamic Republic of Iran, she said, “reverses the
Bushism about friends and enemies. Effectively, their argument is `we are not
with you therefore we are with them’. Such a view provides people with only
two options; either they must side with an Islamic dictatorship or with a US
military dictatorship. The only `choice’ before the people of Iran is to `choose’
who should be their oppressors. This means freedom is not a choice at all.”
This certainly does not mean that the danger of falling into unity with the
US ruling class does not exist. Some people do support US military action in
the name of progressive ideals, while others maintain a careful silence and
refuse to actively oppose such aggression. Although supporting the US-led
invasion of Iraq in the name of the liberation of that country’s women was
only a minor trend, it was a much more powerful current during the American
invasion of Afghanistan. Extreme religious rule and the extreme oppression of
women in Afghanistan led some anti-fundamentalist s and atheists as well as a
few women’s organizations and a section of the people of Afghanistan and
other countries to think that the overthrow of the Taleban at the hands of the
Bush regime was positive. This could happen in relation to Iran, too.
What’s wrong with this argument is that US imperialism has no intention
of freeing the people of Iran or anywhere else. After all, the further enslavement
of the world’s people to US monopoly capital is the Bush regime’s fundamental
goal. In fact, it will do everything it can to prevent the people from
getting free from both imperialist domination and backward social and economic
relations. Iranians can see that the way of life they are trying to escape has
been established as the social basis of the US occupation governments in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
Some people among the oppressed nationalities of Iran, especially
Kurdistan, are dreaming of playing a role like that of Jalal Talabani and
Massoud Barzani in Iraq. Some sections of the Kurdish organization Komela
and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan are trying to play this game.
Their leaders Abdolah Mohtadi and Mostafa Hejri, along with some Azeris
hand-picked by the American establishment, are attending meetings in the US.
Also there are forces dreaming of countrywide power and queuing up for jobs
as American servants to achieve their dreams. They include monarchists
around Reza Pahlavi (son of the deposed Shah), the Mujahaddin organization
(an Iranian opposition group occasionally favoured by the US) and a section
of those who might be or at least were very close to the current regime, such
as Hussein Khomeini, the grandson of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Speaking
to the al-Arabiya television network, Hussein Khomeini said recently,
“Freedom must come to Iran by any possible means, whether through internal
or external developments. If you were a prisoner, what would you do?” There
are also some activists in the Iranian women’s movement who think that
without relying on the US it is impossible to free Iran. Even though these
views are held by a comparatively thin layer of people, they have more
influence because they are amplified and supported by the US.
Building the urgently needed movement to resist US imperialist aggression
in Iran has to include arguing against these two potentially crippling deviations.
The people do not need to rely on the US to free themselves, and they don’t
need to support the Islamic republic to oppose US intervention. In Iran, only a
movement that takes on these major wrong ideas and relies on the people has
the potential to unite the country’s people and win the support and solidarity of
the world’s people. No matter how difficult this approach may be, any other is
an illusion. The same is true on a world level – a truly internationalist stand that
supports all the struggles of the world’s peoples against imperialism and reactionary
rule is needed to unite all who can be united, create the strongest possible
and most sustained movement and avoid the deadly political traps whose
jaws will grow wider and wider. This kind of movement is the most likely to
prevent a war, in relation to the unfolding of other contradictions, and it is what
can provide the possibilities for the greatest advances in revolutionary struggle
if the imperialists do unleash the horrendous crime of another war.