An MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter lifts off from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as it transits the Strait of Hormuz off the waters of Iran [File: US Navy/Reuters]
Netanyahu has been trying to drag the U.S. into its ongoing ‘shadow war’ against Iran for decades. The U.S. wants its war with Iran but on its own terms, economic isolation, limited proxy engagements, shots across the bow, tepid challenges for sea lanes. None but the most flagrant neocons want tit-for-tat sparring to escalate to full blown and potentially nuclear warfare. Yet today sectors of the Israeli establishment seriously consider the Samson Option. The west holds its breath as Netanyahu’s war cabinet considers its options.
The working class needs its own intervention to stop the escalation towards WWIII! The UN and International Court of Justice have proven themselves as feckless talk shops of the imperialist dominated by ‘world order’ which negate any independent action of the Global South. Today workers and oppressed people need a New Zimmerwald to organize an internationalist class struggle against war and the root cause of war today–capitalist exploitation at home and imperialist oppression abroad.
By bombing the Iranian embassy in Syria and killing General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, Israel provoked Iran in hopes of a retaliation of measured proportion which would stiffen the U.S. resolve. Losing the media war, Israel needs to turn world attention away from the genocide in Gaza and to reassert its role as the primary victim of irrational international anti-semitism. Zionism’s war has exposed its character as the bulldog of western imperialism so it needs to change the world’s conversation from its attempt to drive Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, to the Iranian response. Never mind the fact that bombing the embassy violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations article 22, which made the premises of foreign missions inviolable.
Invoking Article 51, Iran responded on April 13,th 2024 by hitting Israel with dozens of drone and missile strikes targeting military installations, emphasizing their adherence to rules of engagement by not targeting civilian populations. The U.S. and UK responded as could be expected placing the blame on Iran and employing its resources to shield Israel from the incoming. This of course stands in stark contrast to the fact that they not only stood by failing to protect the civilians of Gaza while Israel bombed them, but continued to provide arms and logistical support to the Zionist aggressors even after having been exposed in the international court of Justice.
Western media brushes aside the provocation attempting to rally international outrage at Iran–as if history started yesterday! This won’t work in the Global South! The masses are applauding Iran’s action and have been hoping someone would intervene on behalf of the Palestinians! Of course, Iran will not press on to liberate Palestine, citing violations of their sovereignty as cause. In an alignment of forces even the Arab theocracies which are today navigating the space between the Chinese and U.S. imperialisms do not speak for their own people while they close their air space to Iranian overflights, distancing themselves from the Iranian action.
The hawkish Democratic Party, dominated by the neocons in Washington, are committed to the defense of Israel regardless of the 34,000 dead in Gaza. Arms keep flowing despite the feigned outrage at the deaths of a few aid workers! Biden feels the pressure on the campaign trail as Democratic party events are being disrupted by Palestine Solidarity activists and his government stands accused of participation in the genocide by arming the Zionist settler state. Netanyahu, observing the backpedaling of the U.S., has been stoking the fires of regional war, cashing in on the U.S. promise of unconditional defense and catching Biden in the crosshairs. Trump, sniping from the sidelines, claims this would never have happened on his watch.
Biden, losing in the polls, has made gestures to counter the Arab American community’s campaigns of withholding votes in the Democratic primary. Netanyahu also wants to stay in office to stay out of jail and could not let Biden play big daddy and broker an unwanted peace. Provoking war with Iran is a gambit to pull Biden off the fence. But the U.S. does not want nuclear war and knows the unhinged Netanyahu with fantasies of Biblical proportions could cross that trip wire. No doubt after Iran took its shot, Biden was on the horn with Netanyahu trying to calm the whole affair down. Biden lost Afghanistan, or so the story goes….he does not want to lose Israel, at least before the election. The next few hours will be a walk back from the brink. But the masses in the streets want a resolution that ends the genocide in Gaza and the accelerating pogroms and occupations in the West Bank. So neither Biden nor Netanyahu can resolve the contradictions that are foremost in front of the world today. The Zionist colonial settler state must be smashed. For workers revolution and a socialist Palestine! For a Socialist Federation of West Asia!
The terminal decline of capitalism offers up a cesspool of the most reactionary ideas. Ideas which the ‘forward thinking’ intelligentsia presumed were shadows of a long buried past are today normalized in the rantings of Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Trump and and even many old fashioned liberal Democrats. They dehumanize oppressed people from Haiti to Gaza as pests, gangsters and terrorists. This is awkwardly reminiscent of how every oppressor throughout history has demonized the oppressed!
Zionism is losing the propaganda war because the mainstream media is rigged by its corporate owners in favor of imperialism, and everyone knows it, so they can no longer maintain the hypocrisy that white supremist colonialist regimes are forces of democracy!
Israel is a puppet state which cannot survive without the U.S. backing. The U.S. won’t swat them down because it is the U.S. aircraft carrier on land in the region. It stands as a bulwark against the regional powers and serves to divide the Arab nations and their Iranian neighbors. Israel serves to keep the national bourgeoisie of the neighboring nations tied to imperialism and committed to stopping the masses from advancing the permanent revolution and winning socialism by defeating imperialism.
Israel is an occupier founded upon the mutual interest of Western Imperialist intention to control Arab oil and Jewish capitalists’ class interests.
Palestine is the last of the 20thC. settler colonial states in struggle for its liberation. 75 years of determined struggle hardened ideological lines on both sides.
So we need an international proletarian military policy to turn war in Palestine into war against the actual puppet master, the U.S. ruling class, and all the other imperialist governments who support the Zionist Israeli state. In the unfolding war between the U.S. proxy Israel and Iran we stand for the unconditional military defense of Iran without giving any political support to its theocratic capitalist regime.
Build the mass actions in solidarity with Palestine and Iran up into labor struggles internationally against the imperialist backers of Israel (USA, UK, France, Germany and their proxies Ukraine etc). Create teach-ins at every labor council, to debate Palestine in front of the working class. Fight for the political independence of the working class! Give no votes to capitalist and popular front parties!
Win the workers movement to political strikes in defense of the Palestinians, against the arming of Israel and against all Israeli and imperialist military actions. Block military shipments. Dockers must initiate strikes to refuse loading Israeli commercial ships and hot cargo and divert military and humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. This is how anti-imperialist workers must turn the imperialist proxy war into a class war at home!
Propagandize the soldiers, sailors and airmen; show them the facts that they are to be used for genocide in order to hold back the working masses and keep oil profits flowing between the comprador bourgeois oil barrons and big western oil interests.
Victory to the Palestine Resistance! Defeat the IDF! Defend Iran! Build revolutionary workers’ parties in the imperialist nations and throughout West Asia! For a new Zimmerwald to organize against imperialist wars! For a new Workers International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution!
International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT), 04/14/2024
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