LCFI Statement 31-7-19

Tensions between Iran and US worst ever

Not even during the Iranian Revolution, in 1979, in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy, was the level of tensions between the two countries was as high as it is now. The commercial war gave way to the military conflict or skirmishes. Cargo ships and tankers have been trapped, drones have already been shot down, gas pipelines attacked, announcements of suspension of imminent attacks  and spies have been imprisoned and some sentenced to death,… Very little is lacking for this low-intensity war to take a qualitative leap and turn into a high-intensity war.

After dozens of failed initiatives to mount an intervention on Venezuela now, Donald Trump’s government pivoting a “maximum” policy on Iran. The sectors of imperialism that are behind this offensive are the oil wing of the great capital, which are represented by Mike Pompeo who is the U.S. secretary of state, and wanted to rise oil prices, the Industrial military complex (IMC), which all the Presidents of the USA have granted at least one war per mandate, and Israel that for years has pressed the US to get rid of their strongest and most influential opponent in the Middle East. So far, Israel seems to have not been involved yet, it just seems.

While Israel has also remained silent, both Israel and the US have warned that Iran and its proxy militias are the biggest threats to peace in the region and hope to weaken the Islamic regime’s growing influence across the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

“Britain and Brazil were involved in the U.S. side. The Government of London learned of an Iranian ship that was carrying oil to Syria in Gibraltar. In response, in the Strait of Ormuz, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard surrounded and imprisoned a tanker flying the British flag with four ships and a helicopter.” [1]

The government of Bolsonaro blocked Iranian cargo ships, which had bought tons of Brazilian corn, and refused to supply them with Brazilian oil, obeying the sanctions imposed by Trump against the Islamic Republic. Measures such as this are good for the USA and greatly impair Brazilian foreign trade.

Trump is losing control over his own manoeuvres

Trump brought the art of bluffing that he learned in his casino business to his political activity. He’s a compulsive bluffer, and in that he identified himself with the communicative form of the extreme right militancy of the Roger Stone School [2] updated by Steve Bannon. It’s a threat, a bluff, supposedly to reach an advantageous deal with your opponent. However, since the beginning of the mandate in the White House, the main objective of this tactic is to divert the focus from national policy attentions to international, by exporting the intra-imperialist crises to the rest of the world.

Trump is the expression of a minority fraction of the great imperialist bourgeoisie, who took over during the process of declining US imperialist power over the globe after the 2008 crisis. Trump threatens Iran to secure his reelection. However, there are important US warmongering pressures that go beyond Trump’s immediate interests. For the billionaire president, the goal of the game is to stay in power for as long as possible. For several other portions of the great imperialist capital the game is broader and more ambitious, it is to prevent imperialism from continuing to lose global power.

Imperialism seeks to slow the wheel of history, the overturn of the US unipolarity by the multi-polarity represented by China and Russia with protectionist and anti-globalization brakes, to preserve the American hegemony against the development of capitalism itself under the command of new bourgeois powers.

The House majority is dominated by the Democratic opposition, which conspires with a significant portion of the Senate-dominated Republicans to overthrow it through an impeachment to subsequently resume the US world offensive. But Trump has been able to curb the initiatives of the Democratic opposition and his party thanks to the resumption of relative economic growth of imperialism based on a 4% reduction in unemployment linked to stimulating domestic production, precarious and temporary employment contracts and freezing. as in Great Britain, Germany and Japan.

Iran, located between the gigantic energy reserves of the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, is now the target of an imperialist offensive that can even reach a regional or global nuclear escalation. This whole situation is the result of the “maximum pressure” policy of the White House on Iran, is the:

“result of Trump’s decision to sanction Iran and prevent any country from buying its oil. Iran has made it clear that no oil will be exported from the region if Iran cannot.” [3]

Trump’s theatrical war against Iran was the main focus in launching the campaign for re- election on June 18, is becoming an uncontrolled theater of war. The marketing move was to do with Iran as it did with North Korea and Venezuela: cusing, threatening to establish a new kind of relationship of forces.

The Trump deal and no more Obama

This time, to not seem to be using an increasingly discredited trick, Trump needed to increase decibel and the appearance of conflict. But, as the analyst Therry Meyssan characterizes, it is “a dangerous game that can drift at any time.”

The U.S. relations with the Islamic Republic had worsened since 2017, when to please its principal sponsors, the Zionist fraction of American imperialism [4] Trump stimulated the right manifestations against the existing political and religious direction of the country. In 2018, it broke the most important international agreement made by the Obama administration, signed in 2015. Now, it seems that the oil lobby, the Zionist wing of the US elite, the MIC and the democratic opposition and Israel are interested in which Trump goes to war. For the Democrats, a Trump military disaster would be a great electoral cable for them. Neither does the supreme leader of Iran, Sayyed Ali Khamenei, believe that Trump wants war:

“People should know that we and our allies are strong and have many surprises to reach our enemies. In Lebanon of 2006, a small group (Hezbollah) defeated a much larger entity because Israel ignored the ability of resistance. The U.S. seems to ignore our military capabilities, but it appears that, like us, Trump doesn’t want the war. However, if the war occurs, for every attack that Iran receives, we will launch ten attacks in retaliation.” [5]

The biggest defender of the war in the Trump government is Mike Pompeo, current U.S. secretary of state, former CIA director and agent of the Koch Brothers, oil industry entrepreneurs who are among the American sponsors of the coup against Brazil in 2016. According to the Zionist sources:

“President Trump himself was not enthusiastic about military action against Iran but lost his patience on the subject and would grant the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is pushing for action, what he wants.” [6]

Iran, the historical cradle of the chess game, bets on the implosion of the internal contradictions of imperialism and thinks further. This situation gives credit to the version that Tehran refused to agree to a theatrical conflict proposed by Trump, exposed its plot and marginalised the maneuver that sought to save the face of the US president.

“According to well-informed sources, Iran rejected an American intelligence proposal-made by third parties-that Trump could bombard one, two or three clear goals, to be chosen by Iran, so that both countries would appear to leave. As winners and Trump could save his face. Iran categorically rejected the offer and sent its answer: even an attack against an empty sandy beach in Iran would trigger a missile launch against North American goals in the Gulf.

“Iran is not inclined to help Trump descend from the tree he climbed and prefers to keep him confused and cornered. In addition, Iran would love to see Trump not win a second term and will do anything to help knock him out of the White House at the end of his tenure at 2020.” [7]

Days later, Trump lamely said: “It’s getting harder and harder for me to reach an agreement with Iran because they’re acting really bad.” [8]

However, the Iranian leadership seems to have the illusion that the return of the democrats to the White House would represent the repactuation with imperialism in the same way as those established with Obama. The democrats and republicans who oppose Trump have more strategic sense than the current president, accused of being a Russian agent, has at stake in the new cold war against China and Russia. It was the Obama-Clinton administrations that started the hybrid wars against the rise and influence of the nucleus of anti-US Euro-Asian countries. If they return to government, they will be more consistent than Trump in preserving US world hegemony

If imperialism does not retreat, it may begin the third world war

From the current escalation between the USA and Iran the most likely variables are:

1) that in the face of the relatively symmetrical Iranian responses so far, US imperialism will retreat. Iran has not been cowardly, on the contrary, it has shown its teeth. There are great prospects that a conflict of greater proportions will end up wearing Trump down. If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz – which is only 21 km wide and through which 1/3 of all the oil in the planet passes, almost 17 million barrels a day – or sinks a ship in the region, it will carry out a military maneuver with a profound impact on the world economy.

“Any blockage of the fuel flow will take the price of oil to reach US $200 the barrel, US $500 or even, according to some projections from Goldman Sachs, US $1,000. (…) Goldman Sachs projected a possible barrel of US $1000 per barrel a few weeks after the closing of the Ormuz Strait. This number, times 100 million of barrels of oil produced per day, leads us to 45% of the global GDP of US $80 trillion. It is self-evident that the world economy would collapse based only on that.” [9]

Tehran can do this because hundreds of its missiles located on its southern coastal border are pointed into the Persian Gulf. Due to the complexity and risks of financial capital, dependent on a safe market environment to be able to operate, it is enough that an oil tanker is sunk into the Persian Gulf so that all maritime trafficking is threatened. And the main cause may be more financial than military. The costs of operations in the region tend to trigger and make them unenforceable.

What insurance company in the world will be willing to secure a ship transporting 2 million barrels of oil at the high risk of having to bear the cost if Iran closes the Straits? The other side of this is that the greater the risks the higher tends to be the price of oil.

In the current values, with the barrel of oil Brent to 62 DBucks the barrel, the indemnity of 2 million barrels would cost 124 million dollars.After the apprehension of the British tanker Stena Impero, oil reached 2.1% in a day,FOR US $63.23 the barrel.And Sand oil reach 200 or 500 dollars a barrel?

In the current values, with the Brent oil at 62 dollars a barrel, the compensation for two million barrels would br $124 million. After the seizure of the British oil tanker Stena Impero, oil rose 2.1% in one day, to US $63.23 a barrel. What if oil reaches $200 or $500 a barrel?

The loss of control over the situation on the part of imperialism could promote the price of oil, which yields stratospheric profits for the oil industry, but that can detonate a new global economic crisis, slso compromising Trump’s re-election.

In turn, to ensure the resumption of the oil trafficking in the region without risks and to stabilize the price of the planet’s main fuel, the U.S. and allies would need to annihilate Iran’s military capacity and impose imperialist nuclear terror like they did with Japan, dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

2) to reach a rapid end to the conflict with Iran, the US can act as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S. can proceed to a modern version of nuclear holocaust as a way to neutralize Iran and send a strong signal to its rivals, especially Russia and China. This message would aim to reverse the tendency to demoralize imperialist military power, much questioned after the defeat to Syria, supported by Russia and Iran. But even if the possibility could have a very distinct result from that obtained against Japan.

“A U.S. attack would undoubtedly destroy Iran’s oil facilities, missile launch bases, part of its military industry, and would cause many Iranian human casualties. But the American military will also lose their lives and the price of oil will rocket, damaging Trump’s electoral prospects. The U.S. is not taking into account the capabilities of Iranian missiles and the possibility of Iran having tactical nuclear missiles with hardened uranium, similar to those used by Israel against Lebanon in the war of 2006.

“In addition, if Iran is seriously hit, as the U.S. can prevent Iran’s allies from bombing Israel by attacking U.S. embassies and bases in Lebanon and Iraq and attacking U.S. troops in Syria?… Iran has been supporting its allies in the Middle East for a decade and it would be illogical not to expect their support to be available in the extreme case of a direct attack on Iran. There will be no concern about the world’s reaction to the revelation of Iran’s hidden capacities when the number of deaths begins to rise, and destruction becomes devastating. This could very well be Iran’s plan B, an option that Trump seems to ignore.

“The U.S. can use unconventional weapons against Iran, which will provoke global outrage. The Internet today enables instant access to information around the world. The use of unconventional weapons will re-illuminate the world’s memory of atomic bombs launched by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During World War II, the United States did not face any responsibility because the world was at war. Today the situation is very different, and Trump is facing an internal political division, an electoral campaign and the opposition of the other signatories of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement that oppose the repeal of the agreement by Trump under the guidance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.” [10]

American nuclear terror could unravel an inverse result of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Instead of marking the end of World War, as occurred in the second, start a Third World War. Instead of scaring the opponents, stimulate them to react.

3) It is likely that the offensive against Iran has greater consequences, dragging all allies on both sides in the Middle East. Israel and Saudi Arabia, on the one hand, Iraq, Turkey, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, on the other. Soon, Russia and China, Iran’s partners, would be directly involved in the conflict, thus untied in a third Global War.

“The Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, has emphasized in his speeches: “The war against Iran will not remain within the boundaries of that country, but it would mean that the entire region [of the Middle East] would be set on fire. All American forces and interests in the region will be exterminated, and with them the conspirators, first among them Israel and the Saudi ruler family.” [11]

Even in regional wars, Iran has come out best. The main military defeats of the Anglo-Zionist and Saudi bloc of imperialism in the 21^st century was at the hands of the allied forces, sponsored and armed by Iran. The first Zionist defeat was in 2006, by Hezbollah. The second defeat took place a decade later in Syria. In the first, the U.S. assumed a secondary role in the block led by Israel. In the second, the defeat of the United States, through the liberation of Aleppo (Syria) was also a defeat of the world counterrevolution and a victory of the working class.

It was not a socialist and revolutionary victory but marked the reversal of the course of consecutive victories of imperialist interventions in oppressed countries. It marked an international turn of military control of the planet and exposed the decline of imperialism against the rise of the Eurasic bloc, which has as its military vanguard Russia. In a way, by the hypertrophied weight of Zionism within the bourgeoisie and the American imperialist state, they were strategic defeats of imperialism by Iran’s agents. Now, Saudi Arabia’s defeat in Yemen is underway for another guerrilla group supported by Iran, the Houthis, which are imposing casualties on the invading military coalition commanded by Riyadh in Yemen, and also utilizing drones to attack airports in Saudi territory itself. Casualties have already been inflicted, forcing the 5,000 soldiers of the United Arab Emirates from the coalition to withdraw.

Iran was the great benefactor of the imperialist occupation in Iraq. The political opponent, Saddam Hussein, was cowardly crushed by the enemy, the U.S., who, when retiring from Iraq, left the political vacuum to be largely occupied by Iran. Iraq has also become Iran’s main access corridor to Syria and Lebanon. The Persian nation has political and military influence in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen. Against the U.S. and Great Britain, Iran is supported by Russia and China who know that an Iranian defeat implies the recovery of the Anglo-Zionist influence lost in recent years in the Middle East.

Iran and its vast regional influence are fundamental for China to establish the consolidation project of its global expansion called “One Belt One Road”, popularly known as the new Silk route. “Iran is a key knot of the new Silk Route” [12], the largest investment plan of history of mankind budgeted at five trillion dollars, a value of almost 30 times the updated value of the Marshall plan (US $100 billion in updated amounts of 2018), which the US created to rebuild Europe after the Second World War.

For 40 years, Iran has been subject to U.S. sanctions. Virtually all the White House leaders have threatened to attack the Islamic Republic, but none have done so concretely. A lot is at stake in a possible US war against Iran. From a rocketing price of oil that could lead us to a new economic crisis of planetary proportions to the third world war. A defeat of imperialism, even if Iran continues to be ruled by the Persian bourgeoisie, will weaken imperialism and favour the struggle of the exploited and oppressed in the Middle East and in the world.

Notes

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[1] JERUSALEM POST, Iran and Israel share barbs over Twitter, https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Tzachi-Hanegbi-For-two-years-Israel-is-the-only-one-killing-Iranians-596353

[2] Wikipedia, Roger Jason Stone Jr. (born August 27, 1952) is an American political consultant, author, lobbyist and strategist known for his use of opposition research, usually for candidates of the Republican Party. Since the 1970s, Stone has worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Bob Dole and Donald Trump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Stone

[3] (MAGNIER, Middle East policy, “How Iran decided to take down an unmanned U.S. aircraft and avoided the war through another U.S. airplane”) https://ejmagnier.com/2019/06/23/how-iran-decided-to-down-a-us-drone-and-narrowly-averted-war-by-sparing-another-us-plane/

[4] (https://jornaleconomico.sapo.pt/noticias/sheldon-adelson-o-dinheiro-por-tras-de-donald-trump-2-354848),

[5] (MAGNIER, Middle East policy, Iran has already warned Arab countries in case of war: the U.S. “like a lion in a Persian history”. https://ejmagnier.com/2019/06/26/iran-has-warned-to-target-arab-countries-in-case-of-war-the-us-like-a-lion-in-a-persian-story/

[6] The Jerusalem Post: U.N. officials: U.S. planning a ‘ tactical assault ‘ in Iran, https://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=592832

[7] Magnier, Middle East Policy, (Iran and Trump on the edge of the Abyss, Iran and Trump at the edge of the Abyss) https://ejmagnier.com/2019/06/21/iran-and-trump-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss/

[8] Trump: Iran making it harder for me to want to make a deal https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/22/donald-trump-iran-making-it-harder-me-want-make-de/

[9] (ESCOBAR, Iran goes for maximum contain pressure “) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/20/iran-goes-for-maximum-counter-pressure/

[10] (Magnier, Middle East Politics, Trump Imagine a quick US war with no plan B, but overlooks Iran’s possible Plan B) https://ejmagnier.com/2019/07/02/trump-imagines-a-quick-us-war-with-no-plan-b-but-overlooks-irans-possible-plan-b/

[11] (ESCOBAR, Iran goes for maximum contain pressure ” https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/20/iran-goes-for-maximum-counter-pressure/

[12] (ESCOBAR, “Iran at the center of the Eurasian Riddle”) https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/06/article/iran-at-the-center-of-the-eurasian-riddle/