U.S., AUSTRALIA GET OUT OF IRAQ, THE PERSIAN GULF & AFGHANISTAN! U.S. OUT OF SYRIA! LIFT ALL SANCTIONS ON IRAN NOW!

DEFEND IRAN
AGAINST IMPERIALIST ATTACKS!

9 January 2020 – The U.S. regime and its allies are threatening a new all-out war in the Middle East. Driven by their predatory capitalist agendas their latest target is the people of Iran. Last week, a U.S. strike killed top Iranian military leader, Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani had been commander of Iran’s Quds Force which had helped ex-colony Syria to stave off an attempt by Washington to use proxies to impose regime change on that country. However, the U.S. murder of the Iranian Major General is not about one person. It is a provocation driving towards war on Iran.

The U.S. has been heading towards war with Iran ever since the hard-right Trump regime re-imposed much harsher sanctions on Iran in 2018. Then last July, Washington’s British allies brazenly seized an Iranian civilian ship off the coast of Gibraltar. This was followed up by the U.S. increasing its naval presence in the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s southern coast. Done under the guise of protecting merchant shipping against the threat of Iranian responses to the Gibraltar ship seizure, it was actually aimed at tightening the military screws on Iran. These screws were tightened several turns further just days before the killing of Soleimani when U.S. airstrikes killed at least 25 members of an Iraqi Shiite-based militia sympathetic to Iran, the Kataib Hezbollah.

Although the Australian regime has been somewhat wary of being drawn into a new war it has joined in the war drive against Iran. In August, prime minister Scott Morrison agreed to deploy a naval frigate and surveillance aircraft to join the U.S. operation in the Strait of Hormuz. The ALP Opposition supported the deployment as “appropriate.” Now, just as the U.S. war threat against Iran has been ratcheted up to its highest level in decades, these Australian forces will actually be deployed next week. Meanwhile, Australia has 300 troops in Iraq, which nominally train the Iraqi forces but, actually, help to maintain Western imperialist domination of that country that they have so brutally devastated.

Western media have been at pains to highlight that after Iran responded to Soleimani’s assassination with missile strikes against U.S. bases in Iraq, Trump avoided an immediate military response. However, the U.S. president announced still harsher sanctions on Iran as well as the deployment of further U.S. troops to the region. The U.S. regime wants to bring Iran to heel because it wants no force who will hinder their total domination of this oil rich and geographically strategic region. And they are prepared to kill a lot of people to achieve these goals! However, they understand too that Iran has a much more powerful military than Iraq had. Any all out U.S. war with Iran will see a lot of American troops getting killed. They are well aware too that much of the American population is sick of being part of distant wars, especially given that thousands of troops were killed by the Iraqi people’s resistance to the U.S.-led occupation. That is why an all out assault on Iran would likely have to be preceded by a massive propaganda campaign. Beware of hyped-up and concocted horror stories about some particular Iranian “atrocity” that the U.S. and their allies will try to find to justify war! Let’s never forget how the U.S., British and Australian regimes and mainstream media lied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to launch their heinous invasion in 2003!

WE MUST STAND WITH WEAKER, ECONOMICALLY DEPENDANT IRAN
AGAINST THE IMPERIALIST BULLIES!

Since the U.S. assassination of Soleimani was carried out at Baghdad Airport, that missile attack was also a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty. In the same attack, the U.S. also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a leader of an Iraqi Shiite based militia sympathetic to Iran. The Iraqi parliament responded to the U.S. murder of Soleimani and Muhandis by voting to eject U.S. and other Western troops out of the country. However, the arrogant, U.S. and Australian imperialists have said that they will not leave.

After the U.S. killed Soleimani and Muhandis, millions took to the streets in angry protests in both Iraq and Iran. In Iran the masses are furious at not only this latest intervention but at decades of being battered by Western imperialism: from the 1953 British and U.S. engineered coup that overthrew Iran’s Mosaddegh government – that had moved to nationalise Iran’s oil wealth that was being plundered by the British predecessor to BP – to the suffering caused by years of sanctions. In Iraq, it is still fresh in people’s minds that though the capitalist dictatorship under Saddam Hussein was certainly oppressive, the U.S./Australian/British invasion brought death, increased sectarian divisions and a serious deterioration in the position of women. The imperialist invaders killed tens of thousands of Iraqi people during their first Gulf War slaughter in 1991, they caused the premature deaths of nearly two million Iraqi people – mainly infants – as a result of the subsequent sanctions and then either killed by their own hands – or through the sectarian Sunni-Shia conflicts that they caused – over a million more Iraqi people since then.

Let us solidarise with the people in Iraq and Iran opposing the imperialist presence in the region and the threat of another calamitous U.S. led war! Let us stand with Iran against U.S. and Australian military threats! U.S./Australia get out of Iraq and all of the Middle East! Lift all sanctions on Iran now!

It is true that just like their American and Australian counterparts, the Iranian state oversees a capitalist system where workers are exploited. And just like the nearby U.S.-allied regimes in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, the Iranian government oversees the intense oppression of women and brutally cracks down on leftists. However, it is very wrong to equate Iran on the one hand and the U.S. and its imperialist allies on the other. Iran is a weaker, economically dependant country which is weighed down by the stranglehold over world markets by the rich capitalist powers. And although links to socialistic China allow her to gain some level of independence, the continued domination of much of the world economy, capital and access to technology by the Western powers stifles her. Moreover, it is not Iran that is going around invading other countries as the U.S. and Australia regimes have done in Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, East Timor, Afghanistan and Libya, to name just a few. Nor is it Iran that has been orchestrating dozens upon dozens of coups to overthrow overseas governments, including in Indonesia in 1965, Chile in 1973, East Timor in 2006 and Bolivia in 2019. No, that is the work of the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialists who are the greatest threat to the entire world’s peoples. That is why the working class people of the world have a clear side with Iran against the rich capitalist powers. As Lenin famously put it in an article written two years before the 1917 Russian Socialist Revolution:

“…if tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, and so forth, those would be “just”, “defensive” wars, irrespective of who attacked first; and every Socialist would sympathise with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slaveowning, predatory “great” powers.”

Socialism and War, V.I. Lenin, 1915

So we must defend any action that Iran takes against imperialist provocations – including the recent missile attack on U.S. bases. We must also support Iran acquiring whatever weapons that she needs for self-defence.

STANDING BY IRAN AGAINST IMPERIALISM
IS IN THE INTERESTS OF WORKING CLASS PEOPLE

In response to the recent events, Greens leader Richard Di Natale took a neutral position: “We condemn the actions of the Iranian Government, just as we condemn the provocative, illegal assassination undertaken by the US Government. We urge all sides now to show calm and restraint.” You can expect too that various social-democratic, nominally Marxist groups, while weighting their criticism more strongly towards the U.S. than the Greens do, will call for “both sides”, which means Iran too, to negotiate and show restraint. However, calling on Iran to negotiate is not going to ward off a U.S. attack, which at bottom is driven by the interests of U.S. corporate bigwigs. Indeed, any sign of weakness shown by Iran by “showing restraint” or offering concessions may well only embolden the predatory imperialists. Moreover, to call for Iran to give concessions to U.S. demands to weaken its military support to groups – like Palestinian resistance groups, the Houthi rebels in Yemen etc – that in some way resist U.S. (and its Saudi and Israeli allies) marauding around the region is to act to help Washington achieve part of its aims in a “peaceful” manner.

If anyone concerned about the interests of the toiling classes thinks that they should be neutral in any conflict between the U.S. bloc and Iran they should compare the implications of an Iranian victory in any conflict versus that of a victory of the U.S.-led imperialists. Should Iran, with backing of class conscious workers around the world, be able to successfully resist a U.S.-led assault this would encourage the resistance of all the world’s people suffering under imperialism. This includes the Palestinian people bravely resisting the murdering U.S.-backed Israeli forces and all the peoples of Asia, Africa, the Pacific and Latin America robbed by Western capitalist powers. On the other hand, should the U.S. and its allies prevail that will have the opposite effect. It would encourage them to launch new wars in the region. Globally they would be emboldened to launch still more direct attempts to overthrow the anti-colonial Maduro government in Venezuela and the socialistic state in North Korea. The U.S., British and Australian rulers would be encouraged too to further intensify their backing of the pro-colonial, rich people’s opposition in China’s Hong Kong.

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If the U.S. and Australian regimes get away with imposing their will on Iran, that will make them more arrogant and oppressive at home. The ruling class here would be emboldened to deepen their repression of trade union activists, further immiserate the unemployed, increase racist state terror against Aboriginal people and intensify racist vilification of refugees and migrant-based, non-white communities. That is why it is in the very interests of the working class to mobilise in action to oppose imperialist attacks upon Iran. Through protest industrial action, the workers movement can impede the war drive against Iran. To lay the basis for such action means challenging the pro-imperialist line pushed by the current leadership of the workers movement in the ALP. It also means winning the best and most influential worker activists to participating in protest actions opposing the war drive. Therefore, any protests opposing the war moves of the U.S. and Australian regimes must be built on a political line that can win over committed trade union activists – that is, on an openly pro-working class, internationalist and secular line.

OPPOSE ALL INTERVENTIONS BY U.S. AND AUSTRALIAN IMPERIALISM

Although the U.S. on the one hand and Iran and pro-Iranian Shiite based groups on the other may seem implacable enemies, at key other times they have been allies. Some pro-Iranian, Iraqi groups criminally backed, at first, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Earlier, during the 1980s, the Iranian government was a key supporter of the U.S.-backed Afghan Mujahedin fanatics that fought an anti-communist war against the then secular, leftist Afghan government and its Soviet Red Army protectors. Then, in 2001, the Iranian state provided crucial support to the U.S./Australian/ NATO invasion of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Russia which to some degree acts as Iran’s ally is also at the same time somewhat of a rival to Iran. During oil supply negotiations last year, Russia and Saudi Arabia co-operated in stitching a deal that sidelined and shafted Iran provoking an angry rebuke from the Iranian side.

The fact is that none of the capitalist regimes act out of any claimed principle whether that be “bringing human rights”, “spreading democracy” or “standing against imperialism.” Rather, the only thing that drives any of these capitalist states – big and small – is protecting the interests of their own respective capitalist classes. Be that as it may, one thing is absolutely sure: the horrible suffering, bloodshed and chaos in the Middle East and surrounding regions cannot be ended unless the U.S. and other Western powers are ejected from these regions. We have already spoken about some of the calamities that these forces have caused in Iraq and Iran. However, their crimes extend far beyond there. In 2011, the U.S. and NATO killed tens of thousands of Libyan people and brought “Rebel” proxies to power that have brought on-going chaos and bloodshed to that once peaceful country. Then in Syria, the U.S. and allied imperialists backed largely religious fundamentalist “Rebel” proxies to try and impose regime change there. They fuelled a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Among the groups that they backed was not only Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate but for a period even ISIS – which itself was created out of the strife that these imperialists had brought to Iraq. Then when the nasty little ISIS monsters turned on the Western big imperialist monsters, the U.S., Australia and others Western powers responded with airstrikes done so callously that they killed tens of thousands of civilians in the mainly Sunni-populated areas of Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, since their 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S., NATO and Australian forces have killed tens of thousands of civilians there. The Australian troops in particular killed several Afghan children at close range, executed in cold blood many civilians and murdered unarmed prisoners. We must demand that all U.S., NATO and Australian troops get out of Afghanistan as well as all of the Middle East. U.S. out of Syria! Lift all economic sanctions on Syria as well as Iran! Oppose all intervention by the imperialist powers whether that be military, diplomatic or through the funding of proxy forces!

THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM LEADS TO IMPERIALIST WAR!
BUILD THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THIS SYSTEM!

No one should be surprised that the Trump regime is driving towards conflict with Iran. Nor at its aggressive attitude to Red China. After all Trump promised both these things during his election campaign. He also vowed to be more combative when “negotiating” with Washington’s part allies, part rivals in Western Europe. This too has occurred. Trump did, however, promise to improve relations with Russia – in good part because he hoped to use Russia against the German and French competitors of the U.S. and because he sought to bring Russia into a grand capitalist front against socialistic China. This part of Trump’s original agenda has been largely frustrated by other wings of the U.S. ruling class who don’t want to allow the up and coming Russian power to emerge as a major capitalist rival. The end result is that U.S. relations with just about everyone – other than Britain and Australia – have become pricklier and the world has become a more dangerous place.

However, there are small clots among the Left who, because of their sympathy for Russia’s capitalist rulers and their indifference to racial oppression, actually gave support (with some criticisms) to Trump in the lead up to his election. Some even condemned the anti-Trump protests during his inauguration! They basically argued that Trump would be less imperialistic. Especially after events over the last two weeks, they have been left with political egg on their faces. Of course, these “leftists” are now not about to broadcast their past softness on Trump. However, genuine leftists should expose these clots and ensure that they are completely discredited and isolated. To support, even in a critical way, a hard right-wing, extreme racist is a despicable crime for anyone claiming to be a leftist!

To be sure the problem is hardly just Trump and the rabid right-wingers. All wings of the imperialist ruling classes must be opposed. The Obama-era Iran nuclear deal unfairly curbed Iran’s nuclear program and did not give Iran complete sanctions relief. Let’s not forget too that it was this previous, more liberal U.S. regime that waged the regime change war on Libya and the proxy war in Syria. Here in Australia, it is hardly just the right-wing Liberals that are the war-mongers. It was the then Hawke Labor government that sent Australian forces to take part in the 1991 first Gulf War slaughter of Iraqi peoples. Later, the previous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd ALP government maintained the Howard government’s occupation forces in Afghanistan and backed the proxy war in Syria. Today, the ALP continues to fall over themselves to show “bipartisanship” with the Liberals on all key foreign policy issues.

What causes the drive to imperialist war is mainly not bad people and bad ideologies. Instead, it is the natural product of capitalism in the richer countries where, to counter the internal contradictions of their system, these capitalist states are forced to seek out new sources of cheap labour and raw materials and new markets to seize control of. It is notable that Trump is threatening Iran at a time when the U.S. economy is expected to weaken further. However, in targeting Iran, Washington also has other goals far beyond Iran. For one, Iran has friendly relations with China. By targeting Iran, the U.S. regime wants to put the squeeze on socialistic China. The destruction of the world’s most powerful socialistic state remains the number one foreign policy goal of the capitalist powers. The U.S. regime also wants to hit Iran to strike a blow against its emerging Russian capitalist rival. Most dangerously, by driving towards war with Iran, Washington wants to take a side swipe against its German-led West European rivals. The latter are unhappy at Trump’s abandonment of the Obama-era deal with Iran and understand this was a way to stop the French, German, Dutch and other European powers from consummating lucrative contracts with Iran. In these tensions we are seeing the dim outlines of a potential future war between rival imperialist powers. The imperialists fought two destructive inter-imperialist wars last century. Today, all sides will have nuclear weapons at the start of any new world war. We need socialist revolution in the imperialist centres of the U.S., Australia, France, Germany, Japan etc to save humanity from this truly terrifying, apocalyptic threat.

FOR PRO-WORKER, PRO-WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENTS
IN THE MIDDLE EAST THAT ARE STAUNCHLY ANTI-IMPERIALIST

To defend Iran against the imperialist bullies one does not in any way need to prettify the Iranian ruling class. Iran’s capitalist rulers exploit their own working class, brutally subjugate women, trample on the rights of Azeris, Kurds and other non-Persian ethnic groups, murder communists and cruelly persecute lesbian women and gay men. However, should the imperialists invade Iran or impose a regime-change through proxies, the oppression of the masses would deepen much further. Look at what happened in Iraq! And in Libya! Given that the imperial powers would cream off much of the country’s oil wealth and fruits of workers’ labour, not only would the masses be immiserated even more but the dominant imperialists would need to incite sectarian and ethnic scapegoating to divide the exploited masses. And we have seen the calamity that such methods have brought to the people of Iraq! On the other hand, if the predatory war drive against Iran is defeated, although the religious fundamentalist regime would initially gain a boost to its authority, before long the toiling masses would say to themselves: “now that we have repulsed the big global oppressors let us now get rid of our exploiters here at home who are, in the end, economically subordinate to these imperialists.”

In recent months there have been mass protests and riots in Iran against fuel price hikes, poverty and corruption. However, taking part in the protests have been a mixture of pro-imperialist groups (including Shah supporters and supporters of the Mojahedin-e Khalq), genuine leftists and those who are not under any definite political leadership. Given the balance of power in the world and the imminent threat of imperialist attack, any such amorphous movement can quickly coalesce into a hardened proxy movement for imperialism. On the other hand, the imminent threat of an imperialist attack puts the question of opposing imperialism more onto centre stage. This gives an opportunity for genuine leftists taking part in opposition movements to split the movements by raising clear anti-imperialist slogans. In practice this would mean combining pro-worker economic demands and demands against the capitalist ruling class with clear slogans calling for the defence of Iran against imperialist attack. The idea would be to weed out from the leftist bloc anyone who either supports the menacing U.S. forces, is neutral on the question of an imperialist attack or is too half-hearted in opposing imperialism. The aim would be to build a leftist united-front movement that is clearly pro-working class, pro-women’s rights and anti-imperialist. Such a movement would not only politically oppose the capitalist rulers but would be staunchly against pro-imperialist opposition movements and would loudly stand for the defence of Iran against the imperialist aggressors. A similar split in opposition movements, albeit accounting for different terrains, is needed in Iraq, where the current government is simultaneously subordinate to Washington and allied with Tehran, and in Lebanon, where the governments have often been uneasy capitalist coalitions of pro-U.S. and pro-Syria/pro-Iran elements.

DOWN WITH AUSTRALIAN IMPERIALISM!

For leftists and opponents of imperialism in Australia our role must be overwhelmingly focussed on opposing the Australian regime’s contribution to the U.S.-led war drive against Iran rather than on supporting any rallies backing opposition forces in Iran – even leftist-led ones. Especially in the context of escalating war moves against Iran right now, even well-intentioned protests in Australia backing leftist opposition forces in Iran can have the effect of adding to the war-drive against Iran. In a land where the local ruling class is very much part of the U.S.-led moves to put the squeeze on Iran, the best way that we can support the building of a pro-working class, anti-imperialist opposition movement in Iran is to fight to lift the imperialist pressure that is bearing down upon her.

In mobilising against Canberra’s participation in U.S. moves against Iran we must understand that the Australian rulers are not merely puppets of the U.S. They are something worse than that. They form a predatory imperialist ruling class in their own right. They back U.S. wars in the Middle East because they want U.S. power to be strengthened because it is U.S. power that underwrites Australian imperialist overlordship and plunder of natural resources in PNG, Bougainville, East Timor, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and even to a degree in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, the Australian rulers and the U.S. rulers co-operate in pressuring socialistic China as both share a common goal of weakening the world’s most powerful socialistic country. Some on the Left, however, like to portray the Australian rulers as mere puppets of the U.S., almost as if Australia was a dependant country persecuted by imperialism. This is very distorting to the struggle as it implies that what is needed is to appeal to Australian nationhood – and even to a section of the ruling class – to unite to “achieve independence” from the U.S. Such nationalism and tying of workers to a section of their own exploiters is very harmful to the class struggle. For what we need to do is to mobilise the working class and its allies against all the capitalists.

Let us combine the struggle against the union busting, racist attacks and persecution of the poor perpetrated by the Australian imperialist rulers at home with the struggle against their predatory imperialist interventions abroad from the Persian Gulf to Iraq, East Timor, the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea. Stand against the Australian capitalist ruling class! Stand with the people of Iran against U.S. and Australian imperialist threats!