IRAN – IT’S WAR ! Operation True Promise 4 is under way
STOP PRESS
The threatened US/Israeli attack against Iran finally began on 28 February, just as LALKAR was prepared to go to press. Explosions took place in central, northern and eastern Tehran, as well as in Isfahan, Sahand, Karaj, Qom, Kermanshah, Khomein, Dezful, Kharg Island and Minab. In Minab, two primary schools full of little girls were bombed, leaving over 140 dead. Iranian President, the 86-year old Ali Hosseini Khamenei has been killed, along with members of his family.
US President Trump boasted: “The United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests. We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground”.
What are the “core national security interests” of the US that are ‘threatened’ by Iran. Nobody imagines that Iran has any ambition to attack the United States. The ‘core’ interest the US wants to ‘protect’ is its hegemony over the Middle East – maintained through the state of Israel and the puppet Arab regimes of the area – and its monopolist control over most of the world’s supply of oil, that is to say, the wealth enjoyed by its billionaires at the expense of the hundreds of millions of the world’s propertyless toiling people.
At the end of last December, US imperialism attempted to overthrow the Iranian government by means of a colour revolution. It sought to magnify dissidence by causing a rapid decline in the international purchasing power of the Iranian currency, having organised dissidents through Starlink, provided them with armaments, and encouraged them to use unbridled violence. This colour revolution, rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people, was thoroughly defeated. The Iranians were able to achieve what had been thought impossible for Iran to do, i.e., disabling Starlink and using it to track down the CIA operatives who were using it, and they certainly had the will and the power to put down the violent goons mobilised against them, leaving US imperialism bemoaning the fact that its puppets had been ‘brutally suppressed’.
This ‘brutal suppression’ it then turned into a rallying cry to justify all-out war on Iran. Nevertheless, there was hope that the imperialists might think better of launching such a war in view of the fact that their arsenals had been seriously depleted as a result of their provisioning of the Ukrainian fascist regime for war against Russia, as well as by the realisation that the Iranians had already demonstrated their ability to retaliate effectively during the course of last year’s US 12-day assault on Iran when it became clear that Iranian missiles could readily pierce Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ to cause devastating blows in Tel Aviv and elsewhere.
The Iranian government has been warning throughout that if it was attacked again, it would not be limiting its response as it did last year: its retaliation would be more severe than anything its aggressors had ever seen. And indeed as we write Iran is more than fulfilling its promise. In only 24 hours, Tel Aviv has seen unprecedented bomb damage; US military bases or other facilities have been set ablaze in Dubai, Doha, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Riyadh, Kuwait. An oil tanker has been sunk as well as a US military vessel. Some 400 American soldiers are said to have been killed in the process.
In killing Ali Husseini Khamenei, it must be said in passing, the reactionaries have yet again hit an own goal, since it was at Khamenei’s insistence that Iran did not develop a nuclear weapon (on the basis that to do so would be unislamic). After his demise, that has brought several million Iranians out on the street publicly to mourn his passing, it is likely to be concluded in Iran that possession of nuclear arms is the best guarantee of peace!
In the meantime it can be expected that US imperialism’s unprovoked attack will not only result in even greater physical damage to its Middle Eastern interests and to Israel to an unprecedented degree, but also to chaos on the financial markets that may end up ending the hegemony of the US dollar.
Throughout the world the masses of people have been roused in protest. When they are additionally subjected to economic hardships occasioned by this war, there is every chance the protests will turn insurrectionary, perhaps even in the US itself.
In Britain the ‘Labour’ prime minister, Keir Starmer, after having made a bit of a show of saying he would not allow the US to attack Iran from Diego Garcia or from the Fairford base in Britain, has now sent the RAF to the Middle East to help the defence against Iran’s retaliation, i.e., to get involved in the illegal US slaughter of the Iranian people. It is difficult to see how he will justify that decision if British pilots are returned in body bags.
The fact of the matter is that in this war the Iranian cause is just and must be supported. We must all hope that despite its military weakness relative to US imperialism and its various allies, the justice of its cause will triumph. What is new in this situation, and a game changer, is that Iran’s advanced hypersonic missile technology allows it to strike back effectively both at US bases and their armada of warships. The victories of the militarily weaker side in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, among others, do show that the justice of a cause, and the support of the masses of the people, both of which Iran enjoys in abundance, are the most powerful weapons possible in any confrontation with the enemy.