The United States is once again moving forward in attempted aggression against Iran. Besides economic sanctions restricting Iran’s oil and metal trade, Trump deploys troops, and from aircraft carriers, dispatches missiles and bombers, alleging aggression by the state of Iran.
The tensions between the United States and Iran are deepening with the rupture of the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan (JAP), an agreement that Obama reached in 2015 with the government of Hassan Rohani, with the guarantee of the participation of other countries (Germany, France, Russia, China, etc.). Iran agreed to reduce the production of enriched uranium, and the United States would lift the sanctions imposed.
But in 2018, Trump breaks this agreement and immediately re-establishes sanctions against Iran to prevent it from selling oil to Russia, India and China. This is how imperialism, under Trump, opens a new stage of instability in the Middle East, in its eagerness to once again position itself as a world gendarme in the face of the capitalist debacle and the world economic, political and social crisis.
The revolution that took place in Iran in 1979 led to the fall of the pro-American monarchical regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi. Iran became a theocratic republic, strongly authoritarian ruled by the Islamic clergy and a bourgeois sector that since then has played a more independent role of the United States and confronted its plans with Israel in the region. It merged itself in the energy industry with the creation of nuclear power plants and a world reference in the sale of oil. A capitalist government that implements austerity plans and represses protests, persecuting and imprisoning demonstrators who mobilise because of the economic crisis, strengthening a regime that attacks basic freedoms and rights. A fundamental ally, together with Russia, of the Al Assad regime to finish destroying the resistance of the Syrian revolution. Besides the war in Syria, Iran takes on greater influence in the region, to the detriment of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the main allies of US imperialism.
For this status of Iran in the region, Trump goes on the offensive to privilege imperialist interests with his ally, the Zionist state of Israel, which did not like the prominence Iran has achieved. Thus, after breaking the JAP, the United States advances with a threat of aggression against Iran, denouncing that there is the possibility of this attack on the allies of imperialism’s interests. Although Iran denies the denouncements, it is preparing to resume nuclear development, storing enriched uranium and heavy water, and shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, where 1/5th of the oil consumed by the world circulates.
In the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International we are categorical against imperialism, but at the same time we give no political support to the bourgeois government of Iran, who applies austerity plans and represses the mobilised Iranian people. We repudiate the threat of aggression with the deployment of arms and military troops in the region and the sanctions applied. We call on workers and popular organisations all over the world to organise an international repudiation against Donald Trump and imperialism. We demand the lifting of the sanctions imposed and the withdrawal of the imperialist forces from the region. Out Imperialism of all the Middle East!
Eduardo Ruarte
