To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
January 05, 2020
Re: On the threat of a full-scale war between US imperialism and
the Iranian theocracy
Below are excerpts from the statement of the Alliance of Middle Eastern
and North African Socialists (AMENAS) of January 3, 2020. The full
statement can be found at
https://allianceofmesocialists.org/oppose-u-s-and-iran-war-by-showing-solidarity-with-uprisings-in-the-mena-region/.
Oppose U.S. and Iran War by Showing Solidarity with Uprisings in the MENA Region
In the early morning of January 3, at the order of U.S. president Donald Trump and without any authorization from the U.S. Congress, U.S. airstrikes targeted a convoy near the Baghdad airport in Iraq and killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Mauhandis, top Iraqi militia commander/founder of Kataib Hezbollah militia and at least six others. The U.S. Department of Defense stated that this attack was in response to Iranian-orchestrated attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq during the past few months, including a December 27 attack on an Iraqi military base near Kirkuk which killed a U.S. contractor and wounded 4 U.S. soldiers. There are currently 5300 U.S. troops in Iraq. 3000 more are on their way to the Middle East. 14,000 additional troops have been sent to the region since May 2019.
The idea of assassinating Qassem Soleimani was publicly endorsed by a
December 31 Wall Street Journal editorial statement which also called
on Trump to attack Iranian militias in Syria.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iranians-escalate-in-baghdad-11577837753?mod=opinion_lead_pos3)
...
Earlier in June 2019, Trump had cancelled a U.S. military assault on Iran which had aimed to respond to Iran’s shooting down a U.S. drone. His administration decided not to respond to Iran’s September 14 air strikes on Saudi oil facilities and earlier attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf region attributed to Iran. Trump himself had recently emphasized that he was no longer interested in “regime change” in Iran but wanted to continue imposing the backbreaking sanctions on Iran to force the Iranian government to change its behavior.
However, what the latest ominous developments reveal is that regardless of what imperialist leaders might wish, the compulsion of capitalist-imperialist powers to compete and show their superiority has a logic of its own.
For the Iranian government, Qassem Soleimani was the top commander, second important leader after Ayatollah Khamenei, and architect of Iran’s bloody intervention in Syria as well as the main decision maker in Iraq. Iran has promised “harsh revenge.” Its ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah has issued a similar threat. Israel has been engaged in low-intensity war with Iran for some time by targeting Iranian bases in Syria and Iraq, and the Lebanese Hezbollah. Israel might strike Iran itself if necessary.
The most worrisome aspect of these developments is that they might lead to catastrophic consequences and full-scale war. That would in turn overshadow the wave of uprisings that have broken out in the Middle East and North Africa region in 2019, from Sudan and Algeria to Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. All of these uprisings have opposed imperialism, authoritarianism, neoliberalism, poverty, corruption, religious fundamentalism and sectarianism. Women have been active participants and often in the forefront. The participants are mostly working-class and unemployed youth. They are not content with the ouster of individual ruling figures but want to change the socioeconomic and political system. For all these reasons, the revolts could mark the beginning of a new progressive and revolutionary chapter for the region as a whole, although significant difficulties and challenges exist.
Authoritarian rulers and systems however, will not be easily pushed back. In Iraq, a wave of popular protests that began on October 2 in Baghdad and the Shi’a south have been brutally attacked by the Iranian-backed Iraqi government with support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian sponsored Shi’a fundamentalist militia, al-Hashd al-Sha’bi which includes the Kataib Hezbollah. Small but increasing expressions of support for the uprising have emerged in majority Sunni and Kurdish areas. 500 protesters have been killed and over 19,000 injured.
In Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other government forces brutally suppressed the nationwide popular protests that broke out on November 15 in opposition to a rise in the price of petroleum and called for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and an end to its military interventions in the region. According to Reuters, at least 1500 protesters were killed in four days. Between 8000 and 10,000 mostly young protesters have been arrested and most have not been heard from. Many political prisoners, including labor, feminist, and oppressed minority activists languish in prison from previous protests. These and revolutionary protesters in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Algeria are the forces that socialists around the world need to reach out to and support.
The joy expressed by some at the death of the criminal reactionary Qassem Soleimani is understandable, given his role in repressing revolutionary popular classes in Iran, Syria, Iraq and in expanding Iran’s militarism and influence in the region. However, his assassination represents nothing affirmative for the popular uprisings in Iraq and the region.
This U.S. imperialist action was not done to empower the people of Iraq. On the contrary, the result of this imperialist action could actually increase the risk of derailing the popular uprising in Iraq. The threat is not necessarily that the current Iraqi protest movement would concentrate solely on opposing the United States after this assassination. Up to now, the majority of protesters have clearly opposed all foreign influences, especially Iran and the USA. However, they might now be overwhelmed by another movement controlled and organized by pro-Iranian militias, which uses this assassination to make the departure of Americans the only demand, while not challenging the current sectarian and crony capitalist system. The risk is that the new U.S.-Iranian escalation will dictate all internal issues in Iraq and make Iraq the site of a direct confrontation between the U.S. and Iran.
The popular uprisings in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon will all suffer while the rulers who have been condemned by the protesters try to instrumentalize the crisis in their effort to remain in power. ...
In the face of all these developments, opposition to U.S. imperialism’s air strikes and war threats against Iran and Iraq can only be effective when rooted in solidarity with the progressive and revolutionary forces in the Middle East and North African region and full opposition to all the authoritarian governments and imperialists powers in the region.
We oppose all global and regional imperialists and authoritarians
Solidarity with the popular uprisings in the MENA region and elsewhere
Our destinies are linked
Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African Socialists <>
by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers' Voice
The AMENAS statement is important because it dwells on the relationship of the current war danger to the people's uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. US imperialism and Iranian expansionism may quarrel with each other, but they are both oppressors and have both trampled on the people's movements against dictatorship, corruption, and deprivation. The only serious opposition to the path of escalation into a full-scale war between the US and Iran would be to denounce the bloody brinkmanship of both sides and to support the real opponents of war and dictatorship -- the mass protest movements in Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere in the region. There is no real opposition to US imperialism and its brutal interference in the Middle East unless there's support for the determined people's movements that are going on now, prior to an all-out war between the US and Iran. And if there should be an all-out war, it will be even more important to support the people's movements.
Yet the demonstrations Friday, January 4, against the threat of a war between the US and Iran generally ignored these uprisings. That's partly because a narrow-minded approach has become almost universal in the pacifist coalitions. And it's partly because a number of groups, like the Workers World Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ANSWER anti-war coalition, and too many others, back the theocratic Iranian regime, the Assad dictatorship in Syria, and other bloodstained reactionary forces, presenting this stand as anti-imperialism. The influence of Stalinism and Trotskyism has helped hamstring the anti-war movement, so that it often washes its hands of the real forces that stand against the oppressors and militarist, and instead backs one reactionary power against the other.
In this situation, the AMENAS statement is refreshing, because it points to the connection between war and the efforts to suppress the people's movements. The bourgeois press doesn't talk much about this; instead it is full of criminal chatter about whether it will be useful to imperialism to assassinate this or that individual, and about minor differences between the bourgeois politicians over whether to assassinate now or later. But there is no way a serious anti-war movement can ignore the mass struggles around the world. If it does so, it will become irrelevant to the major class forces that are growing underneath the weight of imperialist and class oppression.
I do have some differences with the AMENAS statement. For example, it gives the impression that the mass uprisings that broke out in 2019 already back the revolutionary goals that AMENAS has. This is not so. The masses want change, but there are differences among them as to what change means. In Iraq, demonstrators came out into the streets day after day for three months, demanding social services, an end to corruption, the removal of all the old parties and politicians from office, and an end to the sectarian Iranian influence in Iraq. But, aside from basic democratic demands, there wasn't clarity about what a new system would be and how it would achieve the desired economic changes. And this is common to what is seen elsewhere. Even in the midst of brave protests against particular imperialist atrocities or economic privation, there isn't necessarily opposition to imperialism or capitalism in general. Nevertheless, the success of these uprisings would break down the old barriers that have suppressed the rights of the working people for so long. We in the Communist Voice Organization don't have to idealize these movements in order to see their importance. Their success would be an important step forward; and it would pave the way for a deeper struggle against capitalism and imperialism; it would create room for the development of revolutionary organization among the masses and the deepening of the class struggle. The idea that liberation comes all at once is an empty dream which goes against everything that Marxism-Leninism has shown about the working class movement, and it holds back activists from realizing the need for the independent organization of the working class within the general democratic movement.
That said, the statement by AMENAS is a contribution to understanding
what's going on in the present war crisis, and we hope it spreads
widely among activists and workers. Solidarity with the mass uprisings
that are taking place against the forces that have bound and gagged the
masses for all too long! <>
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Posted January 6,
2019
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