Gaza Carnage Prelude to U.S.-Israeli War on Iran?

For eight straight days, U.S.-armed Israel bombed Palestinian civilians in what the New York Times called a “practice run for any future armed confrontation with Iran” (11/23/12). Meanwhile, President Barack Obama was on a Southeast Asia road trip to round up allies for any potential conflict with China.

These actions underscore the fundamental dilemma facing U.S. capitalists. They are desperate to maintain their global top-dog status, but they’re not quite ready for the regional and world wars that inevitably loom as imperialist rivalries intensify. Obama stands ready to expand U.S. military adventures beyond Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, but has failed to build the domestic unity and patriotism that his ruling-class backers need. At the same time, the U.S. bosses lack international support to secure Iraqi oil and Afghan gas routes against Islamist militias.

Factional fighting has destabilized Iraq and limited Exxon Mobil’s ability to extract barely half its goal for oil production there. The Taliban and Islamic militias have prevented construction of the gas pipeline extending through Afghanistan from central Asia. As they struggle in these smaller arenas, U.S. imperialists know it will be far more difficult to confront the militaries in Iran and China.

Complicating the bosses’ move toward wider wars is their need to impose even more fascist discipline on U.S. workers, who are ripe for rebellion. These workers are suffering unchecked racist unemployment, widespread poverty (with 46 million people under the poverty line), and the massive, racist incarceration of 1.7 million black and Latino workers and youth. All of these attacks drag down wages and conditions for white workers, as well.

Clash Among U.S. Rulers

U.S. rulers are in disarray. Major U.S. capitalists are clashing over how to mobilize for war and the best way to wage it. Behind the scenes, their dispute shaped the supposedly tax-focused elections and the scandal involving former CIA head David Petraeus (See page 7). The less powerful Tea Party bosses, who question the need for overseas war under any circumstances, found themselves shunted to the side in the electoral circus.

There is a basic disagreement between the views put forward by Obama backer Colin Powell and the approach favored by the George W. Bush administration, as espoused by former Vice President Richard Cheney and War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Powell Doctrine requires the long-term build-up of overwhelming U.S. forces in a broad international coalition. The Cheney-Rumsfeld faction prefers on-the-cheap, high-tech warfare with limited ground troops. Having Israel lay the groundwork via missle warfare in Gaza serves these latter forces. Beyond these internal divisions within the U.S.  dominant finance capitalist wing, their international allies have interests that don’t always coincide. 

Israel is a case in point. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees a nuclear-capable Iran as an immediate threat to Israel’s existence. He sent a warning to Iran by dropping huge bunker-buster bombs (supplied by the U.S.) on Gaza. This attack horrified the Exxon Mobil-JPMorgan Chase ruling-class faction, which is ill-prepared for the long and costly war that could ensue. But it warmed the heart of the neo-conservative supporter Sheldon Adelson. Owning newspapers in Israel (along with casinos in China, the United States’ main imperialist rival), Adelson pledged $100 million to Team Romney. He was counting on a Romney administration to give the go-ahead to Netanyahu while also reducing tax revenues — a clear threat to the long-term war plans of the finance capitalists.

Wider Conflict in Near-Term War

As reported by the Huffington Post (11/20/12), Anthony Cordesman, a prominent strategist at the Rockefeller-bankrolled Center for Strategic and International Studies, warns of a near-term “wider conflict — one that could see Iranian missiles targeting American troops in Afghanistan, Hezbollah rocket and guerrilla attacks into Northern Israel from Lebanon, U.S. warships fighting through minefields to re-open the strait of Hormuz [the conduit for huge supplies of oil] and smoke billowing from wrecked tankers and oil facilities along the Persian Gulf.”

Cordesman spoke of Netanyahu’s planned Israeli air strikes on Iran, which Obama succeeded in postponing until after his election but seemed more imminent after the Gaza foray. To forestall such hasty action, Obama diverted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from her anti-China, alliance-building Asian tour and sent her to Cairo and Tel Aviv to craft a deal on Gaza.

That short-circuited Netanyahu’s Iran plan for the moment. But in a further demonstration of the weakness of U.S. diplomacy, Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, representing the Muslim Brotherhood, parlayed his role as the Hamas-Israel power broker into a grab for a pro-Islamist, anti-U.S. dictatorship.

Even as war raged in Gaza and Syria, however, Obama stuck to his task by meeting with Vietnamese and Cambodian rulers at the recent pro-U.S. Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit. His focus was a testament to the prime importance of the imperialist competition between the U.S. and China. But despite Obama’s best efforts, these regional alliances remain uncertain.

Will millions of working-class Vietnamese and Cambodians fight for the same U.S. rulers who massacred five million of their family members in the 1960s and ‘70s? The racism that propelled those genocidal attacks reflects just how cheaply U.S. bosses view Asian workers. It is also an extension of how they view black, Latino and Asian workers and youth within the U.S.

Emerging Class Struggle

In counterpoint to the U.S. rulers’ war needs is the rise of class struggle worldwide. Millions of textile workers have struck in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Millions more have marched against European bosses’ poverty-imposed austerity. Anti-racist and student-teacher struggle is sweeping Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of miners in South Africa have squared off against the U.S.- and British-backed corporate owners of the mining riches there. Protests against racist cop murderers have erupted in various U.S. cities. For the first time, multi-billion-dollar Walmart has been confronted by strikes within the U.S. against their poverty wages and exploitative working conditions.

Progressive Labor Party members and friends have been active in many of these fight-backs. We have supported and sometimes led these workers’ struggles while spreading our communist outlook. These ideas point the way to the solution to capitalist exploitation: revolution to overthrow the racist, sexist profit system and establish workers’ rule. Join us!