“Peace is an extension of war by other means,” said U.S. strategist Anthony Cordesman, referring to Barack Obama’s shaky nuclear deal with Iran (Center for Strategic and International Studies website, 3/30/15). The agreement, which calls for Iran to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for a relaxation of sanctions, is a move toward war. While the deal may represent a temporary thaw in hostilities, the fact remains that U.S. bosses remain locked in an increasingly deadly struggle with China and Russia — the main backers of the Iranian regime — for control over the Middle East’s vast energy wealth.
At the same time, U.S. capitalists are fighting among themselves over how best to curb Iran’s influence in the Middle East. What they fear most is the encirclement and isolation of Saudi Arabia — the grand prize of U.S. imperialism for its oil fields — by Iran and its regional allies.
As the inter-imperialist conflict intensifies and the U.S. inevitably wages a broader war in the Middle East to protect its vital interests, workers will be the cannon fodder. The international working class has no stake in this capitalist competition. Our only solution is a communist revolution led by the Progressive Labor Party.
Buying Time
For the dominant wing of U.S. capitalism, Obama’s Iran deal is a ploy to buy time until the bosses are ready for all-out invasion. When John Bolton, former UN ambassador under George W. Bush, wrote a New York Times Op-Ed column titled, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran” (March 26), he was attacked for “criminal stupidity” by Harlan Ullman, a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council, a finance capital think tank. Ullman is no pacifist. He co-authored the Pentagon’s “Shock and Awe” doctrine that guided the U.S. invasion of Iraq — and slaughtered thousands of civilians — in 2003. This doctrine stipulates the use of overwhelming force to undermine the enemy’s will to fight.
Shock and Awe ultimately failed in Iraq because it did not anticipate the scale of anti-U.S. backlash, now exploited by the Islamic State (ISIS). But the U.S. bosses will do their best to apply the lesson of Iraq to Iran. As Ullman noted,
“We will have to take out a good portion of their air defenses and other conventional forces, and that is going to get a retaliatory series of strikes by Iran... We need to know what that’s likely to be, and how we’re able to deal with it, before we make a decision to go to war” (Newsmax, 3/27/15).
U.S. Capitalists Prepare for Onslaught
U.S. rulers are nowhere near prepared — politically or militarily — to take on Iran. But they are working on it. The Council on Foreign Relations, the leading think tank for U.S. imperialism, outlined a strategy that the hair-trigger Bolton would admire. Should Tehran drag its heels in shutting down its nuclear program on Obama’s terms, the Council laid out a scenario for action:
In week one, the Security Council or the alliance of the willing would demand that Iran verifiably reverse itself within no more than two weeks. Failure to comply would result in week three’s suspension of all international commerce to isolate Iran’s economy....Week five would bring the cessation of all commercial air and maritime travel to Iran to further isolate…Week seven, the partners would implement a Cuban missile crisis…Then, in week nine, the United States would lead air strikes to destroy all suspected nuclear sites…until Tehran opened its territory to international inspectors authorized to eliminate all nuclear contraband.
In preparation, Obama is beefing up anti-Iran firepower. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “the Pentagon has upgraded and tested the largest bunker-buster bomb in the U.S. arsenal…that could destroy or disable Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facilities should a nuclear deal fall apart” (4/3/15). But doubts persist about the megabomb’s effectiveness in destroying sites buried under mountains. Air Force generals concede that a successful hit would require the long-shot maneuver of “guiding two or more of the bunker busters to the same impact point, in sequence” (Wall Street Journal). In response, Obama is preparing for another plan. He has initiated a trillion-dollar modernization of the U.S. nuclear arms arsenal.
The dispute over when to bomb Iran — now or later — is already shaping the 2016 presidential race. Ted Cruz, the GOP’s first announced candidate, has enlisted Bolton as an adviser. Jeb Bush, whose father and brother both led genocidal Middle East oil wars, has fallen afoul of pro-Israeli Sheldon Adelson, the arch-Zionist U.S. billionaire who wants to blast Iran tomorrow. Bush is following the counsel of James Baker, the ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase heir who applauds Obama’s more measured approach and favors an eventual massive land war over air strikes. In 1991, as George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state, Baker helped lead the 750,000-troop effort to “liberate” Kuwait for British Petroleum and Exxon. In 2007, advising George W. Bush, his Baker Institute engineered the bloody Iraq “surge” that Obama called a success “beyond our wildest dreams.” As for Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton, she voiced skepticism about Obama’s latest maneuver by noting that “the onus is on Iran” (Washington Post, 4/5/15).
Workers of the World, Unite!
Regardless of which wing of the ruling class prevails in defining U.S. policy in Iran, the working class will pay the price in the bosses’ fight for war-driven profits. Sooner or later, U.S. bosses will need ground troops to consolidate their oil interests in the Middle East. Using racism and nationalism, they’ll do their best to win millions of working-class youth and workers to fight and support that war.
The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party has a different plan. We are organizing workers in the U.S. and worldwide to turn imperialist war into a war for communist revolution — and to smash the capitalist system for all time. On May 1 and May 2, PLP in the U.S. and around the world will commemorate May Day, marching for a society that will abolish imperialism, racism, sexism, poverty, and unemployment. We celebrate the power of the working class to one day run society in our collective class interests.Join us!