Iran's military response to Israel's attack on its Embassy in Damascus is a huge strategic error. Iran had said that it had to respond to the attack by the Zionist state, and, indeed it did, but the response it has made is precisely that which the attack was designed to provoke. It strengthens the position of the Zionist state, and of US imperialism, shows Iran to be effectively toothless, has distracted attention from the genocide committed in Gaza, by the Zionist state and its US imperialist backers, has strengthened the position of Netanyahu, and caused US imperialism's other allies in the region to back the Zionist state, actively, by helping to shoot down the Iranian missiles.
Last week, I asked the question “What If Iran Took Israel to The ICJ?”. To have done so, of course, would not have resulted in any action against the Zionist state, just as it has flouted one UN Security Council resolution after another, over the last 75 years, and just as it has ignored the ICJ's provisional ruling in relation to the action brought against it, by South Africa, in relation to the genocide being committed in Gaza. But, what it would have done would have been to further expose the hypocrisy of Zionist imperialism, and of its western imperialist backers, in the US and Europe. It would have further exposed to the world's masses the sham nature of bourgeois-democracy, and of its rule of law, of the so called international rules based system, which is a system of rules dictated by the most powerful, and only enforced on behalf of the most powerful. As Marx put it,
“The bourgeois economists have merely in view that production proceeds more smoothly with modern police than, e.g., under club-law. They forget, however, that club-law too is law, and that the law of the stronger, only in a different form, still survives even in their “constitutional State.””
(A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy)
Bourgeois-democracy, in the constitutional state, provides merely a superficial facade for the fact that power resides not with voters, but with the ruling-class, via their ownership and control of property, and their control, thereby, of the state, of its bodies of armed men, of its ideological institutions in the schools, colleges and universities, of its religious and cultural institutions, of its media and so on. But, its precisely by utilising those institutions of bourgeois-democracy, whilst vigorously exposing them for the sham they are that the masses can be freed from the illusions in them, fostered by the petty-bourgeois reformists, and social-democrats.
“In the process of the struggle for these slogans of democracy, the Party must shatter the constitutional and democratic illusions of the petty bourgeoisie and of the reformists who express their opinions, by explaining that power in the state is not obtained by the democratic forms of the vote, but by property and by the monopoly of information and armaments.”
(Trotsky – The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress)
The argument for not falling into the trap of US/Zionist imperialism, by responding militarily, but by using the institutions of that global imperialist system, is not any belief in that system, or expectation of impartiality, or redress, but the exact opposite. It is to further expose the sham nature of that bourgeois-democracy, and its rule of law, for the world's masses to see.
Of course, the nature of the impartiality, the extent of the hypocrisy is not hard, already to detect. The Zionist state commits genocide in Gaza, and is “backed to the hilt” by US imperialism, and its lap dogs in the UK and EU. The Zionist state, day after day, systematically undertakes pogroms against Palestinians in the illegally occupied and annexed West Bank, and blockades Gaza, but when the Palestinians respond by attacking Israel, the imperialists insist on its right to self-defence, by engaging in that genocide in Gaza. The Zionist state bombs the Iranian Embassy, and US imperialism, UK imperialism, and EU imperialism remain schtum, but, when Iran responds to that attack, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, giving it a right to self-defence, those same imperialist states condemn its reckless attack.
Yet, the reality is that, across the globe, and particularly in the powerful imperialist states, the masses have been fed on years of imperialist lies and propaganda, so that even these realities are not readily observed, or understood. As Owen Jones has noted, the hypocrisy is so blatant that everyone should be able to see the truth, and yet, even with the daily images of genocide, even with the open statements of the Zionist butchers from Day One, setting out their intention to commit such genocide, only a bare majority of people, even now, have absorbed it.
And, now, the consequence of Iran's military action is to undermine even that growing perception. Global media will now feast upon the images of Iranian missiles raining down on poor old Israel, and valiant defence of it, by its armed forces, supported by the imperialist defenders of “democracy”. Genocide Joe Biden, who, along with Starnak and other European imperialists, failed to condemn the flagrant attack by the Zionist state on the Iranian Embassy, will lyingly claim to have shown that they were right all along to demand that the Zionist imperialist state had a right to defend itself, and that they were right to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with it, in defence of freedom and democracy, and all that is right and proper in the world.
The Iranian regime, if they had been watching, over the last 30 odd years, would have realised what game the imperialists play. When Saddam Hussein failed his US imperialist masters, in the proxy war against Iran, in which they had provided him with WMD, and the specialists to use them effectively, they resolved to remove him, in the hope of installing a more effective proxy. US imperialism, via back channels, told Saddam that, if he invaded Kuwait, in relation to Iraq's dispute with it, over its stealing of Iraqi oil, they would not get involved. Of course, when he did invade, the US used it as the pretext for the first Gulf War. The US, having armed and financed Osama Bin Laden, to fight the USSR, in Afghanistan, used its links to him, to support the gangsters of the Kosovan Liberation Army. They enabled them to engage in attacks on, until them, peaceful Kosovan villages, in order to stir up ethnic violence between Serbs and Albanians. When Serbia intervened to end the pogroms being undertaken against Kosovan Serbs, the US used it as the pretext to engage in its war against Serbia, and to separate Kosovo from Serbia.
Assorted pundits have talked about back channel communications between Iran and the US, in relation to this latest attack. In fact, those pundits original assessment that Iran would probably respond in its normal manner, by using its proxies in Lebanon, Syria and so on, so as to avoid an actual state to state confrontation, proved wrong. Indeed, the suggestion that, if Iran did respond, directly, it would be via, largely ineffective, drones, also proved wrong. Whilst it used a large number of drones, it also used cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. The fact that, the Zionist state, with the support of US imperialism, and its UK puppet, was able to shoot down 99% of those missiles, with help also from other, neighbouring, Arab states, simply illustrates the impotence of Iran's military offensive capacity, whilst giving the Zionist's state, and imperialism the pretext required to escalate their actions against Iran. The Zionists state can now be expected to retaliate further, with imperialism imposing further sanctions on Iran, with Genocide Joe, already convening a meeting of the G7.
The Zionists knew exactly what they were doing in bombing the Iranian Embassy, and it is fantasy to think that its US imperialist backers were not aware of, and did not approve of it. US imperialism needs such an extensions of the war, to further its own interests in the region, and Genocide Joe, himself needs it, electorally, to distract from his disastrous support for the Zionist genocide, as he approaches the US elections. If Iran was given some assurance by back channels that such a strike would not result in such a further escalation, they are naïve.
Iran has further shown its impotence, because the fact that all these missiles were shot out of the sky, makes any potential Iranian nuclear weapon also largely useless, as a deterrent, because it would rely on such missiles to deliver it to its target.
As the world marches at an increasing pace towards World War III, anyone who thinks that the actions of the “imperialist democracies” in themselves becoming more autocratic and authoritarian, is a sign of weakness, is deluding themselves. It is a natural development ahead of such a war-footing. It is part and parcel of both utilising the portrayal of some supposed external threat to rally the people around the flag, and to justify such authoritarian measures, and simultaneously using those measures to slap down, at birth, any internal opposition to the ruling class and its war aims.
A look at the actions of the reactionary Zelensky government, in Ukraine, illustrates that, as it has used all the old bourgeois-defencist nonsense about “defence of the fatherland” , to create a “bloc of four classes”, into which the social-chauvinists have rushed headlong, whilst Zelensky has increased the attacks on Ukrainian workers and their organisations, and even on the institutions of bourgeois-democracy, with, now, also, the cancellation of elections. Meanwhile, the regime imposes punishment beatings, and the equivalent of the “press gang”, against young Ukrainian workers, seeking, in their thousands, to escape across its borders, to avoid the draft into an army fighting an increasingly unpopular and unwinnable war, led by corrupt politicians, who are pocketing billions from it in the process, whilst sending its own troops to Sudan to fight another proxy war, on behalf of western imperialism.
But, the hopes of Owen Jones that, at some point in the future, the blatant nature of the lies will be such as to ensure that all of these politicians, media, and militarists are brought to book is forlorn. As Churchill wrote, history is written by the victors, not the vanquished, and, at the moment, it is the forces of US imperialism that have the upper hand, in those conflicts, even if only in leaving chaos and devastation in their wake, as they did in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
More than 20 years on, neither Bush nor Blair, nor any of the others that purveyed blatant lies that led into the Iraq War, have been held to account, for example. On the contrary, they have personally prospered, and their associates are now repeating the lies, and leading the world into an even bigger war, now supported by large sections of what calls itself the Left, which has collapsed into petty-bourgeois nationalism, having abandoned the principles of international socialism, and the understanding that “The Main Enemy Is At Home”.
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