Friday 12 April 2024

What If Iran Takes Israel To The ICJ?

When the Zionist state bombed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, its intention was clear, as with its attacks on Syria and Lebanon previously, and its murder of the children and grandchildren of the leader of Hamas. These are deliberate acts of provocation to try to goad Iran, Syria and Hezbollah to respond militarily, in order to distract attention from the Zionist genocide in Gaza, and to give the pretext for an expansion of the war into a regional war, drawing in the US to attack Iran, which the Zionists have been trying to do for more than 20 years.

It is similar to the provocations of NATO, and its Ukrainian, imperialist proxy that drew Russia into its invasion of Eastern Ukraine. Blairite, former NATO Secretary-General, George Robertson made that clear, when he stated openly, that NATO had goaded Russia into that invasion. That shows the lying nature of the claims that the current events in Israel/Palestine began on October 7th, as well as the claims that the war in Ukraine began with Russia's invasion. As Lenin put it, and cited by Trotsky against the social-imperialists of his day,

“Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims – seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence – with such ideas as “safeguarding peace against the aggressors,” “defence of the fatherland,” “defence of democracy,” etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people. “The question of which group delivered the first military blow or first declare war,” wrote Lenin in March 1915, “has no importance whatever in determining the tactics of socialists. Phrases about the defence of the fatherland, repelling invasion by the enemy, conducting a defensive war, etc., are on both sides a complete deception of the people.” “For decades,” explained Lenin, “three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia, and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?”...

If revolutionary and progressive movements beyond the boundaries of ones own country could be supported by supporting ones own imperialist bourgeoisie then the policy of social patriotism was in principle correct. There was no reason, then, for the founding of the Third International.”


It has been ten days since the Zionists bombed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, in breach of all international law and protocols, and, so far, the Iranians have confounded the expectations of the Zionists and their US imperialist backers, by not responding militarily. They are wise to have done so. Already, the Zionist example gave Ecuador cover to invade the Mexican Embassy. Iran has said that the Zionist act of war will not go unpunished, and even without any response, the Zionists have acted as though such a military response was at hand, prompting Genocide Joe Biden to reiterate his “iron-clad” support for the Zionist, genocidal regime, also in anticipation of such a military response.

All of these statements and the outpouring of western media has been aimed at whipping up a war hysteria, on the basis of an imminent Iranian military response. It is like the way they whipped us such hysteria for months, claiming that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent, as if to call Putin chicken. Already, its being claimed that, if Iran does not respond, it will prove its impotence, and so on.

But, what if Iran responds to Zionist/imperialist aggression and flouting of the international “rule of law”, not by military action, but by taking Israel to the ICJ? That would again expose the sham nature of that international rules based order, which only enforces the rules when they are breached by opponents of US imperialism. It would not benefit Iran, in recompense for the attack on its Embassy, but it would far more effectively expose the hypocrisy of Zionism and its US imperialist sponsor. It would give no grounds for complaint or retaliation by Zionism and its imperialist backers.

As Marxists, we have no illusions in bourgeois-democracy, or its institutions at a national or international level, but we recognise that billions of workers, and poor peasants, across the globe do, and so using these institutions, to show, in practice, its sham nature, as simply a façade to hide the true nature of the dictatorship of capital/imperialism, is useful to break those masses away from it, and from the reformist parties that sow those illusions.

Of course, nor do we have any illusions in the reactionary, bourgeois states such as Iran, South Africa, or Nicaragua, currently using those international bourgeois institutions either. Iran, like Israel, is a clerical-fascist, theocratic state, wholly reactionary, and antagonistic to workers' interests. We have no interest in backing either dog in such a fight, but better that they conduct their fights in these channels than by shedding workers' blood on the battle field to settle their scores. And, to the extent they do take lumps out of each in the courts, and other such parliamentary bodies, the more they lay bare the true nature of their own regimes, their own hypocrisy, and oppression of the masses.

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