A brief comment from our comrades in Battaglia Comunista written in the immediate aftermath of Israel's attack on Iran.

On the night of 13 June, Israel attacked Iran. Tehran, and seven other cities, experienced heavy bombing whilst six nuclear sites, the real target of the assault, were hit. At the moment Iran acknowledges “only” 79 dead, and 350 injured.⁽¹⁾ The victims include Salami, the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Bagheri, the head of the armed forces, and two scientists from the uranium enrichment programme. As is now clear, the human and strategic targets that were hit had been identified for some time. According to the statements of the Israeli government, the attack was not a “necessary” response but a real act of war that will continue for a long time.

The Israeli initiative comes after the Israeli Defence Forces had severed all the tentacles linked to Tehran: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Alawite government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and other groups in Iraq. In its earlier military operations, Israel had destroyed Iran’s defensive systems. The further weakening of Iran came through sanctions. This was the perfect time to attack. Trump initially said he knew nothing about the attack, only to correct himself as usual, admitting "aware of Israel strikes on Iran beforehand".⁽²⁾ Netanyahu himself in a video statement admitted: “without US support, perhaps we would not have launched the attack”.⁽³⁾ Finally, Trump, completed his statement with: "Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb".

As planned, the Israeli-American imperialist duo has tightened the noose in redefining the balance of power in the Middle East, even if the war question is not yet over. Israel’s strike at the heart of its deadly enemy, given that Trump let it happen with the goal of weakening Iran, its nuclear programme and, by association, its Russian and Chinese allies, tells us a lot. Russia receives drone weapons from Tehran, while China buys 90% of its oil from Iran, plus Iran forms the third component of the Eastern imperialist triad alongside Russia and China. It is more than clear that Israel’s move was agreed with Trump and that the consequences for future imperialist relations were also assessed.

There is much talk about peace, but the episodes of war are multiplying and threatening a global conflict. The draft agreements between China and the US on Chinese tariffs and exports to America are also on the verge of collapse.

Netanyahu claims the attack was necessary for Israel’s survival, which Trump backs in order to force the ayatollah’s republic to come up with a nuclear deal for “peace” in the world, but both the US and Israel are at the centre of the Middle East crisis.

Iran, Russia and China, with their warships stationed at the entrance of the Red Sea to support the Houthis, have long shown their muscles in one of the key global maritime trade routes. We are thus only at the beginning because Iran, with the direct or mediated support of Russia and China, will certainly respond to Israel (as it began to do with hundreds of rockets and drones). In doing so, it will risk dragging in further the entire geopolitical area involving the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the BRICS which, in addition to Iran, includes China, Russia, Brazil and India.

Whilst Israel, in the near-total silence of the West, carries out its work of genocide and ethnic cleansing, the US and China confront each other with a huge deployment of naval forces in the Taiwan Strait. As Russia continues to strike Ukraine in an attempt to wrest as many territories as possible from Kiev, the US has plans ready to invade Panama and Greenland. “I believe that the Americans want the Pentagon to have plans ready for anything,” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said, responding to a congressman’s question during a House hearing, so “not excluding military action to invade Panama and Greenland, to which Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed expansionary aims.”⁽⁴⁾

The scenario of imperialist tensions is becoming more and more disturbing. The areas involved in conflicts widen, economic interests become even more essential, the struggles over tariffs, financing and refinancing war, including Europe, grow geometrically. Pacifist lies crumble in the face of the barbarism of the wars in progress. The economic crisis that is the basis of all these phenomena is not going away and, precisely for this reason, the only investments that the capitalist economy is making go towards the arms industries.

We are in the presence of an economy that, in order to survive, is forced to cut social security, to keep wages as low as possible and to contain expenditures for pensions and health care. In other words, this crisis-in-crisis economy needs to fund the tools of war to conquer economic areas, raw materials and energy resources. It also needs to control trade routes, to dominate the seas as well as the skies, including space. It needs to destroy in order to rebuild and, above all, it needs the international proletariat to continue to be a ductile force in its bloody hands.

When then will the world’s workers raise their heads to stop this inhumane slaughter, perpetrated in the name of imperialist interests so blatant as to openly adopt the old ideology of nationalism, the defence of national economic interests for the “common good”, in the name of some god or other, or of the threat to national survival? When will the class act in its own interests which are irreconcilably opposed to those of capital? When will it escape the bourgeois web that entangles it, when will it organise itself politically and strategically in its own revolutionary party? And when will the social contradictions of capitalist barbarism explode? But nothing happens spontaneously, through idealistic mechanisms, or by “divine will”. For this “when” to arrive, we must work for it now, even if we have to go against the current and start immediately.

Notes:

Image: Avash Media (CC BY 4.0), commons.wikimedia.org

(1) As of 18 June, the death toll in Iran now stands at 224 with over 1,000 injured. In Israel, 24 have been killed and over 500 injured.

(2) foxnews.com

(3) lespresso.it

(4) adnkronos.com