On the morning of 28 February, Israel and the US launched unprovoked military strikes against at least six cities across Iran, on the pretext of disabling Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons capability. The supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated in the strikes. This is an imperialist attack bent on controlling the Middle East and beyond, coming just weeks after the US bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president, then imposed a total oil blockade on socialist Cuba.
A US armada is stationed in the Persian Gulf, the largest US military buildup in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have called on Iranians to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Islamic Republic has retaliated by launching missiles against US bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This could be the beginning of a major regional war. British Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer stated that in Britain ‘the Iranian regime poses a direct threat’ and that ‘British planes are in the sky today as part of regional…defensive operations’. A joint statement by Britain, France and Germany refused to condemn the slaughter by their ‘partners’ the US and Israel which has killed many civilians including at least 100 students at a girls’ school bombed by the US-Zionist forces. Instead, the statement condemned Iran’s retaliation, effectively demanding its surrender.
Why is Britain collaborating in imperialist war against Iran? It is not simply due to Zionist or US bullying. Until the Second World War, Iran was dominated by British imperialism. Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (renamed BP in 1951) Britain controlled virtually all of Iran’s oil output. When the Iranian people elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh who aimed to nationalise Iranian resources, Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the British and US secret services on 19 August 1953. The imperialists installed the mass murdering Shah (monarch) on the Iranian throne to protect imperialist interests.
The Iranian revolution of 1979 saw the toppling of the Shah by popular forces including working-class revolutionaries, ending direct imperialist control over Iran. The Islamic Republic was almost immediately established by counterrevolutionary bourgeois elements of the movement with the tacit approval of western imperialist states. This theocratic regime massacred and tortured thousands of communists and continues to oppress the Kurdish people, whose land has been dismembered by imperialism. Nonetheless, the counterrevolutionary regime could only be built on a mass popular anti-imperialist base, and this proved to be an obstacle to western influence. US imperialism has sought to reassert itself ever since with British, European and Zionist support through economic sanctions and military actions.
The response of the British left establishment to the attacks has been pathetic. Some resort to liberal pacifist whingeing, exemplified by Jeremy Corbyn who absurdly calls on the imperialist British state to ‘pursue a foreign policy based on justice, sovereignty and peace’. Others, such as Corbyn’s fellow Your Party leader Zarah Sultana, repeat the deceit that Britain is the ‘lapdog of US imperialism’, concealing the independent imperialist interests of the British ruling class, and excusing themselves from their responsibility to directly oppose the British state.
For us in Britain the task is to build a movement that opposes British imperialist attacks on Iran and all British operations in the Middle East, in solidarity with oppressed peoples struggling for their self-determination, from Palestine to Kurdistan.
Hands off Iran! End the sanctions! British forces out of the Middle East!
