The barbaric assault on Iran by the US and Israel reveals the central features of imperialism: the constant drive to war; inter-imperialist rivalry between the US and the EU; and the subjugation of weaker nations in order to open up new markets for profit-making. It has sparked a regional crisis across the Middle East. Over 1,400 Iranians have been killed in US-Israeli airstrikes since 28 February. The Zionist state has invaded Lebanon in an attempt to crush Hezbollah and annex parts of southern Lebanon. In Gaza, the ‘Board of Peace’ exists to carve-up the Strip. Behind all this lies imperialism’s push to remove all obstacles to capital accumulation and re-divide the region.
US imperialism aims to secure the Zionist state and maintain imperialist dominance over the region by neutralising Iran and its support for the Palestinian liberation struggle, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansar Allah in Yemen. The EU, while reluctantly providing some support for the war, has expressed its opposition to it. It is heavily dependent on imports for its energy. The rise in oil and gas prices following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, combined with being cut off from Russian energy with the Ukraine War, means it now faces a deepening energy crisis. The US, a net fuel exporter, does not have the same vulnerability.
The British ruling class is divided in the face of this crisis and is politically torn between the EU and the US. Britain, a net fuel importer, is affected by rising oil and gas prices. The ruling class fears a reaction by the working class, which is already facing a cost of living crisis and now will carry the cost of another imperialist war. The Labour government has announced vague plans to support ‘those who need it most’ with energy bills, projected to rise in the summer, as well as plans to target ‘profiteering’ by energy companies – this is in the context of sluggish GDP growth and government attempts to limit borrowing. It has verbally distanced itself from the war. However, British imperialism has overseas assets worth over five times its GDP that can only be defended through its military alliance with US imperialism. Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s insistence that Britain is only defending its allies and that Britain would not ‘be drawn into a wider war’ is a lie; he has allowed British military bases to be used in the slaughter and deployed military assets to the region. So, the British state is directly involved in the war.
Despite the naked barbarity of the assault, the open involvement of Britain and the overwhelming unpopularity of the war, there is no effective opposition. On 4 March, with the support of various ‘left’ MPs, Jeremy Corbyn merely tabled a bill in the House of Commons that would require military action and the use of British bases to be approved by MPs. This is what passes for opposition in Britain.
The opportunist left has taken a social-chauvinist position by obscuring the role of British imperialism and putting Britain’s involvement simply down to Starmer failing to ‘stand up to Trump’. Your Party MP Zarah Sultana has repeatedly attacked Starmer by claiming that he is Donald Trump’s ‘lapdog’ or ‘poodle’. Corbyn, in an article published in The Tribune, stated: ‘for too long, Britain has blindly followed the US as it indulges in disastrous imperial fantasies’. These sentiments have been echoed by the rest of the left, including Stop the War Coalition (StWC), the Revolutionary Communist Party, Socialist Appeal and Novara Media.
StWC only refers to ‘Trump’s war’ – not a single word opposing the imperialist British state. The left is pretending that British imperialism does not exist: its interests in the Middle East, its historic support for the Shah in Iran and its need to prop up the Zionist state are ignored. StWC’s tightly controlled demonstrations are an appeal for the Labour government to break with the US and follow a ‘peaceful’ foreign policy by fully aligning itself with the EU. This is a reactionary fantasy.
There is no movement on the streets capable of opposing the war – demonstrations and meetings called by StWC and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have not attracted significant numbers. This pathetic response reflects the failure of those who claimed leadership of Palestine solidarity in Britain to build any effective movement over the last two and half years against Britain’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza but instead demobilised the protest movement.
The working class in Britain has nothing to gain from this war – it will pay the cost of it. Rising oil and gas prices threaten to further erode working class living standards within the imperialist countries. Politically conscious people are now making the connection between the attacks on Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Cuba and Venezuela, a crucial step towards internationalism. The Labour Party, with its vicious racism, support for Zionism and involvement in the war, has been further exposed as a reactionary, pro-imperialist party. It is on this basis that opposition must grow. A revolutionary working-class movement against the war must be built. It must defend the right of Iran to defend itself and unconditionally stand with the Palest-inian people. Ultimately, its task must be to oppose British imperialism in its entirety and bring about its utter defeat in the Middle East.
