On 26 February 2021, five weeks after the inauguration of Joe Biden as US president, the Democrat government launched airstrikes on the Syrian border region of Deir Ezzor, in an operation described by the Pentagon as a ‘proportionate military response’ to moves of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. British foreign secretary Dominic Raab announced that Britain ‘supports the US response to militias attacking coalition bases in an attempt to destabilise the region,’ in a week that the Labour Party confirmed its ‘unshakeable’ commitment to NATO. By contrast, Cuba’s socialist foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez immediately condemned the ‘flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of this sister nation and of international law and the UN charter.’ Following in the footsteps of its predecessors, the new US administration has shown it will target Iran, Syria and any other nation it sees as threatening its strategic interests – wherever they may be.
The attack came as UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, visited Damascus, with the bombing a seemingly calculated move by the US government intended to stamp its own intentions on proceedings. Pederson had recently spoken on the need for international ‘reengagement’ with the Syrian government and met with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in November 2020 to discuss potential negotiations. The Biden administration clearly have other plans and claim that the strikes were a defensive move, after recent (non-lethal) attacks on its occupation bases in Iraq. Biden warned Iran: ‘you can’t act with impunity’. Pentagon spokesmen showed satellite images of the nine buildings it destroyed, claiming to deal a blow to Iranian capabilities. London-based imperialist think tank Chatham House had warned that Iran is ‘the biggest influence’ in the Syrian border region. Missing from this narrative is the role of Syrian state forces and their allies in facing down Daesh (Islamic State) and other fundamentalist and Turkish-backed groups in the region; 26 soldiers were reportedly killed in a Daesh attack in Deir Ezzor province on 8 February; deadly car bombings have also returned with a vengeance to Baghdad.
Deir Ezzor is eastern Syria’s largest city and, since unrest in 2011, has been the site of repeated outside intervention. In September 2016, US warplanes killed up to 60 Syrian army soldiers, in an air raid the then Obama government claimed to be targeting Daesh. A resource rich region, ‘rebel’ forces held the oilfields from 2013, forcing Syria to import all its oil. US troops retain a 55km ‘deconfliction zone’ around its unauthorised Al-Tanf base, next to the Iraq border and along the strategically important Baghdad-Damascus highway, and houses ‘vetted’ opposition militias, while preventing Syrian state forces from expelling Daesh from the Syrian desert. Alongside the US moving around Daesh prisoners, local sources report a build-up of US forces in early February, including military reinforcements, 60 armoured vehicles and army engineering logistics, with the aim of establishing a second base near Al-Haskah in the north east, apparently seeking to solidify control of Syrian oil and gas as economic recovery stalls under crippling sanctions.
Syria is one theatre in US and British-led warmongering in the wider region, bearing the scars of a decade of attempted regime change, open and covert intervention, backing for fundamentalism, economic war, sanctions and displacement. With the new millennium, the noted ‘hawks’ of Washington set their sights on a new drive to recolonise the Middle East, with Iran – a strategic prize of the ‘Great Game’ in 19th Century imperialist rivalry – a key target. Iranian fighters have long been drawn into the crises of the region, from pre-1979 communists fighting alongside the PLO in Lebanon, to the 1980-88 war with imperialist-supplied Iraq, which gassed and killed thousands from Iran. The US and British-led invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan in 2001 and, arguably most significantly, Iraq in 2003 brought an intensification of the chaos and instability of a grab for oil and strategic dominance. Acting on the side of its allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, the Tehran government has pursued a defensive policy in the face of increasing US-led aggression. Far from ushering in a period of dove-like diplomacy, the post-Trump, Democrat government is intent on exploiting the internal contradictions fanned by imperialist war, facing down rivals in Europe, Russia and China, and arresting the relative decline of US imperialism.
It is a common pattern of bourgeois political commentary to look at the election promises of politicians and find backtracking, flip-flopping and the discarding of supposed principles, with many such retreats to be found in past and present histories. After the 26 February bombing, left Democrats railed against the bypassing of Congress (Bernie Sanders) and questioned the legality of the attack (Ilhan Omar). Indeed, in July 2019, Biden had used a campaign speech to promise an end to the ‘forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East,’ and to ‘elevate diplomacy as the principal tool of our foreign policy.’ But actions speak louder than words. Even if the Obama presidency of 2009-17 had been heralded with ‘change’ as the buzzword, the victor had praised the ‘realism’ of Bush Sr during the campaign. In office, with Biden as vice president, the regime launched a war to obliterate the Libyan state, deployed US troops in Syria, and sustained continuing occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Biden had voted for military action against Iraq in 2002 and boasted of the cost-effectiveness of bombing Libya, claiming that ‘we didn’t lose a single life.’ Libyans didn’t count. Likewise, no official numbers have been released on the deaths at Deir Ezzor.
Any pre-election promises on Middle East peace and military action being a ‘last resort’ are exposed by the quick-fire actions of the US government. But such principles were made to be see-through, and were allied to open commitments to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the kinds of unholy alliances that imperialism has always relied on to further its interests. We’ve already seen them scotch any thought of sanctions on the Saudi leadership over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi; Britain’s politicians are even less squeamish over Yemen and didn’t bat an eye over £1.4bn in arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the last quarter. Anyone familiar with Biden’s steadfastness in a pre-Trump government that dropped more bombs than the Bush Jr administration, knew where this was heading. The liberal democratic socialists in the US, now finding themselves in a ruling party have a choice: preach legality and stay put, or be part of a real socialist movement to destroy the forever war machine.
Louis Brehony
