The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Suleimani in Iraq on 3 January marked a serious escalation in US imperialism’s undeclared war against Iran. Forces aligned to each power are preparing for an acceleration in proxy confrontations from Yemen through Saudi Arabia, to Israel and Lebanon. The assassination came at a time when a mass protest movement in Iraq presented the potential to reshape the political agenda in the region beyond sectarian and bourgeois nationalist politics. The US intervention has dissipated some of this potential for self-determination and a new imperialist-sponsored carve-up of Iraq is on the cards. US imperialism, backed up by Britain, Israel and others, is raging against its relative decline, attempting to reimpose its dominance. The Middle East remains the most important fossil fuel producing region in the world, and control over its strategic location and resources remains key for imperialist powers. The erratic and dangerous actions of US imperialism continue to devastate lives across the region and threaten millions more. TOBY HARBERTSON reports.
Qasem Suleimani was the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force – the division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) responsible for extraterritorial operations – and was considered the second most powerful man in Iran. US drones destroyed his vehicle as it left Baghdad airport on 3 January. Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis, the deputy chief of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) militia grouping and leader of the Kataib Hezbollah militia, was also killed, along with eight other people. Suleimani had overseen the operation against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, in which the PMF played a major role. IS praised the US action and declared it ‘divine intervention’. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab also welcomed the strike, describing it as ‘self-defence’, as did the fascistic regimes in Israel and Brazil. Russia and China criticised the action, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Li warning that it violated ‘basic norms of international relations’. On 6 January, US President Donald Trump threatened to bomb 52 targets ‘at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture’ if Iran retaliated. The inclusion of cultural sites was in contravention of numerous international laws and treaties and clearly aligned US strategy with that of IS – which destroyed much of historic Palmyra in Syria, between 2015 and 2017.
Undeclared war
The strike came at a time of continuous confrontation between the US and its allies and Iran and aligned resistance forces across the Middle East (see FRFI 271 ‘Iran: imperialism driving the world to war’). Key battlegrounds include Yemen, where the Houthi-led resistance continues to deny Saudi Arabia victory, and Syria, where the strategy of the major imperialists to overthrow the government of Bashar Assad has failed at a dreadful cost. Iraq however has long been the focus of the struggle. Israel, with US backing, has been launching attacks on Shia militias in Iraq for months to roll back Iran’s gains in establishing a corridor of allies across the region, via Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the Mediterranean. An attack on a US base in Kirkuk on 27 December injured several US soldiers and killed a US contractor. The US blamed Kataib Hezbollah, which denied involvement. In response the US military launched ‘defensive’ attacks against Kataib Hezbollah weapons stores two days later, killing 25 militia men and injuring at least 55. After the funeral, Kataib Hezbollah supporters and other Iraqis besieged the US embassy in Baghdad, demanding US withdrawal from the country. Footage of this attack reportedly triggered Trump to order the strike on Suleimani.
The murder of Suleimani was yet another example of imperialist exceptionalism where economic and military power trumps international laws. The US has not declared war on Iran but openly killed its top general. The attack was carried out in the territory of another sovereign nation without its knowledge. Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing, declared the assassination a breach of international human rights law. Similar assassinations have long been practiced by Israel, targeting Iranian nuclear scientists and Hamas leaders. The initial US justification for Suleimani’s assassination was that he posed an ‘imminent’ threat to US forces in the region. No specific details of this threat were ever revealed. On 13 January Trump tweeted that whether Suleimani posed an imminent threat to US forces or not did not matter ‘because of his horrible past’. A recording leaked on 18 January revealed Trump giving Republican donors the justification that Suleimani was ‘saying bad things about our country’.
Fictional heroes
For many in Iran Suleimani was a national hero, and he had large numbers of supporters across the region due to his actions in opposition to US imperialism and IS. He was however a brutal general of a bourgeois theocratic state, having cut his teeth as a soldier suppressing a 1979 Kurdish uprising in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, and recently masterminding the bloody Iraqi state response to the popular protest movement in which more than 600 have been killed. His funeral and memorial services across Iran and beyond brought out huge numbers of angry mourners, with millions marching in Tehran chanting ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’. Iranian cleric Shahab Mohadi wondered what form a retaliatory assassination might take: ‘who should we consider to take out in the context of America? Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob? All of their heroes are cartoon characters — they’re all fictional.’ Iranian leaders made clear that Iran would respond to the assassination, raising the possibility that any proportionate response would trigger a huge regional war.
The Iranian military response came on 8 January with the launch of missiles against US compounds in the Iraqi military bases of Erbil, and Al Asad. The IRGC stated that the targets had been US drone operations and other aircraft launch facilities. Iran is thought to have informed the Iraqi government about the strikes, allowing Iraq to pass this information onto the US military. The US government was clearly relieved that the attack was small scale and Trump quickly said that Iran was ‘standing down’. As part of a managed de-escalation, Trump initially claimed that there were no US casualties, but it was later confirmed that at least 50 US soldiers suffered concussion or traumatic brain injury, with many being flown to Germany or the US for treatment. The US has not launched any military response as we go to press. However, further sanctions were imposed on Iran compounding the already devastating US blockade of the country.
Hours after the Iranian military retaliation, an IRGC air defence battery shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane near Tehran, killing 176 people, including 130 Iranians. The plane was mistaken for an incoming cruise missile in the tense aftermath of the rocket strike. For three days the Iranian government maintained that the crash was likely to be due to mechanical failures, but on 11 January it finally publicly acknowledged that ‘human error’ had led to the plane being hit by IRGC missiles. Iranian leaders made frank apologies, whilst justifiably pointing to US imperialism’s aggressive actions as the underlying cause. The announcement reinvigorated anti-government protests in Iran, eroding the temporary national unity which had followed Suleimani’s death. Britain’s ambassador to Iran, Rob Macaire, was among those arrested for organising or instigating protests – he was quickly released and left the country. Those overeager to use this tragic incident to further demonise Iran would do well to remember the downing of Iran Air flight 655 by the US military on 3 July 1988, after the USS Vincennes cruiser apparently mistook the plane for an attacking Iranian fighter jet. 290 civilians were killed and the US has continued to refuse to apologise or accept legal liability for the disaster.
In the midst of all this the European powers which remain committed to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, including Britain, announced on 13 January that they ‘had no choice’ but to launch an ‘official dispute’ over Iran’s breach of the deal’s strictures – as if the deal has not been made entirely obsolete by Trump’s 2017 withdrawal and imposition of harsh sanctions. The following day British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested that the JCPOA should be replaced with ‘a Trump deal’. On 15 January Iranian President Rouhani hinted that European troops in the region were now in danger.
Self-determination or external division?
The assassination of Suleimani has shifted political attention in Iraq away from the months-old protest movement against poverty and unemployment – which was taking an increasingly anti-Iranian stance. Suleimani’s decision to meet the Iraqi protest movement with live ammunition and savage repression – seeing it as a US-Israeli ploy to undermine Iran – has been described by journalist Patrick Cockburn as a rare tactical mistake (London Review of Books 11 January). However, in the wake of his assassination the US military presence has appeared to many the main threat to Iraqi sovereignty, over Iran. On 5 January, the Iraqi parliament voted to eject all foreign forces from Iraq, including the 5,200 US troops, but in a non-binding vote.
Many Kurdish and Sunni MPs stayed away from parliament for the vote in a sign of increasing division in Iraq’s political system. Iraqi military cooperation in the operation against IS was briefly paused, but no moves to expel US troops were made. However, powerful cleric Muqtada Al Sadr, who controls a well organised grass-roots political movement and the largest bloc in parliament, has mobilised his supporters behind this demand. On 24 January thousands protested in Baghdad calling for the expulsion of US troops and the closure of Iraqi airspace to US planes. Sadr had earlier thrown his weight behind the national protest movement, and had been increasingly critical of Iran’s role in Iraqi affairs. However, on 24 January he withdrew this support and many of his supporters quickly left the protest camps, leaving the young protest movement vulnerable. Sure enough, Iraqi troops moved in to violently clear protesters in Baghdad and Basra on the same day, firing live ammunition and burning tents, killing four protesters.
If Sadr conspires in the crushing of the new protest movement, history will not forgive him. Iraq’s integrity is uncertain. Plans have long been afoot to divide Iraq along sectarian lines. These mainly focus on dividing off the oil-rich Sunni desert Anbar province in the west (recently an IS stronghold), with US Democrat Presidential candidate Joe Biden first formulating such plans in 2007. Saudi Arabia has been pushing for this outcome in months of secret meetings, and the idea has been enthusiastically taken up by the US and Israel following the killing of Suleimani. The plan would involve making use of provisions in the Iraqi constitution for autonomous regions – like the Kurdistan Regional Government in the north – but then move towards full state independence (David Hearst and Suadad Al Salhy Middle East Eye 23 January). This would have the advantage for the conspirators of blocking Iran’s strategic corridor to the Mediterranean, and dividing some major resource deposits from the increasingly hostile Shia-dominated south and east. The people of Iraq would not benefit from such an externally-imposed division.
More than 100 years since Britain and France drew the borders of Iraq in the Sykes-Picot agreement, division once again threatens increasing war and chaos. The popular movement on the streets of Iraq could offer real hope for the future if its momentum and principles can be maintained. Only through mass popular action can the imperialists and their system be ejected from the region. Self-determination for Iraq! No to war on Iran! All imperialist troops out of the Middle East!
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 274 February/March 2020
