The quick reversal of US President Donald Trump’s latest failed plan to break Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, his ‘Project Freedom’, which lasted all of two days, is a clear expression of the failure of US imperialism’s war aims.
By the beginning of May, at least 6,000 people had been killed across Iran and Lebanon in the unprovoked war launched by US imperialism and the Zionist Israeli state on 28 February. At the time it seemed Trump had two basic war aims: firstly, regime change, and secondly, ending Iran’s nuclear programme and eliminating its stockpile of enriched uranium. The US has failed to achieve either. The unilateral extension of the ‘ceasefire’ by Trump on 22 April, despite his now routine threats that if it expired without a new deal being agreed then ‘lots of bombs start going off’, was an expression of this strategic failure.
On 7 April, after vile genocidal threats from Trump that ‘a whole civilisation will die tonight’ if Iran didn’t re-open the Strait of Hormuz, the Pakistani Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, announced that the US and Iran had agreed to a two-week ceasefire. During this period, as part of the deal, Iran agreed to allow shipping to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The ceasefire agreement supposedly covered the cessation of not just the US/Israel bombardment of Iran but also the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon. However, almost immediately, Israel denied that Lebanon was included in the agreement and on 8 April unleashed a large-scale bombing campaign of civilian areas of the capital Beirut, killing more than 350 people. Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz and announcing that it would remain closed until Israel stopped its attacks on Lebanon. The US responded by announcing it would blockade Iranian ports, preventing ships from entering or leaving.
On 16 April a separate ceasefire agreement was announced between Israel and the Lebanese government; this was provisionally accepted by the Lebanese liberation movement Hezbollah, which had been resisting the Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon. This agreement led to a temporary easing of the closure of the Strait by Iran, before it was once again closed in the face of the continuing US blockade of Iranian ports.
The US blockade is primarily aimed at hitting the Iranian economy but it is also damaging the Chinese economy, as it prevents oil tankers destined for China from leaving Iranian ports. Almost half China’s supply of oil and more than a third of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) would normally pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The continuing blockade of the Strait and the Iranian ports is clearly having a detrimental effect on China’s economy, offset only by the fact that China has built up massive stockpiles of oil for situations such as this.
Other states in East Asia such as Japan and South Korea also depend to a large extent on the supply of oil and liquefied natural gas from Iran and the Gulf States but are not as well prepared as China. World oil prices are consistently now over $100 a barrel, compared to around $70 before the US/Israeli attack.
Britain and the European imperialist bloc continue to defend their own interests in the region. In preparation for the end of the conflict, in April Britain and France jointly organised conferences, involving more than 50 other countries, to develop military plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz ‘as soon as conditions permit, following a sustainable ceasefire agreement’. The statement from the British Minister of Defence expressed clear imperialist ambitions for full control of the Strait. The Royal Navy announced on 11 May that it had deployed the destroyer HMS Dragon to the Strait of Hormuz.
Meanwhile, any effective protest in Britain against the war has ebbed away. Despite the use of British bases for so-called ‘defensive strikes’ against Iran, Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been allowed to maintain the fiction that Britain is ‘not involved’ in the conflict. The early energy of protests that united support for Cuba with opposition to imperialist and Zionist attacks on Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and Venezuela has dissipated, while emboldened supporters of the deposed Iranian monarch, the Shah, make common cause with an assorted bunch of Zionists and British racists to attack anti-imperialist activists on the streets. There is an urgent need for an anti-imperialist, internationalist movement that demands ‘Hands off Iran! British imperialism out of the Middle East!’ and exposes the complicity of the Labour government in genocide and war.
