https://themilitant.com/2020/01/04/us-hands-off-iraq-iran-get-out-of-the-middle-east/
US hands off Iraq, Iran! Get out of the Middle East!
article
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
Vol. 84/No. 1
January 13, 2020
Washington mounted airstrikes Dec. 29, targeting the Tehran-backed
Kataeb Hezbollah militia, whose forces are part of Iraq’s military —
hitting three sites
in Iraq and two in Syria, killing at least 25 militia members. Secretary
of Defense Mark Esper warned that Washington may take “additional
actions” in
response to “bad behavior from militia groups or from Iran.”
Washington said the strikes were retaliation for rocket attacks on an
Iraqi army base near Kirkuk two days before that killed a U.S.
contractor and wounded
four U.S. soldiers. According to the Wall Street Journal, this was the
11th time over the past two months that U.S. troops in Iraq were
targeted by rocket
fire.
Kataeb Hezbollah was formed in 2003 at the initiative of the reactionary
clerical regime in Iran after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It was one
of the
first groups to dispatch fighters to Syria to support the dictatorial
rule of Bashar al-Assad during the civil war there.
Both Washington and Tehran continue to clash as each government pushes
to further its own economic, political and military interests in Iraq,
Syria and
other countries in the Middle East. Their conflict is part of broader
clashes between U.S. and other imperialist powers, Moscow, Ankara and
other regional
capitalist rivals.
Iran’s capitalist rulers aim is to increase their regional power by
force of arms, extending beyond Iran’s borders the nearly
four-decade-long, cleric-dominated
political counterrevolution that pushed back the workers, farmers, women
and oppressed nationalities who carried out the historic Iranian
Revolution of
1979. This was a powerful, modern popular social revolution, not a
religious jihad as is falsely claimed by the U.S. rulers.
The attacks and counterattacks also take place amid continuing mass
anti-government protests in Iraq against the effects of interference by
both Washington
and Tehran and the exacerbation of the grinding capitalist economic
crisis on working people there. The day before the U.S. airstrike,
anti-government
protesters temporarily halted operations at the Nasiriya oilfield in
southern Iraq.
Since Oct. 1 Iraqi government forces and Iranian-backed militia thugs
have killed over 450 protesters and wounded some 25,000.
The mass mobilizations have forced Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi
to say he will step down and caused an ongoing political crisis in the
country.
But he remains in office until agreement on a replacement can be reached
among Iraq’s political parties, all facing pressure from Tehran and
Washington.
Trying to deliver a blow to these protests is one of the central aims of
Tehran, their Iraqi militia forces and allies in the Iraqi government.
Pro-Tehran rally at U.S. Embassy
Iraqi government forces made no attempt to stop hundreds of militia
fighters and supporters who entered the heavily fortified Green Zone and
gathered outside
the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad Dec. 31. This orchestrated move was falsely
presented in the U.S. press as “protests.” Dozens of participants, many
in Iraqi
or militia fatigues or carrying flags of the Popular Mobilization
Forces, smashed the gate and made a foray into the compound. Hundreds
set up tents outside
the embassy.
Many bourgeois forces were aware of the move. Yassine al-Yasseri, Iraq’s
interior minister, and other government officials showed up there, as
well as
central leaders of the militias. Yasseri told AP that the prime minister
had warned the U.S. that the airstrikes would have serious consequences.
U.S. forces kept most of the militia forces at bay with tear gas. The
next day the embassy was reinforced by Apache helicopters and 100
additional Marines.
Senior leaders of the militias ordered their forces to withdraw Jan. 1
and they did so, taking down their camps. Some set up a new “camp” well
outside
the Green Zone. Kataeb Hezbollah said they had won a victory and would
now seek withdrawal of U.S. troops through the nation’s parliament.
No end to toilers’ protests
Much of the bourgeois press claimed the U.S. missile attack and
pro-Tehran militia action at the embassy had quieted the mass protests
by Iraqi working
people that have rocked the country for months. A number of protests
leaders said this was a lie.
Al Jazeera visited Baghdad’s Tahrir Square Dec. 31, a main center of the
anti-government protest movement. “We, the protesters of Tahrir Square,
condemn
the [U.S.] strikes of course, whether it be Iran or the U.S. who was
responsible for them,” Ali Khraybit told the news service, stressing
“the crowds in
the Green Zone do not represent us.”
“Peaceful demonstrators [against the government] gave 400 lives but
never allowed to get into the Green Zone,” Sarkawt Shams, a member of
the Iraqi parliament
from the Kurdistan region, tweeted Dec. 31. “How come these guys get in
and reach US Embassy without any barrier?”
There are some 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, tasked with maintaining the
U.S. capitalist rulers’ interests. Since May the Pentagon has sent more
than 14,000
additional troops to the region. On any given day Washington has between
60,000 and 80,000 troops deployed in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
“Nothing the U.S. government is doing in Iraq and Syria is in the
interest of working people there or here in the U.S.,” Naomi Craine,
Socialist Workers
Party candidate for U.S. Senate in Illinois, told the Militant Dec. 31.
“Working people in the U.S. can aid the Iraqi people in their struggle
by demanding
U.S. troops and bases out now!”
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