My Goodness! What universe is The Militant living in? It's like they write
articles filled with Marxist rhetoric that have nothing to do with actual
reality. Iran hasn't had a nuclear weapons program for years and years. And
those working people whom The Militant supposedly supports? Well, a lot of them
support the religious groups mentioned in the article. A lot don't.
Miriam
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From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2018 10:49 AM
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Subject: [blind-democracy] US rulers, Tehran fight over sway in Middle East
http://themilitant.com/2018/8220/822002.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 82/No. 20 May 21, 2018
(lead article)
US rulers, Tehran fight over sway in Middle East
BY TERRY EVANS
Determined to protect U.S. imperialist interests in the Middle East, push back
Tehran’s growing military interventions and prevent Iran’s capitalist rulers
acquiring nuclear arms, President Donald Trump May 8 withdrew the U.S.
government from the 2015 nuclear deal signed by former President Barack Obama.
That agreement — also signed by the rulers in Germany, France, Britain, Russia
and China — eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for curtailing its nuclear
program through 2030.
Trump said Washington will impose sanctions and take other steps to press
Tehran to make additional concessions. More punishing sanctions will sharpen
the crisis facing Iran’s capitalist rulers and fall most harshly on working
people.
Washington holds a vast nuclear arsenal. According to a White House statement,
the president will “assemble a broad coalition of nations to deny Iran all
paths to a nuclear weapon.” Businesses and banks that trade with Iranian
companies will have up to 180 days to end these operations.
Government spokespeople in London, Berlin, Paris and Tehran all say they will
keep the deal working by allowing Iran’s oil exports and other trade to
continue while Tehran keeps restrictions on nuclear activity.
The three European capitalist regimes say they will “defend the more than €20bn
of trade [$23.7 billion] that now exists between the EU and Iran,” the
Financial Times reported May 9, “up from €6.2bn in 2013.”
Since the pact was signed in 2015 the Iranian rulers have continued to advance
their counterrevolutionary role in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, building on
decades of military incursions across the region. The country’s capitalist
rulers’ moves abroad are an extension of their efforts at home to push back the
gains made by working people during the
1979 revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah of Iran.
Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard, along with Hezbollah and other Shiite militias,
intervened in Syria to shore up the rule of the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship
after it put down a popular uprising. They have been backed by Moscow’s air
power. As a result, Iran’s rulers have established bases across Syria,
installing missile and weapons systems.
Their military forces are deployed ever closer to the border of Israel.
Syrian government officials and opposition forces both report Tel Aviv carried
out a missile attack against an Iranian-linked army base in al-Kiswah, eight
miles south of Damascus, May 8. Nine Revolutionary Guard or Shiite militia
troops were killed, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Jerusalem Post said this attack came after “it became known,” that
Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard forces were planning a missile attack on
Israel.
After a missile strike that killed seven Iranian troops in early April, senior
Iranian cleric Ali Shirazi threatened “to turn Tel Aviv and Haifa into dust.”
But so far the Iranian rulers have not retaliated. They remain wary about the
impact at home of the bloody outcome of more clashes with Israel. For years the
capitalist rulers have offered inducements to Afghans and other refugees to
serve as cannon fodder in their wars in Syria and Iraq. They hope to lessen the
number of Iranian casualties and quell opposition to their murderous conflicts.
But widespread discontent with the impact of their wars drove working-class
protests throughout Iran in late December and early January. Since then,
strikes by steel, rail and hospital workers and teachers were reported in the
Wall Street Journal. Workers were enraged when the government’s budget was
revealed in December 2017, showing huge funds for wars while workers face
cutbacks.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran would try to maintain the
agreement with the pact’s other signatories. He reiterated that the country’s
rulers have no intention of relinquishing their “influence in the region.”
Moscow says that if Washington resumes sanctions it would expand trade with
Iran.
Washington: Biggest military force in Mideast The U.S. rulers have the largest
military force in the Mideast, with
2,000 troops in Syria and massive reserves, air power and naval patrols
throughout the area. And they are getting their allies in the region to do
more. The Saudi Arabian monarchy says it will send troops to be part of a
joint-Arab force in Syria. The rulers in Egypt say they also may join in. U.S.
troops are in land controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, some
25 percent of the country.
As the same time the U.S. rulers are seeking to broker a deal between Tel Aviv
and Palestinian leaders. The new U.S. Embassy is due to open May 14 in
Jerusalem. U.S. officials denied reports by Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor
Liberman that they had asked the Israeli government to withdraw its forces from
four neighborhoods in east Jerusalem so a future Palestinian capital could be
located there. But Liberman reiterated that “the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem will
come at a price and it is worth paying it.”
A Dec. 11 statement by the Socialist Workers Party — “For Recognition of a
Palestinian State and of Israel” — explains that the U.S. government is
“putting it to its allied regimes in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt and
Jordan, as well as to the bourgeois misleaders of the Palestinian Authority and
Hamas, that Washington is ‘making them an offer they can’t refuse.’” It adds
that the U.S. rulers are “combining the stick of an anticipated U.S. Embassy in
Jerusalem with the carrot of greater economic and military aid to Sunni-led
governments against their feared rival in Shia-led Tehran.”
The starting point, the SWP statement says, has to be “the class interests and
solidarity of workers and toiling farmers across the Middle East — be they
Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, Kurdish, Turkish, Persian or otherwise, and whatever
their religious or other beliefs — as well as working people in the United
States and around the world.”
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