Once again, the eyes of the world are fixed on every word and gesture of the man in the White House, Donald J. Trump. With one third of the entire American Navy assembled in the region, and with Trump oscillating between threats and calls for negotiations, the question on the lips of millions is: will there be war with Iran?
Donald Trump has deployed the biggest overseas military force in the Middle East since the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The USS Abraham Lincoln is stationed in the Arabian Sea, and has now been joined by the largest aircraft carrier in the world, the USS Gerald Ford, currently stationed in the Mediterranean.
The number of American fighter jets in the region – including F-35s, F-22s, F-15s, and F-16s – now exceeds 200, alongside dozens of accompanying fuel tankers, and command-and-control and electronic-warfare aircraft.
The kidnapping of Maduro seems to have convinced Trump that US imperialism can simply dictate terms to the Iranians through military might. But the reality of the situation is quite the opposite. Trump’s aggression is a sign of overconfidence.
The massive buildup, intended as a way to force the Iranians to throw in the towel, has not worked. This leaves Trump in a Catch-22: let the Iranians maintain their nuclear programme and conduct an embarrassing and costly retreat, or pull the trigger and open up a Pandora’s Box of chaos in both the Middle East and at home.
“Help is on the way”?
Trump, along with the rest of the warhawks in both the Republican and Democratic parties, is cynically using the social and economic crisis in Iran and the plight of its people to justify America’s imperialist aims in the region. “Help is on the way”, Trump cynically quipped when, in January, Iran was rocked by huge protests.
But let us not forget that the situation in Iran has been brought about by the policies of the US and the West itself, asphyxiating the population through sanctions and other economic means of war. Trump simply saw an opportunity to take advantage of the weakness of the regime. Notice that all talk of protestors has disappeared from his daily threats. Now, instead, he is talking about Iran’s nuclear programme. Both are pretexts for the real goal: regime change.
Let us be clear. If the US chooses to attack Iran, it would unleash enormous chaos with unpredictable results in Iran itself, and across the whole region, reaching all the way back to America itself.
The United States has always left behind a trail of death wherever it has intervened. Nations with rich cultures stretching back millennia have been dragged down into a state of barbarism by US imperialism, destroying untold numbers of lives in the process. The Iranian people only have to look at Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya to see what Trump’s ‘help’ will offer them.
The hypocrisy of the West knows no bounds. They raise a hue and cry about Iran’s supposed attempt not just to acquire a nuclear weapon but to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. They claim that Iran is the ‘destabilising factor’ in the whole equation, demanding that they have to sit down and ‘negotiate’. But Iran has never left the negotiating table! It is simply asking to be a recognised power in the Middle East, with its own sovereign interests.
For the US and Israel, this is unacceptable. What they are demanding – not only that Iran relinquish its civilian nuclear programme, but that it give up ballistic missiles and cease support for regional allies – amounts to a complete capitulation, that Iran leave itself defenceless. Brushing aside any of the democratic niceties of the so-called ‘rules-based order’, it is they who have repeatedly launched unprovoked attacks against Iran; it is they who are the aggressors.
Furthermore, it is an open secret that the US used information obtained through the inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Since then, inspections have effectively ceased.
The Europeans now join the US in the hypocritical chorus, demanding that the Iranians give the IAEA unfettered access to every enrichment facility in Iran. Britain, France, and Germany have reimposed brutal sanctions, further crippling the Iranian economy and pushing millions of ordinary Iranians into desperation, accusing Iran of breaking the 2015 JPOA nuclear deal. ‘This is the rules based order!’ they shriek – conveniently ignoring the fact that the first ones to walk away from this deal were the Americans!
Sowing the seeds
The current impasse was baked into the situation after Trump’s bombing of Iran on 22 June last year. As we pointed out at the time, the ceasefire was not a ‘win’ for Trump but a recognition that the 12-Day War was turning in Iran’s favour, with Israeli defences becoming strained and depleted.
In reality, it was a move to cut short the hostilities before the situation descended into chaos and dragged the US into a protracted quagmire. “Israel and Iran have been fighting for so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing!” Trump fumed when finding out that Israel had attempted to sabotage the truce and continue the war.
Afterwards, Trump boasted that the American bunker-buster bombs had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s enrichment programme. Story over, it would seem…
But a leaked intelligence report quickly made it apparent that the strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear programme by a few months, at best.
At the time, Trump claimed that these facts were simply lies and deceptions construed by the Democratic establishment. Now, though, as he yet again conducts negotiations with Iran to dismantle their nuclear programme, he has effectively admitted that that programme is intact. In the topsy-turvy world of the Trump administration, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s ‘special envoy’, is now insisting that Iran is “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material”. So much for “one of the most successful military strikes in history”…
Trump hoped that the power of a B2 bomber alone would be enough to knock the cards out of Iran’s hands and force them to sign a rotten deal. Instead, the 12-Day War has convinced the Iranians that showing restraint or giving in to Trump will simply invite further aggression down the line until he achieves regime change. The only chance is to hit back and hit back hard.
Steve Witkoff, interviewed on Fox News on Saturday, explained that Trump was “curious as to why they haven’t… I don’t want to say the word capitulate, but why they haven’t capitulated”. Trump’s plan to use gunboat diplomacy to bring down any and all American adversaries to flat-out surrender has proven utterly naïve. Like a boomerang, his own bravado is coming back to hit him in the head.
Billions of dollars are now being poured into a huge mobilisation that massively exceeds the buildup outside Venezuela. If Trump ‘chickens out’, as he has been repeatedly mocked for doing, it would not only be one of the most expensive bluffs in US military history (the deployment has cost the US more than $1 billion so far), but a huge political humiliation for him personally. Furthermore, it would represent an enormous blow to the prestige of US imperialism in the region, in the eyes of its allies as much as its enemies.
Likely outcomes
Iran came away from the 12-Day War with their industry and the war machine intact. They accepted Trump’s ceasefire and agreed to launch only a pre-arranged, symbolic, face-saving attack on a US air base in Qatar. Despite major security breaches, Israel was not able to topple the regime, and the short-lived exchange showed that Jerusalem is anything but invincible.
As the war went on, Israel’s stocks of THAAD and Patriot missiles dwindled, and the proportion of Iranian missiles penetrating the Iron Dome increased. That brief conflict used up 25 percent of the world’s THAAD missiles, and these air-defence missiles are both expensive and take a long time to replenish. Meanwhile, Iran has thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of easily replaced ballistic missiles.
If a new war broke out, it is clear that the US and Israel would aim to take out Iranian launchpads, nuclear facilities and decapitate its leadership as quickly as possible. But Iran is an enormous country with launch sites all over the country. It won’t be able to take out its military capability. If regime change is not brought about quickly, or Iranian capitulation is not achieved in a couple of weeks, then the balance will tip towards Iran, which could inflict enormous damage not only on Israel but on US bases and perhaps even warships.
For the Iranian regime, the only logical conclusion to draw from the 12-Day War was that any future guarantee of their own survival would be to obtain nuclear weapons as a deterrent at the earliest possible moment.
Inside Iran, the IRGC and the clerics have established that the best way to safeguard their own power is by closing ranks. The wing that has been strengthened is the hardline wing, and the negotiations are serving to strengthen this wing against the so-called ‘reformists’ by demonstrating precisely their futility and the aggression of the US and Israel. The regime has had months to prepare for an attempted decapitation strike, including giving emergency powers to the local government level.
Iran is not Venezuela. It is much further away from the United States, and has a much stronger military, a larger population, proxies in the region, and the ability to wreak economic havoc on the world economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz. While the January uprising and the deadly clampdown by the regime showed that the internal situation in Iran is reaching a breaking point, an attack by US and Israeli imperialism would only cut across domestic tensions for a time and rally much of the population around the government. It would shore up support for the defence of the country against the attempts at subjugation from western imperialism.
It is therefore not at all certain that the US would succeed in bringing down the regime. Trump, who promised to end US involvement in ‘forever wars’, may find any operation is vulnerable to so-called ‘mission creep’ – that the US could be dragged further and further into a situation it cannot control.
By far the most reactionary consequences would flow, however, if the US should succeed in bringing down the regime. It would create a power vacuum inside Iran that could lead to the most terrible consequences for that country, which would undoubtedly spread chaos into the region. It would be like the Iraq War raised to the power of ten. Furthermore, as the Iraq War disrupted the regional balance of power, so the destruction of Iran would disrupt the equilibrium in the region even more, laying the basis for further conflicts.
Explosions at home
Unlike the Iraq War, which enjoyed widespread support in the US after 9/11, Trump has made this massive gamble that could see him drawn into a major war without any real support at home. Currently, only 27 percent of the US population would support an attack on Iran, a figure that would quickly drop if an attack turned into a regional war and American casualties began to climb.
An attack on Iran, and all the hellish consequences that would bring, would further unravel Trump’s base of support. ICE was just defeated by the workers of Minneapolis. His broken promises about the release of the Epstein files – and the implication that he is part of a cover-up for the ‘Epstein class’ – are making previously loyal, working-class elements of his MAGA base turn against him. And most importantly, his claims that the American economy is thriving – just like Biden claimed – are making more and more people aware that he too is completely out of touch with the real situation for ordinary Americans. Attacking Iran would wreck his image as a different kind of president – a ‘peace president’ – further still.
Whether an attack on Iran is imminent or not, one thing is for certain: the first year of Trump’s second term has added much more combustible material to American society and world politics. A further intensification of the class struggle everywhere is guaranteed. Even inside the US Navy itself, morale is reportedly abysmal. Many among the crew on the USS Gerald Ford are threatening to quit over the ship’s faulty toilets.
For all the immense military power that the US possesses, at the end of the day, they cannot use it as they please. In the current situation, there are limits to what the US can do around the world, making it impossible to simply turn back the clock of US decline.
Down with imperialism!
The real aim of the US, whether they go to war or not, is to maintain its grip over the Middle East. Trump and the Israelis believe they have the undisputed right to do as they please to this end, whether that be to bully, bomb or invade anyone, anywhere, at any time.
The fountainhead of reaction and death that is US imperialism has to be fought by communists everywhere. It is the main enemy of the world working class. As for the liberation of the peoples of the region, including Iran, it is the task of the workers and poor in Iran.
For decades, the West has built up Iran as the greatest threat to its safety and security. But they are the ones drenched in the blood of imperialist meddling and war. They are the biggest threat to the security and safety of the working class of the world. The struggle against them and the system they represent is the only one that can liberate all oppressed peoples of the world.
