Albanese backs Trump’s reckless attack on Iran. Labor Tribune editorial board calls for the defeat of US gangster imperialism.
The US-Israel attack on Iran is an act of gangster imperialism. It has nothing to do with democracy, human rights or peace. It is about power, domination and the violent policing of a region by two states that are completely reckless in their approach to international affairs.
It is not without irony that the only power in the region that ‘illegally’ holds nuclear weapons is Israel, a power that is also committing a genocide on the Palestinian people.
Marxists and socialists are for the failure and defeat of this gangster imperialism. Their bombs will not bring freedom; they will bring rubble, refugees and reaction. We saw that in Iraq, Syria and in Afghanistan. Reports have emerged of a girls’ school hit in Minab in Southern Iran, killing more than 100. Such acts of ‘liberation from the air’ highlight the lie that the west intervenes in the interests of the Iranian people, let alone for the liberation of its women and girls.
At the same time, we never suspend our solidarity with the people of Iran in their dual struggle – against imperialism from without and the regime of the ayatollahs from within.
Iran’s supreme ruler Ali Khamenei will not be mourned by working people in Iran. His regime has jailed trade unionists, beaten students, executed protesters and crushed dissent. But the tyrants of Tehran are not the business of Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu. Settling accounts with the ayatollahs is the historic task of the Iranian working class – not of imperial bombers and regional war criminals.
It is unclear exactly what Trump’s endgame is here – or even if he has one. While ‘regime change’ has been called for, without putting boots on the ground, the US cannot determine what comes next. Bombing countries into submission does not create a smooth regime change. Perhaps the only result desired here is just a destroyed and weakened society. That much is clear from Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan.
Such an outcome suits the interests of the US and Israel – who want to create either fractured states, across the Middle East, as is the case with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq; or Arab states compliant to imperialism, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.
Another goal of the US-Israel assault on Iran is to indirectly weaken Russia and China as the US increasingly uses its undoubted military might to try to reverse its relative decline as a global economic and hegemonic power.
This is not about oil – this is about maintaining US hegemony. Iran was a threat to that regional control.
Albanese backs the US empire
The first Western government to leap to its feet in support of this reckless attack was Australia.
In a statement backing Washington’s action to “prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”, Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has signed Australia up to yet another US-led war drive.
It is a bitter irony. Albanese rightly opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq – a war justified by lies about “weapons of mass destruction” that did not exist. Today he echoes the same script about supposed Iranian weapons that Iran does not possess.
Have we learned nothing?
Albanese’s words are even more gung-ho than many in the US Congress.
Democrat representative Ro Khanna from California said: “Trump has launched an illegal regime-change war in Iran with American lives at risk.”
Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia said the attacks were a “colossal mistake”.
Even Republican Thomas Massie said it was an “act of war unauthorised by Congress”.
Inside Iran, that struggle is alive. Before the US-Israel attacks, Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company declared its support for student protests across the country – from Mashhad to Tehran – denouncing the presence of Basij forces on campuses and demanding the release of detained students and political prisoners. “Worker, Student, Unite, Unite!” they declared. “No to repression, no to oppression, only freedom and equality!”
This is the voice that deserves our solidarity – not the cynical manoeuvres of Washington or Tel Aviv. Iranian workers and students have repeatedly raised demands for justice, independent organising and freedom of expression. They insist on the independence of their organisations from “any form of tyranny, authoritarianism and totalitarianism.” That includes the ayatollahs. It also includes imperialist “liberators”.
The Australian labour movement should say clearly: no support for this war. No blank cheque for US militarism. No more echoing the lies that paved the road to Baghdad. Stand with Iranian workers and students – not with Trump and Netanyahu.
The road to freedom in Iran will not be paved by bombs and cruise missiles. It will be built by the organised power of workers and the oppressed themselves.