While tightening their economic pressure against Iran through punitive sanctions, the Anglo-American imperialists are simultaneously busy making preparations for outright military aggression as well. US president Obama’s recent statements about giving time to allow the sanctions to take effect are only a diplomatic ruse to fool world opinion.
While tightening their economic pressure against Iran through punitive sanctions, the Anglo-American imperialists are simultaneously busy making preparations for outright military aggression as well. US president Obama’s recent statements about giving time to allow the sanctions to take effect are only a diplomatic ruse to fool world opinion. In reality, military preparations against Iran are going full steam ahead. British papers have quoted their army chiefs as saying that “it is a matter of WHEN not IF war breaks out—with 18 to 24 months the likely timescale.” Other reports say that an attack will be launched even earlier.
Why is Iran being targeted today? According to the web of lies spun by the US imperialists and their propaganda machinery, Iran is allegedly preparing to build nuclear weapons which are a threat to mankind. Coming from the US, which is armed with the deadliest nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, which has the biggest war machinery on earth, and which carries out aggression and occupation with impunity throughout the globe, this is nothing but absolute hypocrisy. It is the US imperialists which instigated Saddam Hussain to attack Iran in the eighties, leading to massive death and destruction in both Iraq and Iran. It is US and its ally Israel which have been continuously putting pressure and blackmailing Iran. Iran has denied that it is pursuing a program for building nuclear weapons. Even if it did so, it is well within its right to secure its defence. The real issue is that the US and its allies know that Iran is a roadblock to their plan to establish complete domination of West Asia, its energy resources, and its people. Iran has been a consistent supporter of the struggle of the Palestinian people for their national rights against the Israeli aggressors. It has consistently exposed the "war against terrorism" of the US, and pointed out in various international forums including the UN General Assembly that it is US imperialism that is the fountainhead of terrorism worldwide.
After having laid waste Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in the course of the last decade, the US imperialists and their allies are now training their sights on Syria and Iran. Tens of thousands of troops have been massed on Iran’s borders in Afghanistan. The US has doubled the number of aircraft carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf. US warships in the region are being equipped with anti-tank weapons, besides rapid-fire machine guns and light weapons.
A recent report in The Wall Street Journal has said that the US military establishment has asked for $100 million to boost its capability for military operations against Iran. The US military is strengthening its mine detection and clearance equipment as well as its surveillance capabilities in the Straits of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to block in retaliation for the economic sanctions imposed on it. Unmanned drones are already flying threateningly overhead, violating Iran’s air space.
Earlier in January, according to the same report, the Pentagon had demanded $82 million to improve upon a formidable 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb, designed to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with devastating effect.
All these preparations clearly show that the US imperialists and their allies are going ahead systematically with their plans to attack Iran. An assault on Iran, as the experience of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya shows, will greatly expand the zone of conflict and devastation which the imperialists have created, and will have extremely grave consequences for peace and the sovereignty of all countries and peoples in this region.
A feature of the imperialist war preparations against Iran is that the time-tested imperialist henchman in the region, the Israeli state, is being given a special role in them. In the beginning of March, both the Israeli Defence Secretary and President Netanyahu made trips to the US to coordinate the plans against Iran. Many analysts have predicted that it is Israel that will be used to launch a first strike against Iran. Discussions between the Israeli and American chieftains are expected to cover among other things which weapons will be handed over by the US military to Israel for this purpose.
Through all this war talk and sabre rattling, the imperialists are trying to create a fear psychosis. Their aim is to get Iran to knuckle under and bow down to their dictate. In this they are seriously underestimating the strength and resolve of the Iranian government and people. The imperialists are also trying to create an atmosphere on the global stage that Iran is totally isolated and that a military strike against Iran and its defeat are inevitable. In reality, with their serious reverses in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with more and more countries seeing through the hypocrisy of the imperialists’ justifications for aggression against other countries, it is the US imperialists and their allies who are on the back foot. The Iranian people have not wavered in their resolve to resist imperialist bullying and pressure. The working class and people of India fully back them in their endeavour to defend their sovereignty and dignity. Imperialist aggression must be stopped in its tracks.