No More Wars for Oil!
By Gregory William
Without ceasing their efforts to overthrow the legitimate government of Venezuela, the Trump administration and the U.S. military command have been revving up threats against Iran.
Trump and his gang have already demonstrated through their use of inhumane economic sanctions that they are willing to destroy the lives of thousands of people—all so that their capitalist masters can gain control of Iran and Venezuela’s oil fields.
In early May Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, announced the deployment of a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Persian Gulf to “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attacks on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.” Since then Trump has sent an 1,500 additional troops to the region.
Does Iran pose any threat to the U.S.? No!
Since the beginning of the last century, the United States has carried out more than 100 invasions of countries around the world. In that time, Iran hasn’t invaded a single country. Nor have they started a single war.
Bolton has had a hand in several U.S. invasions and wars—not least in Libya and Iraq, where hundreds of thousands have died as a result. During the lead-up to the Iraq war, Bolton systematically churned out lies about Iraq’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” to convince the public that war was necessary, leading to absolute devastation in that country and massive looting of U.S. taxpayers’ money. Bolton has been advocating for war with Iran for over 20 years and is now trying ratchet up tensions so that an accident or a false-flag attack might provide a pretext for war.
Here’s another claim workers might hear in the U.S. capitalist-owned media. Isn’t the Iranian government a despotic theocracy that curtails the rights of its people, and isn’t that a good reason for the U.S. to intervene?
There’s no reason to believe that this is a concern of Trump and company. One of the U.S.’ closest allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, recently beheaded 37 men and hung one of their bodies upside down on a pole in public. This hasn’t been a topic of discussion in Washington. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to support the Saudi regime’s genocidal war in Yemen and gives the Israeli government billions of our tax dollars to murder innocent Palestinian children.
The Iranian forces that Bolton and Trump are promoting as the possible “liberators” of the country hail from the now-deposed fascist monarchy or alternately, from the so-called ‘National Council of Resistance,’ an organization aligned with the Saudi monarchy and Israel.
U.S. imperialists clearly have no interest in promoting democracy or human rights in Iran or anywhere else in the world. The long history of U.S. interference in Iran proves it.
In U.S. wars for oil, playbook hasn’t changed
In 1953, U.S. and British espionage agencies orchestrated a coup in Iran, ousting the democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. In 1951, under the leadership of Mosaddegh, the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry which had until then been under the control of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company—later known as British Petroleum (BP), the same company responsible for the horrible Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Iranian government intended to use their oil resources to benefit the people of Iran rather than British and American shareholders.
Before the coup, the British initiated an international boycott of Iranian oil. They were trying to put an economic stranglehold on the country to make it bend to the wishes of the British and U.S. capitalist classes. In place of the popular government of Mosaddegh, the coup orchestrators installed General Fazlollah Zahedi, who shored up the rule of the Shah (the Iranian prince). The new regime relied heavily on Washington to stay in power. According to the CIA’s own declassified documents, for example, Iranian mobsters were on the U.S. payroll to stage pro-Shah riots as the coup was underway.
Under the Shah’s rule until 1979, thousands of social leaders, trade unionists, workers, students, and peasants were tortured and murdered by the SAVAK, a Gestapo-like agency set up by the CIA. Inequality soared to become almost the worst in the world, according to the International Labor Office. The people of Iran suffered all these hardships to enrich the owners of an imperialist oil cartel. This is really existing “free” market capitalism at work.
In 1979, the Iranian masses rose up to overthrow the imperialist-backed Shah. Although many of the demands of the revolution have not been met by the government of the Islamic Republic that replaced the monarchy, national independence remains a victory that the masses of Iranians are intent on defending. Any progressive Iranian knows that a U.S. war would be a terrible setback to their own struggle for political power within the country.
Why we must say no to intervention today
Nearly four times the size of Iraq, Iran is a country of 80 million people. A war with Iran would condemn an entire region of the earth to years of death and insecurity. This terrible cost to humanity would be paid by U.S. workers too. For every dollar of our taxes that’s wasted on death machines, that’s one less dollar spent on education or healthcare or all the things necessary to give us real national security.
We— the workers of the world— must stand up and declare that we will not pay for their oil with our blood.
U.S. Hands off Iran!
End U.S. sanctions against Iran!
Bring the troops home!
Close the U.S./NATO bases!
End U.S. aid to Saudi Arabia and Israel!