Unprovoked bombing of Iran – latest crime of the Zionist terror regime 

By Michael O’Brien

The Israeli bombing of Iran was a criminal, unprovoked attack – the latest atrocity carried out by the maniacal Zionist regime. While Israel lacks the means of replicating in Iran the genocide it has been wreaking in Gaza, or the destruction it is responsible for in Lebanon, it has seized an opportunity to deal blows to the Iranian regime and draw the US into the conflict. While both Israel and the Trump administration state that they want an overthrow of the Iranian government, there is no viable force waiting in the wings that could effect a takeover that the broad mass of Iranian people would accept – no more than turned out to be the case in Iraq and Libya,

Contrary to the propaganda, the bombings were not a ‘surgical’ assault from which ordinary Iranians were spared. The call by the Israeli government for Tehran to be evacuated was a flimsy cover to excuse itself for the significant civilian casualties. Tehran has a population of approximately 17 million people, many of whom lacked the means to leave. No one should be fooled by the hand-wringing by some Western capitalist governments in a display of concern about the conflict in the Middle East extending further. Without cutting the supply of arms to Israel, it is just hypocrisy, and the West effectively fell into line once the bombings began.

Discord in Trump’s regime

However the assault on Iran has brought to the surface some discord within the Trump camp in the US, between those who are fundamentally at one with the Netenyahu regime (the neocons), and those of a more isolationist bent who resent Israel determining the scale, pace and extent of their rampage across the Middle East and their desire to pull in the US to be more directly involved. These tensions are strategic and should not be overstated. 

Nor are the likes of Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon deserving of faint praise – they have no concern for the people of Iran; rather, they hold to the position that the US should be focusing its attention on China and the domestic anti-immigrant, anti-worker, anti-LGBTQ and anti-women agenda. Trump himself has tried to balance between the two camps, settling, as we go to print, on a ‘limited’ engagement of the US military directly in Iran before publicly imposing a ‘ceasefire’ on Israel.

Understandably, in many quarters, there was outright celebration that a fraction of the long-range missiles fired by Iran in retaliation landed in Israel. The irony of the revelation that one of the military targets within Israel was situated under a hospital will not be lost, nor will the outrage expressed by the Israeli government over the limited damage caused by these attacks, compared to the wholesale destruction of Gaza. However, among the casualties in the Iranian retaliation were Palestinians living within Israel who, alongside migrant workers, did not have adequate access to bomb shelters compared to Israeli Jews. 

Iran weakened

Notwithstanding some missiles hitting targets in Israel, the Iranian regime has been badly exposed in front of its own population. It has maintained its position since assuming power after the revolution in 1979 through brutal repression of opponents of all stripes, ethnic minorities and women. It has rested on a projection of power but has been shown to be impotent in the face of the Israeli air force, which met little opposition in the skies. 

Moreover, the Iranian regime has been shown to be riddled with Israeli agents and key personnel vulnerable to assassination. There are credible reports that Meta, which owns WhatsApp, was a source of assistance to the IDF in locating figures connected with the nuclear programme (which has never reached the level of producing weapons-grade uranium) and the talks process connected with that programme.

The West’s unachievable goals

While the Iranian government has been weakened, there is no clear and straightforward path for its overthrow and replacement by a pro-Western regime. The regime does not enjoy widespread support among a population which has suffered not just repression but also economic deprivation. This poverty is, in considerable measure, the product of imperialist-imposed sanctions, but it is also the result of the Revolutionary Guard and Mullahs siphoning off vast amounts of revenues for themselves. This is a repressive capitalist regime that socialists have no truck with, and behind their “anti-imperialist” rhetoric, it should not be forgotten that the Iranian State supported the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 for its own strategic reasons. This led to a 20-year-long occupation with horrific consequences for the Afghan people. 

Furthermore, it would be a mistake to conclude that the Iranian working class and the ethnic minorities are in any sense pro-Western imperialism. There is a basic sympathy among the Iranian people for the people of Gaza and a hatred for the genocide perpetrated by Israel, supported by Western imperialism. The supporters of the Shah regime, which preceded the 1979 Revolution, have no credibility. Small but important forces in Iran, including trade unions, have articulated a clear-sighted, independent, anti-imperialist and class position in opposition to the Ayatollah and the West. Added to this, those who led the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests in September 2022, which were brutally suppressed, have also made clear their opposition to the recent attacks on Iran. 

This powerful working class, if it takes power and abolishes the rule of the Islamic regime and the capitalist system it is tied to, could be a beacon for the struggle to end the rule of imperialism, the Zionist State and other oppressive regimes in the Middle East. 

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