[D66] US/Britain prepare for war against Iran

[Antid Oto]

US/Britain prepare for war against Iran
4 November 2011

Articles in the British-based Guardian and Telegraph newspapers on Wednesday
have lifted the lid on military preparations by the US and Britain for an attack
on Iran that go well beyond routine contingency planning.

The leaks pointing to a dangerous new military adventure take place amid a
debate within the Israeli inner cabinet and media over whether to unilaterally
launch air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Officials and ministers in all three countries have denied the reports, but have
repeated the longstanding threat that “all options remain on the table”.
However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is due to release a new
assessment of Iran’s nuclear programs, described to the Guardian by an unnamed
Western official as “a game-changer”, that could well provide the pretext for
war. Iran has consistently denied it has any plans to build nuclear weapons.

The Guardian reported: “The [British] Ministry of Defence believes the US may
decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian
facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek,
and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations
within the coalition government.” In anticipation, “British military planners
are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with
Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months.”

An article in the Telegraph confirmed that Ministry of Defence (MoD) had
signalled the need to act quickly based on claims that Iran was shifting key
uranium enrichment technology to a facility near Qom buried deep underground.
MoD planners told the newspaper there was a “shortening window of opportunity”
as a result. “You have got to get there early enough—once they dig into the
ground, it gets much more difficult,” one source declared.

Unnamed British sources told the Guardian that US President Obama did not want
“to embark on a new and provocative military venture before next November’s
presidential election. But they warned the calculations could change because of
mounting anxiety over intelligence gathered by Western agencies.” One Whitehall
official commented: “President Obama has a big decision to make in the coming
months because he won’t want anything just before the election.”

Israel could prompt Obama to plunge into a new war by launching its own strikes
against Iranian nuclear facilities, or threatening to do so. Last Friday,
prominent Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, writing in Yediot Aharonot, reported
that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barack were
pressing the inner cabinet and security chiefs to agree to attack Iran. The
claim provoked a furious response from inner cabinet member Benny Begin, who
denounced the media debate as “utterly irresponsible” as it “severely impeded
the government’s ability to make decisions” on the issue.

The Israeli government has already made advanced preparations for an attack on
Iran. The Ha’aretz newspaper reported on Tuesday that the Israeli foreign
ministry had begun a diplomatic campaign in mid-September stressing to allies
that there was not much time left to end the Iranian nuclear program through
diplomatic pressure and sanctions. On the military front, Israeli warplanes last
week conducted a long-range exercise—of the type required to reach Iran—using a
NATO airbase on the Italian island of Sardinia. On Wednesday, Israel test-fired
a long-range ballistic missile that also has the potential to strike Iran.

Those who claim that Israel and its American and European backers would not risk
an attack on Iran and potentially calamitous consequences ignore the fact that
their intelligence agencies have already been engaged in activities that are
tantamount to acts of war. It is widely acknowledged that Israel, with the
likely assistance of the US, was behind the cyber war operation using the
Stuxnet computer virus to sabotage Iran’s enrichment facilities, as well as the
assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists over the past year.

More fundamentally, the preparations for war against Iran are no more being
driven by concerns over its nuclear program than the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq were motivated by “terrorism” or “weapons of mass destruction”, or the
NATO bombing of Libya was to protect the Libyan people. The US has recklessly
plunged into one war after another over the past decade in a desperate bid to
offset its economic decline by securing its hegemony over the energy-rich
regions of the Middle East and Central Asia.

The neo-colonial invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have both turned into
disasters, which, as American commentators have repeatedly noted, have only
enhanced the standing of Iran in the region by removing two hostile regimes.
Having failed to secure a status of forces agreement with Baghdad, the US
position will be further weakened when it removes its remaining troops from Iraq
by the end of the year. The prospects are no better in Afghanistan as the US and
its allies prepare to wind back combat forces by 2014.

Far from acting as a restraint, the worsening global economic crisis is
impelling US imperialism to use its military might to shore up its economic and
strategic interests at the expense of its main European and Asian rivals. That
is the twisted logic behind targeting Tehran, which is regarded in Washington as
a major obstacle to US ambitions in the Middle East and the main reason for its
failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, as in the case of Libya, a US-led
war on Tehran would seriously undermine the substantial economic interests of
China and Russia in Iran, as well as their efforts to forge closer strategic ties.

The Obama administration is also being driven by the deepening economic crisis
and rising class tensions at home that have been exposed by the eruption of the
anti-Wall Street protest movement. Despite the widespread popular opposition to
militarism and war that has developed over the past decade, the American
financial aristocracy is quite willing to take another irresponsible gamble to
shore up its interests in the Middle East and as a means of diverting attention
from the social devastation produced by its austerity agenda.

The latest reports in the British press constitute the sharpest warning to the
American and international working class. As global capitalism lurches from one
economic and political crisis to the next, rivalry between the major powers for
markets, resources and strategic advantage is plunging humanity towards a
catastrophic conflict that would devastate the planet. The only social force
capable of ending the danger of world war is the international working class
through a unified struggle to abolish the profit system and establish a
world-planned socialist economy. That is the perspective of the International
Committee of the Fourth International and its sections in every country.

Peter Symonds

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/pers-n04.shtml