[D66] Iran-VS

[A.O.]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/11/thre-m11.html

With B-52s, carrier battle group in place, US war against Iran on a hair
trigger
By Bill Van Auken
11 May 2019

The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group made its way through the
Suez Canal on Thursday entering the Red Sea and the heart of the Middle
East, while a US bomber task force consisting of four nuclear-capable
B-52s landed on the same day at a US airbase in Qatar. The two military
deployments have placed the threat of a major and catastrophic new war
in the region on a hair trigger.

B-52s arrive at Al Udeid Air Base

The deployments come in the midst of a new round of bellicose threats
from Washington. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement on
Thursday warning that the US is prepared to take “swift and decisive”
military action against Iran.

With the Pentagon bringing its most destructive and powerful weapons to
Iran’s shores, Pompeo justified the US military buildup by claiming that
Iran had “engaged in an escalating series of threatening actions and
statements in recent weeks.” He did not bother to provide any example of
such actions and statements.

“The regime in Tehran should understand that any attacks by them or
their proxies of any identity against US interests or citizens will be
answered with a swift and decisive US response,” Pompeo said. “Our
restraint to this point should not be mistaken by Iran for a lack of
resolve. To date, the regime’s default option has been violence, and we
appeal to those in Tehran who see a path to a prosperous future through
de-escalation to modify the regime’s behavior.”

The talk of US “restraint” as opposed to a supposed Iranian “default
option” of violence beggars belief. Pompeo speaks for a government that
has been engaged in unending wars in the Persian Gulf region for the
last 25 years, wars that have claimed well over one million lives and
left entire societies in ruin.

As always, US imperialism is attempting to cast itself as the victim of
aggression, mobilizing its unmatched military might only as an act of
defense.

Pompeo’s remarks were echoed by those of the recently appointed chief of
the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for US military
operations in the Middle East, Marine General Frank McKenzie, who
delivered an inflammatory address to the right-wing, pro-Zionist think
tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“Any attack on US interests will be met with unrelenting force,” the
general told the Foundation, which was used by George W. Bush as a forum
for defending his war policy against Iraq. Reflecting the bipartisan
support for US imperialist aggression in the oil-rich Middle East, the
think tank includes on its advisory board, Donna Brazile, the former
chairperson of the Democratic National Committee.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has imposed yet another round of
sanctions against Iran. On Wednesday, the White House issued an
executive order imposing unilateral and extra-territorial sanctions
against Iran’s iron, steel, aluminum and copper industries, threatening
anyone trading in the materials as well as any financial institution
facilitating such trade with US retaliation, including exclusion from
American markets.

These new sanctions follow Washington’s termination on May 1 of waivers
granted to China, South Korea, Japan, India, and Turkey, countries that
had been allowed to continue purchasing Iranian oil without being
sanctioned. The stated US aim is to reduce Iranian oil exports to “zero.”

Just one year ago this month, the Trump administration unilaterally
abrogated the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
reached between Iran and the US, Russia, China, Germany, the UK and
France and both re-imposed and escalated unilateral US economic
sanctions aimed at strangling the Iranian economy and creating the
conditions for toppling its government and replacing it with a puppet
regime.

Meanwhile, the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) issued an advisory on
Thursday warning US commercial ships, including oil tankers, that they
could be targeted in the growing buildup to war in the Persian Gulf.
Given the crippling embargo that Washington is mounting against Iranian
oil exports, the advisory warned:

“Iran or its proxies could respond by targeting commercial vessels,
including oil tankers, or U.S. military vessels in the Red Sea,
Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, or the Persian Gulf. Reporting indicates
heightened Iranian readiness to conduct offensive operations against
U.S. forces and interests.”

This advisory, like Pompeo’s warnings, is an unmistakable provocation,
aimed at creating a pretext for an all-out US war.

Pompeo and US national security adviser John Bolton, who has publicly
called for bombing Iran, have both threatened that the US will unleash a
devastating attack on Iran against any and all attacks on US troops or
“US interests” anywhere in the Middle East by a host of actors that
Washington deems to be “proxies” of Tehran, ranging from Shia militias
in Syria and Iraq to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon
and Hamas in the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

In any one of these countries, the Pentagon or the CIA, or, for that
matter, Washington’s principal regional allies, particularly Israel and
Saudi Arabia, which both want a US war against Iran, are capable of
staging a provocation that can be used as a pretext for launching an
all-out war.

NBC News revealed that last week top Trump administration officials
convened a highly unusual summit meeting at the CIA headquarters in
Langley, Virginia to discuss the war buildup against Iran. Present were
CIA Director Gina Haspel, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford, Secretary of
State Pompeo, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and
others, US officials told the network.

The officials told NBC that the session was not convened to discuss the
supposed “intelligence” about alleged Iranian plans for attacks on “US
interests” that served as the pretext for the dispatching of the carrier
battle group and the bomber strike force to the region. The evidence to
substantiate the claims of impending Iranian “aggression” is as
fabricated as that used to bolster the claims about “weapons of mass
destruction” in advance of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

What were these officials talking about in the CIA’s bunker in Langley?
Former CIA operations officers and military officials told NBC that such
meetings at CIA headquarters are normally convened to discuss highly
sensitive plans for “covert actions.” Whether such actions will be aimed
against Iran and its government, or at staging a “false flag” operation
somewhere in the Middle East that can be used as the pretext for a US
attack remains to be seen.

The recklessness and criminality that characterize Washington’s threats
against Iran are an expression of the deep-going social tensions,
economic instability and political crisis gripping American capitalism,
which the ruling financial oligarchy seeks to divert outward in an
explosion of military violence.

A war against Iran would eclipse the horrific bloodshed of the Iraq war
launched in 2003, drawing in the entire region and all of the major
powers, including US imperialism’s so-called “great power” rivals,
Russia and China, bringing humanity face-to-face with the threat of a
nuclear Third World War.