IN a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday night, Donald Trump announced to the US workers and middle class that the spiralling cost of oil is ‘a small price to pay’ for imperialism’s unprovoked, illegal war against Iran.
With petrol prices at the pump starting to soar, Trump’s appeal to American workers to ‘suck up’ the sharp rise in inflation for the greater good of US capitalism is a sign of the desperation gripping the ruling class, as the war drives a recession across the globe.
Trump was clearly rattled by the fact that his plan, to incapacitate the Iranian leadership through targeted assassination of the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would lead to instant regime change and force Iran to submit to US imperialism, has come badly unstuck.
Last week Trump issued yet another empty boast that he and Zionist Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu would be the ones to decide who the next leaders of Iran would be.
On Sunday night the Iranians named Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father as Supreme Leader, leading the Israeli military to immediately threaten that he would be murdered like his father.
The intention from the outset was for an aerial bombardment to crush the Iranian government with limited cost to the US – apart from the cost of bombs used to kill Iranian men, women and children.
But eleven days into the war the real cost of this imperialist war to ‘reshape’ the entire Middle East has rapidly emerged following the powerful resistance of the Iranian military which has struck heavy blows against the US and Israeli military, along with blows against US military facilities, hosted by nations in the region, exposing the weakness of US imperialism.
The closure of the Straits of Hormuz by Iran has effectively choked off a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies, while the closure of Qatar’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facility at Ras Laffan has brought international gas supplies to a standstill.
Yesterday morning, the price of crude oil reached $119.50 a barrel – an increase of 29%.
This explosion in oil price led to Trump’s claiming it was a ‘short term’ consequence and that it ‘will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over.’
Iran posed no nuclear threat to the region or the world. Trump’s claim is just one, along with many other increasingly deranged arguments, advanced by him to justify a war that is driving the world into an economic recession.
The abject failure of the US and Israeli military to force Iran into submission has shattered the hopes for a short term war, and sent the stock markets across the world into meltdown.
Finance ministers, including UK chancellor Rachel Reeves, from the G7 group of leading industrialised nations rushed to New York yesterday for an emergency meeting to try to work out how to survive the oil and gas crisis.
While these ministers were meeting to try to deal with the catastrophic economic outcome of a war that is escalating out of control, Trump was reported in US news agencies as now considering putting US troops on the ground inside Iran.
In desperation, Trump and US imperialism are moving towards a ground invasion to subdue a nation with a population of 93 million.
In a short space of time, the war started by the US and Israel to crush the Iranian revolution and secure the country’s oil for the benefit of American capitalism, has gone rapidly from bad to worse. It has now become hopeless for imperialism.
The working class now has the power to put an end to wars by putting an end to imperialism.
The time has come for the working class in the US, UK and Europe to force their trade union leaders to take action, by organising general strikes to bring down their capitalist governments, and go forward to workers’ governments and socialism.
We must build up the WRP and the Young Socialists in Britain, and sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country, to provide the leadership required for the victory of the world socialist revolution. There is not a moment to lose! Forward to the victory of the World Socialist Revolution!
