THE US and its Israeli ally carried on with attacks against cities across Iran following president Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday that he was suspending, for five days, any US attack which he claimed would ‘obliterate’ Iranian power and energy infrastructure.
Iranian media reported yesterday that overnight US-Israeli strikes had hit the capital Tehran and also targeted the cities of Tabriz, Isfahan and Karaj.
US-Israeli strikes hit two gas facilities and a pipeline just hours after Trump announced the postponement of planned attacks on Iran’s power infrastructure.
Iran meanwhile targeted Israel and Israeli Occupation Forces in northern Iraq, penetrating the Zionist ‘cast iron’ (and much depleted) defences and hitting Tel Aviv.
On Monday, Trump claimed that his pause in carrying out his threat against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure was because of ‘good and productive’ talks to resolve ‘our hostilities in the Middle East’ with Iranian officials.
This was immediately rubbished by Iran’s foreign ministry as ‘part of the effort to reduce energy prices and buy time for the implementation of the US’s military plans’ and insisted there was ‘no dialogue’ between Washington and Tehran.
Iran’s Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted on X that Trump’s aim was to ‘manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.’
In fact, the price of oil on the international markets did fall back immediately following Trump’s abrupt announcement only to shoot up again to over $100 a barrel, as it became clear that Trump is no longer master of the world able to dictate the outcome of the war he and the Israeli regime of Benjamin Netanyahu started.
The markets clearly agreed with the Iranian assessment that a five-day postponement was exactly the amount of time the US military required to get its force of 5,000 marines, currently on ships, sailing towards the Persian Gulf.
Chris Beauchamp, chief analyst at IG Group, said: ‘Donald Trump has managed to swerve disaster multiple times during his presidential terms, but investors aren’t sure he can get away with it this time.’
American media are reporting that the Trump administration is seriously considering plans to send ground troops to seize Kharg Island, the strategic point in the Strait of Hormuz, in an attempt to reopen the Strait which has been closed to enemy ships by Iran.
Iran has already warned that any attack on its energy infrastructure or any attempt at invasion will be met with a devastating response that will destroy the oil and gas facilities throughout the entire Middle East region.
Already, the closure of the Strait to ships belonging to those countries regarded as allies of the US and Israel has caused a massive historic crisis for the world economy, driving up the cost of energy, food and inflation across the world, and threatening the working class and masses with a future of poverty and unemployment.
The drive by a bankrupt imperialist system to reassert its domination over the Middle East by means of war that destroys the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, while driving the working class at home into abject poverty, is the only future for capitalism.
Now is the time for the working classes of the UK, US and Europe to take action by organising mass general strikes to bring down their capitalist governments and bring in workers governments and socialism.
Workers must demand their trade union leaders call immediate general strikes or be removed and replaced by leaders prepared to mobilise the strength of the working class in the struggle to overthrow bankrupt capitalism and go forward to socialism.
The time has come to put an end once and for all to imperialist wars by taking power and advancing humanity from capitalist barbarism by dumping it into the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Join the WRP and Young Socialists, build 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.
