AN increasingly desperate US president Donald Trump authorised a wave of strikes against civilian infrastructure in southwestern Iran on Wednesday.
These latest attacks followed overnight strikes that targeted wheat storage facilities and an agricultural water pumping station.
Speaking on Tuesday evening following earlier attacks, and the renewal of US imperialism’s blockade against Iran, a clearly agitated Trump threatened to escalate the war on Iran in the coming days.
Trump said ‘We will hit Iran very hard tonight. We will hit them very hard tomorrow night, and the night after that. Next week will be very bad for them.’
Trump then went on to threaten to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants unless Tehran returned to negotiations.
This is not the first time Trump has issued such threats.
In April he threatened to bomb Iran ‘back to the stone age’ with threats to target Iranian energy infrastructure and desalination facilities unless Iran submitted to US domination. Trump failed to make good his threats of turning Iranian civilisation to dust.
After launching an unprovoked and illegal war, along with its Israeli ally, US imperialism has failed to achieve any victory. It failed to carry out the regime change promised by Trump and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, and significantly failed to secure control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Responding to the attacks launched by US imperialism, Iran declared the Straits of Hormuz closed ‘until further notice’ over the unauthorised use of the strategic waterway by a container ship.
Iran is insisting the Strait, which carried over 20% of the world’s oil and gas supplies along with other items vital to the manufacturing and agricultural industries, will remain closed until America and its allies end their intervention in the region.
IRNA issued a statement saying, ‘The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one.’
Meanwhile Iran has responded to the wave of American attacks by carrying out several rounds of drone and missile strikes against US assets across the region.
In his Fox News interview on Tuesday Trump refused to rule out a ground campaign in Iran, although he was careful to say unspecified allied forces could seize key strategic sites like Kharg island without the involvement of US troops.
Trump said he would consider a ground operation ‘If I thought it was appropriate’, adding: ‘Sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people who will do the ground campaign for us’.
Kharg Island handles around 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports and serves as the primary source of the country’s oil revenue.
Where will Trump find ‘other people’ to invade a tiny island 15 miles off Iran’s Gulf coast and well within range of Iranian missiles and drones?
Presumably Trump is thinking of drafting in his NATO allies to provide the cannon fodder for the US failed war in order to defeat Iran militarily and also its failure to strangle the country economically.
Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian responded to Trump’s threats saying that hostile rhetoric from Iran’s enemies was nothing new and questioning whether they had achieved any of their objectives ‘on the ground’.
He said; ‘Those who sought to tear our Iran apart and break this nation into pieces, where have they ended up? What have they actually achieved on the ground?’
What has been achieved is that US imperialism has been exposed, in all its weakness, as totally unable to re-order the world through military might.
The attempt by Trump to regain complete control over the Middle East region has accelerated the world capitalist economic crisis by driving up energy costs, and upending the entire global supply lines that tens of millions of people across the world rely on.
The working class in the US, UK, Europe and throughout the world are expected to bear the cost of capitalism going headlong over a cliff into economic recession and collapse.
The time has come for the working class to use its full strength to put an end to bankrupt capitalism by seizing power through the victory of the world socialist revolution.
