PRIME Minister Tony Blair told businessmen from Britain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Dubai yesterday: ‘We must mobilise our alliance of moderation in this region and outside it to defeat the extremists.’
The leader of British imperialism, who was speaking at the end of a six-day, six-nation diplomatic tour of the Middle East, made clear that his main target was Iran, led by President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad.
Blair called on the world to ‘wake up’ to the monumental struggle between the forces of moderation and extremism, because this ideological battle was the challenge of the 21st century.
The Labour leader said: ‘We must recognise the strategic threat the government of Iran poses – not the people, possibly not all of its ruling elements, but those presently in charge of its policy.
‘They seek to pin us back in Lebanon, in Iraq and in Palestine. Our response should be to expose what they are doing, build the alliances to prevent it and pin them back across the whole of the region.’
He added: ‘We have to wake up. These forces of extremism, based on a warped and wrong-headed interpretation of Islam, aren’t fighting a conventional war, but they are fighting one against us.
‘And “us” is not just the West, still less simply America and its allies, “us” is all those who believe in tolerance, respect for others and liberty. We must mobilise our alliance of moderation in this region and outside it to defeat the extremists.’
Blair arrived in the UAE from occupied Palestine, where he endorsed the policies pursued by the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and backed Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas. The latter is attempting to depose the elected Palestinian government, led by Hamas (Islamic Resistance), by making an unconstitutional call for fresh Parliamentary elections.
The Labour leader did not exhibit any discomfort in talking about ‘liberty’ in the UAE, where the ruling royal family does not allow a Parliament. The rulers of the UAE are welcome in Blair’s ‘alliance of moderation’!
The ‘extremists’ Blair is targeting are clearly the resistance movements of Hamas, Ba’athists and others in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran.
When he talks of the ‘war’ being fought against the US, Britain and the Zionist entity of Israel, he is attempting to dupe his listeners with his talk of this being merely ‘an ideological battle’.
However, President George Bush, the leader of what Blair describes as the ‘strategic alliance’ between the US and Britain in the Middle East, is already dispatching forces to the Gulf. They are not armed with ideology, but bullets!
The Pentagon is sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf. The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D Eisenhower was sent there in September, along with four other ships and submarines, carrying a total of 6,500 sailors.
A White House spokesman said: ‘The administration has been pretty clear about Iran’s role in the region, which is that Iran has to stop being provocative.’
In Dubai, Blair, the emissary of the US-British imperialist alliance, acknowledged the defeats being suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the setbacks in Lebanon and Palestine.
These blows against their attempts to ‘re-order’ the Middle East have made the imperialists weaker and even more desperate to control this oil-rich region. Their crisis is driving them to war against Iran, the most powerful state in the area.
Blair is attempting to cobble together an ‘alliance’ of ruling monarchies, remnants of feudalism, and corrupt Arab regimes that survive on millions of dollars of so-called US ‘aid’, for the confrontation with Iran.
Already Bush, Blair and their cronies are responsible for the thousands of killings by imperialist troops and their puppet forces in the Middle East.
It is time for the British working class to put an end to the murderous, militarist Blair regime, that, alongside Bush’s administration, is responsible for sending masses of men, women and children (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon) to their graves.
The trade unions must take mass strike action to bring down this Labour government before Blair joins the White House in going to war against Iran.
Leaders of the unions who oppose this struggle must be removed and replaced. The Workers Revolutionary Party is building such a new leadership in the unions. Join the WRP today!
