DESPITE seven days of devastating non-stop aerial bombardment by the US-Israeli aggressor and their huge war machine, the defiant defence of Iran to protect their country and the gains of the Iranian revolution has brought the imperialists to the point of economic defeat as panic erupts among the world’s financial institutions.
With oil and gas prices soaring – Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) gas is up by 50 per cent – after Iran closed the vital Hormuz Strait oil transit artery, the huge reduction of fertiliser production is threatening the world’s food supply, while the debt-laden US economy is now on the verge of a massive stock market collapse.
Yesterday, Qatar’s energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, warned that the Iran conflict could ‘bring down the economies of the world’ in a new energy crisis, and predicted that all exporters in the Middle East would shut down production within weeks as a result of the war.
He predicted this would nearly double the price of a barrel of oil to more than $150, dragging down growth in global economies. It would take Qatar ‘weeks to months’ to ramp up deliveries to normal levels even if the war ended immediately.
Qatar, the world’s second-largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), was forced to halt output at its Ras Laffan plant following Iranian drone strikes.
It declared force majeure this week, excusing it from fulfilling its contractual obligations after the suspension of production.
‘This will bring down the economies of the world,’ al- Kaabi stated.
While boasting that the US-Israeli cities will intensify production for ‘four weeks or more’, US President Trump was forced to ease the sanctions on Russian oil sales to India in a bid to free up supplies.
This is just as the conflagration is spreading, and is engulfing Lebanon with the Israelis bombing Beirut and Lebanon’s southern border region, along with the continuing genocidal war on Gaza!
Ukraine has also been brought into the conflict with a desperate pro-war President Zelensky offering to supply its ‘interceptor’ drones to the US in exchange for super-expensive US Patriot missiles, as he fears that US weapons are being diverted to the Iran war from Ukraine.
In the UK, PM Keir Starmer has dispatched more jets and two helicopters to British bases in the Middle East for so-called ‘defence’. This is after U-turning on his previous denial of the US use of UK military bases in the UK and on Diego Garcia to prosecute its war on Iran, after just one day, thereby becoming fully complicit in the illegal and unprovoked war.
Condemned by Trump as a ‘loser’ for his delayed support and ‘not a Winston Churchill’, Starmer stated arrogantly that: ‘I condemn Iran’s retaliatory strikes as reckless and dangerous and urge Iran to cease attacks and pursue a diplomatic resolution.’
However, his Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy refused to rule out more British strikes on Iran.
He said that PM Starmer could change his mind about taking part in offensive military action against the regime alongside the US and Israel.
Downing Street later said that ruling out joining air strikes during a ‘fast-moving’ conflict would be ‘irresponsible’.
However, it’s the bankrupt British economy that faces devastation with surging inflation caused by skyrocketing gas and oil prices.
Rocketing global inflation will strangle the British economy, just as a raging unemployment crisis engulfs the economy. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government’s tax-and-spending watchdog, now expects unemployment to peak at 1.93 million, a 12-year high, up from a previous projection of 1.8 million. Moreover, it warned that a variety of factors – from taxes to AI – could push it even higher.
Now is the time for the working class to unite all its struggles for jobs and conditions, with stopping the war on Iran and Gaza, by forcing the trade union leaders to organise a general strike now.
This would bring down the hated Starmer Labour government and establish a workers’ government and socialism in Britain and to promote socialist revolutions across the EU and in the US.
