Donald Trump’s belligerent ‘last-chance’ threat to Iran to resume diplomatic talks about abandoning its nuclear programme or face US military attacks in two weeks, was dismissed immediately by Iran yesterday.
Iranian Foreign minister Abbas Araqchi defiantly declared that ‘Iran will not hold talks with the United States while Israel continues to carry out strikes.’
He added: ‘The US is a “partner to Israeli crimes against Iran” and that Iran would not come to the table with any foreign power until Israel’s attacks against the country cease,’ he told state television.
His remarks follow recent overtures from Trump, who said he has given Iran a ‘chance to negotiate’ an end to its nuclear programme.
In his statement, Araqchi added that any Iranian attacks were in ‘legitimate defence’, and that Iran did not target medical facilities.
However, the 2-week delay in US military action tells its own story and reveals not a position of strength but one of the fundamental weakness of imperialism. It does not have the strength to attack immediately, but needs time to fly in US military tanker aircraft and time to move the USS Nimitz carrier strike group into the area.
Iran is a nation of 92 million people who kicked out imperialism in the 1979 revolution, which ousted the puppet dictator Shah and nationalised the country’s huge oil and gas reserves. Imperialism, now gripped by the greatest ever crisis of the capitalist system, is driven to seize these resources through ‘regime change’ which is revealed by warmonger Israeli PM Netanyahu. Their programme is for throwing the Iranian masses back to the dark ages – at whatever the cost!
Closing the Strait of Hormuz by Iran in an all-out war will send global oil prices rocketing. Oxford Economics has said that a full-blown oil crisis of this kind will push oil to $130 a barrel, and push both global and US inflation to 6 per cent.
S&P Global Market Intelligence has said the Iranian regime may lash out at energy infrastructure across the region as a final, desperate move once it depletes its missile stock and loses its main tool of leverage.
The international commodity futures’ market instantly links the US to global oil price shocks. ‘The cost of petrol at the pump will shoot up for American motorists too in such a crisis.
‘Donald Trump may conclude that it is better to join the war and drop his bunker-buster on Fordo rather than risk a cost of living shock on his watch. But that would create a far-reaching and dangerous situation of a different kind,’ it said.
US imperialism is already entangled in proxy wars against Russia in the Ukraine and against the Palestinian nation in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, along with its allies in the UK and EU.
After its ignominious defeat in Afghanistan after 20 years, it is being defeated again. But what is clearly revealed is the international involvement of the whole world in this death agony of capitalism with the arrogant Trump believing he can march into any country and threaten to incinerate their populations.
Revolution has emerged on a world scale and the counter-revolutionary wars of imperialism to restore their rule over the former colonies and the deformed workers’ states of Russia and China, will be met by the international working class taking action in the imperialist countries to overthrow their warmonger governments and take the power and bring in socialism worldwide.
The conflict in the Middle-East and Ukraine places the whole world on the brink of a cataclysmic nuclear World War 3 which would wipe out humanity all over the globe.
What is most urgently required is the building of the revolutionary leadership of the International Committee of the Fourth International in the major imperialist countries to organise the victory of the world socialist revolution.
Capitalism is gripped by a terminal economic and political crisis which requires that the existing trade union leaders, subservient to their ruling classes, must be removed so that a new leadership can call for general strikes to remove the international bourgeoisie and establish workers’ power and socialism.
Don’t delay. Join the Workers Revolutionary Party and Young Socialists now and build sections in every country! Forward to the victory of the World Socialist Revolution!