THE Iranian foreign ministry said yesterday that Iran’s armed forces have dealt a heavy blow to US bases and assets across the region, in what was American imperialism’s latest act of aggression against Iran.
The US carried out what the Iranian foreign ministry called ‘savage attacks’ on areas in southern Iran using as a pretext the crash of one of its Apache helicopters over the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday night.
At first US president Donald Trump appeared unconcerned and indicated that this incident would not derail the ‘peace’ talks or upend the ceasefire he was forced to agree to on 8 April.
Indeed, Trump claimed this week that a ‘peace deal’ with Iran was on the verge of being signed in the next two or three days.
This was however quickly changed, when Trump declared on Wednesday that the helicopter had been deliberately shot down by Iran, and that this demanded immediate military action by the US. He wrote on his Truth Social platform that the US ‘must, of necessity, respond to this attack’.
Iran has denied the allegation that its forces caused the crash with Iran’s parliamentary national security spokesperson, Ebrahim Rezaei, noting: ‘In just two days, the Pentagon and the White House concluded that the helicopter crash in the Strait of Hormuz was Iran’s doing.’ He continued: ‘Yet 102 days have passed since the Minab school massacre, and the investigation into the killing of the Minab girls is still ongoing.’
The Minab school was targeted by multiple US missile strikes on February 28. It was an unprovoked US-Israeli strike causing the deaths of over 120 young girls – the official US investigation has yet to admit American culpability for this grotesque crime against humanity!
Late Tuesday night US forces launched waves of attacks on Iran, attacks that ended early Wednesday morning.
If Trump and his military advisors thought this show of strength would remain unanswered by Iran, then they once again badly underestimated the determination and strength of the Iranian military, the government and its people.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps announced it had launched missile attacks on four US targets in Jordan destroying a hanger used to house F-35A Lightning II fighters.
In a statement yesterday, Iran’s foreign ministry strongly condemned the ‘US crime of military aggression’ and reminded all countries in the region of their ‘legal and moral responsibility’ to prevent the US and Israeli military from using their territory and facilities to carry out aggressive actions against Iran.
BBC Middle East expert, Jeremy Bowen, interviewed yesterday on Radio 4’s Today programme, summed up the crisis engulfing Trump and US imperialism saying: ‘Donald Trump likes to feel he is the master of all he surveys (but) it is absolutely clear he has lost control of the consequences of his decision to go to war.’
Where Bowen errs is to blame Trump solely for this loss of control.
Trump may be delusional, but he was picked by the US ruling class as the saviour of a bankrupt American capitalist system that is no longer the master of the world.
Trump came to power claiming to make American capitalism great again by using overwhelming military might to crush opponents and reorganise the world under the domination of US capitalism.
Trump enjoyed all the fawning admiration of the minor capitalist nations who sought to profit by clinging to the coat tails of US imperialism.
Now unable to inflict defeat on Iran, and facing an uprising from US and workers across the UK and Europe, who are refusing to pay the price of imperialism’s failed war, Trump is once again using the military to lash out in desperation.
No social system leaves the scene of history peacefully and capitalism is no exception to this rule.
The capitalist system in its final death agony must be overthrown by the working class, who Karl Marx called the ‘gravediggers of capitalism’.
Now is the time for the working class internationally to organise its enormous strength by calling general strikes to bring down their capitalist governments and bring in workers governments and socialism. Now is the time to bury capitalism and advance humanity with the victory of the World Socialist Revolution!