IRAN’S retaliatory strike against Israel, launched on Saturday, has provoked an outpouring of hypocrisy from the imperialist nations and their tame media outlets.
How dare Iran strike back against imperialism’s Zionist attack dog in the Middle East! they scream as the Western nations reel under the impact of a direct military challenge to their supposed supremacy that confers on the Israeli state the right to bomb sovereign nations and murder over 33,000 Palestinians with absolute impunity.
In all the outrage from the US, UK and their European allies, the fact that Iran was responding to an Israeli missile attack on the Iranian embassy and consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus on April 1st killing seven Iranian military officers is swept aside.
As the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, told members of the UN Security Council on Sunday: ‘What happened on the night of April 14 did not happen in a vacuum’.
Nebenzia accused the UN Security Council itself of being responsible for the Iranian retaliation attack by its refusal to take any action against Israel over its flagrant violation of all the UN rules when it carried out its illegal bombing of the Iranian embassy which, under international law, is designated as Iranian territory.
Nebenzia contrasted this inaction with what would be the response if a Western power’s embassy had been attacked by another state, saying: ‘We know full well that an attack against a diplomatic representation is a casus belli (an act that justifies a war) under international law.’
He added: ‘When it comes to other countries, their rights – including the right to self-defence – well that’s a different matter’.
This hypocrisy was underlined by the Tory foreign secretary David Cameron during his round of the TV and radio stations yesterday morning, condemning Iran for its ‘reckless and dangerous’ attack on Israel.
Interviewed on Sky News however, Cameron was backed into a corner when asked point blank: ‘What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates?’
Cameron replied: ‘Well, we would take strong action’ but still insisting he understood why Israel had attacked the Iranian embassy out of ‘frustration’.
The ‘frustration’ of the Zionist regime, shared by its imperialist backers, is that after six months of genocidal war that has claimed the lives of over 33,000 Palestinians, the majority being women and children, the Israeli military have not only failed to crush Palestinian resistance but have ignited an ‘axis of resistance’ across the entire Middle East region and beyond into the working class and masses of the world.
This has thrown the imperialist nations led by the US into a state of panic, with president Joe Biden repeating his ‘ironclad’ commitment to Israel while appealing to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to take further action that could ignite a war that would set the region ablaze.
Biden’s call for restraint doesn’t stop the US from pumping more arms into Israel, and preparing for just such a war in an attempt to reimpose American dominance over the region.
The International Monetary Fund and top US bankers have been issuing increasingly dire warnings that a war in the oil-rich Middle East would be catastrophic for the world capitalist economy.
The working class is expected to pay for this war, as the bosses and bankers attempt to dump the cost onto the backs of workers and their families as capitalism dives off the cliff into a Great Depression that the IMF is so fearful of.
Such a catastrophic crisis would lead to a revolutionary uprising by the tens of millions of workers and youth in the US, UK and Europe who have steadfastly supported the Palestinian fight against occupation, for the independent state of Palestine, and who will not tolerate an imperialist war against Iran to support the Zionist regime.
The time has come for the working class to take decisive action to put an end to imperialist war and genocide by demanding their trade union leaders immediately call general strikes to bring down their governments that support and encourage the Zionist regime, replacing them with workers’ governments and socialism.
This is the way to end imperialist war – with the victory of the world socialist revolution.
