WHAT is being termed as a coalition of trade unions (Unison, the GMB and Amicus), charities and faith groups yesterday warned Tony Blair that any military action against Iran would have ‘unthinkable’ consequences.
This warning follows on from the warnings given by three US ex-senior officers telling Bush that war will bring a disaster to the US, particularly to its troops in Iraq, and that the best course is to turn to diplomacy.
Also in the United States, Republican and Democratic congressional representatives are banding together to try to get a resolution through congress forbidding President Bush from ordering military action against Iran without a congressional vote.
In both the US and the UK many leading figures and organisations feel that Bush is about to lead them from the disaster of the Iraq intervention into a land war in Asia which will bleed the US dry.
Such a war will emerge with a US attack on Iran, will be reflected back in the most explosive way in Iraq, especially southern Iraq, and will then spread into Syria and Lebanon to the west and Azerbaijan and Afghanistan to the east.
Such a conflict will drag in hundreds of thousands of US troops – to their graves.
The novelty of the UK effort to stop this happening is that the UK coalition is appealing to Blair to intervene with Bush to stop the war and turn to diplomacy.
There is more chance of hell freezing over.
In fact, both the US and the UK administrations have refused to rule out military action against Iran. The UK refusals have been delivered by Blair and his would be successor Brown.
Launching the coalition report ‘Time to Talk’, former Labour minister Stephen Twigg, director of the Foreign Policy Centre, said: ‘The consequences of military action against Iran are not only unpalatable, they are unthinkable.
‘Even according to the worst estimates, Iran is still years away from having a nuclear weapon.
‘There is still time to talk and the prime minister must make sure our allies use it.’
However, George Bush has already decided that Iran is behind the insurgency in Iraq, and that the only way to defeat the insurgency is to take action against Iran, using its plan to acquire nuclear power for peaceful purposes as the cause of war.
In fact, US and UK imperialism are absolutely convinced that their hold on the oil and gas resources of the Middle East and the Gulf will not be secure until the Islamic Republic of Iran has been taken down several pegs at least, with regime change not ruled out.
As is well known, the Israeli airforce is already practising dummy runs in the western Mediterranean, simulating attacks on Iran’s nuclear power facilities, while the US has moved several nuclear armed fleets to within striking distance of Iran, as well as having its air forces based on Diego Garcia.
After the experience of the destruction of Iraq by Bush and Blair, there is mass opposition to any new imperialist assault on Iran.
However, after the way that Blair ignored the massive million and two million-strong marches against the Iraq war, there is also a conviction that protest is not enough.
We notice that central to the UK coalition are the Unison, GMB and Amicus trade unions with some four million members between them.
This coalition needs to prove that it is serious.
The best way to show this is for the three big trade unions, with the support of the clerics and others in the coalition, to tell Blair-Brown that in the event of any move to attack Iran, the three trade unions will call a general strike and bring tens of millions out onto the streets, to bring down their government and go forward to a workers’ government that will withdraw all troops from the Middle East and the Gulf.
Anything less than this will be a betrayal.
