IRAN’S Army chief has defiantly dismissed US President Donald Trump’s threat to hit scores of Iranian sites, if Iran hits back after the US terrorist attack that murdered General Soleimani, Iran’s chief military cadre, saying the Americans lack the ‘courage’ to make good on such a spurious promise.
The remarks by Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi yesterday came a day after Trump threatened to target 52 sites, some ‘at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture’ if Tehran avenged the US assassination of the top military commander.
Iran’s judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said the US assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani was a flagrant violation of international law as he was targeted while being in Baghdad as a ‘formal’ and ‘high-profile’ guest of the Iraqi government.
Speaking to Radio Tehran, the spokesperson said that the killing of an invitee of a sovereign government by ‘a foreign country illegally present’ in Iraq constituted a ‘blatant instance of government terrorism’.
‘This was a barbaric act which goes against human rights and violates all international laws,’ he said.
‘As the judiciary, we will pursue this crime through international bodies alongside the Foreign Ministry and the High Council of Human Rights,’ Esmaili added.
US Senator Bernie Sanders should be demanding that Trump be impeached for this cold-blooded murder before being consigned to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
In fact, the US terrorist attack was on a ‘sitting duck’, who they knew would be there on that date at the invitation of the Iraqi government. It was a coldblooded mafia-style killing of a completely illegal nature, that ignored the Iraqi government completely.
What the US operation was all about was revealed in Trump’s threat to hit 52 Iranian sites and that the 52 figure came from the 52 US hostages that were held by students at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, a seizure that concluded the Iranian revolution that overthrew the US’ great friend, the Shah.
The US has never recovered from the results of the 1979 revolution and Trump’s terror attacks are an expression of US imperialism’s desperation to destroy the Iranian revolution and return some new Shah to his throne and the Iranian people to slavery.
Iran is not going to back down to Trump’s threats. The US president is going to have to carry out his threats to level the Iranian economy, and bomb the oil refineries.
The Iranian workers have every right to defend their country and their economy from being destroyed by US imperialism.
It is the raging worldwide crisis of capitalism that is driving Trump’s programme to strangle the Iranian and then the Palestinian revolutions to take over the oil resources, and return to the rule of the feudalists in the Middle East.
The prospect is that Trump will continue his campaign to drive the pro-Iran wing out of the Iraqi government, and is looking for some general to do the dirty work for him. There is also no doubt that the Arab and Islamic masses will burn the oilfields and block the Strait of Hormuz to bring the western economies to a halt in that event.
British workers must not allow what happened in 2003 with Blair’s lying terror attack with Bush on Iraq. British workers must demand that all UK-US troops, ships and aircraft are withdrawn from the Middle East.
The working class must demand that the TUC call a general strike to stop British troops, ships and planes going to the Gulf and the Middle East.
If US-UK intervention brings a new three-day week to the UK, the TUC must be made to call a general strike to bring down the Johnson government and bring in a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bring in a nationalised and planned socialist economy.
The US working class must be urged to take the same road to power. This is the way forward. Join the WRP and the YS now to organise and lead the coming British socialist revolution as part of the world socialist revolution!
