Missiles, ostensibly aimed at targets in Iraq, have struck towns and areas across the border in Iran. U.S. and British warplanes have repeatedly violated Iran’s airspace in defiance of the Iranian government’s order declaring its territory off limits to the imperialist invaders.

Washington continues to publicly build its case--and privately prepare--for war against Iran. U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Tehran March 28 of supporting Iranian "proxies" inside Iraq, which his forces will treat as enemy combatants.

In response, Tehran, which had been cautious so far in its statements on the U.S.-led invasion next door, began to adopt a more openly hostile stance. Iran’s foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi told a March 30 news conference in Tehran that his government "will not support a government in Baghdad installed by America." The invaders, Kharrazi stated, "thought they would be welcome in Iraq, but Iraqi people are greeting them with suicide attacks.... The U.S.-led forces miscalculated the situation. It appears that more difficult days await the invading forces."

Rumsfeld had threatened two days earlier that the Badr Corps, an Iraqi Shiite Muslim militia with forces in northern Iraq, will be "treated as combatants" by the U.S.-led forces and "we will hold the Iranian government responsible for their actions."

The Badr Corps is a militia with ties to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SICRI), based in the Shia population. They are comprised of about 15,000 fighters, some based in two areas of northern Iraq and most living in exile in Iran. The force has a history of conducting operations against the Saddam Hussein regime, primarily confined to sabotage, assassination attempts, and guerrilla warfare.

While claiming the mantle of the "liberator" of the people of Iraq, Rumsfeld made it clear that resistance to the Hussein regime by this group is unwelcome. Since it is "not under the direct operational control of [U.S.] General [Thomas] Franks," the Badr Corps "will be taken as a potential threat to coalition forces," Rumsfeld declared.

"We don’t see the need to get a permission from the Americans to topple the oppressive regime in our country," said Mohsen Hakim, a leader of SICRI. "Badr Brigade includes children of Iraqi people. It has been fighting in the past 20 years to see the fall of the Iraqi regime."

Iranian government officials dismissed Washington’s warnings. "Rumsfeld is making propaganda to cover up his lack of success in this war," Iranian government spokesman Abdullah Ramazanzadeh told Reuters March 29. "We won’t go into this meaningless war, neither for or against either side." He added that "The Badr Brigade’s decisions have nothing to do with Iran. They are independent, like any other Iraqi opposition group."

About 100 U.S. Special Forces troops, along with 10,000 Kurdish fighters, reportedly attacked and took over several villages in northeastern Iraq near the Iranian border March 28. Intensive bombing by mortars, artillery, B-52’s, and fighter jets accompanied the assault. The villages were supposedly controlled by Asnar, an Iraqi group that allegedly carried out suicide bombing attacks against the invading forces the previous week. Reports in the big-business media insinuate the group has ties with Iran.

On the same day, the Financial Times of London reported that the Pentagon is quietly compiling a list of non-U.S. companies with investments in Iran’s energy sector, some of which are based in countries that are part of Washington’s "coalition of the willing." Oil companies, including Shell of the UK, Eni of Italy, and TotalElfFina of France, would be barred from U.S.-awarded contracts for the "reconstruction" of Iraq.

While its bombs and missiles wreak havoc on Iraq’s infrastructure, Washington is already looking for bidders on the first such contract, worth $900 million. Five U.S. firms are being considered.

The blacklist will "kill two birds with one stone" says an anonymous expert quoted in the article--enriching U.S. companies while at the same time fueling Washington’s war drive against Iran.

Iran’s energy industry has been at the center of the growing imperialist war campaign against Iran. Washington is targeting Tehran’s efforts to develop nuclear power to advance the development and industrialization of the country.

In February, director of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) Mohamed El Baradei declared that a nuclear plant currently under construction in Iran contained equipment that could be used in the construction of nuclear weapons in violation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, to which Iran is a signer. Baradei demanded that Tehran be subjected to random, unannounced "inspections" by United Nations snoops.

Washington then ratcheted up its war rhetoric when U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell asserted March 13 that Iran had a "far more robust nuclear weapons development program than anyone said it had."

The Iranian government has refused to agree to UN inspections, pointing to the fact that the IAEA has never fulfilled its end of the nonproliferation agreement by providing technical assistance to Iran’s nuclear power projects.  
 
Iranian people oppose invasion of Iraq
On March 21, a missile fired by British troops attempting to occupy the Iraqi city of Basra crashed into a building owned by the Iranian oil ministry in Abadan, just 30 miles east of Basra, injuring three people. Abadan was one of the cities that suffered during Baghdad’s invasion in the 1980s. Many in the area, however, are increasingly opposed to the U.S.-led invasion.

"I personally know many who would go to fight for Iraq; we’re just waiting for the call to jihad, and for Iran to open the border," said Qassem Khatamian, an Abadan shopkeeper. "We don’t want to fight for Saddam, but for our people, our oil, and our land. It has nothing to do with him."

In the first major protest against the invasion of Iraq, hundreds of thousands filled the streets of Tehran March 28, following Friday prayers. A group of demonstrators marched to the British embassy and threw stones at its windows shouting, "The British embassy must be closed!" Washington has not had an embassy in Iran since it severed diplomatic relations with Tehran following the revolutionary upsurge that drove the U.S.-imposed monarchy from power in 1979.

At the same time, 15,000 people marched in Cairo, Egypt, against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The largest protests by Palestinians in support of Iraq took place in the occupied territories as tens of thousands rallied in Gaza and across the West Bank. On the other side of the Jordan river, rolling demonstrations took place in Amman and throughout the country.

These actions are also taking more and more of a protest character against the local regimes in a number of majority Arab countries, where the governments have gone along with Washington’s onslaught to one degree or another.

The Jordanian government, for example, reported that 55 demonstrations in defense of Iraq took place the March 22–23 weekend in the kingdom, including sharp clashes with the police in the city of Maan, and in the Palestinian Al-Wihdat refugee camp. A representative of the monarchy sought to put the best face on the situation, saying the demonstrations showed that Jordan "is a democratic country."  
 
 
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