The measures, rationalized by unsubstantiated U.S. and allied claims that Iran’s government is secretly trying to build atomic weapons, are aimed at pressuring Tehran to stop development of its nuclear industry. They have nothing to do with preventing the spread of war or of “weapons of mass destruction” in the region, as shown by Washington’s support for India’s nuclear arms program. From the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, to the unceasing threats against Iran and Syria, to the military conflict in Somalia, Washington, not Tehran, is the aggressor.

The sanctions are the latest move in a years-long U.S.-led campaign aimed at installing a more pliant regime in Iran. Washington and its allies lost a steady friend in that country when a popular revolution ended the brutal reign of the U.S.-backed shah in 1979. The current government, a bourgeois clerical regime whose anti-Semitism and other policies undermine the interests of Iran’s toilers, is not one Washington can rely on to carry out its “long war” on “terrorism.” A war whose ultimate target are working people around the world and any government that doesn’t bow its head to the dictates of the masters of finance capital.

The demand by the billionaires who rule the United States that Iran end uranium enrichment, in effect abandoning its nuclear program, reeks of imperial arrogance. A third of the world’s toilers do not have access to modern means of energy, including sections of Iran’s population. Electrification is a basic precondition for industrial and agricultural development of the semicolonial world—the majority of humanity. The governments of these countries have the sovereign right to develop the energy sources they need to bring their populations out of darkness.

The imperialist powers have effectively nullified the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by barring “nonnuclear weapons states” from developing technology and facilities needed to produce enriched uranium, the required fuel for nuclear energy. Washington and its allies have established a nuclear club that includes governments they count on to do their bidding, while denying billions access to electricity that could improve their living conditions and broaden their political horizons.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is aimed at meeting the country’s growing energy needs. While Iran’s population has doubled since the 1979 revolution, its oil production is only 70 percent of the 1979 level. What’s more, decades of imperialist domination have prevented Iran from developing modern industry. While an oil-rich nation, Iran lacks the refining capacity to turn the crude natural resource into a usable product. As a result, the country imports 43 percent of its gasoline.

Washington is the only government ever to have used nuclear weapons, when it unleashed them on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. It now has the audacity to claim it is safeguarding the world from a “nuclear threat” posed by Iran, north Korea, or other “rogue nations.”

Let’s demand: Hands off Iran! Lift the sanctions!
 
 
Related articles:
UN council imposes sanctions on Iran
Students in Iran protest president’s talk  
 
 
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