Vol. 77/No. 44      December 9, 2013

Working people the world over should join in demanding that Washington and its allies lift all economic and financial sanctions against Iran. U.S. imperialism seeks to strangle Iran’s economy and impose maximum hardship on the population to force the Iranian government to comply with its demands.

Any alleviation of this condition will help the confidence and fighting capacity of workers and farmers. The interim deal reached between Tehran, Washington and its imperialist allies in France, the U.K. and Germany, as well as with the Russian and Chinese governments, will lift a small part of the massive web of sanctions in place, but its crippling effects will continue to weigh on working people.

At the same time, a de-escalation of tensions makes it easier for working people to carve out political space to resist the bosses’ attacks on their living conditions and press for greater rights.

Working people in the U.S. and other imperialist countries should champion the right of semicolonial nations to expand electrification, including the use of nuclear power, which is crucial for development of industry, agriculture, medicine and culture.

U.S. imperialism, the world’s greatest hypocrite, selectively dictates to nations like Iran and North Korea that they have no right to nuclear technology, lest they seek to develop nuclear weapons. All the while, Washington sits atop the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, the only power to ever use this tool of mass murder, against the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nuclear weapons have only one purpose — to kill millions of innocent people. Their existence and possession by any government are antithetical to the interests of toiling humanity.

The Cuban Revolution — from the battles that led to its victory in 1959, transforming the country’s workers and farmers into the authors of their own history, to today — has set an example of working-class morality, rejecting outright the use of any tactics that target the innocent. For decades revolutionary Cuba has defended itself by relying on the political consciousness and mobilization of millions of workers and farmers — and no nation in the world can claim to have done a better job at staying the imperialists’ hand.

“Our nuclear weapon is the invincible power of moral weapons,” Fidel Castro said in 2005. “Weapons to combat death, to combat AIDS, to combat diseases, to fight against cancer, that’s what we dedicate our resources to.”

End all imperialists sanctions against Cuba, Iran and North Korea!
 
 
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US-Tehran deal opens space for Iran workers
 
 
 
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