Washington’s devastating bombardment of Iran is aimed at restoring stability for the U.S. rulers to plunder the Middle East. They’re unleashing unmatched U.S. air and naval power, believing they can impose their domination in the region with no unintended consequences; push back Beijing, their main rival; and strengthen their declining place as top dog in the imperialist world order.
In fact, the U.S. war on Iran and the reaction to it in Europe, Canada and elsewhere, has shone a spotlight on the escalating conflicts among rival capitalist ruling classes that mark all politics today. And it is intensifying them.
The war has sharpened rifts between Washington and its weaker imperialist “allies,” fraying the U.S.-led NATO military bloc. The governments of Spain and the U.K. took their distance from Washington’s war moves, with Madrid refusing to let Washington use military bases on its soil. Along with the French government, they condemned the U.S. bombing.
The war has widened the U.S. rulers’ deepgoing antagonism with its chief rival in Beijing. The Chinese rulers are getting pushed back by Washington in Latin America and are now losing oil supplies from Iran, vital for their economy. Like most other Asian powers, Beijing has little oil resources to exploit at home. The rulers in Turkey hope to seize on Tehran’s weakened position to advance their own reach across the Middle East, providing the U.S. rulers with new challenges.
For Israel, the war has a far different meaning — the opportunity to deal blows to Tehran’s decadeslong drive to destroy the state that offers refuge for Jews worldwide.
Whatever the war’s outcome, it will not prevent the accelerating drive of capitalist governments everywhere to expand their militaries, including nuclear weapons and new space-based weaponry.
In the imperialist epoch, capitalism can no longer play any progressive role. Each competing capitalist ruling class is forced to fight to redivide the world at the expense of all others, in ever-more deadly conflicts, as they did leading up to the last two world wars. The crisis of their system breeds not only war, but Jew-hating violence tied to the rise of fascist forces.
All capitalist governments worldwide are drawn into this dog-eat-dog competition — whether U.S., China or members of the BRICS bloc of so-called middle powers, all hustling to find new corners of the world they can exploit. The conflicts unfolding today are a product of the intrinsic workings of capitalism. They cannot be ameliorated by the U.N., “international law” or any other supposed supra-state savior.
As wars proliferate in the Middle East, between the rulers in Pakistan and Afghanistan, across Africa and elsewhere, the stakes rise for the working class — the only social class capable of preventing the rulers marching us toward a third world war.
As the capitalist crisis deepens it increasingly breeds struggles by working people in the tens of millions, alongside battles for national liberation by peoples oppressed by capitalist domination.
In these struggles, workers will have our chance to forge the leadership we need, one that is capable of uniting working people of all religions, nationalities and languages, to fight to wrest power from the capitalist war makers and chart a road toward a socialist world, the only road to a lasting peace. To be part of the fight for peace you should join the Socialist Workers Party in advancing this course.