Letter: Contrasting tones about Iran (2026)

Letter to the Editors from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Contrasting tones about Iran

Dear Editors

I was struck by the contrasting tones of your February and April editorials. Whereas the more recent editorial argues that the ‘attack on Iran must be understood not as an isolated moral crime, but as a predictable consequence of the global system in which all states operate’, the earlier piece is an emotionally charged condemnation of the violent suppression of protests by the ‘mad mullahs’ and their ‘army of police thugs’. The author seems to anticipate, almost gleefully, that when the leaders of the ‘regime’ finally lose their tenuous grip on power they ‘won’t expect mercy’ and ‘damn well won’t deserve any’. Perhaps recognizing the overcharged rhetoric of the editorial, the author inserts a boilerplate paragraph at the end, bemoaning the ‘slaughter’ taking place elsewhere that is attributed to the ‘competitive market system which sets humans forever against each other, just so that a tiny few can profit’. True enough, but this does not shed much light on the recent protests.

Given that the protests began over economic issues, some mention could have been made of the role of economic sanctions and the collapse of the Iranian currency (which US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took credit for in remarks made at Davos). The reasons why the protests turned violent must also be considered on a more sophisticated level than simply saying that the police always go in ‘with guns blazing’. In light of how often violent repression of protests backfires (eg, Minneapolis 2025), such an approach, as government policy, would be as moronic as it would be mad. Were all of the blazing guns in the hands of the Iranian police? This question should at least be considered in light of the clear and longstanding US and Israeli policy of ‘regime change’ in Iran by any means.

And since the author goes all the way back to the 1979 revolution, in listing up past protests, why not also mention a few of the efforts made to topple the Iranian ‘regime’, starting from the full US backing and arming of Iraq’s 1980 invasion of Iran and the eight-year war that followed. The assassinations of Iranian political leaders and scientists, the tearing up of the JCPOA nuclear deal, the Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, and not one but two sneak attacks during negotiations may also be relevant in assessing why the hard-liners have triumphed over the liberal wing of the Iranian ruling class. On a deeper level, it would be helpful to say a word or two about why the US and Israel have been so hell-bent on regime change in Iran.

Putting the recent protests in this historical and geopolitical context does not mean siding with the Iranian leadership, however. There is an obvious distinction between understanding the grounds for a certain behavior and justifying it. Explaining why capitalists behave the way they do did not make Marx an apologist for capitalism. Similarly, when the April editorial states that ‘the United States, Israel, and Iran each act to defend and expand their economic, political, and military power’, I do not take this as a justification for war.

But even the April editorial, for all its truths (or truisms), is not much help to a reader trying to understand the US and Israeli war against Iran. It is remarkable that it does not contain even a single concrete example of the ‘regional and strategic interests’ of Iran or what sort of ‘influence, resources, and strategic advantage’ is being sought by the US and Israel. If the author had cut out some of the repetition in the editorial, surely there would have been space to list one or two of the ‘structural drivers of conflict’ (the author’s jargon – not mine). Doing so might have helped us understand why the Americans and Israelis are acting in ways that make the ‘mad mullahs’ look like the adults in the room

Michael Schauerte

Reply:

As with much socialist activity, editorials are shared endeavours, so the tone and style can vary. They are short topical commentaries, not in-depth articles, and perspectives can also vary. Rather than an objective and dispassionate overview, the February editorial was a more visceral response to what had only recently taken place and which was, after all, a monstrous slaughter by anyone’s reckoning. We make no apology for that response, as socialists always take the side of the oppressed against the oppressors.

Of course it’s true that economic issues, and US sanctions, played an important part in the protests, but economics isn’t everything. The point of listing every Iranian working-class protest since 1979 was to show how much workers hate the theocratic regime, and how astonishingly brave they have been in fighting it.

On the regional geopolitical situation there is of course much to say, and one can always criticise analysis for not being thorough enough. Whole books will no doubt be written on the madness of King Trump and the cynical and perfidious power-plays of the US – now a net fossil fuel exporter and thus less affected by energy consequences; Israel’s expansionism promoted as a quest for survival and its premier’s self-promoting quest for political survival in order to stay out of the courtroom; the Iranian regime’s own destabilisation programme via proxy forces in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen; the sometimes conflicting axes of republican versus monarchist and Sunni versus Shia; the manoeuvrings of Russia and China behind the scenes; the complex web of rivalries and proxy conflicts among the Gulf states themselves, and the spectre of nuclear war that hangs over the whole region if and when Iran matches Israel and finally produces a bomb; all of this against the shifting backdrop of a global decarbonisation agenda and the consequent long-term reorientation of goals and priorities by local rentier/capitalist elites facing their own impending irrelevance and possible extinction. A couple of editorials can hardly be expected to cover everything, but there’s always room for contributors to add further illumination in future issues.— Editors.

Editorial: Weapons of mass destruction – now they tell us (2004)

Editorial from the August 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the UN Charter, states have to find a legal pretext before they going to war. The pretext that the governments of America and Britain, acting on behalf of their capitalist class, found for going to war against Iraq last year was that the Iraqi state possessed “weapons of mass destruction” that were an immediate threat to America and Britain’s allies and military bases in the Middle East.

It has now turned out that this was a bad choice of pretext as recent official reports in both countries are admitting that the intelligence reports about this were wrong: Iraq did not possess such weapons. We hold no brief for the “intelligence” services but it does seem a little unfair to blame them for telling their political masters what they wanted to hear.

So where does this leave matters?  It’s common knowledge that the real reason America and Britain went to war was oil – to acquire and secure a reliable source of this key fuel to meet the growing demands of capitalist industry in the West. Under the Saddam regime Iraq was not a reliable source and, in any event, its production and the renewal of its equipment was limited by UN sanctions. In addition, America wanted to add to its military bases in the area, to protect Caspian as well as Middle East oil sources. A useful spin-off, though not the cause of the war, was that America could show to other states, such as France, Germany, Russia and China that unlike Britain were not prepared to fall in line, that it was the top dog in the world.

No doubt if Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction this would have been a good capitalist reason for going to war, but only because these weapons would have been held by a state which represented a threat to the security of oil supplies. That weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East as such were not the issue can be seen from the fact that no preventive strikes have been planned, or even dreamed of, against the one state in the region known to possess them – Israel – but then Israel is no threat to oil supplies. On the contrary: it was allowed to come into existence and has been propped up by the US precisely to counter such threats from potentially anti-US Arab regimes.

The same goes for the “nasty dictator” argument. Certainly, Saddam was nasty enough, but there are plenty of other nasty regimes in the area, the worst being America’s main ally there, Saudi Arabia, which is still a mediaeval despotism.

Once the war started the outcome was in no doubt: a walk-over for America and Britain. The Saddam regime was overthrown and a friendly puppet regime installed in its place. Saddam himself was eventually captured and a big show trial is planned (at an American military base). The verdict is in no doubt, though the new puppet regime may well shy away from killing him – lest it set a precedent for them should their turn to be overthrown come. This is “victors’ justice” as, technically, Bush and Blair could also be charged with war crimes for going to war without a proper legal basis as well as for murdering and torturing Iraqi prisoners of war. But that’s not going to happen, of course.

The lesson of all this is that wars are fought today over economic matters such as sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investment outlets, and strategic points to protect these. Since competition over these is built into capitalism, so is war. But, in order to get popular support for a war, governments have to come up, these days, with plausible “humanitarian” and “democratic” reasons. The homage paid by vice to virtue. Socialists say: don’t be taken in by such propaganda. As long as capitalism lasts there will be wars, threats of war and preparations for war as well as government lies about the reasons for going to war.

Wars and preparations for war mean destruction and waste in a world that is capable of providing enough to provide every man, woman and child on the planet with decent food, clothing, housing, health care, education and all the other amenities of life. But this is not going to happen within the framework of capitalism, with its class ownership and production for profit. It is only going to be possible within the framework of world socialism, where the Earth’s resources will have become the common heritage of all humanity, to be used, under democratic control, to provide for the needs of all.

World View: Yes, inaction is not an option (2002)

From the April 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

“What the Pentagon has done with this is sound military conceptual planning.” This was the US Secretary Colin Powell commenting on the leaked 50 page Pentagon report entitled: “Nuclear Posture Review” – proof, if ever it was needed, that the lunatics have finally taken over the asylum.

What was so special about this “Review”? It contained contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons on seven countries that the US claim are the biggest threat to world peace: China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria and Libya. It orders the US military to plan for the use of smaller nuclear weapons, suggests the arming of Cruise missiles with nuclear warheads and identifies four instances when the US must launch a nuclear attack: an Arab-Israeli conflict, war between China and Taiwan, an attack by North Korea on South Korea and an attack by Iraq on any of its neighbours.

Coming within a year of the US trashing of numerous international treaties regarding weapons proliferation and, bearing in mind the US response to the 11 September attack on mainland USA and the belligerent tone of President Bush’s recent State of the Union Address, this is news to be taken seriously. It hints at US unilateralism and a new era of unchecked US aggression in defence of the interests of its corporate elite.

Such US aspirations, however, are not recent, for they can be traced right back to the 1820s and the “Monroe Doctrine”, which announced that the Americas belonged to the USA. Now, all US excesses can be rationalised by a quick thumb over the shoulder in the direction of Ground Zero. The US, having suffered considerable loss of life in the 11 September attack last year, have found in that atrocity the pretext to pursue their goal of “full spectrum dominance” – military domination of the world.

No sooner was this news out, when US vice president Dick Cheney flew off for a ten-day tour of the Middle East. Though ostensibly the trip was an attempt to iron out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, few commentators did not suggest that the real reason for the visit was to drum up support for a full-scale attack upon Iraq . Prior to his visit to the Middle East he stopped over in Britain to ask a complacent Tony Blair whether he could afford any US attack on Iraq 25,000 British troops.

The signs of a coming US attack upon Iraq have been visible for some time now. For months, US military instructors have been in northern Iraq training Kurdish fighters. Five thousand mothballed military vehicles in Kuwait have been overhauled and 24 Apache attack helicopters have arrived in Kuwait. Moreover, In the wake of the recent anthrax scare, investigators worked round the clock in a desperate and futile bid to find the Saddam link, before concluding it was probably the work of a home-grown crank. And in recent weeks, Washington has continually reminded us that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and must be prevented from using them, whilst negligent of reports from the UN Special Commission that Iraq’s arsenal is now down to 5 percent of its 1990 level and seemingly oblivious to questions relating to how he has amassed such deadly weapons, considering the stringent sanctions which even outlaw the export of ping-pong balls to Iraq.

Twelve years after the war with Iraq, the US now looks serious about “regime change”. Back then though the overthrow of Saddam was not part of the US agenda. Having initially led the Kurds of northern Iraq and the Marsh Arabs of the South into believing that they would get US support if they rose up against Saddam, they then sat back and watched as Saddam almost annihilated them. It had occurred to them that Saddam might be holding the country together, stopping the spread of militant Islam, and that an Iraq minus Saddam might divide into warring factions and further threaten US interests in the region.

US allies in the Middle East – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – have shown little enthusiasm for US plans for Iraq, all voicing reservations and fearful of the consequences. Turkey, another US ally, who has many times loaned its airfields to the US for its operations against Iraq, believes its economy could be damaged by any such conflict, and King Abdullah of Jordan has warned of the “catastrophic effect” that any aggression towards Iraq would have on the Middle East. Seemingly, only Tony Blair, George Bush’s cheerleader, has agreed that Saddam must be stopped, citing, in Republican fashion, Saddam’s elusive weapons of mass destruction and, like the true political amnesiac, never querying the weapons of mass destruction the US and Britain have stockpiled or the nuclear weapons in the hands of another Middle Eastern aggressor – Israel.

While the defenders of “freedom” attempt to whip up support for another Gulf War, on the pretext that Saddam Hussein is a terrorist, the rest of us can recall that both the US and Britain backed Iraq in its war with Iran, even providing it with arms, and that they were silent when Iraq used chemical weapons on Iranians in 1984 (four months later the US even reopened its embassy in Baghdad) and again when Saddam used chemical weapons on the Kurdish village of Halabjah in 1988, killing 5,000 civilians.

And remember the ferocity of the first US war with Iraq, when Saddam invaded Kuwait and threatened US oil interests in the region? It lasted 42 days, during which time 110,000 “Coalition” aerial sorties were flown and 88,500 tons of bombs were dropped. It left an estimated 100,000 dead, including tens of thousands burnt to death retreating from Kuwait along the Basra Road. Sanctions imposed since then have devastated Iraqi civil society and have killed over 1.5 million including 500,000 children under the age of five – results the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide classifies as “genocidal conduct” and a convention the US refuses to comply with.

When asked what he estimated the number of Iraqi dead were after the first Gulf War, Colin Powell remarked: “Frankly, that’s a number that doesn’t interest me much”. His predecessor, Madeline Albright, when asked to comment on the half a million Iraqi children that had died of starvation disease and replied: “the price is worth it.” These are the type of people calling the shots in Washington, working closely with the Pentagon and the White House and in the interests of world peace!

When we recall the horror of the first Gulf War and juxtapose it with the statements of successive US Secretaries of State and indeed the recent revelation that the US will hit with a nuclear weapon whoever it wishes, regardless of international opinion, we realise that the job of securing world peace can never be left to politicians. Defending the belligerent stance of the US, George Bush recently said that “inaction is not an option.” It’s a sentiment shared by socialists. For it is the inaction and complacency of the working class that enables such horrendous injustices to go on. For almost a century we have warned of the dangers of political apathy, of trusting in leaders, of accepting all that governments say without question. Our silence, more than anything, is what Bush and Blair and Co. will depend on in coming months, that same silence the master class toasts each day. Our inaction is an important element in our continuing exploitation, for the master class see in it our consent for their excesses.

As the saying goes, it takes two to tango. Capitalism may well breed war, but our apathy is very much a part of the process. Bear the above in mind in coming months when the US fleet heads off to the Gulf.

John Bissett

After Iraq, Iran? (2012)

From the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

CND is deluding itself if it thinks that a capitalism free from nuclear weapons is possible.

CND are in support of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Middle East and the future UN conference on this matter. On 13 October they will be holding a special International Conference – ‘Building towards a Nuclear Weapons-Free Middle East: Civil Society input for a new Helsinki Process’. At which Professor Abbas Edalat of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) has been invited.

Professor Edalat was the main speaker at a CND  public meeting at Conway Hall in Central London in July on the question; ‘Iran – Why is the West preparing it’s public for a new war in the Middle East?’ His organisation, CASMII, is said to support the Iranian Reform Movement which was in power in Tehran 1997-2005 and has a bourgeois ‘middle class’ base. But where do Professor Edalat and CND stand in relation to capitalism and war?

Edalat began with the quote “the road to Tehran goes via Baghdad” which is that regime change is the goal of the West, that oil resources are the reason but the pretext is that Iran’s nuclear programme is a threat. He identified the USA and Israel as the real threat in the region. It appears Edalat understands that wars in capitalism are about competition over sources of energy. Even capitalist economist Keynes recognised that “the competitive struggle for markets” was the major factor in “the economic causes of war”.

Edalat spoke of the economic sanctions against Iran which he said hit the “pro-western middle classes” whereas the “poor and lower classes” are looked after by handouts and subsidies from the state. It is understandable that the leftist exile group Hands Off the People of Iran criticise CASMII for being opposed to the interests of “workers, progressives and democrats”. It is interesting that Hands Off were excluded from the Stop the War Coalition, and that Stop the War have adopted CASMII’s resolution on Iran.lat pointed out that Iran’s breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was “minor” in that it was a failure to disclose a single receipt of low emission uranium purchased from China. He concluded that military intervention in Iran would mean that the Iranian people would lose out, there would be an oil price rise, disastrous effects for the world economy, and that there was an urgent need to debunk the western media discourse about Iran.

CND are developing a campaign against the threat of war against Iran. CND opposed UK involvement in the nuclear-armed NATO wars of ‘liberal interventionism’ such as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. This attitude raises the question: do CND support some wars within capitalism? What about UK intervention in the civil war in Sierra Leone? Kate Hudson at CND identifies that US intervention in the Middle East is a “brazen pursuit of national interests”. In fact these are western capitalist interests.

Can international co-operation take place within capitalism? The 1946 Baruch Plan initiated by the US for all nuclear fuel production to be under the control of an international agency was not realised because of USSR opposition. CND have identified that the “preventative military intervention” against Iran for not meeting NPT obligations is a smokescreen for US desires for regime change in Iran. They see the parallels with the build-up to the Iraq War. Kate Hudson at CND believes that “concerted, transparent and productive diplomatic negotiations” will lead to a solution. Within capitalism this really seems quite unlikely. Western capitalist interests want regime change in Iran in order to open the country up to free market capitalism. Edalat would like a liberal bourgeois capitalist Iran in the western mould.

In the pursuit of the interests of the capitalist class, the state will in Brecht’s note to Mother Courage, “make war as a continuation of business by other means” which is a variation on Clausewitz’s “War is the continuation of politics by other means”. Interestingly Sun Tzu 6th century BC book The Art of War is used today in western capitalism as a handbook for corporate strategy in achieving profits.

War existed in the class societies before capitalism where they were caused by absolute shortages and scarcities. In capitalism there are artificial scarcities, and overproduction which cause competitive accumulation and leads to war. War in capitalism is an inevitable result of the quest for profit and competition between capitalist interests for markets, raw materials, energy supplies, trade routes, and exploitable peoples. The cause of wars in the Middle East has been the oil-importing countries’ need to have dependable oil supplies.

Recently the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) published a study which shows the link between capitalism and war by identifying 322 banks and financial institutions that are funding nuclear weapons development and manufacture such as Barclays, Lloyd’s, HSBC, and RBS.

CND, Stop the War, ICAN, and CASMII do not identify capitalism as the cause of war but believe certain types of wars and weapons should be opposed and that reforms to capitalism by abolishing nuclear weapons will make the world a nicer place in which to do business and make profits. It is ironic that CND used footage from the film The War Game in its recruitment campaign when the footage was of the Allied ‘conventional’ bombing of Dresden which was more destructive in terms of fatalities than the atom bomb at Nagasaki.

All wars in capitalism are in the interests of the capitalist class and the working class are the victims and cannon fodder of capitalist war. The abolition of global capitalism and the transformation to world socialism will remove the causes of war.

Steve Clayton

Editorial: Middle East - Wars Without End (2014)

Editorial from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The collapse 25 years ago of US rivals for world domination, the Russian state-capitalist empire, was hailed as a step forward for humanity by the US and its bloc of Western capitalist states. Their ideologues proclaimed the end of history and the beginning of an era of peace and free trade in a world of democratic states.

It hasn’t turned out like that and was never going to. Capitalism is a system which has a built-in conflict between states, and the capitalist groups they represent, over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investment outlets and areas to secure or protect these. Usually this takes place economically and through diplomacy but, when a state feels that its vital economic interests in one of these fields is under real threat, they resort to war.

Their rivals defeated, the United States and some of the others in the Western capitalist bloc felt confident enough to intervene militarily to overthrow regimes that were hostile to it even though they didn’t really constitute a real immediate threat to their vital economic interests. Which is why some of the states in the bloc were opposed to this. But the attacks went ahead. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan was overthrown. Then the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Then the Gaddafi regime in Libya. All were toppled, though after 14 years of war the Taliban have not been crushed and the Western powers are preparing to call it a day and withdraw their troops without victory. Next up for regime change was Syria. After that it was to be a much tougher nut, Iran.

The Western capitalist bloc stirred up a civil war in Syria and now they are reaping the whirlwind – a fanatical Islamist movement which has conquered parts of Syria and has now invaded Iraq and whose ultimate aim is to drive the West out of the Middle East. Panic stricken, the West has now appealed to Iran to help them out. No doubt Iran will seize the opportunity to steal a march on its main rival for regional hegemony, Saudi Arabia.

Tony Blair is claiming that this has nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 which he tricked his cabinet and parliament into backing. But nobody believes him. It is a continuation of the same battle for control of the Middle East and its oil resources that has gone on ever since the end of the Second World War, with crisis after crisis and war after war.

The West's rivals for the control of the Middle East oilfields and the trade routes needed to get the oil out – as well as of the strategic areas and points to protect these – have been sections of the local capitalist class in the region. The ideology they used, to begin with, to get a mass following was an anti-imperialist nationalism which had a left-wing tinge and even employed a ’socialist’ terminology. This was the ideology of Nasser in Egypt, the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq, and the PLO in the 1970s. Since the collapse of the Russian state-capitalist bloc, Islamic fundamentalism has emerged as the dominant ideology of those who want local capitalist, rather than Western imperialist, control of the oil resources of the Middle East. Hardly a step forward for humanity. In many ways, rather the opposite.