Groucho Marxism

It has been less than three weeks since the US and Israel effectively declared war on Iran but already thousands have been killed and no less than 14 countries have been bombed, including Israel itself. How long the war will continue is not clear. What is clear is that the US and Israel have massively underestimated Iran’s ability to fight back. It is also clear that the war will have impacts that go way beyond the Middle East. Already in Britain we have seen petrol prices begin to increase as firms aim to protect their profits from the oil supply shock caused by Iran blocking the Straight of Hormuz. Similar price rises are likely to happen across the world, including in the US. This raises the question of why the US and Israel have launched an offensive that is likely to impact so negatively on their own citizens.

For the second time in less than a year, the US and Israel have taken military action against a another country at a time when a breakthrough in negotiations with that country was imminent. We saw this first with Venezuela and the kidnapping of president Maduro and we have seen the same thing happen now with the attack on Iran. The fact that this has happened twice in quick succession suggests that it is no mere coincidence. On both occasions, the US and Israel decided to take military action when they did precisely because they knew a deal was on the cards. Or more accurately, as Oman’s foreign minister pointed out last week, Israel persuaded the US to take military action because Israel knew a deal was on the cards.

Israel patently has zero interest in diplomacy. Instead, it wants to turn Iran into a failed state as this will enable it to more easily pursue the ‘greater Israel’ agenda. Israel didn’t want negotiations between the US and Iran to succeed so it persuaded the US to bomb Iran instead. You might wonder how a relatively small country like Israel could convince a superpower like the US to do what it wants. The answer lies partly in the narcissistic character of the current US president. Trump is the perfect president from Israel’s point of view as his ego can be used to manipulate him. Netenyahu obviously managed to convince Trump that in perpetrating this conflict he would go down in history as the ‘big man’ who finally managed to defeat Iran.

However, as already mentioned, Trump and Netenyahu massively underestimated Iran’s ability to fight back. The US also apparently did not foresee that Iran would block the Straight of Hormuz. Trump has responded by desperately trying to form a coalition of imperialist powers to provide warships to defend shipping in the straight – so far to no avail. The leaders of these countries understand how incredibly unpopular this war is with their respective electorates. Facing worldwide opposition to the war, the US and Israel have sought to justify their actions by highlighting the repressive and brutal character of the Iranian regime; but few are buying this argument. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has laid bare the hypocrisy of such moral justifications.

The leaders of the US and other imperialist nations regularly tell us what a terrible country Iran is, but these same leaders have been shamefully silent on the Gaza massacre and are now silent on Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon. Netanyahu regularly speaks of the ‘terrorist regime’ in Iran, but at other times seems to be quite fond of terrorism. Nearly 80 years ago, anti-Palestinian terrorist group Irgun blew up a hotel in Palestine, killing 96 people. Sixty years later, in 2006, Netenyahu attended the anniversary celebration of this attack. Netanyahu’s attendance was not a surprise as the leader of Irgun was one of the co-founders of the movement that in 1988 became his party, Likud. The hypocrisy is off the charts.

Western leaders may not be joining in with the US-Israeli attacks on Iran but it is notable that few are calling for these attacks to stop. During last year’s US-Israeli attack on Iran, German chancellor Merz blurted out the truth that the bombing represented “the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us”. Still, it seems unlikely that other Western countries will allow themselves to be dragged into this war any time soon. Many are still aggrieved about being hit by Trump’s tariffs and are therefore reluctant to come to his aid. Aside from that, Western leaders are wary about doing anything that might escalate the conflict as they know this will rebound negatively on them. If only Trump and Netanyahu had the same foresight.