artivista
Statement by ILPS-Canada
We call on all who support justice, peace and an end to the devastating control of the 1% over our planet, to stand up and refuse to be fooled by the warmongering cries to attack Iran coming from Washington, Tel Aviv, Ottawa and beyond.[1]
Such an assault would kill thousands of Iranians and create region-wide destabilization. It would cause an unbridled, speculative hike in oil and gas prices and could lead to a global conflagration. We have already seen Russia and China, which imports a third of Iran’s oil exports, manoeuvering to defend their interests in the face of the U.S.-led military threats.
The reactionary and expansionist Israeli regime has been assigned the leading role for the offensive as Washington and its client state organize sanctions, industrial sabotage, cyber-attacks, drone flights and assassinations in preparation for the military crusade.
The US sanctions essentially prevent any business with Iran’s Central Bank or the purchase of Iranian oil – which constitutes half of Iran’s GNP – under threat of losing access to the US banks, corporations and markets. It adds up to a de facto economic blockade of Iran by Washington, which will cause even more suffering to the Iranian people, and by international law could already be considered ‘an act of war’. On Washington’s coattail, Ottawa has now also enacted further sanctions against Iran under the Special Economic Measures Act.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a hawk on Iran, calling it the “single biggest threat to the world’s security”. Meanwhile, Ottawa has staunchly defended Israel, watering down resolutions urging peace talks at last year’s G8 summit, opposing efforts to have a Palestinian state recognized by the UN and threatening critics of the Israeli government here in Canada.
Iran has been called a “geopolitical pivot”—a country whose fate can shape global geopolitics. Four times the size of Iraq, the country dominates the Persian Gulf geographically with 1,000 miles of coastline. Iran borders the energy-rich Caspian Sea and stands between Russia and the oil fields of the Middle East, and links the Middle East and Central Asia. It has the world’s third largest oil reserves[2]; tankers carrying 20% of the world’s oil pass out of the Persian Gulf through the narrow Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman.
The United States ruled Iran for 25 years starting in 1953 when it supported the violent overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh who, backed by 99.5% of the population, had dared to nationalize British Petroleum, then called Anglo-Iranian.
Washington governed through a tyrant called the Shah who handed the country back to a cartel of oil monopolies that included five American oil giants, while the regime murdered hundreds of thousands of people and crushed all progressive opposition.
The 1953 coup profoundly impacted Iranian politics and consciousness for decades afterward and planted seeds that grew into the 1979 revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power.
Today, shut out of Iran, US imperialism, supported by their imperialist cohorts including the Canadian government, argue that Teheran’s nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making.
But if all this talk about combatting Iran’s purported nuclear capacity was about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, where are the sanctions against Israel with its estimated 160 nuclear warheads? Unlike Iran, the Zionist regime refuses to sign a nuclear cooperation treaty and does not allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors into its country.
Ironically, it was a recent IAEA report about Iran’s nuclear threat, containing unsubstantiated new evidence apparently supplied by Israeli, British and American intelligence, which has upped the ante against Iran. It was clearly a political and not a factual statement. Remember the famous non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq? Interestingly, Washington pays over one-quarter of the IAEA’s budget and was instrumental in choosing the new head of the Agency, Yukiya Amano, who, WikiLeaks revealed, received U.S. backing in return for his agreement to support the U.S. campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.
For the record, 30 years ago then U.S. President Ford supported Iran’s nuclear program, endorsing the Shah’s plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry and worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium. Iran, a U.S. ally then, had deep pockets and close ties to Washington. American companies, including Westinghouse and General Electric, were scrambling to do business there.
Despite the anti-people actions of many other repressive theocratic regimes in this region, imperialism has chosen to target one in particular. The latest moves by Washington, backed by our warmongers in Ottawa, are clearly a continuation of a sordid and reactionary history of intervention in Iran by the U.S. and its allies.
This includes supporting one tyrant after another; plundering Iran’s oil wealth for over 70 years and exploiting it to this day; overthrowing a popular government and putting the fascist Shah on the throne; and during the revolution of 1979 seeing possible advantage in the seizure of power by reactionary Islamic theocrats — who have now become an obstacle to the interests of U.S.-led imperialism in the region. Thus history demonstrates that nothing good can or will come of any new U.S. intervention or attack—no matter what pretexts it offers.
Only one country in history has used the atomic bomb, as the families of the hundreds of thousands of victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki can attest. Only one country spends more on military killing machines than the rest of the world combined. Only one country has supported Israeli militarization and expansionism to the tune of $3 billion a year while vetoing 42 UN resolutions critical of the Israeli government. And this is the power, the United States of America, which is attempting to convince us that they deserve our support to bomb, with Israel’s help, the Iranian people back to the Stone Age in the name of “democracy”, “freedom” and global stability.
We must demand an end to the economic sanctions against Iran and not allow this latest military aggression to happen. The never-ending “war of terror” must come to an end today.
We say:
No war on Iran for Big Oil’s profit!
No to Canadian imperialism’s support for attack on Iran!
U.S. imperialism out of the Middle East!
No to Israeli expansionism and militarization!Statement by ILPS-Canada
February 21, 2012
