Tempest Collective
The Tempest Collective stands in unconditional opposition to the war mongering of Trump, his threats against Iran, and the bipartisan project of U.S. imperial hegemony.
The Trump administration is once again playing the imperial bully with Iran. Trump has ordered a naval and aircraft build-up around the country at a scale not seen since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Trump has demanded, in his typical troglodyte style, that Iran reach a deal with the United States on uranium enrichment and ballistic missiles within 10-15 days or “bad things will happen.”
The U.S. has sent twelve of its warships, including two aircraft carriers, to the region, with enough firepower to carry out continuous attacks for several weeks. If this is a bluff merely intended to strengthen the U.S. hand at the negotiating table, then, according to one think-tank, it will be the costliest bluff in history.
Yet we cannot count on this merely being aggressive showmanship. The attack on Iran over the summer, as well as the attack on Venezuela, illustrated the administration’s willingness to act unilaterally in violation of both international and domestic law, and were also perhaps the first demonstrations of a new strategy for U.S. empire, one based not on drawn-out conflicts and troop deployment, but raids of rapid imperial piracy. Their previous successes may encourage the administration that this is a strategy worth continuing to deploy.
The government of Iran has not taken this lying down, with Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s top theocrat, promising to send U.S. warships “to the bottom of the sea” if the U.S. attacks. For Iran’s government, giving up its civilian nuclear program and stockpile of ballistic missiles is a red line that it is unwilling to cross. Iran has already proposed sending half of its most highly enriched uranium out of the country and diluting the rest. It has also offered to allow U.S. companies to act as contractors in Iran’s oil and gas industries. In exchange, Iran seeks relief from the U.S. sanctions that have been crushing the country’s economy.
All of this comes only a few months after massive protests rocked Iran. The country’s government is the weakest it has ever been, with its international position diminished by U.S.-Israeli aggression, and its domestic support totally disintegrated among the popular social classes. This includes the middle-class bazaaris, who acted as the principal support of the regime since the counterrevolution. The regime was only able to sustain itself through the murder of an estimated 7,000 civilians. The Trump administration cynically sought to position itself as an ally of these protests, seeing in them an opportunity to further U.S. interests. The U.S. is trying to take advantage of Iran’s weak position to either extract huge concessions or use military force to achieve regime change by replacing the theocracy with the dictatorship of the son of the shah, the pre-revolutionary monarch and tyrant.
Key to remember is that while the Democrats will raise objections around the process of the decision to strike, and perhaps even on this specific attack’s efficacy, they have no qualms in principle about attacking a sovereign country, especially Iran. In the lead-up to the so-called “twelve-day war” last summer, many Democrats expressed their support for the attack. The Democrats have a different approach to managing U.S. empire, but this does not make them even marginally less imperialist.
Whatever Trump’s rhetoric, no species of U.S. intervention can aid the people of Iran in their struggle for liberation; only the Iranian people are capable of achieving that for themselves. U.S. intervention will only confuse the situation, and if anything, increase popular support for the regime.
If the Trump administration does attack, we have to be ready to be in the streets. The working class must expand the lessons of Minneapolis, learning that mass strikes are our best tool, not only to stop Trump’s domestic attacks, but to put an end to U.S. imperial aggression abroad.