The decades-long U.S. campaign for regime change in Iran has reached new heights. There are several economic and military components to this campaign, each of which merits a review.
On Dec. 4, 2011, a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aerial vehicle went down 140 miles inside Iran. Iran said that it had intervened electronically in the drone’s technology to bring it down, a claim the U.S. military denied, blaming technical difficulties for the incident. Mocking the Iranian claim, Pentagon analyst James Lewis, said, “Iran hacking into the drone is as likely as an Ayatollah standing on a mountain-top and using thought waves to bring it down.”
Arrogant pronouncements notwithstanding, subsequent information provided an explanation of how this could have been done. Many media outlets published comments from an Iranian engineer stating that Iranian specialists, using knowledge from previously downed U.S. drones, jammed the communications between the drone and its control center. They reconfigured its GPS communications systems to make it land in Iran, instead of flying back to its home base in Afghanistan. Several U.S. military analysts acknowledged the plausibility of such a development.
U.S. drones make a mockery of international law by routinely flying over Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, three sovereign countries. Even if one considers the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan to somehow entitle it to that country’s airspace, there is no doubt that frequent drone bombings in Pakistan and spying over Iran are overtly illegal, a fact rarely mentioned in the business media’s coverage.
Indicative of imperialist arrogance, Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama demanded that Iran return the drone—the drone that was downed while spying. An Iranian military commander’s response was, “No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country.”
Atomic energy issue used to promote imperialist agenda
The escalation of the imperialist campaign against Iran came following a Nov. 8, 2011, report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. With “credible” intelligence provided by “member countries” (presumably the United States or one of its junior partners), it reported suspicion of a decade-old plan to build nuclear bombs. In reality, the report lacks any evidence but indicates a capitulation to intense U.S. pressure by the new IAEA leadership under former Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano. As was the case in the lead-up to the war on Iraq, the United States is manipulating U.N. institutions to promote its war-mongering agenda.
That the IAEA has no real evidence is not the result of lack of access to secret facilities. Iran has made over 20 sites available to IAEA inspectors, who have conducted hundreds of inspections. The suspicion of Iran’s plans to develop nuclear weapons prior to 2001 has to do with “evidence” that frequently turns up surreptitiously through intelligence agencies, forcing Iran to spend years responding to new allegations and, in the process, reveal more about its military secrets. The scenario is a repeat of inspections for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Of course, having been threatened with military attacks for years and surrounded by U.S. military bases from every direction, Iran has every right to develop nuclear weapons to defend itself. The countries alarmed by Iran’s alleged plans to develop nuclear weapons do not exactly possess a record of promoting peace. On the contrary, they are countries with stockpiles of nuclear weapons with an unimaginable destructive capacity and a long history of military interventions all over the globe.
On Nov. 15, 2011, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was asked in an interview whether he would “want a nuclear weapon” if he were a member of Iran’s government. Barak responded: “They look around and they see the Indians are nuclear. The Chinese are nuclear, Pakistan is nuclear as well as North Korea, not to mention the Russians.” Of course, the main nuclear armed countries Iran would be concerned with are not India, Pakistan, Russia and the DPRK. The real threat of attacks on Iran comes from the same nuclear-armed countries pushing sanctions: the United States, Israel, Britain and France.
Assassinations of nuclear scientists
On Jan. 11, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a nuclear scientist and supervisor at a uranium enrichment facility, was assassinated by a car bomb in Tehran. Since 2007, five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated, all professional jobs leaving no solid evidence that would lead to the perpetrators. However, there is little doubt that Israel and/or the United States are behind the assassinations. In fact, while Israel has refused to take direct responsibility for obvious reasons, various Israeli officials have dropped hints of Israel being behind the assassinations.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz has referred to the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists as “events that happen unnaturally,” and stated that he expected more “unnatural events” to occur this year.
U.S. policy has also had a sabotage component, such as the 2009 Stuxnet cyber attack. The Stuxnet computer virus was not a generic virus designed by anonymous hackers. It was a virus specifically designed to wreak havoc on uranium enrichment facilities by breaking the logic of electronic boards that control spinning centrifuges. Although the extent of damage is hard to determine, Iran has acknowledged that some facilities were infected by Stuxnet.
Iran’s threat to block Strait of Hormuz
In early January, Iran held a 10-day naval maneuver in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials have threatened to block the strait if Iran is blocked from selling oil on the international markets.
The Strait of Hormuz is the most strategic energy waterway, through which up to 40 percent of the world’s shipped oil passes. At its narrowest point the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian/Arabian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, is 21 miles wide, of which only 6 miles is navigable. A distance of 12 nautical miles (14 miles) off the shore of any country is considered part of its territory. This means that at its narrowest point the strait has no international water; all of it is territorial waters of Iran to the north and Oman to the south.
The U.S. sanctions of Iran’s oil, passed in December 2011, are not just a statement of U.S. refusal to buy oil. The sanctions give the U.S. government the right to punish third-party governments and companies that buy oil from Iran.
In other words, companies and governments are forced to choose between trading with Iran or the United States. Given the size of the U.S economy, it is obvious that few companies and governments would choose to trade with Iran. So it is effectively a blockade, designed specifically to impose hardship on the Iranian people and make the economy collapse.
Iran is today a country whose main source of foreign currency, energy trade, is blockaded; a country whose airspace is being frequently violated by U.S. spy aircraft; a country whose scientists are being serially assassinated; a country being routinely threatened with bombing by Israel and the United States; a country subjected to an intense 24/7 propaganda campaign through imperialist mouthpieces, such as Voice of America and the BBC; a country where “pro-democracy” opposition forces are being funded and organized by the United States and its European imperialist allies.
These facts are rarely mentioned in corporate media coverage of Iran. Instead, every utterance of an Iranian official threatening a response to these aggressive moves is treated as evidence of the bellicose nature of the country.
The latest round of sanctions, piled on top of other destabilizing measures, has resulted in a serious economic downturn and depreciation of the Iranian currency in recent weeks. To the extent that the United States and its allies succeed in blocking Iran’s energy trade, Iran’s economic problems are likely to deepen.
The next stage in the imperialist campaign may well be promoting unrest and uprisings in the form of regional conflicts by elements from Iran’s national minorities—Kurds, Azaris, Arabs, Baluchis and others. The destabilization campaign may also lead to a “pro-democracy” movement, possibly a variation in the right-wing “Green Movement” that arose in June 2009.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is obviously not a socialist state, a state that would represent the interests of the working class. However, an independent nationalist state, despite all of its shortcomings, represents progress as compared to the client state ruled by the Shah—the brutal pro-imperialist dictator who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution—that facilitated the looting of the country’s resources by the oil giants and multinational corporations. The recent experience of Libya is yet another lesson that a movement promoted and supported by imperialist forces cannot possibly bring about progress or democracy.
Revolutionaries and progressives in the United States should mobilize against another U.S. war in the Middle East. It is not just war that we should oppose but sanctions, assassinations and all other forms of intervention. We should also beware of falling for a new round of imperialist-inspired “pro-democracy” movements. The people of Iran have the right to self-determination. It is only they who should determine their future, free from sanctions and war. U.S. Hands off Iran!
