[Militant, No 498, 11 April 1980, p. 16]
President Carter and the strategists of US imperialism are caught in a contradiction.
They know that the new sanctions against the Iranian people will not ensure release of the American hostages. But direct military intervention would provoke a mighty explosion. and almost certainly seal the fate of the hostages.
The international labour movement must condemn Carter’s actions this week. For decades Western imperialism backed the Shah’s dictatorship.
America’s CIA trained the torturers of SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, and successive British governments, both Tory and Labour, supported the Shah’s dictatorship as a regional power to protect oil supplies and other strategic interests.
Now they are feeling the consequences of the Iranian revolution.
The measures Carter announced will have little effect. Sanctions will not bite. as US exports to Iran were only $1.6 million in February, and no new oil has been purchased since the hostages were seized in November.
Selling the Iranian government’s US-based assets will not add new pressure. They were frozen in November. The ending of diplomatic relations and visa restrictions will have little effect.
Not all the US ’s capitalist allies will participate in sanctions against Iran. West Germany and Japan depend for much of their crude oil on Iranian imports. and Iran’s oil minister has warned that supplies will be cut off from any country joining America’s sanctions.
The US military chiefs and some White House advisers are now threatening a military intervention, mining or blockading the Gulf. Senator George McGovern has called for an air strike. But any of these actions would amount to an open declaration of war.
Direct military action against Iran would provoke a massive outcry in the region.
The Iranian revolution would inevitably be given another powerful impulse, threatening capitalism in the country with complete extinction. As in Cuba, when Castro came to power, the regime could be pushed along the road of taking over the whole of the economy.
For months US imperialism pressurised the Iranian government to take control of the hostages. But that government is still fighting to control the revolution.
Khomeini evidently does not want to be seen as giving in to pressure from the former Shah’s main supporter, US imperialism. The Iranian government is using the hostages to whip up nationalist fervour against American imperialism, and now against the neighbouring Iraqi dictatorship, as a way of deflecting the mounting dissatisfaction amongst Iranian working people at the lack of jobs and other material improvements in their lives.
While not supporting the original seizure of the hostages which was a completely ineffective and counter-productive step from the point of view of working class interests, or approving in any way Khomeini’s attempts to establish a theocratic dictatorship. the labour movement internationally must condemn US imperialism’s plans.
Only a socialist takeover of the Iranian economy under workers‘ control and management, along with the spread of the revolution throughout the Middle East, can take society forward.
Coupled with a class appeal to workers in the west for solidarity action, the ground would be cut from under the feet of western imperialism.
By Jim Chrystie
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