Iran resists Trump’s war: Support Iran’s just demands!
March 22 – Since the U.S.-Israeli terrorist militaries massacred over 160 Iranian children, mainly girls, in Minab, along with the assassinations of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and dozens of top Iranian military leaders on Feb. 28, the Islamic Republic Guard Corp has carried out a heroic war on two fronts — military and financial.
What made this response by Iran more than justified was that this attack took place in the midst of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran as Iran was discussing concessions it was willing to make regarding its nuclear energy program.
Subsequently, other attacks have assassinated some of the remaining top-ranking Iranian political and military leaders, most notably Dr. Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, along with his family members, on March 16.
Despite these killings, Iran has been able to respond with a constant barrage of devastating missile strikes on strategic military and economic targets not only in the Palestinian territories occupied by the regime in Tel Aviv but also against U.S. military bases located in Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. U.S. troops on these bases were forced to transfer to other bases, some in Cyprus and Germany.
Resistance forces in Iraq (a country still partly occupied by imperialist troops) have assisted in Iran’s defense. They specifically targeted U.S. military bases on Iraqi soil, forcing the imperialist alliance North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to shut down its operations there.
For decades, these imperialist outposts have occupied the entire West Asia region to protect the profit-hungry interests of Big Oil and to act as a military buffer between Zionist Israel and the oppressed West Asian masses.
The U.S. aircraft carrier Gerald Ford has been damaged and is reported to be in Crete, a Greek island, undergoing repairs. Now the U.S. is sending 2,500 Marines, building up to 5,000, for possible ground actions in Iran in an attempt to control the Strait of Hormuz.
A growing financial war
The arrogant President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held the misguided notion that Iran — a country of 93 million people that achieved an earth shattering Islamic revolutionary blow ejecting a U.S. imperialist puppet monarchy 47 years ago — could be bullied into surrender. Those two war criminals and the entire imperialist ruling class have gotten a rude awakening.
Not only is Iran more than holding its own on the military front — despite suffering severe damage to its overall infrastructure and civilian deaths in the thousands — it is also carrying out a debilitating financial war against global imperialism.
With one of the world’s largest oil reserves, Iran controls the narrow and vital Strait of Hormuz, which is a main artery for the transport of 20% of global oil exports and other essential resources like natural gas. Since Feb. 28, Iran has militarily and financially blocked ships from passing through this strait to reach the Persian/Arabian Gulf — if these ships are aiding the imperialist war of aggression against Iran.
Since so much of the world’s energy comes from countries located on this Gulf — Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates — the war of aggression by the U.S. and Israel has boomeranged and is wreaking havoc on the global economy. This havoc drives up the costs of oil prices, not only gas at the pump for cars and for other industries, but it leads to higher prices for jet fuel, food and other essentials.
Iran is allowing countries it has friendly relations with to use the Strait, including China, Russia and Pakistan.
The U.S. just announced that 140 million barrels of Iranian oil, that U.S. punitive restrictions have kept from being traded freely on the world market since the 1979 revolution, will temporarily be allowed to enter the world market. This will allow countries to buy this oil without facing U.S. penalties. The U.S. administration took this step to ease the rise in the price of oil on the world market. This is a major concession to Iran, even as the U.S. is waging war on Iran.
At this writing, there are over 400 ships stranded in the Strait. Ships will only be allowed to pass if they each pay $2 million to Iran. And they must pay not in petro-dollars — the main imperialist currency — but in yuan, the Chinese currency.
Iran’s demands, not negotiations
While it’s reported that both the Israeli and U.S. governments have reached out to Iran to reopen negotiations to end the war, the Iranian government has made it crystal clear that no more negotiations will take place at this time and that the war will end on Iran’s terms.
A senior Iranian political and security official told the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen publication on March 22 that Iran has outlined demands of its own to peace negotiators that the U.S. must agree to if it wants an end to the war: “guarantees to prevent the recurrence of war, closure of U.S. military bases in the region, payment of compensation to the Islamic Republic, an end to wars across all regional fronts, establishing a new legal framework for the Strait of Hormuz and prosecution and extradition of media figures deemed hostile to Iran, not attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansarullah in Yemen, removal of U.S. military bases from the region and unconditional surrender of Israel.” (The Cradle, March 22)
In his rash response to the principled and firm position of the Iranian government, Trump is now threatening to destroy Iran’s power plants in the coming days. This threat sounds more like a sign of desperation than a show of confidence. The U.S. president will have to get Congressional approval for another $200 billion for the Pentagon to extend the war.
According to Press TV on March 22, the Iranian government said that if their electrical generation infrastructure does come under any form of attack, the entire Strait of Hormuz will be on complete lock down, and their military will counterattack with the objective of creating a blackout of the entire West Asian region.
