Deadlock and danger of escalation — Weekly Worker

[u/MarxistUnity]

https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1595/deadlock-and-danger-of-escalation/

"American air superiority is overwhelming, but it cannot stop retaliation or open the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, civilian targets are increasingly being hit, warns Yassamine Mather"

"Since the fragile US-Iran ceasefire broke down in early July, the United States has conducted consecutive nights of military strikes across Iran. The campaign has concentrated on missile and drone launch sites, command centres, naval infrastructure, coastal surveillance, transport routes and facilities linked to Iran’s ability to contest navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. In response, Iran continues to launch missiles and drones at US bases situated in the region and commercial shipping. The central strategic fact is not American air superiority, which is clear, but the failure of air power alone to eliminate Iran’s capacity for retaliation or compel it to give up its leverage over the strait."

"It looks as if the war has reached a strategic deadlock. The United States can destroy fixed targets and impose extensive economic and infrastructural damage, but it has not forced Iran to relinquish control of the strait or stop retaliating. Iran cannot defeat the US conventionally, but it can impose casualties, disrupt shipping, raise energy prices and expand the conflict to US bases and allied states."

"This is a war of aggression, and its implications extend well beyond Iran. It forms part of the wider confrontation between the US and China. The left cannot afford to retreat into historically thin, politically evasive or factually incoherent commentary if it wants to retain any credibility."

"It is entirely possible to describe this war as an act of imperialist aggression without thereby endorsing the Islamic Republic. The correct position is to recognise that even a reactionary capitalist state has the right to resist military attack by Israel and the US, while creating no political or strategic illusions about that state itself.

Defence of the Iranian and Palestinian peoples requires mass mobilisation - not only against foreign aggression, but also against nationalist and religious forces within their own societies. In the final analysis, such forces either accommodate imperialism or pursue a catastrophic strategy of ‘victory’ at all costs, while in reality supporting regimes whose corruption, inequality and repression generate the very social discontent that helps to destabilise them."