Hands Off Iran

(A Rant)

It’s difficult to say which is more foundational to the current war in the Mideast between the U.S. and Iran. On one hand we have the perpetual travails of Palestine and Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, on the other the less appreciated determination of the U.S., Israel, and assorted Arab monarchs to reduce Iran’s regional power. In both cases, the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, provide each side the need to amp up hostilities.

Iran is a great country. It actually has real elections, unlike a gaggle of U.S. allies in the region, including the bone-saw monarch of Saudi Arabia. In important respects, it is more democratic than the state of Israel. It wants to drive the U.S. out of the region, and why shouldn’t it? What is our interest? It isn’t oil. We are a net oil exporter. It isn’t whatever remains of Al-Qaeda or ISIS, both of which were in opposition to Iran. It isn’t the security of Israel. Israel has a nuclear deterrent to any major attack from Iran. Israel is threatened to a limited extent by Hezbollah in Lebanon, but there’s nothing to be done about that. Hezbollah is dug in. Israel tried to dislodge them in the past and got a bloody nose for it.

Broadly speaking, insofar as the balance of power in the Mideast shifts from the U.S., Israel, and the oil sheikdoms to Iran, I’d say that would be a positive development for the world. After all, among other depredations, the Sunni-Arab regimes have been selling out Palestine forever.

Now the U.S. has launched a wave of attacks on groups loosely allied with Iran, mostly in Iraq and Syria, after the deaths of three U.S. servicepeople. Maybe some have forgotten that during the Trump administration, the U.S. staged the assassination of a high Iranian official. Was that o.k.?

What business does the U.S. have in Iraq and Syria, we might ask, since ISIS/ISIL has been eliminated? It can only be to stand against Iran. Israel is no danger from Iranian-connected gangs in Iraq or Syria. The corporal’s guard the U.S. has stationed there (fewer than 4,000 personnel) are not directed at Hezbollah. They are only there as cannon fodder to justify U.S. aggression towards Iran, much like our token force on the North Korean border. If anything, the fatalities are the doing of the U.S. government and the Biden Administration.

The U.S. supplies weapons to Israel but is not responsible for how they are used. Iran supplies weapons to anonymous, ungovernable tribes in Iraq and Syria but IS responsible for how they are used. See how that works? It’s also known as the “rules-based international order.” I don’t have to tell you who made those rules.

"We seek no wider war," the Biden says, while he widens the war. We have been at war with Iran for years. The same callousness that led Trump and his idiot son-in-law to seek deals between Israel and Arab monarchs absent any consideration of Palestine, helping to provoke the Hamas attacks of October 7th, frames the Biden's "response" in the absence of any serious treatment of the root cause of the current conflicts. Not only is the U.S. at war with Iran, it is also at war with Gaza.

We have seen this movie before. In the late 60s, LBJ made some historic advances in social welfare domestically before he was undone by his determination to pursue a war in Vietnam. Unlike that sorry affair, the result of a Democratic political failure his November would make Richard Nixon look like a Renaissance man.

On MSNBC, Democrats offer sickening albeit qualified support for Biden’s war-mongering. If Iran or its surrogates choose to retaliate in ways that result in further U.S. casualties, all knee-jerk allusions to the need for diplomacy and caution will become as invisible as the Zionist peace camp, God bless ‘em. As this escalates, the current xenophobia towards immigrants from the south will expand to include Arab and Muslim residents of the U.S.

Trump can suggest that his magical, exalted presence in the White House would have prevented any of these problems. This absurd claim also allows him to repel any question of what he would do now, given the opportunity. If Trump is reelected, I’d say there is a realistic chance he would nuke Tehran. (In my view, that was a prime reason to oppose him from the beginning.)

Even so, in their distaste for increased U.S. commitments in the Mideast (or anywhere else), the MAGA troops are more right than the Democrats. Meanwhile, we can see the reemergence of the neocons, not incidentally featured all over MSNBC, who have always wanted war with Iran. Trump has cast them out of the G.O.P., but they have migrated into the Democratic Party. Even so, I fear any anti-war impulses among Trump’s supporters will be drowned out by two factors: Trump’s own inclination for massive, theatrical aggression, and the legions of Republicans who remain stuck in Bush II foreign policy mode (as elaborated in the article linked above)

There has been squeamishness over the terminology deployed to criticize Israel, in words such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, or “from the river to the sea,” and comparisons to Nazi Germany. We should ask, at what level of death in Gaza is it permissible to indulge in lurid rhetoric? Contrary to my previous apprehensions, I’d say we are now past the point where any reserve is required. My only caveat is the need to distinguish between Zionism and Judaism, and their associated symbols.

What of anti-imperialism? I’d say a consistent posture would entail support for both Palestine and Ukraine. Current geopolitics makes that a difficult combination to uphold. Biden’s analogy of Israel to Ukraine got it backwards.

We are going to need a new anti-war movement.