Iran’s next retaliation will intensify Russia’s fight with “Israel,” & make this conflict’s battle lines clearer
What does it mean that Iran plans to retaliate for the latest Zionist aggression, and that Russia is fundamentally connected to Iran’s military efforts? It means that when Iran’s counter-attack comes, and this conflict reaches its next level of escalation, the pro-Palestine movement will be at a decision point. Everyone who’s against the genocide will need to decide whether they want to back the most substantial material forces which are fighting Zionism; or whether they want to embrace the State Department’s demonizing narratives about Iran and Russia. If the principled anti-imperialist stance gets to define the pro-Palestine movement, then we’ll be in place to take advantage of imperialism’s next crises.
This new ideological conflict will be an extension of the debates that occurred when Russia intervened to stop U.S.-backed jihadists in Syria, and when Russia acted to rescue the Donbass from ethnic cleansing. In both of those cases, the outcome was mixed; many leftists repeated Washington’s propaganda when it came to Syria, and even more of them opposed Russia’s operation in Ukraine, but anti-imperialists were able to bring our arguments to a substantial audience. During this next stage, where these military powers will be intensifying their anti-Zionist actions, the anti-imperialist position will have potential to resonate with even more of the masses. That’s because the enemy which Iran and Russia will be fighting is one that’s already widely recognized as a source of great evil. Almost everyone has seen the “Israeli” settler Nazi state’s crimes; the bulk of the world is against the Zionist entity, and even in the imperial center most people understand that the entity’s “war” is not justified.
Most Americans have yet to process the more terrible truth that this “war” is in fact a genocide, but it’s intuitive to them that their government’s justification narratives about “Israel” are not honest. They see a powerful army deliberately murdering civilians from a nation that doesn’t even have its own army; that’s enough to create profound unease among most people. So when the Eurasian military powers increase their efforts to weaken the aggressor army, the U.S. public’s sympathy for “Israel” is going to be limited.
Imperialism’s propaganda can portray Iran and Russia as doing this for the wrong reasons, but that vilification tactic is limited in its effectiveness. How many of the people who’ve found out about Zionism’s crimes can be made to also internalize a fear and hatred towards these other countries? Given the failure of the Ukraine psyop, the majority of them can’t take such imperialist war propaganda seriously; not enough that they’ll make it their mission in life to help destroy Washington’s adversaries.
Within a couple of years, most Americans became tired of the Ukraine proxy war, and came to wish for negotiations that could end it. Most of them didn’t need to discover the real context behind the war in order to come to this conclusion; they just had to see how counterproductive their government’s involvement in Ukraine is. The prevailing attitude in this country is that more foreign wars would be the last thing we need; which is another reason why our government wouldn’t be able to inspire enough support for a dual war against Iran and Russia.
It’s this widespread resentment towards the U.S. war machine that makes the conflict’s next stage a moment of great revolutionary potential. The imperial state is already apprehensive towards fully confronting Iran; every semi-rational person within the foreign policy establishment knows that this kind of war would explode the economy. And if the USA’s people are already becoming alienated from the imperial project, then such a conflict would existentially endanger the system. This is why I believe the dominant wing of the deep state doesn’t hope for a total war with Iran, and will try to manage the coming escalations. There’s no guarantee that this wing will succeed at keeping the exchanges minimized, but that’s what we can expect it to attempt to do (it’s already been working to keep “Israel” on a leash throughout the latest confrontations).
If full war happens regardless, Iran and Russia will be able to subdue Washington and its Zionist proxy, like how Russia has subdued NATO and its fascist Kiev proxy. If full war is avoided, then Washington will have effectively surrendered to the anti-imperialist united front, letting Iran and Russia damage “Israel” without getting serious U.S. pushback. In the latter scenario, the full extent of Washington’s imperial decline will be on display, as it will be unwilling to substantially act against its challengers. Whatever Washington does next, Russia’s anti-fascist war in Ukraine will effectively be expanded to Palestine, with Iran being the main one to prosecute this war but Russia having an important role. And this dual effort to subdue the “Israeli” Nazi state will absolutely succeed; it’s only a question of how much force Iran and Russia will be compelled by Washington to utilize. The empire is cornered. That’s why its preferred plan is to instigate a big war in east Asia, while carrying out a wave of color revolutions: it needs to compensate for its double defeats in Ukraine and west Asia.
Perhaps Washington will pursue an expanded conflict in west Asia, but that will only be an attempt at delaying its final defeat in the region, which is coming no matter what. The last year’s U.S. effort at propping up “Israel” hasn’t even been part of the hegemon’s previous plans; it’s been an interruption of those plans, created through unexpected actions by the Palestinian resistance. What the foreign policy strategists are anxious to do is pivot towards assaulting China, and towards destabilizing China’s economic partners.
As part of its attempts to manage the situation, the imperial state is fueling left-wing pro-imperialist ideology, with its culturally based hostility towards countries like Iran and Russia. The imperialist media and its allies within the left are smearing principled anti-imperialists as “rightists,” seeking to divide the pro-Palestine movement over social issues. This psyop’s larger goal is to proliferate neoconservativism under a leftist cover, letting the empire target countries for regime change on the basis that they’re “reactionary” and “fascist.” If any organization or state doesn’t conform to American leftism’s cultural sensibilities, it needs to be eliminated; that’s the mindset of this ideology. And that’s going to be the narrative foundation for the remaining parts of this grand imperial war, whether this war will come to center around west Asia or east Asia.
Our only path forward is to build a domestic united front against monopoly capital, one that can keep organizationally operating amid the state’s crackdowns. As our allies abroad finish the job of crippling imperialism, we need to defeat it from within, and the global conflict’s next stage will bring us many more allies in this task.
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