The Middle East: a blaze of imperialism’s making

Ever since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel, the logic of the situation in the Middle East has been moving in the direction of an escalation of the war beyond Gaza. All attempts to hold back this process have followed the same course. The Americans first state they don’t want an escalation. But each time Netanyahu does something to push towards widening the war, because he knows that the US will always fall on Israel’s side.

This happened once again with Israel’s attack on Lebanon, with Biden stating that he “understands” Israel’s security needs, etc.

After Iran’s retaliation following the assassination of Nasrallah, the Israelis were rubbing their hands. This was an opportunity to go for Iran’s nuclear research centres, to strike a blow against the country’s most formidable enemy, and perhaps draw the US into a wider war, which has been Netanyahu’s aim since the beginning.

Biden, however, has publicly stated that Israel must not hit either the Iranian nuclear facilities or its oil installations, and that there should be “proportional retaliation”. The problem with proportional retaliation is that every time you retaliate, the next retaliation has to be bigger. In fact, this second launching of missiles by Iran was double the size of the one they launched in April.

The Americans were involved in downing incoming rockets from Iran back in April, and they were also involved this time. But the scale of the Iranian strike has prompted the US to send more powerful defence systems to Israel, together with 200 personnel to man them.

This suits Netanyahu down to the ground. He may be willing to forgo a retaliatory strike aimed at Iran’s nuclear or oil installations in favour of hitting military targets – for now. Biden has, after all, given him something much more valuable: US Army personnel on the ground. They are now in the firing line should Iran launch further strikes. The next time Netanyahu provokes Iran to strike back at Israel, should US troops end up featuring on the casualty list, the US will find it exceedingly difficult to avoid a direct confrontation with Iran.

Meanwhile, Starmer has stated that the British – who have a base in Cyprus – have also been participating heavily. We see how the conflict is drawing in major members of NATO, especially the United States, but also the British and the French. And in spite of all this, some of the Iranian missiles still got through.

After Iran’s retaliation we now hear the usual mantra, blaming Iran for its aggressive policy. All the news is centred around ‘Iranian aggression’. The truth, however, is that the aggressor is Israel, and it is Netanyahu who has systematically ramped up the war, deliberately drawing Iran into a conflict. He has been repeatedly provoking Iran ever since the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, and later with the killing of the leader of Hamas in Tehran at the end of July.

The killings of Haniyeh in July and Nasrallah more recently, placed the Iranians in a dilemma. Their thinking was: “how do we measure the retaliation such that we don’t lose face, but we don't provoke a war?” The problem with this is that any retaliation by Iran would give Netanyahu the excuse to retaliate in a much bigger way. That’s what he has been waiting for.

In the coming days, we can expect a retaliation from Israel, although we cannot say with certainty when Israel is going to hit Iran.

The situation is thus following a downward spiral towards war, despite the fact that US imperialism would prefer to contain the conflict to Lebanon and avoid a wider regional war, which would also not be in the interests of Iran.

The situation inside Israel

In Israel, what became evident at the beginning of September, with the killing of the six hostages, is that Israeli society is divided.

Israeli society is under enormous strain. This can be seen in the huge increase in the use of drugs, tranquilisers and sleeping pills. People are under enormous stress. The Israeli economy has been seriously disrupted.

Netanyahu does not care two hoots about the hostages still being kept in Gaza by Hamas / Image: Hudson Institute, Wikimedia Commons

The building industry and agriculture are paralysed, and lots of companies are facing bankruptcy and closure. On top of that, now the civilian population is facing the real threat of being hit by missiles. This became evident with the second Iranian missile attack, which hit several targets inside Israel. One can imagine the enormous stress that Israeli society has been put under because of Netanyahu’s policy.

The divisions in Israeli society, however, are not so much on the question of supporting the war effort. Rather, there is a section of the population which genuinely supports the call for a ceasefire in order to save the hostages. Their concern for the hostages is genuine, while that of Netanyahu is false to the core. Netanyahu does not care two hoots about the hostages still being kept in Gaza by Hamas. He merely exploits the hostage question to keep ramping up the war.

That came out clearly at the beginning of September, when he could have made a move towards Hamas, opening up negotiations for a ceasefire by pulling IDF forces out of the Philadelphi Corridor that runs along the border of Gaza with Egypt. He did the very opposite. Systematically, throughout the course of the year, he has sabotaged negotiations.

He killed Haniyeh and Nasrallah precisely when they were in the midst of ceasefire negotiations. Nasrallah had actually accepted the proposal of a ceasefire on the very day he was assassinated. Netanyahu refused to pull the troops out of the Philadelphi Corridor on the border with Egypt, as he knows this is a red line to Hamas.

A large layer of the population has seen through his manoeuvring, however. Up to 700,000 people came out on the streets of Israel in protest. It even produced a general strike, albeit a short-lived, half-hearted one on the part of the leaders of the unions, who didn't want to really carry it out and called it off as soon as the courts intervened. However, in that particular moment, all the opinion polls showed that support for Netanyahu’s coalition had dramatically declined. If there had been an election at that moment, he would have lost his majority.

This plays an important part in the thinking of Netanyahu. To allow such a situation to continue would have meant risking his own downfall. And his own personal destiny is an important element in the whole situation.

How did he seek to escape this impasse? He did what he has done throughout the last year: he raised the level of tension in the war by shifting attention to Hezbollah, highlighting its threat to Israel. He looked at the opinion polls in Israel, and could see there was greater support for a war against Hezbollah than there was against Gaza.

Everyone can see that Hezbollah is much more of a threat to Israel than Hamas has ever been. It has sophisticated weapons, and guided missiles. And, just as he has used the hostages held in Gaza, he is now cynically using the 60,000 Israeli evacuees from the northern border of Israel. Again, he has no real concern for them. How can anyone claim that he is making the border with Lebanon more secure for these people?

Netanyahu is not mad

Netanyahu’s behaviour has led some to stating that he is mad, but he is not. He is a very astute politician. He might be a psychopath, but psychopaths are clever people, and that is why they’re so dangerous. He’s completely indifferent to all the death and destruction, to all the suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people, and he has no compunction about expanding similar suffering to millions of people in the region.

Netanyahu’s behaviour has led some to stating that he is mad, but he is not / Image: UK Government, Wikimedia Commons

“If Hezbollah goes for an all-out war, we will turn Beirut and southern Lebanon into a Gaza,” he told his military chiefs on the northern border. It is quite clear what that means, and we are beginning to see it on our TV screens every day.

Psychopaths are also known to be quite ruthless in defending their core interests. Netanyahu certainly fits that trait. The ruling class of Israel, however, is making a serious mistake in following him down that road. Look at their position in Gaza. After 12 months of incessant bombing, have they won? They have the backing of the superpower, the United States; they have powerful weaponry and all the most advanced technology, but have they won?

To answer that question one has to recall what the objectives were: release the hostages and destroy Hamas. They have failed on both fronts, and that is part of the reason why the generals wanted a ceasefire. They understand that Hamas wins because they have not lost. All Hamas has to do is keep going, despite their terrible losses.

The hatred and desire for revenge that Israel’s atrocities have engendered will ensure that more recruits and fighters will continue to join Hamas, and therefore it will keep going, almost indefinitely. For that reason alone, Hamas has won and Israel has lost.

Now, if that is true of Gaza, it will be a thousand times truer in Lebanon. Despite suffering many serious losses in the recent period, Hezbollah is not Hamas. It is a far more powerful fighting force. The fact that we are starting to see higher casualty rates among Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon is proof of this.

Prospects of a Lebanon war

Hezbollah represents a much more professional military force than Hamas. They have battle hardened soldiers who fought in Syria. They have technology, weapons, etc., that Hamas never had. It is true that they don’t have a serious air defence system, they don’t have an air force, and they’re far weaker militarily than the IDF. But their strategy is based on pulling the Israelis further into southern Lebanon, where they will be fighting on Hezbollah’s territory, and the nature of the war can change to the detriment of Israel’s forces.

Hezbollah represents a much more professional military force than Hamas / Image: Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons

The biggest single killing of Israeli soldiers since the war began a year ago took place on Wednesday 2 October, when eight Israeli soldiers were killed, and dozens were injured. That means the biggest single hit to the Israeli army has taken place right at the beginning of the incursion into southern Lebanon. This provides an indication of what this war could start to look like if it turns into an all-out land war. The fact that three Israeli Merkava tanks were destroyed with guided rockets on the same day is an indication of how tough it is going to be for the IDF.

Netanyahu has been claiming that the invasion of Lebanon is going to be a quick, surgical operation. “We've destroyed a lot of the bases,” they claim. It is true that Israel has spent years studying Hezbollah, studying its bases, the way it functions, its cadres, etc.

An interesting article from 29 September in the Financial Times, How Israeli spies penetrated Hizbollah, showed that when Hezbollah went into Syria, they had to recruit a lot more men, and in that period it became far easier to infiltrate Hezbollah. There is also corruption within Hezbollah that opened it up to operations like the pager and walkie-talkie attacks.

These are all elements which facilitated Israel’s dramatic first blow, allowing them to get into the communication systems of Hezbollah, something they had clearly been working on for some time. The pager attack hit key commanders and cadres of Hezbollah, injuring something like 3,000 and killing several dozen. Then they went further and killed the leader, Nasrallah, and a lot of the leading commanders of Hezbollah. The message they wanted to send out was: “we can get you wherever you are.” 

However, although Hezbollah has suffered a serious attack, this does not mean that Israel has destroyed it as an organisation whatsoever. They have put together another leadership and are now fighting back. On the ground they’re fighting to defend their own territory, and we can already see that it is going to be a drawn-out war. There’ll be a lot of destruction, a lot of death – they can still obviously do a lot of damage to southern Lebanon – but the Israelis will suffer far more than anything they’ve suffered in the year-long war in Gaza.

Netanyahu is inflated with his own ego and his own success. He has no time for Biden. He can see that there is a power vacuum in the US, and Netanyahu is taking full advantage of it. He knows that whatever verbal criticisms the Americans make in public, they will always send Israel the weapons it needs.

The Zionist ruling class of Israel are full of themselves and believe that this is their chance to destroy the Iranian regime. They have bitten off more than they can chew, and have grossly underestimated both Hezbollah and the Iranians.

The Zionist ruling class of Israel are full of themselves and believe that this is their chance to destroy the Iranian regime / Image: Khamenei.ir, Wikimedia Commons

In spite of all the weapons and the backing of the western imperialist powers, Israel remains a small country with a small population and limited resources. They have a lot of weapons, a lot of missiles, but these need to be replenished, and they are costly. If they are going to be facing regular missile attacks, their stocks will be depleted. This at a time when the US is under pressure to provide missiles to Ukraine. They do not have unlimited supplies.

An article in the Financial Times,  Israel grapples with shortage of air defence missiles, confirms this fact in quoting Dana Stroul, “a former senior US defence official with responsibility for the Middle East”, who states that: “Israel’s munitions issue is serious. If Iran responds to an Israel attack [with a massive air strike campaign], and Hizbollah joins in too, Israel air defences will be stretched.”

Israel is not, therefore, in a position to fight a long war. A short, successful victory is what was needed, and would be in Israel's best long-term interests. But in southern Lebanon, the IDF is going to get bogged down in a long war of attrition.

Beyond this there is the growing danger of a wider war. Netanyahu in his speech to the United Nations made it clear that he can hit anywhere in the Middle East, not just Lebanon, and not just Iran. His strutting on the stage of the UN highlighted an important change in the balance of forces globally, in the sense that the United States no longer dominates the world as it did at its peak.

Netanyahu is fully aware of this, and behaves accordingly, i.e. he acts in a manner designed to pull the US more and more into his war plans.

While he was in America, he brazenly ordered the attack to kill Nasrallah and even had it filmed and televised. And what was the reaction of the Biden administration? They’re fully backing Netanyahu in his war in southern Lebanon.

They would like to keep the war limited to Lebanon and incursions to hit Hezbollah. But what they want and how this will actually play out are two different things. All the serious analysts are pointing out that a war that starts with small incursions won’t stop there.

The US drawn in

Netanyahu’s attacks on Hezbollah, however, are also clearly a provocation aimed at bringing Iran into the war. As we have seen, Iran had been acting in a manner to avoid escalation. But there are divisions inside Iran.

The new president of Iran, Pezeshkian, is from the reformist, more moderate wing. He publicly stated that, “we don't want a war”. He represents that wing of the Iranian regime that would like to open up negotiations with the West to end all the sanctions, and for Iran to be brought back into the fold, to facilitate trade, etc.

Netanyahu’s attacks on Hezbollah are also clearly a provocation aimed at bringing Iran into the war / Image: public domain

The President, it seems, was told by the Americans: “you hold off and we'll guarantee you a ceasefire”. He foolishly fell for this, and held back from carrying out a retaliatory attack on Israel for practically two months.

His problem is that he represents only one faction within the regime. And there’s another faction, a very powerful faction, known as the conservatives, that is not happy with Pezeshkian’s compromise position towards the West, which has done serious damage to the regime’s relationship with Hezbollah. This has led to bitter recriminations, and a feeling within Hezbollah that Iran was betraying them.

He paid a price for this inside Iran, as the conservatives went for him, humiliating him on social media. Pezeshkian’s stance suited Netanyahu, but there were limits to how far the Iranian regime could go with this. The murder of Nasrallah was definitely a step too far, placing the Iranian President in a very uncomfortable position.

We have to remember that the President does not hold the real power in Iran. Rather, the ‘Supreme Leader’ is the highest authority within the regime and, most importantly, he is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In the end, the President was overridden by the Supreme Leader, who gave the thumbs up for the missile attack on Israel.

Even this time, however, they gave ‘prior warning’, although not as much as back in April. This time they gave them only two hours, and not directly to the Israelis. Despite that, it was a serious warning, the implication being that next time there’d be no warning.

Whatever its internal divisions, Iran is being forced to hit back. And now that it has, Israel is preparing to hit back even harder. Netanyahu hopes to escalate towards a wider war, which will involve not only Iran, but also the Houthis who have also launched missiles, and have been hit by Israel.

The Iranian strike, which only hit military targets, was a warning of what this could entail. Israel immediately stated that they “shot down 90 percent” of the incoming missiles, later lowering that figure to 75 percent. The truth is that a lot of those missiles did get through and did serious damage. They aren’t prepared to admit it, but that’s a fact. And that is just a little warning of what they could expect next time.

If this becomes an all-out war, and the Iranians use their full firepower, Israeli air defences would prove incapable of stopping all the missiles. This means the Americans have to get involved in a much bigger way. The sending of the THAAD missile defence system to Israel is a confirmation of this. 

However, it wouldn’t just be Israel that would be vulnerable to missile strikes. There are American military bases spread all across the Middle East – there are about 40,000 US soldiers in bases from Turkey to Saudi Arabia, in places like Kuwait, even in Syria and Iraq. And these are very open to being attacked by pro-Iranian Islamic militias.

This has already happened in the recent period, and it can occur on a much wider scale. Such attacks would pile further pressure on the US, forcing it to react. The US military is already in discussions with the Israelis about a negotiated response, an agreed, ‘proportionate’ attack on Iran.

We should also not forget that the American ruling class has long been divided over the question of Iran. There’s a wing which would like to openly attack the country. They have been a minority for years, but it is a significant section of the US ruling class nonetheless.

At one point, it did seem that they were preparing the ground for an attack on Iran. Then, under Obama, they switched their policy. They tried to bring Iran into the fold, making a deal so that they could inspect their nuclear research plants. Trump then threw all that out, broke the previous deal, and the Iranians continued with their nuclear development. Now, things could swing once more inside the US ruling class in favour of supporting an Israeli attack on Iran.

Israel is very keen on the idea, and they were looking at either hitting Iran’s oil refineries or the nuclear research centres. They were even considering attacking both. The Americans have told Netanyahu not to go down this road. They are prepared to contemplate an attack, but not one with these targets, which would have global repercussions. We should remember that when the Ukrainians were attacking Russian oil installations, the Americans protested loudly. They told the Ukrainians to stop, and they did stop.

Netanyahu does not seem to be preparing an attack on these key installations, for now. But at every step, we’ve seen the same thing. The Americans make verbal gestures of concern on this or that detail – and then they are forced, whether they like it or not, to go along with everything Netanyahu has been doing.

This weakness is a reflection of the long-term decline of the US and the crisis of the system. At every step, they are left trying to get the best out of a bad deal.

Wars connecting up

Although the Iranian regime is divided, with one wing wishing to open up more to the West, Israel sees Iran as an existential threat. And therefore, in spite of what the reformist wing would like, Iran is being pushed closer to Russia and China.

Iran is being pushed closer to Russia and China / Image: Khamenei.ir, Wikimedia Commons

This is another important aspect of this war. It is increasingly connecting up with the war in Ukraine, for the simple reason that the same big power is involved in both conflicts: the United States. Although not in exactly the same way, they’re behind the Ukraine war, and they’re behind Netanyahu.

Let us think about this for a moment. If the US causes trouble for Putin, if they threaten him with the prospect of allowing the Ukrainians to use missiles that can hit inside Russia – although the West has now cooled off on this idea – then Putin has many ways of hitting back. One of them is in the Middle East, through Iran. Iran and Russia, despite their differing interests, are being pushed into a de facto alliance by the West.

It was only last year, for instance, that Russia and Iran agreed on building a new railway via Azerbaijan, allowing Putin to establish an alternative trade route through to the Gulf, that would replace the old routes that were closed off by western sanctions. We can be in no doubt that the success and precision of Iranian attacks on Israeli military targets would have required the aid of Russian intelligence and satellites.

And Russia isn’t just building links with Iran. There have been reports of talks between the Russians and the Houthis about supplying the Houthis with more advanced missiles. These talks were then put on hold under pressure from Saudi Arabia. However, if the Americans were to threaten Russia through the Ukraine, Putin has a way of hitting back. His thinking would be, “you're disturbing me in my backyard, I will cause a big mess in your backyard.” And he could do that in the Middle East.

China is also in the background. We saw how it was involved in brokering the deal that normalised relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The behaviour of Netanyahu is thus pushing the whole region towards a regional war in which the US, although it may not necessarily place infantry on the ground, would have to participate in the defence of Israel, sending their ships in, sending more forces in. The British have also said they will participate, using the military base they have in Cyprus, which the Americans are also using.

We thus see, opening up before us, a global front beginning to appear, stretching all the way from Ukraine to the Middle East, on one side of which we have the US with its NATO allies, and on the other side, Russia and Iran, with China in the background.

Arab regimes on the brink

The scenario now evolving in the Middle East has consequences for the whole world economy. The very same day that Iran announced it was preparing a retaliation, the price of oil jumped by about four or five dollars in just a few hours, and stock markets fell everywhere. When Israel announced it was not going to attack Iran’s oil installations, the price came back down again, but it is indicative of how sensitive the oil markets are to the prospect of a wider war in the Middle East.

There was, however, one stock that did not fall, but rose: defence stocks shot up on the same day that the rest were falling. We can imagine the thinking of the stock market speculators: “War is coming. These are good stocks to invest your money in.”

In a situation where the world economy is at best stagnating or growing slowly (some countries are on the edge of, if not already in, recession), a sudden change in the Middle East could have the effect of tipping the world economy over the edge into a slump.

Egypt, for example, has behaved well according to the imperialists / Image: Marius Arnesen, Flickr

Traffic through the Suez Canal has already been disrupted by Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. This has massively increased the cost of shipping, which has had an effect on the world economy, especially in Europe. Rerouting the shipping of goods from Asia around Africa triples the cost of sending a container from China to Europe. A regional war in the Middle East could make this even worse.

If it comes to all-out war, we will most likely see the closing down of the Strait of Hormuz and other trade routes. This would be catastrophic for the world economy. If Israel were to attack Iranian oil installations in the coming period – possibly after the US elections are out of the way – and Iran were to hit back at oil installations in neighbouring countries, as it has threatened to do, this could have a dramatic effect on the price of oil. Ironically, such a scenario would strengthen Russia, as Putin would begin seeing a lot more money coming in from his oil exports.

It is reminiscent of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the subsequent Saudi-led oil embargo. A world economy already moving towards recession was pushed into a slump in 1974, the first serious economic crisis since the Second World War.

The other side of this is the social and economic impact across the Middle East. The people of this region are really suffering the consequences of the world crisis of capitalism.

Egypt, for example, has behaved well according to the imperialists. They’ve collaborated, they have maintained relations with Israel, and haven’t created problems on the border with Gaza. In compensation, they received an $8 billion dollar loan package earlier this year.

Like all such loans, however, it comes with strings attached, including massive cuts in subsidies to basic goods. Electricity prices have shot up, bringing the cost of energy bills for ordinary people up to the same level as rent costs. The price of bread quadrupled this summer because of massive cuts on state subsidies. Poverty is increasing enormously in Egypt.

Jordan has faced a similar situation, with the same policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. There is now over 20 percent unemployment there. Jordan has consequently become one of the most unstable regimes in the region. The country is also home to a big Palestinian population. Meanwhile, the regime is actively collaborating with the imperialists.

When the Iranians retaliated against Israel back in April, Jordan participated in bringing down the missiles with the excuse that they were flying over Jordanian airspace. That was rightly seen by the Jordanian masses as their government collaborating with the Zionists and with the Americans. There were huge protests, which the regime clamped down on heavily.

That explains why, when diplomats globally call for calm, the Jordanians are always the first to make such statements. They are terrified of a possible mass movement that could overthrow them at some stage.

These Arab regimes must deal with this crisis delicately. It could determine their very survival. The destabilisation of the whole region that Netanyahu is provoking, could lead to the fall of several of these regimes.

Wider revolutionary implications

The impact of the present war, however, will go far beyond the Middle East itself. It is going to further radicalise workers and youth in the advanced capitalist countries. All those young people that took part in the encampments, in the protests, in the demonstrations, will see that, in spite of everything, the war is ramping up. They are seeing that what Israel has done to Gaza is now being done to Lebanon.

Some analysts are saying that this is a gift to Trump in the elections / Image: The White House, Wikimedia Commons

Officially, Lebanon has a population of around six million people. That figure is an underestimate, as there are many more refugees from Syria, etc. Already, one million people have been displaced. More than 2,000 have been killed and we are only at the beginning. All this cannot fail to radicalise wider layers. And as America gets more and more involved, this will have an effect on a significant layer of the youth and working class in the US.

It’s already having an effect on the US presidential election campaign. Some analysts are saying that this is a gift to Trump in the elections. We cannot predict exactly how the elections are going to go, as it seems Harris and Trump are neck and neck at the moment. But with the US more involved, it would bring back memories of America’s role in Vietnam and would have a radicalising effect amongst wide layers of the youth and workers in America.

In Britain, when Starmer makes a speech in which he completely justifies what Israel is doing, in which he states that Britain participated in bringing down the Iranian missiles, it brings home the fact that the Labour government is not just supporting Israel in words. It is actively supporting Netanyahu’s war, with the RAF assisting Israeli forces in their operations in Gaza.

In these conditions, our fight as communists is against the warmongers. Our main enemy is right here, at home. The same people who are supporting the barbarism in Gaza, in Lebanon, are attacking the pensioners, cutting back on the fuel subsidies for the elderly in Britain.

The same criminals who are prepared to let old people die in the cold at home, support the killing, the burning, the starvation of thousands of people in the Middle East. The barbarism we are witnessing daily is almost unbelievable: children shot in their heads and necks, patients burned alive on hospital beds, whole villages demolished by explosives, millions forced from their homes, populations being told, “surrender or starve”.

Now the imperialists are set on a path that involves spreading this horror far further, across the region and beyond. Today it is clearer than ever: capitalism must die, imperialism must die, so that mankind may live.