Defend the Iranian people’s sovereign right to their own nuclear energy program!
The imperialist powers led by US imperialism are day by day escalating their offensive against Iran. After having established their stranglehold over Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in recent years, the current targets of the imperialists are Syria and Iran.
Defend the Iranian people’s sovereign right to their own nuclear energy program!
The imperialist powers led by US imperialism are day by day escalating their offensive against Iran. After having established their stranglehold over Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in recent years, the current targets of the imperialists are Syria and Iran. This is part of the overall drive of imperialism to strengthen its domination and plunder of the energy-rich and strategically located countries of West Asia as well as Central and South Asia. Iran is viewed by the imperialists as a major stumbling block in their path.
This pressure against Iran however is not something new. Ever since the overthrow of the American stooge, the Shah, in the revolution of 1979, the government and people of Iran have firmly opposed imperialist domination in the region and worldwide, resisting various attempts by forces within and outside Iran to change this stance.
In recent times the imperialist powers together with Israel have stepped up their efforts to undermine Iran through blackmail and interference. The focus of their attack has been Iran’s nuclear energy program. Like every sovereign country, including India, Iran has the right to develop its own nuclear energy program to serve its own interests. However, the imperialists are determined to deny Iran this right under the excuse that Iran is building ‘weapons of mass destruction’ – something that Iran has repeatedly denied, and which regular inspections of its facilities by the IAEA have failed to prove.
The world is now witness to a strange situation, wherein a club of imperialist powers who have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over are trying to close down the nuclear energy program of a country that has never attacked anyone and that clearly has no plans of doing so!
However, it has become very clear that the Iranian government and people have no intention of bowing down to this immense pressure to close down their nuclear program. It is also clear that Iran continues to have very good relations, including trading relations, with a large number of countries around the world.
In the last couple of years, the American and European imperialists and the Israeli state have therefore stepped up their attacks on Iran.
For instance, they tried their best to utilise the tide of the “Arab spring” protests to engineer so-called ‘regime change’ in Iran. This move failed miserably.
They have also resorted, with the collaboration of Israeli assassins, to the cold-blooded murder of Iranian scientists connected in some way with Iran’s nuclear program. Six prominent scientists have been killed in this targeted way.
At regular intervals, the Israeli regime announces its intention to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear installations. Done with the full backing of their US imperialist patrons, this warmongering is intended to terrorise Iran into backing down.
At the same time, an unending series of economic sanctions has been imposed on Iran by both the US and European Union imperialists. These have been primarily aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring revenue through selling its huge reserves of crude oil. Countries that continue to buy oil or other imports from Iran, or fail to cut back on purchases significantly, are penalised. At the same time, the fact that the American and European Union sanctions also prevent Iran from purchasing vital supplies of essential commodities, like medicines, foodstuffs, etc, shows that their aim is not just to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. It is to generate mass discontent within Iran, which the imperialists through their agents hope to exploit to bring down the government and political system there. This is another despicable instance of the lengths to which the imperialists will go in order to achieve their strategic objectives.
It is a matter of great concern to the Indian working class and people that the UPA government has fallen in line with this imperialist campaign to choke Iran, even though it goes against the interests of our own country and people. Iran was the third largest supplier of crude to India until a year ago, but purchases from Iran have been steadily cut back by nearly 25% since last March, so that Iran has fallen to seventh place among India’s crude suppliers. After the latest sanctions in recent weeks which have hit companies that insure Iranian crude imports, the Mangalore oil refinery, one of India’s biggest, has said that it may not be able to continue to buy crude from Iran. The steady weakening of the crucial oil trade between Iran and India is very costly for both the Iranian and the Indian people.
Although countries like Russia and China are continuing to purchase crude from Iran, it is a matter of shame that a big country like India is joining the imperialist onslaught on Iran, a country with which it has always had friendly and peaceful relations. The Indian working class and people must demand that this opportunist policy of the UPA government towards Iran be reversed immediately! Several commentators have noted that the Indian government is actually exploiting Iran’s current difficult situation in order to drive a better bargain for itself, both with respect to its terms of trade with Iran, and to promote itself vis-a-vis US imperialism. This self-serving policy of the ruling Indian big bourgeoisie is against the interests and the sentiments of the Indian working class and people.
It is essential that the working class and people of India come out ever more strongly against the imperialist pressure and blackmail of Iran. The onslaught on Iran is clearly an onslaught against all those who stand in the way of the growing imperialist aggression and pressure on the sovereignty of all countries. We must demand that the Indian government give up its opportunist self-serving policy and come out clearly against the growing pressure and encirclement of Iran.