Tag: iran

We are in a new age of war and extremes

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (10.3.26) ensuring a statement against the bombing of Iran and identifying some of the dangers of US imperialism. Most essentially, the need to protest. Right now 56% of UK voters (and 51% of US voters – none of whom read this(!)), oppose Trump’s murderous illegal bluster, and we must ensure their views are seen on the streets and in the media. If all that is seen is BBC pro-war nonsense and far-right media memes, populations will shift into acceptance of war economies and war ideology. “Protest and Survive” as the old saying goes!

Unedited version below or expand the pic for the published article.

We are in a new age of war and extremes

Stability has been blown away. We are In a new age of war and extremes, Most of us don’t want life to get any worse than it is now, and yet it is getting worse. The most dangerous sensation in such circumstances is that gnawing feeling of powerlessness.

Yet another illegal war has begun, unapproved by the democratically elected majority in Washington USA or Parliament UK, this time bombing the ninety-three million people Iran. Various opinion polls have shown the majority in Britain to oppose the war on Iran, from a simple self-interested concern for the financial impact if not a humanist care for the lives of civilians everywhere. But what can we do?

The years of imagery of the total destruction of Gaza, the crumpled concrete and mangled steel of apartments, streets and entire neighbourhoods, the burnt and crushes bodies of children in Palestine are now accompanied by the familiar mushroom smoke plumes and colossal streaks of flame over Tehran, Iran. Humanity must not become desensitised to the cries of and for Humanity.

US Secretary of State for War, Pete Hegseth, has set out his endgame for Iran: the total destruction of the country’s infrastructure and many of its people: “With complete control of the skies, we will be using 500-pound, 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound bombs, of which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile.” Some of his military commanders have been invoking far-right extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical ‘end times’ to justify involvement in the illegal Iran war to US troops.

We can oppose the Iranian government and oppose the imperialist war against it. We can support the Iranian civilians who bravely protested against Khomeini’s brutal Police last month, at least twenty-thousand shot on the streets, and at the same time understand that bombing children from on-high does not liberate the children. Under the rockets of Israel and the bombs of the USA, some flown out of the UK, we shall see more mass murder not freedom.

We may be able to understand the logic of the Iranian diaspora across the world protesting in favour of Trump and Israel as liberators. But we should not agree with them. We only need to reflect upon the illegal invasions of Iraq and Libya to understand that western bombing leaves formerly modern economies in ruins, the infrastructure crushed back, in the words of president George Bush Jnr, “to the Stone Age”.

Then the western corporations moves-in to rebuild in their own image, for their own profit, leaving the local economies devastated and impoverished. The war on Iran is an imperialist war like all others, Israel the preferred launching pad for the US in the Middle East, seeking complete control in the interests of US economic security and power, not those of Iran or anywhere else.

The potential to destabilise the adjacent countries and, indeed, the West, is very real. The autocratic governments of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and even Egypt are already very vulnerable and in tension against each other. Not least, against all the deniers, the very real impact of global heating caused by climate change is having dramatic impacts on their people’s access to drinking water, any loss of electric power stopping their energy-thirsty desalination plants and wrecking both food production and social stability.

The very idea that the bombing or Iran will have positive outcomes for the people of Iran, even in “the long term”, goes against all evidence from history and today’s material conditions. Contrary to the pretext for the bombing, Iran had no nuclear weapons and no stated intent, whilst Israel has 400 nuclear warheads and is threatening their use. But what can we do?

We can demand our own government plays no part in this destruction. The fact that US B-1 Lancer bombers flew from UK’s RAF Fairford this weekend means we are party to the war, whatever defamatory names Trump calls Starmer. Turkey’s attacks on Iran represent the engagement of NATO – an escalation of itself.

We can support the people of Iran and the Middle East in their demands for human rights, the end to dictatorship and the fight for the self-liberation of their own countries. Last weekend a hastily-called demonstration of over 50,000 marched through London to the US Embassy, calling to stop the bombing. In opposition to the protests there and across the country, Neo-fascist organisers and far-right protesters joined with Iranian royalists to counter the anti-war demonstrators, echoing the war cries of Trump and Netanyahu.

We have to protest against war. If we don’t, the voices for more conflict will grow louder. If we do not stand up now, the organisers of division, promoting war, racial hatred and western “white supremacy” will be allowed to grow more powerful, the lack of opposition imposing passivity. We must prove in practice, in person and in public that we, the majority, want Peace.

Trade unions must be involved in processes to end conflict and build a peace grounded in social justice. Join us on the streets!

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Bombing Iran will NOT liberate the People

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (3.3.26), damning the suggestion that bombing women liberates women, anywhere. International Women’s Day on 8th March should see a battle cry rage against Trump’s misogyny, racism, anti-Trans bile and deadly military imperialism. They’re all linked!

Bombing Iran Will Not Liberate the People!

Welfare not Warfare!

The illegal Israeli military mass-bombing of the girls’ school in Minab in the south of Iran killed at least 153 women and girls last Saturday. This cannot claim to be in the interests of the liberation of women in Iran.

The rights of Iranian people have never been on the agenda of Western powers. Women, and men in Iran have protested heroically to change their government towards women’s rights, with death their only answer. The bombing of Iran offers no solution to women’s oppression there or anywhere. War always treats women as targets.

There’s so much hypocrisy spoken about women’s rights that we should all take responsibility for calling it out. We live in a deeply sexist human world. A global system based upon individual power and control vested primarily in super-rich men. The Epstein files show how corruption and sexism are so pervasive and entrenched. Andrew represents the corruption, both financial and sexual, of unaccountable wealth. Trump symbolises white male supremacy. Women’s oppression and capitalist class society are intertwined.

The genocide in Gaza has exposed the brutality of war and the unique impact on women, famine, physical abuse and incarceration impacting menstrual health and pregnancy. We still have a long way to go to win a world free of women’s oppression.

Let’s be clear: women’s oppression encompasses all social, economic, and political spaces causing personal subjugation for simply being a woman. Its is based upon class: wealthy women whilst suffering the indignity of being considered primarily as sexual objects have sufficient agency to combat much of the oppression. They side with the class privilege of wealthy men and collude in the exploitation and oppression of other women as low-paid nannies, personal assistants and cleaners.

Most working class women’s experiences of oppression are internalised into self-blame. Interactions and relationships are all based upon sexism – the portrayal of women as objects to be used, owned and controlled permeate all aspects of women’s lives. The modern capitalist family requires women to fund the domestic budget by working as well as running the home as carer, educator, nurse, chef, bottle-washer and on-call lover.

Next weekend we celebrate International Women’s Day, March 8th, in deteriorating circumstances. The backlash against campaigns for women’s liberation is well-funded and growing. In the name of women’s rights, the far-Right now proclaim themselves the defenders of the “traditional” heterosexual family as the “natural order”, recruiting women to specific roles in political organisations, “Pink Ladies” mobilised to protest outside refugee hostels for traditional women’s roles and heterosexual family values, and to keep white children safe from Black men. Disgusting!

Farage and his Reform UK private business echoes vice President J D Vance in demanding women should have more babies, referring to Musk’s “population apocalypse” of white families in the face of migration, inter-marriage, LGBT+ parents and left-wing “wokism”. The far-Right are reawakening the fascist campaigns of last century, for “children, kitchen and Church”, opposing women’s rights and imposing a woman’s place apart from any self-determination.

International Women’s Day (IWD) has been celebrated for over 100 years, born from mass revolts of young women workers challenging exploitation and the abusive power of the Boss class. Today many companies and businesses use IWD to sell cosmetics and gimmicks to reinforce the cardboard cut-out female rather than address the issues women face.

But IWD has radical roots and is a day to remember those who have fought for women’s liberation – from the Suffragettes in the UK to the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran. The women trade unionists and the men who have joined their cause remain clear-eyed – the working class have nothing to gain from women’s oppression. Free domestic labour, tasks still primarily allocated to women, protect the profits of big business not having to pay for the child care and raising of the next generation of the workforce.

And so, women are kept down. One-in-four women in Britain suffer domestic violence and abuse, often sexual, an average for a period of 6 years of their adult life. Rape in this country is lawless, only 3% of alleged cases followed through to a conviction. Child sexual abuse is reportedly on the increase again, the vast majority of cases girls abused inside the family, the majority of families being white. Sexual abuse is not the preserve of the black male refugee but the privileged white misogynist.

The cuts to social welfare, repeated and enforced in order to divert essential funding away from our health and welfare services and into war and military spending, affect women most acutely. Women’s rights depend upon a well-funded Welfare State alongside the ideological struggle for liberation from this system enforcing roles and relationships of power-and-control.

Here in Plymouth, trade unionists are fighting the cuts to health services, including stopping the closure of Plymouth’s Sexual Abuse Referral Centre, reducing the support that women and children receive following rape and abuse. You won’t see the far-Right protesting about that except as a “drain on the tax-payer” and a symbol of the “Nanny State” they want demolished.

For socialists, the challenge to class exploitation has to have the fight against oppression at its heart. We encourage and support the struggle by women against all forms of oppression, including gender stereotyping, role-segregation and being made scapegoats blamed for the imposition of low wages, high child care costs and poor social conditions. Welfare not Warfare! On this International Women’s Day we must remember the struggles of the past and unite for social justice and women’s liberation today!

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US Bombing of Iran will Threaten Us All

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (17.02.2026), identifying the threat of imperialist war to the interests of the international working class. The fight for Iran is the battle for ownership of people’s labour power and natural resources by competing ruling classes and super-rich corporate executives. Imperialist war is never on our side.

The unedited version here, or expand the picture to read the published column.

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Today’s talks between the United States of America and Iran hold imminent war in the balance. To argue against war is not to support one side or the other. The drive for peace is a valuing of humanity, of people, of life.
But it is naive to think that competing interests do not exist. The USA’s century-long domination of the Middle East has won unconscionable levels of extreme wealth to the corporations of America and the West, at huge cost to Arab peoples of all denominations and cultures across the region. The people of Iran no longer enjoy their own land’s treasures, the strategic value of the territories dwarfing the extensive oil and mineral wealth plundered and stolen by the West.
Iran’s economy is all-but destroyed, more by the brutal long-term sanctions from the USA and western allies than by the rigid authoritarian State dictatorship in Tehran. The USA’s military outpost in the Middle East, the Apartheid State of Israel, has pointed nuclear-armed missiles at its neighbour for decades.
The USA funded Saddam Hussein to wage a ghastly and costly 8-year trench-war between Iraq and Iran from 1980 following the country’s revolution a year earlier. More than 500,000 were killed, Iran’s economy intentionally demolished in the process. The US, UK and more than 30 western countries supported Iraq, with France sending Saddam £5BN in weaponry and the chemical weapons that he later used in Halabja and against Iraqi Kurds. Indeed, Kurds of all factions continue to be attacked by all sides today, the length of their suffering almost unimaginable. War often spills-over.
The racists who hate Muslims and Asian people won’t care a jot about yet another conflagration in the Middle East. Indeed, they may well cheer-on yet another war as if seeking the death or total subjugation of the entire world’s Muslim population of two-billion – one quarter of all humanity. That’s not going to happen. People like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson are arguing to slam the door shut in the face of Iranian refugees through their toxic anti-migrant campaigns.
Failed diplomacy over Iran will directly affect western economies and the livelihoods of western people whatever their prejudices. We are no longer living in the 1980’s, today’s military tensions far higher than for two generations past. Not least, the transfer of State funding away from health and welfare at home towards arms manufacturing. Only this week Starmer is planning an additional £14bn a year for military spending, leaving our schools and hospitals in tatters.
There is and always has been a global component, Iran strategically placed and becoming more-and-more a region set for a proxy war between imperialist rivalries. Just as North America and Europe funded Iraq, so Russia and China armed Iran back in the ‘80’s and continue to do so. And those imperialist rivalries continue today in more volatile and far less manageable circumstances.
At the pressurised and unpredictable centre lies the issue of nuclear weapons. Israel has them. The two US aircraft carriers, their accompanying bombers, jets and naval fleets, are carrying nuclear weapons, threatening Trump’s “major destruction far worse than previous attacks”. There is no evidence anywhere (Israel and the US would publish it were there) that Iran has nuclear weapons or any capability.
Last Friday Trump said regime change in Iran would be the best thing that could happen. Even if standing as only the 58th largest economy in the world, beleaguered by sanctions and inflation but holding 10% oil and 15% gas of world reserves, and with a population of 95 million, any assault would trigger an international crisis. Mass bombing of Iran will not ensure regime change and will only push ordinary people towards the regime again.
The outcome of western invasions of countries including Iraq and Libya have killed millions and destroyed any stability. The western-supported war in Sudan has forced tens of millions into famine and starvation. The occupation of Palestine and genocide in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of civilians, women and children, and destroyed an entire region. We can see what an invasion of Iran will do.
There are those liberals and on the Left who therefore side with the Iranian State, Russia and China against the obvious aggression and threats of the the USA and NATO. This is a misplaced and blindly comfortable but false position to take. All sides have regional imperialist ambitions none of which are in the interests of the working class, either of their own countries or internationally. It is we, the ordinary citizens, who lose and die in those wars, the rival ruling classes stamping our bones into the ground on which to build their next dynasty. It is reasonable and responsible to not take the side of any ruling class.
In a world of capitalist competition, the cry for “Welfare not Warfare” has to be in the interest and therefore the demand of the overwhelming majority of humanity. The Iranian people have a long and proud history of standing up to oppression and dictatorship. It must be for the Iranian people to determine and create their future, however difficult. And that will take another revolution, not a plundering Trump-inspired death-fest. Don’t Bomb Iran!

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has Third World War Already Begun?

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (17.6.25), written the day before and hardly keeping pace. Trump has convened the US national security council to prepare for war with Iran.
Think on it. The US president has told Tehran’s population to immediately evacuate the city. Israel has nuclear weapons. The imperialists want regime change in Iran and to break Iran’s ties with Russia, and more importantly, China. They want to break Iran the way they have Iraq, Libya etc.
And the UK is fully engaged.
Stop Arming Israel!

(Unedited below)

Has World War Three already Begun?

Does it matter that Britain is training soldiers from the Israeli Defence forces here in order for them to conduct an illegal war? Is it of no consequence that Prime Minister Starmer is sending typhoon jets and refuelling planes to support Israel’s bombing of Iran? How does this represent “de-escalation”? Millions of us are outraged and protest that these are acts of warfare, not even voted upon by our elected representatives in Parliament.
In the context of international law, and to be confirmed by the hindsight of written history, the UK is “at War”. Our political leaders, including the Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard, are complicit with genocide in Gaza and illegal bombing of the citizens of Tehran, the capital city of Iran. Neither of these joint military actions are happening in self-defence.
Israel’s invasion and occupation of Gaza, destroying 80% of buildings, all infrastructure, killing 60,000 unarmed civilians with 200,000 seriously injured is not proportionate to the stated 1,000 Israelis killed by Hamas fighters 19 months ago.
The current enforced and intentional starvation of the 2 million people still inside Gaza, trapped in an open air prison without food or clean water, are acts of barbarity, immorality and despotism.
Cabinet members of the Israeli parliament, self-identified as Fascists representing a fascist party – so extreme that even the British government has sanctioned them – call for the use of nuclear weapons in Gaza and upon Iran.
Iran had not attacked Israel first. Israel cannot prove self-defence, not least because there is no evidence a) that Iran was planning to attack Israel, and b) there is no evidence that Iran had nuclear weapons nor that they have the means or intention to build any. Prove otherwise.
The rationale for bombing Iran is a repeat of the false claims of Blair and Bush for their illegal invasion of Iraq. As stated back then, nuclear weapons are illegitimate and should be immediately dismantled. So why is it OK for the UK or Israel to have them?
Over decades, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has consistently received the practical support of the USA. President Trump shipped about 300 AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles to Israel on Tuesday in full knowledge of the “surprise” attack on Iran last Friday.
Trump has continued the call for regime change in Iran, tearing-up agreements during his first term of office and now threatening Iran with the “full-strength” of US military force. Trump and Netanyahu state they want to see regime change, the economic, imperialist and ideological reasons for which are obvious. Israel is continuing to do the work for US imperialism just as it always has.
All talks are off, intentionally sabotaged by the West. Iran and Israel have stated that all targets are now legitimate, each hitting oil and economic facilities, killing civilians and pushing oil prices sky high internationally. Fires are burning at fuel facilities and military installations, Israel bombing nuclear sites – illegal as we hear all the time from the war in Ukraine, Russia rightfully condemned for shelling nuclear power plants. Why is it OK for Israel to do far worse?
Trump has provided Israel’s armaments, backed-up by the UK. They know that Iran is supported by both Russia and China, the momentum towards war in the South China Seas most obvious. The risk of global, never-ending war is very real, at huge cost to our welfare and security. So why is the British tax-payer spending billions upon billions of pounds killing civilians on behalf of Israel?
Will Starmer break away from UK complicity in war crimes and genocide?
So many questions. So little time.
Stop Arming Israel!
Tony Staunton, vice-Chair, CND