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!