U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry sits across from Iranian Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Vienna, Austria, on July 13, 2014,
before they begin a bilateral meeting focused on Iran's nuclear
program. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
By
Keith Jones
After
20 months of negotiations, the Obama administration last week reached
agreement with Iran, China, France, Russia, the UK and Germany on a
15-year accord to “normalize” Iran’s civil nuclear program.
Should this agreement survive the opposition of sections of the US
ruling elite, it will constitute a significant tactical shift on the
part of US imperialism, one with potentially far-reaching
implications.
Since
the 1979 Iranian revolution toppled the Shah’s bloody US-backed
dictatorship, implacable opposition to Iran has been a constant in US
foreign policy. During the past 12 years, Washington dramatically
intensified its campaign of bullying and threats. Having ordered the
invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively Iran’s eastern and
western neighbors, George W. Bush twice came close to launching war
against Iran.
In
2009, the Obama administration sought to bring about regime-change in
Tehran via a “Green Revolution” fomented through unsubstantiated
claims of a stolen election. Two years later, Washington cajoled its
European allies to join the US in imposing the most punishing
economic sanctions ever deployed outside a war.
Now,
in exchange for sweeping concessions from Iran, Washington has agreed
to suspend the economic sanctions and provide Tehran a 15-year path
to “normalize” its civil nuclear program.
Obama
has stipulated that last week’s agreement with Tehran is limited to
the constraints on its civil nuclear program. Yet Obama, Secretary of
State John Kerry and other leading US officials have also made clear
that they view the agreement as exploratory, a means to test Iran’s
intentions. Their policy of “engagement” with Iran is a strategic
bet that through a combination of continuing pressure and
inducements, including an influx of Western investment, US
imperialism will be able to harness Tehran to its predatory agenda.
The
Republican Party leadership, the Wall
Street Journal
and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are publicly
opposing this shift. They are demanding that Obama extract iron-clad
guarantees of Tehran’s submission and warning against sidelining
the US’s traditional Mideast client states, above all Israel and
Saudi Arabia.
The
public bluster of the Republicans, however, is not necessarily an
indication of the real intentions of the main decision-makers in the
Republican Party. To some extent, the Republicans’ opposition can
prove useful to Obama in prying further concessions from Tehran. That
said, it is far from certain the Iran nuclear accord will be
implemented, let alone endure.
The
nuclear accord and the fractious ruling class debate over it are a
reflection of the mounting problems that US imperialism faces as it
seeks through aggression and war to offset the erosion of its
relative economic power and to confront multiplying challenges to its
global hegemony.
There
is deep dissatisfaction within the US ruling class over the outcome
of the three major wars the US has waged in the broader Middle East
over the past decade-and-a-half. In Ukraine, Washington has thus far
been stymied, with the sanctions imposed on Russia failing to produce
the desired results. To the Obama administration’s dismay, many of
its closest allies, led by Britain, defied the US and signed up as
founding members of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Development
Bank earlier this year.
All
of this has left the Obama administration and the US ruling class
groping for an effective, integrated plan of attack.
Certain
things can be said concerning the trajectory of US imperialism, the
strategic calculations that underlie the proposed shift in US
relations with Iran, and the implications of this shift:
*
Obama and the entire US ruling elite are determined to maintain US
global hegemony through military force.
There
is something decidedly ominous about the president’s repeated
proclamations over the past week that the failure of his diplomatic
turn to Iran would result in war. These comments underscore that
Washington is far from renouncing violence and point to the explosive
character of global relations.
*
Central to American imperialism’s global strategy is dominance over
Eurasia, the vast land mass that is home to almost two-thirds of the
world’s population.
In
pursuit of this aim, Washington has long viewed Iran as an especially
significant prize. The country stands at the intersection of three
continents (Europe, Asia and Africa), commands the Straits of Hormuz,
through which 40 percent of the world’s exported oil flows,
straddles two of the world’s most energy-rich regions (Central Asia
and the Middle East), and itself possesses the world’s second
largest natural gas and fourth largest oil reserves.
*
Washington’s trumped-up conflict with Iran over its nuclear program
was never just about Iranian-US relations. Nor was it solely about
control of the Middle East. It always involved the broader question
of US relations with the world’s major powers.
Even
as US dependence on Mideast oil has declined, Washington has stepped
up its efforts to maintain control over the Middle East so as to
ensure domination over a region that supplies many of its principal
competitors in Europe and Asia, including China and Japan, with much
of their oil.
*
When Obama claims, as he has repeatedly done, that for US imperialism
war is the only alternative to a nuclear deal with Iran that realizes
many but not all of Washington’s objectives, he is, for once, not
lying.
Had
the sanctions regime started to unravel, Washington would have faced
a demonstrable challenge to its pretensions to world leadership, one
that it could not walk away from without suffering a major
geo-political defeat. In response, it would have been obliged to
extend the sanctions--in other words, retaliate against the
“sanctions-busters” by freezing their overseas assets and denying
Iran access to the US-European controlled world banking system. Or,
in order to avoid such action, which could quickly spiral into a
military confrontation with China or Russia, the US would have been
compelled to render the issue moot by abandoning the sanctions in
favor of all-out war.
The
Pentagon has long been planning and gaming such a war. And while the
American people know nothing of these plans, in various think tank
reports it is openly admitted that a war with Iran—a country four
times the size of Iraq and with nearly three times the population,
and which has significant state and foreign militia allies—would
quickly envelop the entire Middle East. It would further inflame the
US-stoked Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict and, at the very least, tie
down much of the US military for a protracted period. Last, but not
least, such a war would incite rising popular opposition in the US,
where class tensions are already fraught after decades of social
reaction.
Obama
is arguing that US imperialism has a cheaper, more prudent
alternative. One, moreover, that, as Defence Secretary Ashton Carter
boasted Sunday, “does nothing to prevent the military option” in
the future.
*
The agreement with Iran has been designed to give the US the maximum
leverage over Iran and the maximum strategic flexibility. Should
Tehran prove insufficiently pliant or should circumstances change,
the US can initiate procedures to automatically “snap back” the
sanctions and pivot back to confrontation with Iran.
Moreover,
all of Obama’s arguments in favor of the nuclear accord—his
assertion that it is better to “test” Iran’s intentions than
immediately embark on a war that could prove hugely damaging to US
imperialism’s strategic interests—are predicated on Washington’s
supposed right to wage pre-emptive war against Iran.
*
The Obama administration sees Western engagement with Iran as a means
of preventing Tehran from being drawn into closer partnership with
China and Russia. China is already Iran’s biggest trading partner
and Russia its most important military-strategic partner.
A
further US priority is to see if it can enlist Iranian support in
stabilizing the Middle East under Washington’s leadership. The US
and Iran are already at least tacitly allied in supporting the Iraqi
government and Iraqi Kurdish militia in opposing ISIS in Iraq.
The
Obama administration has also served notice that it intends to use
the nuclear agreement to pressure Iran to assist it in reaching a
political agreement in Syria that would see Bashar al-Assad’s
Baathist regime replaced by one more amenable to US interests.
Reversing previous US policy, Obama announced last week that Tehran
should “be part of the conversation” in resolving the Syrian
conflict.
*
Longer term, the supporters of Obama’s Iran gambit aim to “turn”
Iran, transforming it into an advance post of US imperialism in the
Middle East and all Eurasia. That means to return the country to the
type of neo-colonial subjugation that existed under the Shah’s
regime.
Toward
this end, Washington plans to probe and exploit the deep fissures
within Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime. It is keenly aware that
the reins of Iran’s government are now in the hands of a faction
(led by ex-president Hashemi Rafsanjani and his protégé, the
current president, Hassan Rouhani) that has argued since at least
1989 for a rapprochement with Washington and has longstanding close
ties to European capital.
*
The Iran nuclear accord only intensifies the contradictions in US
foreign policy, laying the basis for future shocks.
While
exploring engagement with Iran, Washington is seeking to placate its
traditional regional allies by showering them with offers of new
weapons systems and increased military and intelligence cooperation.
These actions threaten Tehran, which—notwithstanding the relentless
US media campaign aimed at depicting it as an aggressor—already
faces a massive military technology gap, not just with Israel, but
with Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies.
Nor
can the US afford to stand idly by as the European powers scramble to
get back into Iran. On Sunday, Germany’s Vice-Chancellor and SPD
leader Sigmar Gabriel arrived in Iran at the head of a German
business delegation. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said
he will soon follow.
To
secure support from the US ruling elite, Obama is stressing that he
has only agreed to lift the latest round of US sanctions on Iran.
Other sanctions imposed in the name of opposing terrorism remain,
meaning US corporations continue to be effectively barred from doing
business in Iran.
If
the US is not to lose out in the race to secure Iranian assets, it
must either move forward with rapprochement—over the strenuous
opposition of Washington’s current Mideast allies--or revert back
to confrontation and demand the Europeans and others follow suit.
*
Other strategic calculations, many of a pragmatic and short-term
character, also appear to be bound up with the Obama administration’s
decision to consummate a deal with Iran now. One cannot make firm
judgments about these calculations, as events are moving rapidly and
Washington’s policies are fraught with contradictions.
However,
it was striking that in the lengthy interview Obama gave to the New
York Times
last week, the US president praised President Vladimir Putin, saying
the agreement with Tehran could not have been reached without
Russia’s strong support. He added that he had been “encouraged”
by a recent phone call Putin made to talk about Syria. “That,”
declared Obama, “offers us an opportunity to have a serious
conversation with them.”
Is
it possible that Obama is considering responding positively to
Putin’s pleas for a ratcheting down of tensions over Ukraine in
exchange for Moscow’s abandonment of Syria’s Assad? Could this be
bound up not just with the crisis of US policy in the Middle East,
but also with growing tensions between Washington and Berlin? Could
this be intended as a shot-across-the-bow to Germany?
The
US ruling elite has reacted with dismay to Germany’s cavalier role
in the recent negotiations between the EU and Greece—not out of any
concern for the Greek masses, but because of Berlin’s bald
assertion of its new role as Europe’s disciplinarian.
Should
the US ruling elite ultimately opt to move forward with the Iran
deal, it will be from the standpoint of better positioning itself to
withstand challenges to its dominance, including through military
means, from its more formidable opponents, not only Russia and China,
but also Germany, Japan and the other imperialist powers.
This
article first appeared on World
Socialist Web Site (WSWS)
on
21
July 2015,
and was republished with permission.
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