US has never given up its plans for regime-change in Iran, which Washington regards as a major obstacle to its hegemony despite overtures from Iran’s Islamist leaders for a rapprochement.

The deepening global economic crisis is propelling Washington into new and even more reckless military adventures, both as a means of undermining its rivals, especially China, and as a diversion from the explosive social tensions at home. Flush from “victory” in Libya and the installation of a client regime in Tripoli, sections of the American political establishment are already identifying Iran as the next target.

At this stage, the Obama administration is calling for more sanctions rather than signalling military action, but others are not so reticent. An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday dismissed sanctions aswhich has the very real danger of engulfing the region and triggering a calamitous international conflict. However, political lessons have to be learnt from the failure of previous protests—above all, the unprecedented global demonstrations against the Iraq war in 2002—to prevent the eruption of militarism.

No amount of pressure on capitalist governments will halt the drive to war. Rather, what is required is the building of an independent political movement of the international working class on the basis of a socialist program to abolish the root cause of war, which lies in the profit system and the historically outmoded division of the world into nation states to which capitalism is wedded.

Peter Symonds

Peter Symonds