Dripping with hypocrisy about “compassion” and “caring” for the Iranian people, U.S. government officials seized on this disaster as an opportunity to reiterate their demands that Tehran abandon its nuclear program, turn over to Washington anyone deemed to be a member of Al Qaeda, and establish a government that is “democratic”—that is, one that suits the political and economic interests of the U.S. billionaires.

Washington’s approach to Iran was recently summed up by White House advisor Richard Perle. “We said that if our efforts with Afghanistan and Iraq were successful, our diplomacy then could be simplified to two words: ‘You’re next’,” Perle said. “The point was not ‘we’re going to invade you next.’ It was ‘we’re going to turn to you next.’ ”

“You’re next!” That’s the brutal message of the imperialist “war on terrorism,” the campaign of intensifying military pressures through which Washington seeks to force Iran—as well Syria, Libya, north Korea, and other countries on its hit list—into submitting to its demands.

The U.S. offensive, of course, has nothing to do with democracy, peace, or other professed goals, and everything to do with gaining domination over the oil and other resources of this Middle Eastern nation. The ruling capitalist families in the United States are locked in a sharpening conflict with their imperialist rivals in Paris, Berlin, London, Tokyo and elsewhere over the redivision of the world and its wealth—including Iran and other semicolonial countries—in order to extend the life of their declining empire.

Liberal critics of U.S. policy toward Iran have been wringing their hands over the deadly quake, pointing to the glaring contrast between the massive loss of life in Bam, where the buildings were literally reduced to dust, and the much lower death toll in imperialist countries like Japan that use earthquake-resistant technology. What happened in Iran was a man-made disaster, not a natural one, they note. “What the ‘developing world’ needs is to develop—and fast,” said one British commentator in the Christian Science Monitor.

But that’s precisely the point: such economic development is impossible while the imperialists continue to dominate the semicolonial world and plunder it through debt slavery and unequal terms of trade backed up by military force. Since the late 19th century the world has been “divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations, the latter possessing colossal wealth and powerful armed forces,” as Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin pointed out in 1920. Since then not a single “developing” nation has emerged from that bondage to finance capital, whose every action toward the more economically backward countries is designed to reinforce that dependence. That is how imperialism works.

In contrast with Washington’s attempt to blackmail Iran into submission, one nation in the world has set an example of selfless solidarity—revolutionary Cuba. The workers and farmers government in Cuba immediately offered unstinting relief aid to Iran with no strings attached.

What the people of Iran need from Washington is not a scrawny carrot accompanied by a big club. Working people in the United States and worldwide should demand that the U.S. government lift its criminal economic sanctions against Iran, unfreeze Iran’s assets abroad, and normalize relations with Tehran. And it should get all its troops out of the Middle East now.
 
 
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Washington uses quake relief offer to renew pressure on Iranian gov’t  
 
 
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