John Bolton, erstwhile US national security advisor (and neocon blowhard for all seasons, in or out of office) wrote an article in the Telegraph newspaper shortly after Christmas.
The article lambasted the inaction of the Biden administration over attacks on Israel-affiliated shipping, accusing it of “ignoring the reality of who is calling the shots in this conflict” (supposedly Iran), and claiming that “only if Israel, America, Britain, and others show they possess the resolve and capability to impose significant costs on Iran, as punishment for its aggression, will they persuade the ayatollahs that proceeding further will bring them intolerable pain. Very likely, only direct military force, applied against critical targets inside Iran, will impose such costs.” (The West may now have no option but to attack Iran, 28 December 2023)
What appears to have slipped Bolton’s mind is the disastrous outcome of every other such effort to ‘punish’ US enemies into compliance with imperialist diktat, be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen or Russia. Nowhere has the imposition of any amount of ‘intolerable pain’ on US enemies succeeded in installing a stable comprador government fit to undertake the sisyphean task of shoring up US hegemony and reversing US decline – or, in his own words, “overthrowing the mullahs” and “replacing them with some other form of government that enjoys the support of Iran’s citizenry [!], is central to decreasing insecurity throughout the middle east”.
Instead, the more the USA, Nato and imperialism’s proxy forces have piled on the truly ‘intolerable pain’, the less willing have their targets been to tolerate this treatment and the more willing to find new and innovative ways of striking back at their tormentors, sharing a common interest with millions of other oppressed and exploited peoples. So it is that the agony of zionist oppression visited on the heads of the people of Gaza has not only resulted in their own most heroic uprising but has also swept the middle east with an unstoppable tidal wave of solidarity with that struggle.
That is why the national naval forces of Yemen, misleadingly dubbed as “Houthi rebels”, have been running circles around Israel-affiliated shipping, opening fire on and occupying boats blockading Israel and forcing the rest of the ‘international community’ to wake up to the new reality that turning a blind eye to the ongoing genocide now has material consequences.
Bolton makes a meal out of a statement from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps correctly hailing the Al-Aqsa Flood operation as “one of the acts of revenge for the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani by the USA and the zionists”. Desperate for a casus belli against Iran, Bolton pretends that this supposed “gaffe” reveals that Tehran is pulling all the strings and is paying all strands of the resistance.
Contrary to Bolton’s lies, the richly deserved solidarity pledges and actions that are now strengthening the anti-imperialist cause globally are not a put-up job paid for by evil puppet masters in Tehran. Nobody had to fund the Yemeni comrades to carry out their brilliant solidarity work in the Red Sea.
Nobody had to pay the Palestinian resistance forces, so intimately integrated with Palestinian society, to fight to the death to defend their people. Nobody needed to pay the resistance forces in Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Army or the Iraqi resistance brigades to come out in support of Palestine. It is the imperialists who dig their own graves deeper with every new frantic attempt to bury the resistance.
If we want a genuine example of a foreign power bankrolling a terrorist group to commit heinous atrocities, we should rather look to Washington’s proxies in the Islamic State (Isis).
“Isis has claimed responsibility for the deadly twin blasts near the burial site of slain military commander Qasem Soleimani in southern Iran. At least 84 people were killed and 284 injured in the blasts on Wednesday, state-run news agency IRNA reported, in what was the deadliest attack in Iran since its 1979 revolution.
“Isis media wing Al-Furqan issued a statement on Thursday – more than 24 hours after the explosions – claiming two suicide bombers, who are brothers, had detonated their explosive vests as mourners gathered for the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Soleimani near his grave in his hometown of Kerman.” (Isis claims responsibility for deadliest attack in Iran since 1979 revolution by Eyad Kourdi and Jennifer Deaton, CNN, 5 January 2024)
This barbaric atrocity would seem to indicate that John Bolton, clutching his dogeared regime-change playbook to his chest, is not alone in pushing for war with Iran. But should his hawkish line gain serious traction in ruling circles, the endgame for US imperialism could arrive even sooner than anticipated.
