Understanding Biden's Israel Posture
Biden's moves towards Israel are only confusing if you assume consistency and solidarity are his motivators. They make perfect sense from imperialist point of view.
Perhaps the one phrase of Henry Kissinger’s everyone will remember is the one which also encapsulates not just the sinister ambitions underlying the monster of a man he was but also the cold-blooded cynicism U.S. imperialism always operates under in actuality or, shall we say, in secret. And that phrase is, commenting on the Iran-Iraq War in real time, “It’s a pity both sides can’t lose.”
When one actually considers the outcome of the Iran-Iraq War, you realize that both sides really did come quite close to losing, by pretty much any definition of the term. Over a million civilians dead, hundreds of thousands more injured, millions displaced, billions in infrastructure damage, chemical weapons used against Iranian and Kurdish civilians. To say nothing of the price inflicted on the Iraqi people who were caught between the tanks and artillery. All this before an even more devastating war in Kuwait in 1990.
Kissinger’s statement really does perfectly capture the way imperialist rulers view conflicts like the Iran-Iraq War. People like you and me, for instance, look at things like human toll, human suffering, injustices committed against particularly vulnerable and oppressed peoples, and so on. But rulers of imperialist governments, like Kissinger and Biden, look at them differently. They look at things like being the top dog, in control of oil markets in the Middle East, at the end of brutal and protracted conflicts with high casualties.
So, when countries like Iraq and Iran are both in weakened positions after catastrophic, genocidal wars of plunder, with high amounts of human suffering, the U.S. rulers — as well as their French, British, German and Russian capitalist counterparts who divide the spoils, in horse-trades between themselves where anything goes — are in better position to jockey the defeated countries to act in their imperial class interests, whatever that means, whatever the cost. There is no oppressed nationality or minority who the U.S. rulers will not betray, or haven’t betrayed, if they conclude it will suit their imperial interests in a given region.
After U.S. defeats in Vietnam, Cuba and Nicaragua, growing popular and militant working-class movements in Iran brewed as well. After the Second Imperialist World Slaughter, the U.S. and British rulers had installed a puppet government in Iran, after toppling a noncompliant president. The puppet regime was toppled in 1979 by this popular mass movement. Therefore it’s false to describe the coming to power of the Khomeini-regime in Tehran as “the Iranian Revolution.” The Iranian Revolution was overturned by Khomeini. Khomeini’s rise symbolizes the Iranian counterrevolution.
During the revolution, which saw workers councils come to the fore as well as women’s organizations and organizations of the oppressed, its character was taking shape and form when clerical forces hijacked the movement early on. A struggle ensued between the vanguard of the popular Iranian revolution which toppled the Shah and the capitalist clerical forces and their masked thugs.
During this time, a hostage situation ensued, where the new Iranian government held hostage U.S. embassy staff. President Carter ordered a clandestine military raid of the U.S. personnel, but the operation failed. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein had recently come to power in a bloody and sadistic military coup, which was backed by Carter’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Hussein had his own reasons for wanting to invade Iran, like to take possession of its oil resources; he became useful to the U.S. when it felt it needed Hussein to pressure Tehran.
In 1980, Iraqi tanks entered the southwestern regions of Iran and began attacking military and civilian targets. Senior officials from the Carter Administration have been quoted saying they gave Hussein the “green light” to go into Iran after the hostage operation failed. Carter also wanted to punish the Iranian people for ousting and rejecting the Shah as their leader who he hoped to impose on them.
Even as the U.S. Army provided intelligence and arms to the Iraqi Army, they continued providing funding for weapons, as well as weapons themselves, to the Iranians. When Ronald Reagan entered office, he not only continued providing Hussein with conventional military and intelligence assistance, he also provided Hussein with chemical weapons, knowing he would use them against Kurdish and other civilians. While Reagan and his administration publicly said they would not “negotiate with terrorists” in dealing with the Iranians, they created a secret government to subvert the U.S. Constitution and Congress, by illegally funneling money through the CIA to fund both the Iranians and Nicaraguan fascists attempting to overthrow the glorious Nicaraguan Revolution.
In the end, U.S. imperialism won that round, as Iran and Iraq suffered irreparable harm from which they have yet to recover, and never will, that is until capitalism gets uprooted from those regions and the world over. The Nicaraguan Revolution was ultimately defeated, pairing with the simultaneous defeat of the Granada Revolution, as well as revolutionary defeats in Burkina Faso and the Congo. The Soviet Union played just as much of a treacherous role in Iran-Iraq and all these struggles as the U.S. and its imperialist counterparts in Europe, if not worse.
This perspective is important when trying to understand President Biden’s inconsistent, hypocritical posture towards Israel. While it’s true that there are domestic political pressures coming from the Muslim and Arab quarters of the Democratic Party, as well as the ultra-left flank of the party, the broader and long-term goals of imperialism offer a better explanation for the vacillations. And that is that the U.S. rulers, who Biden and his cabinet represent, would like to see both a weakened Israel that has to constantly worry about terror attacks as well as a weakened Iran that is forced to play ball with the United States in order to get by.
Recent statements by U.S. officials, implying cuts to military aid, have made no light of the fact that it’s their veto, if not leverage, over Israeli policy. Biden’s administration is willing to go to any length to prevent a decisive Israeli victory in Gaza because such an outcome would end the United States’ longtime ‘peace’ racket of being a “neutral arbiter” between Israel and competing powers in the region, which again only serves to guarantee that the U.S. rulers are the ultimate benefactors of the various kinds of wars over borders, resources and sects, which they fuel in the first place, perfectly inheriting the British Empire’s divide/rule.
The United States is the last remaining capitalist empire in history. We are living in the epoch of socialist revolution.
jonathansalinas@substack.com