The New Dark Age

The assassination by the US/Israeli of Ali Larijani (Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council) is yet another example of the extreme chauvinism and racism of the imperialist bloc blinding them to the realities of their enemies.

Though it is undoubtedly the case that Larijani filled an important position, the Iranian political and military systems are built to withstand such personnel being subject to assassination by the imperialists. Iran has had to live with a state of siege and sabotage ever since the revolution of 1979 as various hybrid war strategies have been unleashed upon them from that point onwards.

It is worth reminding ourselves that the very second President of Iran after the revolution, Mohammad-Ali Rajai, along with Prime Minister at the time Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, were both assassinated in a single attack by the MEK in 1981 during the Iran-Iraq war. This experience has led to extensive redundancy being built into the Iranian governmental structure and, so far, this is holding up well under the strain of the US war of aggression.

So why then does the US pursue a tactic that does not actually work in terms of getting them closer to their objectives? After all, the Israeli regime has been assassinating senior leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and other resistance groups for decades now—and that has done nothing whatsoever to stop the rise of such groups in terms of power and efficacy.

The reality is that part of the problem facing the US imperialist bloc is their own extreme racism and chauvinism. They cannot attribute deep planning and sophistication to their enemies. This persistent failure to appreciate the sophistication of the Iranian system will only lead to more desperate “shock and awe” type acts, which are designed to convince the nation under attack that they cannot hope to prevail against the US because the imperialists can eliminate anyone they choose.

When it becomes clear that this doesn’t work, it will produce an escalating crisis of confidence within the US system—which will only produce more acts of desperation as the imperialists seek a way to secure a victory using precisely the same tactics that have failed thus far.

Put simply: the US imperialists don’t know how to fight in any other way now.

The trimming down of the US military over many years has produced a force capable of delivering rapid and large-scale destruction, but one that is not built for sustained wars. Their force structure, their withered industrial base, and the very weak connection between the US leaders and their own masses do not allow for the kind of war that would actually be necessary to defeat a nation such as Iran.

But whilst the power of US imperialism has diminished, their leaders’ belief in their own supremacy has not.

In their narrative of civilisational supremacy, it is always themselves who are the educated and sophisticated ones, and their targets are nothing but thugs. Netanyahu has described the Iranian leadership as being a “gang of gangsters”—rather laughable when one considers the many charges of corruption pending against him personally—but it clearly shows how they want the populations of the imperialist bloc to consider Iran. They want to portray it as held together by brute violence and nothing else, and thus the removal of the man at the top will cause a systemic collapse as “the regime” lacks all legitimacy.

The other factor in the persistence of the assassination tactic is that the US is getting desperate. They firmly believed that the shock of the assassination of the late Ayatollah Khamenei would lead to the collapse of the Islamic Republic. Trump’s announcement at the beginning of the war made it clear that he expected the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government in response to the US/Israeli bombing campaign beginning.

When it became clear that not only was Iran not going to collapse but had a clear plan to try and drive the US out of the region, the US planners were caught flat-footed.

The longer Iran resists, the worse the economic situation threatens to become for the imperialists. Oil prices rise and key products like fertiliser are affected by the cutting off of oil exports due to the effective closure of the Straits of Hormuz. The rising oil price and the restrictions on oil exports will have real consequences in the imperial core nations themselves, such as a rise in fuel prices—which is something that has constrained every US administration since the instability provoked by the oil shock of 1973.

The imperialists will kill many more Iranians before finally being forced to make painful concessions to Iran—having to actually address Iranian security concerns related to the presence of US forces in the West Asian region.

Ali Larijani may be dead. But Iran will survive to see the imperialists humbled.