Behind the Gulf crisis
Socialist Outlook magazine1980sPhil HearseScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
THE HYPOCRISY of the US naval intervention in the Gulf was completely exposed when the Iraqis resumed their attacks on shipping in the Gulf at the end of August. Despite the array of US military firepower, backed up by British and French naval units to defend tankers going to Iraqi ports from the attacks of the Iranians, nearly all, the attacks on shipping are being carried out by...the Iraqis. Even more bizarre, the main single event which provoked the Americans to up their profile in the Gulf was the attack on the USS Stark which killed 35 American sailors...by the Iraqi airforce! For this attack, the Iranians got most of the blame.
The basic facts of the Gulf shipping war are simple and straightforward. The tit-for-tat strikes against shipping in the Gulf were started by the Iraqis as a weapon against Iranian oil exports. Whereas Iraqi oil can go via the overland pipeline, all Iranian oil has to go by sea. If we want to examine who gains by the shipping war, we have to start with the basic fact that without Gulf shipping there would be no Iranian oil exports and thus a cruel blow to the Iranian economy. economy has been wrecked by the war. So Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is desperate for a ceasefire. By stoking up the situation in the Gulf, he calculates that pressure will be built up for Iran to come to the negotiating table.
The conflict in the Gulf comes in the wake of two important political events — the clashes in Mecca between Iranian shi'ites and Saudi sunni pilgrims and police, and the aftermath of the Irangate scandal in the United States.
The Mecca incidents strengthened the belief among the Arab states which have financed Iraq's war effort that Iran was preparing attacks and subversion against them.
In the United States revelations at the Irangate hearings have put pressure on the Reagan administration to show that it's not soft on Iran, does not have any truck with 'terrorists', and can hold its own in the region. So the request to reflag and escort Kuwaiti tankers was jumped at by the Reagan administration as a tailor-made opportunity to do all those things at once.
It is aimed at shoring up America's power and America's interests in the region.
What of France and Britain? At first Thatcher refused to send mine sweepers to help the Americans, but then did a u-turn and sent the minesweepers anyway. Thatcher always finds it difficult to refuse a request from Reagan Chirac in France has embroiled himself partly as a response to France's traditionally pro-Iraqi attitude, partly out of a wish to deepen France's simmering war of the diplomats with Iran.
There is now a huge armada of western battleships in the Gulf. Probably the US have nuclear weapons on the assault ship Guaduacanal. The scene is being set for a military clash with Iran, and one which has nothing to do with keeping the Gulf open to shipping, which could only be achieved by putting pressure on Iraq to stop the tanker war.
Socialists have no reason to support either Iran or Iraq, both reactionary tyrannies, in the war. But they have every reason to demand that Reagan, Thatcher and Chirac stop their imperialist intervention in the Gulf.
PHIL HEARSE