1. Trump, the president of the US imperialism, got Kasim Suleimani, the commander of the Jerusalem Force under the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) and the leader of Shiite expansionism, assassinated. As such, he poked the hornet’s nest in the Middle East. This assassination and the following promise of revenge by the Iranian administration indicate that an “irregular” war is about to begin in the region in the coming days and weeks. This process of conflict could lead to a redistribution of cards in the Middle East, which would affect Turkey closely.

2. Let’s recall how we got here: the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 resulted in an increase of Iran’s influence and role in Iraq, which has intimidated imperialism and Zionism. After the imperialist occupation in Iraq liquidated the Saddam and Ba’ath regime, which was based on the Sunni community in the country constituting about 30 percent of its population, governments formed by the alliance of Shiite parties (which make up about 65 percent of the population) and Kurdish parties have started to rule the country. It was through the Shiite parties that Iran has become one of the leading actors in the country’s administration. Throughout this process, Iraq has been governed on the basis of an implicit cooperation between the US and Iran.

3. The Mullahs’ regime, which came to power through the Islamic revolution in 1979 and strengthened itself by destroying Iran’s real revolutionary forces, had attempted to spread its counterrevolutions in the region in order to survive there under the pressure of imperialism and Zionism. Iran had the greatest opportunity to do so during the process of revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, and it increased its direct military intervention in the region by sending thousands of militias and many military advisers to support the Assad dictatorial regime in order to crush the Syrian popular revolution. The military capacity of Hezbollah in Lebanon that was under Iranian control increased its militia units as well as establishing further units, again under the control of Iran, so as to fight ISIS in Iraq. While the national army of Iraq is now organized on the basis of the Shiite sect, the Shiite militias are also officially recognized as part of the national army. Iran, the same way, supports the Houthi militias in Yemen in turn.

4. In the conjuncture created by the agreement between the US and Iran during the Obama era, the US administration approached Iran’s interventions in the region in a friendly way. The US administration, which prioritized the strangulation of the revolutions in the region and the liquidation of the ISIS, did not raise its voice in the face of Iran’s presence in Syria and Iraq. During the process of liquidation of ISIS, especially in Iraq, the US forces cooperated with Iranian militias, and the pro-Iranian militias supported by the US air strikes captured ISIS-controlled regions, the most important of all having been Mosul. However, after the marginalization of ISIS and the withdrawal of the revolutionary wave, Iran’s rising military and political power in the region has become a problem of first degree importance for the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Thus, both the imperialist and Zionist forces, and the Sunni rulers who are concerned about and fight with the Shiite expansionism have made the gradual liquidation of the military forces under the influence of Iran in the region their main agenda item. In this context, military tensions have increased between the US and Iran in Iraq, and between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Yemen.

5. The economic collapse in Iraq and Iran and the popular uprisings that erupted against the pressure of the regimes in the recent weeks strengthened these tensions. While the Mullah regime took an even more repressive stance under the threat of collapse (during the protests, the regime forces killed a large number of demonstrators, while the exact numbers are still unknown), the United States and its allies used these protests as the perfect timing to back down the Iranian regime. In particular, the months-long uprisings of the Shiite population against the government of the Shiite parties in Iraq and the fact that these Iran-backed parties had no capacity to prevent the overturning of the country have made the conflict between the US and Iran even more sensitive when it came to who has the power of control in the latter. Following the defeat of ISIS, the US demanded the liquidation of Hashdi Shabi and organized attacks on the commanders of this organization. Iran-controlled groups responded by attacking US military units in return. Following the attack in which one US soldier was killed and four US soldiers were wounded, the US hardened its attacks on Hashdi Shabi. It is then that the pro-Iranian forces attacked the US Embassy in Baghdad and partially occupied the Embassy. The US’s response was to kill Qasim Suleimani and Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis, one of the most important commanders of Hashdi Shabi. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see mutual missions rise in the coming days.

6. Other factors that should be included in this picture are the recent developments in the domestic politics of the USA and Iran. The Trump administration is trying to strengthen its prestige in the eyes of the American people during the period of presidential elections, first with the assassination of Baghdadi, and now with that of Suleimani. Iran, on the other hand, aims to divert the internal rebellion by increasing nationalist and anti-USA sentiments through raising tensions on the basis of sectarianism in the region and through increasing frictions with the USA. At the same time, pro-Iranian groups are striving to divert the rebellion against the Shiite government from its course by tightening their attitude against the USA in Iraq. Undoubtedly, this attack by imperialism will help the Mullah regime to turn the rebellion against itself on its behalf and unite it on the basis of Shiism.

7. Although all these developments will not immediately lead to a war that will begin with a direct US attack on Iran (and while we don’t neglect this possibility), we foresee that mutual reprisals, in other words a kind of “irregular war,” will continue taking place in the region. Meanwhile, it is clear that the chaotic situation in Iraq will worsen given the fact that the pro-Iranian Shiite parties cannot rule the country anymore and that there even exist anti-Iranian Shiite parties. The US will obviously try to use this situation to break Iran’s influence in the country. Will the Iraqi parliament’s decision to “withdraw all foreign powers from Iraq (although the applicability of this decision is quite doubtful at a time when a real government could not be established in the country) put an end to the cooperation between the two countries (the USA and Iran) in the administration of Iraq since the US invasion? Will it lead to a new coation agreed by both parties through a new bargaining process? We will see the answer to this question in the coming days.

8.  It is imperative that all workers as well as all progressive and revolutionary forces in the region develop an open and clear attitude in face of all these developments. The Middle East has been under attack and pressure from imperialism and Zionism from the very beginning. The sovereignty of imperialism in the region has been contributing to the survival of monarchical and dictatorial regimes in many countries of the latter. The proletarian people of the Middle East and revolutionary currents in the region hate these regimes and their struggles are their reactions against them. Hence, our place will surely be on their side in case of any military attack that the imperialist and/or Zionist forces may engage in against Iran or Iraq. The USA military forces must immediately withdraw from the Middle East. For this reason, we call on the workers of the world, especially of the USA, to mobilize against American imperialism and Zionist aggression!

9. One of the biggest dangers awaiting the proletarian people of the Middle East is the imperialist project to divide the peoples of the region on ethnic and religious lines, to put them against each other, and to split the land they share in common on these grounds so as to better and more firmly control the resulting smaller pieces. The aim of imperialism is to create division and conflict between the Sunni and Shiite religious groups, to add ethnic sensitivities, to poison the relations between people so as to play them off against each other. Some monarchical and dictatorial regimes in the region would surely support this as well. We shouldn’t let this plan run its course. There is no doubt that all the peoples should be able to have right to self-determination for their own future freely. But it should not be forgotten that the only way to wipe the region off of imperialism as well as the expansionist, oppressive and counterrevolutionary forces is to unite the resistance of all peoples together through establishing a Federation of Workers, in which they can live together and freely in the Middle East.

El Socialista, the publication of Izquierda Socialista in Argentina, interviewed with Görkem Duru from the Workers’ Democracy Party (Turkey), the official section of the International Workers’ Union (IWU-FI), about the mobilizations of recent weeks in the Middle East.

What triggered the revolts in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran?

The bad economic and social conditions that condemned the masses to poverty caused the mobilisations in these three countries to explode. In Lebanon, it was the government’s decision to create a new tax on WhatsApp and other Internet services that led to the rebellion. In Iraq, the working masses took to the streets because of the high rates of unemployment and poverty. In Iran, the fuse of mass protests was lit when the government raised the price of fuel to almost 300 percent. These have been the factors that sparked the revolts. At the bottom lay the unease of the masses over the nefarious capitalist policies of the governments of these three countries. The “garbage revolt” of 2015 in Lebanon, the rebellions of 2011, 2015 and 2018 in Iraq and the struggles that were coming from 2016 to 2018 in Iran, were signs of the discontent of the masses. It would interest two examples to show destruction caused by neoliberal policies in those countries. In Iraq only 48.7 percent of the active population is working. Of the 38 million inhabitants of the country 13 million of them almost 30 percent of the population lives in poverty. In Iran, GDP fell by 9 percent this year and inflation is around 40 percent. As a result, food prices have risen three or four times. In Lebanon, the government has been trying to implement austerity policies since April this year to respond to the severe economic crisis. To make the working people pay the bill of the crisis, it set as an aim to eliminate public expenditures, lower the salaries of public workers and raise taxes. So, the poor have become poorer, without access to public services such as electricity, water and sanitation. The level reached by the policies of capitalist exploitation opened the way to the mobilisations of the masses with economic demands.

You say that it was the economic demands that provoked the revolts. But in these three countries the masses shout “The people want the fall of the regime”, a slogan that has been repeated in many countries of the Middle East and North Africa since 2010. How do you see it? How is the progress of mobilisations?

Yes, in fact, the demonstrations that began spontaneously with the economic slogans quickly spread and took on a political character against both governments and regimes. There were conditions that facilitated the emergence of democratic demands. The strong repression of the mobilisations by the state apparatuses (the repression in Iraq and Iran caused over 400 deaths) has been one factor for the masses to direct their anger against the governments and regimes. In fact, there had already been rebellions in those countries in the recent past and the governments promised structural reforms to quench them, promises never fulfilled. And the standard of living of the people went from bad to worse. As a result, the masses began to question the regimes more harshly. After the last revolts began the governments of Lebanon and Iraq again promised reforms, however, this time the masses did not retreat from the streets, nor after the prime ministers of these two countries resigned. This shows us the level of anger of the masses. In Lebanon, people were shouting, “Let They all go! The masses demand a secular system instead of the sectarian, oligarchic and corrupt regime built on the interests of imperialism after the 1975-90 civil war. In Iraq the masses hate the regime built after the intervention of the United States (2003) with American and Iranian collaboration based on oligarchic hegemony over oil and dividing the country along sectarian lines. In Iran, apart from the economic demands, there is a struggle against the regime of the mullahs with democratic slogans. In the three countries the working class, women and youth organise street protests and regional strikes with both economic and democratic slogans. Considering the demands, the character and the vanguard of the current rebellions, we can say that all of them are part of the revolutionary process that started in the Middle East and North Africa.

You say that the current mobilisations are part of the revolutionary process that began in the area in 2010. What was missing then was revolutionary leaderships capable of meeting the democratic and social demands of the masses. In today’s leaderships, is there a revolutionary leadership capable of meeting the democratic and social demands of the masses?

Unfortunately, there were no leaderships capable of getting the masses to meet their demands. We already know the result, or rather everyone must have seen it. The lack of revolutionary leadership in the example of Tunisia made the revolution stop in the middle of the road, in the democratic stage, by the policy of democratic reaction applied by the bourgeoisie with the help of imperialism and with the approval of reformism. In Egypt and Syria, the army, imperialism, reactionary bulbs (Hezbollah, ISIS, etc.) And the countries of the region tried to crush the mobilizations of the masses. A more current example is Algeria. The mobilisations that started in 2019 could defeat the dictatorship of Bouteflika. However, the bourgeoisie and the army try to sustain the regime with the methods of democratic reaction. They want to make a “transition” by electoral means so that the regime does not fall. But the struggle of the masses against the regime continues.

Also, the working peoples have had experience in the last nine years. The lack of revolutionary leaderships in the process that began in 2010 caused “moderate Islam” like the Muslim Brotherhood to triumph in many countries. But the neoliberal policies of these reactionary leaderships deepened the poverty and exploitation of the masses. And today in countries like Lebanon, Iraq and Iran the peoples reject religious sectarianism because of the experiences they have had throughout this period.

However, revolutionary leaderships have not yet emerged in the area. This lack will be a determining factor in the course of the revolts. This also applies to revolutionary processes in other parts of the world. This is equally important today in Chile, in Colombia, in the struggles of the masses against the policies of capitalist exploitation. Today the slogans “it’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years” and “The people want this regime to fall” are manifestations of the same popular anger. The construction of a revolutionary leadership in one of these countries will be an example for the masses to follow the same path. Therefore, the construction of a program of struggle that can unite the economic and social demands based on the independence of the working class and internationalism, with the perspective of a rupture of capitalism and imperialism, and the unification of the struggles of the masses around this program are the urgent tasks that we revolutionaries have to assume and carry out.