Workers World, Vol. 22, No. 15
April 8 – Once again, the specter of U.S. military intervention against the Iranian people has become a distinct possibility.
In interpreting Carter’s statement imposing sanctions and breaking off diplomatic ties with Iran, “senior White House aides,” says the Washington Post of April 8, “pointedly declined to rule out military responses, such as a naval blockade of Iran, if the crisis continues unresolved.”
It is not so much the rupture in diplomatic relations that reflects the new convulsive temper of the White House and State Department. It is the rude and offensive manner in which the Iranian attaché and his aides were summoned to hear the U.S. reply and the gutter language that was used by the State Department underlings in ushering the Iranian diplomats out, which demonstrate the new and more dangerous posture of U.S. imperialism.
It should be noted that the new developments came at a time of waning political interest by the broad masses of the people in the hostage issue and their growing preoccupation with galloping inflation, the soaring costs of keeping body and soul together, and the specter of unemployment.
Carter’s new turn toward more brinkmanship in the Persian Gulf is closely tied to the perspective of a military solution of the intractable capitalist disease of stagflation, which has imparted a new dimension to the sick capitalist economy.
It is useful in this connection to recall that there are two distinct phases of U.S. diplomacy in relation to the Iranian revolution.
One phase began immediately after November 4, when the Iranian students seized the embassy. It was in that period that the U.S. began its protracted hysterical campaign to whip the country into a frenzy. Almost daily, warlike pronouncements were made by the Carter administration; U.S. warships began to sail to the Persian Gulf, culminating with the arrival of nuclear aircraft carriers and attack naval craft of all kinds.
It was during this period that U.S. diplomacy began to mobilize world bourgeois public opinion against Iran. This culminated in the passage of a resolution by the UN Security Council condemning the seizure of the hostages and demanding their immediate release. The U.S. at the same time was systematically attempting to undermine the Iranian economy with all sorts of punitive financial and economic measures.
Thereafter, the U.S. government embarked upon a plan to cajole the UN Security Council into voting for sanctions against Iran. The difficulty involved in this was that the Soviet Union, which had voted with the imperialists for the release of the hostages, showed signs of resisting the pressure of the U.S. and its imperialist allies in the UN Security Council for sanctions. Imposing sanctions would, under the circumstances, constitute a prelude to a military attack against Iran, either by naval blockade or some other combination of military action.
Aware of the growing reluctance of the USSR to accommodate the U.S. into its imperialist venture, it was revealed on December 23, 1979, by the New York Times in a front-page story that the U.S. government “had told the Soviet Union in the strongest diplomatic terms that any Soviet effort to block the UN Security Council from imposing economic sanctions against Iran would be regarded as an unfriendly action.” (Our emphasis.)
“So serious does the U.S. regard the Soviet action to the request for sanctions announced by President Carter,” the article continued, “that Ambassador Watson rushed back to Moscow even though he had just recovered from a gall bladder operation in the U.S.” Furthermore, the Times revelation went on, “If the Russians are perceived as having contributed to a defeat of the American effort, this could sabotage chances for a strategic arms treaty and add increased tensions to already-strained relations.”
The Times article continued: “The message to the Russians is this, they said: the U.S. expects Soviet support for Council action. If the Soviet Union feels it cannot vote for such a resolution it should abstain and take no active role in trying to persuade others not to vote for it. If the Russians actively lobby behind the scenes to block a resolution or use their veto to stop it, this would severely impair relations and be seen by the government and nation as an unfriendly action.” (Our emphasis.)
It was also revealed by the Times in this same article that “several U.S. senators, after having been briefed by President Carter, warned the Soviet Union to go along with the U.S. or face severe consequences.”
It should be seen from this extremely illuminating report in the Times that the U.S. had virtually delivered a public ultimatum to the USSR to cooperate with U.S. imperialist predatory aims in Iran or, as the senators put it, “face the consequences.”
This is what Vance and Carter mean when they publicly plead for “cooperation” from the USSR. This is what they mean when they invoke détente – this is their version of it. It is their conception of “friendly,” “cooperative,” and “bilateral” relations.
The second phase of U.S. diplomacy began after the USSR had made it clear that it would veto the U.S. resolution in the UN on sanctions. Then began the new tactic of U.S. diplomacy of diverting worldwide attention from its interventionist aims in Iran and the Persian Gulf generally.
It should be noted that the virtual ultimatum given to the USSR on sanctions was conveyed to “Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin before he returned to Moscow for consultations two weeks ago,” says the New York Times in its December 23 article on the subject. (Our emphasis.)
This means that the threatening message to the USSR must have been conveyed either on December 9 or 10, well before the Afghanistan events, and clearly demonstrates that the U.S. anti-Soviet campaign on Afghanistan came only after the USSR made it plain that it refused to go along with the anti-Iranian scheme of the U.S.
The overall strategy of the U.S. in relation to Iran has not changed. What the Afghanistan developments made possible was an about-face by the U.S. in putting across a new tactical approach to the Iranian government. This was an attempt to divert the Iranians’ independence struggle into anti-Soviet channels through the medium of creating a so-called Moslem front against the USSR. The U.S. would supply the weapons, ammunition, and political direction.
The new Carter tactics were widely applauded in all imperialist circles and especially in the U.S., especially because it had a peaceful, reasonable, and conciliatory mask to cover its sordid material interests.
The new U.S. tactic was to tone down the hysterical campaign in the press and the media and to make conciliatory gestures to the so-called moderate bourgeois elements in the government – the Bani-Sadrs, Ghotbzadehs, and Bazaragans. The latter in turn facilitated Carter’s approach by increasing their anti-Soviet pronouncements, with which Ayatollah Khomeini joined in as well.
The aim of the U.S., however, was not merely to elicit public pronouncements or fierce anti-Soviet propaganda from the Iranian regime by the use of its anti-Afghanistan ploy. The purpose of the anti-Soviet strategy was to regain its lost economic and military position in Iran. The hostage matter is just another ploy.
The true aim of the U.S. was again succinctly stated in an April 9 editorial in the New York Times. “The case for educating Iranian students and soldiers, and allowing Iranians to pursue commercial and legal business in the U.S.,” the Times now sadly admits, “rested on an assumption that has turned out to be wrong.”
What was this assumption? “It was that Iran would soon gain a stable government eager to ... reapply for military aid and preserve a relationship to balance Soviet influence in the Persian Gulf.” (Our emphasis.)
It could scarcely be stated more plainly. What the U.S. really wanted was for Iran to become a military dependency again and to preserve a dependent relationship with the U.S. in other words, to become a puppet again. This is hardly a way “to balance Soviet influence in the Persian Gulf” since the Soviet Union has no military role in Iran and does not seek one.
No wonder then that Carter’s tactical approach has finally collapsed. For the real issue is not the hostages. The real issue is the “reapplication for military aid” to preserve a puppet relationship with the U.S. and to be used as a surrogate to fight the Soviet Union.
Thus, no matter how many times both the Ayatollah and Bani-Sadr have attacked the USSR, it is not the USSR that is demanding a military relationship of dependency nor has the Soviet Union got a military presence in Iran or had one as the U.S. has had.
This, then, is the basic predicament of the U.S. It likes to picture the USSR as aggressive in the Persian Gulf area and as the great danger. But since this is false, the Iranian government, including even its most reactionary, bourgeois elements, are not ready for any such venture against the USSR into which the U.S. is trying to propel them.
Nevertheless, the devil has work for idle hands.
“There was talk in high U.S. government circles,” says the Washington Post of April 8 in an analytical article by Don Oberdorfer, “that Iran could face a threat of parallel action by the two super-powers resulting in a partition of that country.” This is not just loose talk. This is part of the new brinkmanship which the Carter administration is embarking upon if it is not stopped.
It is not the USSR which is seeking “parallel action” with the U.S. As we noted, in the Times article of December 23, it was the U.S. which was attempting to bludgeon the Soviet Union into cooperating in the rape of Iran with its sanctions resolution in the UN. The USSR refused and vetoed the resolution. (Incidentally, the Chinese leadership played a treacherous role of merely not voting, when, as a socialist country, its leadership should have resolutely vetoed the imperialist resolution.)
The predatory imperialist character of this “parallel action” proposed “in high circles of the U.S. government” is completely exposed in this very same article by Oberdorfer in which he says (obviously repeating what he was told) that “the resulting partition of [Iran would be accomplished by] the Soviet Union seizing the northern part near its border and the U.S. and its allies taking over the oil-rich area in the south.”
Thus we see the entire geopolitical strategy of the Carter administration completely exposed! It demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that its fundamental aim is the seizure of the Iranian oil fields, the consequent dismemberment of Iran, and the destruction of the Iranian Revolution.
Having failed to obtain the cooperation of the USSR for its predatory interests, it has not embarked on the path of John Foster Dulles, with this difference: Whereas Dulles only took the country to the brink, Carter may be propelled to go beyond it.
Last updated: 11 May 2026