Workers World, Vol. 22, No. 6
February 5 – Not since the very early days of the Korean War has there been so much feverish war talk. Threats of war against the Soviet Union emanating from the highest echelons of the government seem to have become a daily phenomenon.
One only has to consider the utterly incredible threat made by President Carter’s special ambassador to India. By almost any standards, his statement was almost a unilateral declaration of war against the Soviet Union.
As though this were not enough, Zbigniew Brzezinski, on a military mission to Pakistan, topped the adventurism of Clark Clifford and literally brandished a gun in the direction of Afghanistan, as part of the exhibitionist antics in which he tries to illustrate the meaning of the Carter Doctrine.
What are the leaders of the Soviet Union supposed to think in the face of this unprecedented volume of the most jingoistic war drum-beating since Korea?
It has always been standard practice in matters of high foreign policy for significant pronouncements, particularly those which are a departure from the past, to almost always be checked, rather quickly, with the president himself. No so today.
Even in the Carter administration is had been the practice that whenever a hardliner, a hawk, was trotted out to make some bellicose and jingoistic announcement, this was usually followed by trotting out a moderate to soften it while Carter pondered how to find the golden mean between them. Not so today.
The hardliners seem to have the run of the capitalist establishment, in particular of the White House.
At the moment, everything is still focused on the Persian Gulf, although the heaviest propaganda salvos are concentrated on Afghanistan. Nevertheless, it is Iran among all the countries in the area which concerns U.S. imperialist interests most of all. Not necessarily because of the oil, but because it had been the centerpiece of U.S. military strategy to retain imperialist, colonialist domination over the area.
Since the very beginning of the Iranian Revolution, long before the shah was toppled, and all the way through the stormy days of January and February 1979, up to and including this very day, the U.S. has had a two-pronged strategy aimed at undoing the revolution.
The first prong consists of trying to pit, if possible, the relatively progressive anti-imperialist forces against the more militant, more consistently anti-imperialist, revolutionary forces, especially those in the vanguard of the working-class movement.
This prong of U.S. strategy is of course merely a version, not a very new one, of the same old diversionary tactic that the U.S. ruling class employs at home whenever the workers and the oppressed open up a struggle against the ruling class. It is then that they try to divert the masses from skyrocketing inflation and severe cuts in vital services in all the great cities of the country by directing them into reactionary, racist channels.
In Iran the U.S. is also trying desperately to take advantage of the legitimate demands of the nationalities’ struggle against the central government and steer them in a reactionary direction.
The second prong of the U.S. strategic approach is to divert the course of the whole revolution into anti-Soviet channels. By far this is the quintessence of U.S. diplomatic, political, and military strategy.
Not a day goes by that the State Department does not ceaselessly work on this theme. Not for a moment does the Pentagon lose sight of this very crucial aspect of the U.S. struggle against the Iranian Revolution and its vast military implications in so far as the Soviet Union is concerned.
At the present moment the U.S. seems eager to make even the most extravagant promises (never to be kept, of course) to the Iranian government, if only it would finally take some hostile, overt action which would involve Iran in the U.S. imperialist struggle against the USSR.
The use of severe pressure, such as economic strangulation, as well as blandishments and even flattery, along with all sorts of seductive promises, of course, are part and parcel of the State Department armor in the struggle against the Iranian Revolution.
One should not forget, of course, that although the U.S. has been virtually evicted lock, stock, and barrel from Iranian soil, its operatives are nevertheless still at work. CIA covert operations, we are told, will become intensified. The president himself has said this in his State of the Union address.
These are the circumstances surrounding the Iranian government’s vote in the UN for the resolution condemning the USSR’s military assistance to the Afghanistan Revolution.
That, however, hasn’t satisfied the U.S. government. But the Carter administration did begin to make all sorts of overtures to the Iranian government following the UN vote against the USSR.
It is especially noteworthy that the capitalist media thereafter began to play down its campaign on the hostages. The aim of the maneuver is too transparent for even the dullest to see anything in it except as an approach to the Bani-Sadr moderates.
During the entire election campaign in Iran, the U.S. press has consistently shown a tendency to regard Bani-Sadr as its best hope. It seems that no matter how many revolutionary speeches he makes, they recognize him as the opening for a possible imperialist compromise with the Iranian government. Now that he has become president, the Carter administration has intensified its efforts in all directions with a view toward arriving at an imperialist accommodation with the new government.
The way to achieve it, according to the avowed declaration of the State Department, is to increase pressure on the Iranians to not merely reiterate their solidarity with the pro-imperialist forces operating against the Afghan government, but to get a commitment of direct military involvement with the counter-revolutionary Afghan forces.
In order to fortify this strategy, the Carter administration let it be known that it would be willing to put the hostage question temporarily on the back burner and await some (counter-revolutionary) “deeds” from the Iranian government.
It is in this context that one has to view Khomeini’s statement with regard to Afghanistan. If press reports from Tehran are correct, Khomeini has “condemned for the first time today the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and pledged ‘unconditional support’ for the Moslem insurgents fighting against the Soviet-backed government” (New York Times, Feb. 5).
This statement, if correct, unquestionably introduces a new element into the situation.
It marks a shift toward Bani-Sadr’s openly proclaimed hostile position toward the USSR. Khomeini has up until now remained silent in the face of the condemnatory anti-Soviet statements made by Bani-Sadr.
The meaning behind all this is that the Iranian government has fallen prey, in part, to the severe pressure of U.S. imperialism. It is also fearful of becoming isolated in the Islamic world if the pro-imperialist forces become emboldened and fortified by the U.S. as a result of the Afghanistan struggle.
Thus, the Iranian government has officially taken a position of solidarity with the pro-imperialist forces against Afghanistan. For a period of time the Iranian government had taken a much less hostile position in relation to the USSR. Its anti-Soviet pronouncements, however, have not been regarded by Washington as having much substance or offering an avenue for retrieving their former position.
The Khomeini pronouncement, however, offers them a new opportunity. Viewed in that light, Khomeini’s statement may have a wide significance, particularly as the U.S. presses for having his pronouncement translated into overt hostile action against the Afghanistan government.
Khomeini’s condemnation of Soviet assistance to Afghanistan may not amount to much more than the usual pro forma position taken by those bourgeois, non-aligned governments which thrive on the false assumption that by exploiting the class antagonism between the USSR and imperialism, they fortify their own position.
However, it is the State Department’s hope that it has an ace in the hole with the election of Bani-Sadr to the presidency that invests Khomeini’s statement with a more ominous significance. It seems that no matter what revolutionary rhetoric Bani-Sadri employs, U.S. diplomacy seems to regard him as a moderate, that is, one who is amenable and conciliatory to U.S. imperialist interests.
The U.S. has toned down its virulent anti-Iranian campaign and has promoted some makeshift arrangement for an international inquiry commission into the crimes of the shah and his holdings, in the hope that the Bani-Sadr presidency will usher in a new period more favorable for U.S. imperialist interests and one that will divert Iran’s revolutionary course into anti-Soviet channels.
That, however, remains to be seen. Certainly Bani-Sadr’s interviews to the capitalist press and media, especially his interview with ABC last Sunday, indicate that he is capable of making one of those reactionary compromises with imperialism which would divert the course of the revolution.
The revolution, however, is very much alive. And while the most recent developments constitute a shift to the right, the hostility of the mass of the population to U.S. imperialism, the general political awareness of the masses, the growing class consciousness of the workers, and the confidence that they have shown in themselves is much too strong to be easily diverted in a reactionary direction. The 30-year-old atrocities of U.S. imperialism and its puppet shah are much too fresh in the memories of the people – and they will have the last say in the matter.
Last updated: 11 May 2026