US Strikes Syria & Iraq While Maintaining Illegal Bases

KH march in Iraq

12-02-2024: As the first month of the year came to a close, the US (United States of America) military conducted air strikes on sites in Syria and Iraq, six days after an alleged drone attack on an American base in Jordan took the lives of three US soldiers.[1] The strikes hit Iraq’s western Al Anbar province about 400 kilometres from Baghdad, and across the border in Syria. 16 people were killed in Iraq, and 7 perished in Syria. The US claims to have struck 85 targets, including command and control operations, intelligence bases and heavy weapons depots.[2] Some 24 hours after conducting these strikes on Syria and Iraq, the US and the UK (United Kingdom) carried out 300 strikes on Yemen, hitting sites in Sanaa, Saada and Hodeidah, supposedly with the aim of neutralising missiles aimed at the Red Sea.[3] The return of the remains of the three US soldiers struck down provided a photo-op for US President Joe Biden, who appeared stern in apparent resolve to avenge the losses.[4]

Orchestrated narrative?

However, it is a distinct possibility that the Western mainstream media narrative was constructed to carefully cover the fact that the US maintains bases in Syria and Iraq, which are illegal under any form of domestic or international law. The Western corporate media claims that the three US soldiers were struck and killed at Tower 22, on the Jordanian side of the border with Syria. In fact, it is likely that the 3 US soldiers were in fact located in the Al Tanf zone inside Syria, which contains an illegal US base. The government of Jordan allows the US to maintain military bases on its soil, while Syria and Iraq do not. By claiming that the drone attack struck Tower 22 in Jordan, the US government can disingenuously claim that US personnel were killed in a legal US base, which then “justifies” its retaliation.[5] If the Western media reported that US soldiers were killed in one of their illegal bases in Syria, the rest of the world can correctly point out that US military forces should not be there in the first place. In fact, the logical conclusion that many would make is that US military forces in Syria and Iraq are legitimate targets. Hence, the need for the manipulated narrative and media PR campaign.

Regardless of the actual course of events, it is important to note that these strikes and counterstrikes are not isolated events but have been the norm over the last 12 months, and especially since the Hamas led terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7 last year. One day after the US strikes on Syria and Iraq, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) claimed that its fighters had launched an explosive laden drone against a US base in Kharab al-Jir in Syria’s northeastern province of al-Hasakah, though without providing details about casualties.[6] This follows statements by the US military itself in early January that the IRI had conducted 118 operations (i.e., likely rocket and drone strikes) on US bases in Syria and Iraq since October 17 last year. Some of the US bases struck were in Ain al-Assad, Kharab al-Jir, al-Shaddadi, Harir, al-Tanf, Rmelan and al-Malikiyah.[7] There is a very real debate even amongst the ruling political circles in Washington about whether to withdraw US forces from Syria and Iraq which remain as “sitting ducks” as long as they remain there, or whether to stay even with the losses of lives and injuries to US troops to “stay the course”.

Iran is the real target

There is little doubt that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the real target of US imperialism in the Middle East, and it is likely that this was the major reason for the triggering of October 7 via the state proxy of Zionist Israel and its sub-contracting proxy Hamas.[8] However, this should not at all obscure the monumental injustices meted out to Palestinians over the past 75 years. Arguably, Iran was even the real target of the Iraq invasion by the US and its allies in 2003, which led to the slaughter of at least one million people. The rhetoric of the US government could not be clearer, when it declares the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and multiple Shia militias in Syria and Iraq as “Iran backed”. Indeed, for the early February strikes, the US government claims to have hit facilities of Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KS) in Iraq as they are “Iran backed”. Yet KH has been defending Iraq against the US led invasion of that country since 2003, and KS has also done this since its beginning in 2013. That is, they have been defending Iraq against the presence of the US military and assisting efforts to prevent US led regime change in Syria. There are around 2500 US troops based in Iraq, and around 900 in Syria.[9]

The very notion that US troops remain in Syria or Iraq to “fight ISIS” (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is risible. Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, amongst many others, exposed the fact that ISIS, Al Qaeda and other mercenaries were funded and armed by Washington to wage war and overthrow the Syrian state from 2011 onwards.[10] There never were any “moderate rebels”, but there were a host of cutthroats prepared to align themselves with the designs of US and European imperialism against secular Syria, but also the “apostate” Iran. The ongoing occupation war on Syria is aimed at taking down a major ally of Iran, and also the Russian Federation. The US ruling class not only refuses to concede that its war of regime change on Syria was effectively blocked by the military efforts of Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, it continues to steal Syrian oil (and wheat) from the areas it controls. The US forces in Syria literally steal the extracted oil and truck it through the illegal Al-Mahmoudiya crossing to their bases in Iraq. As of August 2022, the Syrian Foreign Ministry estimated the cumulative losses from its oil industry to be in the vicinity of $105 billion.[11]

A US led regime change war on Iran now is basically impossible. US imperialism is obviously still dangerous, but it is also at its weakest point in its history. Conversely, the Islamic Republic of Iran is at is strongest point since its revolution which overthrew the US backed Shah in 1979. Despite devastating US imposed economic sanctions, Iran’s economy has returned to growth levels generally higher than that of a Europe plagued by recession, helped by purchases of oil by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in defiance of US sanctions.[12] Moreover, Iran is now a full member the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) alliance, officially joining on January 1, 2024.[13] The BRICS bloc is a non-imperialist confederation underpinned by the gargantuan strength of the PRC’s socialistic and manufacturing based economy, which offers non-Western nations an alternative path of development to the predatory plunder of centuries of now anachronistic colonialism. Iran today has the most extensive missile defence system of any country in the Middle East, and in June 2023 it unveiled a hypersonic missile named the “Fattah” which was advertised as being “400 seconds to Tel Aviv”.[14] With a population of close to 90 million,[15] Iran can mobilise the Basij “people’s militia” who are committed to defending the 1979 revolution and could number around 10 million,[16] in addition to its formidable military in the form of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC).

Hapless “anti-war” movement

At the very point at which a serious anti-war movement in the West is desperately needed to link the eminent danger of World War III with a skyrocketing cost of living crisis, workers in the West have had to endure the bombastic moral grandstanding of the “Stand with Palestine” parades. Misled by parties of the opportunist so-called left, they virtue signal on stopping the bombing of Gaza, which in itself is of course vitally important. However, they do not call for the withdrawal of US troops from Syria and Iraq, imagining that Israel and Palestine exist in a vacuum. They do not oppose, and even endorse, a US led regime change war against Iran. They cannot see that the war on Palestine, the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) proxy war on Russia via Ukraine, the AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom, United States of America) led provocations of China over Taiwan, numerous regime change operations and Western backed colour revolutions in Asia, Africa and Latin America – are all part of one war. It is one war a declining Western imperialism has to wage if it is not to be simply overtaken economically, politically and diplomatically by the non-imperialist BRICS bloc and their allies.

The “Stand with Palestine” misleaders were, and remain, at one with imperialism during tyrannical Covid repression and the arming of Nazi battalions in Ukraine to fight Russia. On October 7, they were given a new lease of life by the imperialists themselves who unleashed them arguably as a diversion to their desired regime change war on Iran. By apologising for, or even justifying, the barbarous terrorism of Hamas, this false left mirrors their imperialist sponsors’ demand for more violence. By yielding to mindless Palestinian nationalism, they are caught between demanding the destruction of the entire state of Israel (which is often interpreted as anti-semitism) and begging the imperialists for mercy. What is more, they do not even recognise that the states which offer Palestine the most political and diplomatic support are the very ones they seek to overthrow – Iran, Russia, China et al.

What is required is a genuine anti-imperialist anti-war movement, which links the desperate cost of living difficulties workers in the West suffer – the war at home – with the endless wars abroad. It should demand the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Syria and Iraq, and an end to the very suggestion of war on Iran, Russia and China. It should demand an end to Western military support for the Zionist Israeli state. It should demand the immediate abolition of NATO and AUKUS. In short, it needs to break from liberal posturing which can be easily manipulated by the elite itself. This requires workers’ parties based on genuine Marxism, rather than “left-wing” opportunism. Authentic Leninism upholding Permanent Revolution analyses the concrete political circumstances, and guides rising workers to the path of ending catastrophic imperialist wars, increasing poverty, insecurity and political repression and towards the shared prosperity of emerging socialism.

Workers League

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@protonmail.com

[1] www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-29/us-troop-members-killed-in-jordan/103399224 (07-02-2023)

[2] www.npr.org/2024/02/02/1228797949/the-likely-targets-of-the-u-s-air-strikes-in-iraq-and-syria (07-02-2023)

[3] www.ejmagnier.com/2024/02/06/entre-larbre-et-lecorce-les-usa-senlisent-dans-le-bourbier-du-moyen-orient/ (07-02-2023)

[4] www.news.yahoo.com/everything-know-us-strikes-iranian-085856005.htm (07-02-2023)

[5] www.sott.net/article/488555-NewsReal-USAs-Terrorist-Proxy-War-Substitute-For-Actual-War-Against-Iran (07-02-2023)

[6] www.english.news.cn/20240203/f1070978a2ea45b8987076b064d0023a/c.html (07-02-2023)

[7] www.english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-official-to-al-mayadeen–118-operations-on-us-bases-in-sy (07-02-2023)

[8] www.redfireonline.com/2023/10/16/the-west-ignites-another-proxy-war-in-the-middle-east/ (07-02-2023)

[9] www.penntoday.upenn.edu/news/us-airstrikes-iraq-and-syria-explained (07-02-2023)

[10] www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n08/seymour-m.-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line (07-02-2023)

[11] www.globalresearch.ca/us-occupation-syria-will-continue/5811453 (07-02-2023)