Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran—hailed by the capitalists’ liberal media as a step back from global war—is in fact a strategic move toward broader imperialist conflict. It is another sign that the U.S. bosses are not yet ready to launch an all-out invasion, at least not until they’ve put their own house in order. The current U.S. presidential campaign, with the Republican Party in disarray and leading Democrat Hillary Clinton even less trusted by voters than Donald Trump (washingtonpost.com, 8/20/15), reflects the rulers’ predicament. For now, they have neither the political leadership nor the working-class base for a new military draft, an essential element in a major ground war.
The workers of Iran have suffered under more than 30 years of U.S. sanctions on trade, finance, energy, and technology. These restrictions have sent the prices of meat, milk, bread, and medicine soaring. Workers have been forced to buy on a black market run by the same officials and military officers supposedly targeted by the U.S. ruling class. Obama’s “peace” pact is designed to end these sanctions in return for a 10- to 15-year pause in Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. The U.S. bosses hope the agreement will buy them time to mobilize to fight the larger imperialist wars coming down the road, most likely against China or Russia or both.
From Iran to China to Detroit, the Progressive Labor Party is fighting to unite workers in a mass international organization. We aim to smash imperialism with communist revolution, and to build a world without the horrors of child-killing sanctions or war. The international working class can’t rely on phony deals made between the biggest thieves on the planet. We need a world where we run society for ourselves!
U.S. Bosses Know War Is Coming

In their 2015 edition of The National Military Strategy, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff—the top uniformed servants of U.S. imperialism—estimate that an “interstate war with a major power” is a “growing” probability. A related article published by the U.S. Army War College (Strategic Studies Institute, 4/8/15) warns: “….the United States has almost no excess industrial or logistics infrastructure, or human capacity to mobilize for war.” To address this looming crisis, the article argues, U.S. bosses must end their internal partisan splits, raise taxes to finance their military, and most likely restore the draft. As the author concedes, none of this will be easy:

The public might bear these costs if the stakes were high enough, but policymakers could not automatically assume so…. Today, the public is unaccustomed to crushing taxation or postponed consumption. It would not take long for dissatisfaction to grow, possibly generating pressure to negotiate a settlement short of victory.

This is a prescription, plain and simple, for more fascism: lower wages, higher taxes and prices, more racism and racist police terror to stave off insurrection, and millions of working-class children conscripted for imperialist slaughter.
Sign Now, Slaughter Later
For Iran’s capitalist bosses, expanding their dominance in the Middle East matters more than any short-term deal with the U.S. For decades, the U.S. bosses have been waging trillion-dollar wars to secure their control over the region’s oil—a “vital” national interest, according to the Carter Doctrine espoused in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. Today, Iran and the U.S. are locked in proxy wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine. As Majid Rafizadeh, a Harvard-affiliated Iran watcher, observed in the Huffington Post (9/26/15):

Tehran is so deeply entrenched in the well-established and instituted ideological, sectarian (Sunni vs. Shia), and ethnic (Persians vs. Arabs) norms that it is impossible for the government and Iranian leaders to change the character of the state.

Translation: The Iranian bosses aren’t likely to ally with the U.S. any time soon.
U.S. strategists acknowledge that Obama’s Iran gamble may turn out badly. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has countered U.S. sanctions with technical, military, and diplomatic aid to Iran. Most recently, Russia “moved to expand its political and military influence in the Syria conflict” with an agreement to share intelligence on the Islamic State with Iran, along with Iraq and Syria (New York Times, 9/27/15).
Richard Haass, head of the Council on Foreign Relations (a leading think tank bankrolled by U.S. finance capital), has sounded the alarm over a potential alliance between Iran, Russia and China. Haass favors Obama’s nuclear deal because “it buys you 10 or 15 years” (MSNBC, 7/27/15), but warns, “there is also the danger that Iran will fail to comply….What matters is that non-compliance be met with renewed sanctions and, if needed, military force” (Huffington Post, 7/15/15).
Turn Imperialist War Into Class War!
The workers of the world have nothing to gain by relying on any boss. Capitalism can bring us only more terror. The laws of imperialist competition will compel capitalist rulers on all sides to intensify fascist terror—to discipline our class and force us into their military killing machines. The Progressive Labor Party is building our movement in more than two dozen countries. It is open to all workers, students and soldiers who want a world free of racism, sexism and imperialism. Join us! Help us turn imperialist war into class war for communism!