If The Iran/US Deal is Signed. It's A Humiliating Defeat For US Imperialism. Are the Democrats Pleased?

Richard Mellor

According to reports in the mass media, the US and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire and what is being described as a Memorandum of Understanding will be signed this Friday in Geneva.

 

If the last three months or so have taught us anything with regards to the illegal and unprovoked war waged on Iran by the US and its settler colony in the region, it’s that we should take these pronouncements with caution.

 

But for now, they have an agreement and you can read the man points below.

 

The significance of this defeat cannot be underestimated and it’s important to recognize the extent of the damage to US military equipment (from a helpless opponent) that has cost the US taxpayers billions of dollars. When we add the cost of constructing US bases that were supposed to protect the despotic semi-feudal Arab regimes in the region, we are talking about trillions. And the failure of the US to defend these corrupt regimes has changed the balance of forces in the region permanently.

 

But the responses from the politicians of both capitalist parties are something to behold. They reflect on the one hand the sheer arrogance of an imperial power, in this case the world’s hegemon, and also the embarrassment at what is a major defeat for US imperialism in West Asia by an adversary with no air force no navy etc. And it comes after the endless boasting of the US president who thought the war would be over in a few days after the US assassinated the head of state in Iran and numerous government officials.

 

Naturally, many Republicans are livid. Florida Sen. Rick Scott is opposed to Iran’s frozen assets (their own money) being returned to them; “….if we have any of their money, they ought to pay for what costs us to do this, to try to bring them to their senses, to stop killing us.", he says. He’s been reading Golda Meir who famously blamed the Palestinians for forcing the Zionists to kill them. 

 

Lindsey Graham, generously states that if the Iranians behave, "If they become normal, they'll get relief. The question is, are these people in charge of Iran capable of acting normal? Have they abandoned their goal of creating a master religion for the world? I don't know." 

 

Lindsey Graham is normal?

 

And the pathetic excuse for an opposition party, (opposed to having a king in the White House) the Democrats never fail to offer no serious responses. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) says we should be “glad” about a ceasefire but that it’s “essentially surrender”,  and we all know that this contradicts our most famous slogan, “these colors don’t run”. How will Hollywood make a Fallujah moment out of this one? 

 

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) thinks the agreement is, “a terrible deal” and “basically a surrender document from Donald Trump to the Supreme Leader of Iran.”

 

Cory Booker calls it a “utter disaster” the US “releasing billions of dollars” to an “enemy” 

An opposition party that claimed any allegiance to the working class at all would support Iran's side here. The support has been there for the Israeli gen*cide in Ga*za.

 

The Iranian people are the victims here, not the aggressors. Given, the US and its proxy, Israel, bombed a sovereign nation, assassinated its leadership and destroyed as much of its infrastructure as possible, Iran owes no concessions to the US at all. It is demanding what is its right. An end to the aggression by the US and its proxy on Iran and Lebanon. 

 

It is demanding its own money that has been frozen and an end to the crippling sanctions the US has imposed on the country for decades. Recent reports have been published about the actual cost of US sanctions which deprive poorer countries in particular of medicine, food, and other necessities. Millions die.

 

The compensation, a suggested $300 billion, to Iran for the damage the war has caused to its infrastructure aside from the human toll, should not be borne by the US taxpayer but by those that have supported and promoted this aggression including US billionaires, Zionists that have personally funded the Israeli genocide and its war machine and others complicit in this crime; perhaps the Christian Zionist organizations can cough up some dough. The vast majority of people in the US were opposed to this war and were not consulted about it either directly or though their political representatives. They should not pay for the damage.

 

Those families and loved ones of the Americans that have died through this adventure that we never voted for,  should also receive compensation for their losses. Again, not from the working men and women of America in the form of taxes but from the billionaires, arms investors and dealers and others that promoted this crime.

 

As I write I see that Trump has openly stated at the G7 a truth that needs to be heard, that Israel’s violent aggressive behaviour could not have been possible without the United States backing. The tail does not wag the dog in this relationship.

 

What will happen now is difficult to say. It is clear that this defeat for US imperialism reflects a change in the relationship between the great powers as the likes of China, Russia, India and the Brics are pulling for a multi-polar world at the expense of US hegemony, and its unipolar mission. 

 

Whether the toothless UN can be rebuilt is another matter. Like most people, I have more questions than answers. The only thing I can say with certainty is that capitalism cannot overcome its inherent contradictions that inevitably lead it to war and destruction. 

 

Capitalism will, if it is not cast in to the history books like so many civilizations past, destroy life as we know it. Only the working class internationally building a new global society with the formation of a global federation of democratic socialist states can provide a future for humanity.

 

Here are the points of the Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran. Source is I24tv News Israel

Points of the Memorandum of Understanding

1. Iran and the US declare an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and will not launch any hostile action against each other and will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other.

2. The two countries will respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity and refrain from interfering in each other's internal affairs.

3. There will be a negotiation to reach a final agreement within a maximum period of 60 days, extendable by mutual consent

4. Immediately upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding (which has already happened), the US will lift its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and prevent any interference against Iranian shipping. Traffic is to be restored within a maximum of 30 days to its full capacity and shall be proportional to the pre-war volume on the part of Iran. The US will also withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas within 30 days.

5. Iran will immediately take steps to ensure that the movement of merchant ships from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa is resumed within 30 days to the pre-war volume, taking into account the need for the removal of technical obstacles and the neutralization of mines.

6. Together with regional partners, the US will create a comprehensive plan to rehabilitate and assist in the economic development of Iran. It will also ensure financing of at least $300 billion. The implementation mechanism of this plan, as part of the final agreement, will be formulated within 60 days.

---

7. The US will commit to ending all types of sanctions currently facing Iran, including resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and all unilateral US sanctions, both primary and secondary.

8. Iran reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons, with the fate of enriched material and all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues, including Iran’s nuclear needs, being addressed in a final agreement.

9. Pending a final agreement, they will maintain the status quo: Iran will maintain the status quo on its nuclear program, and the United States will not impose new sanctions on Iran or strengthen its forces in the region.

10. The United States Treasury Department will issue waivers for exports of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products and their derivatives, and all related services, including banking, insurance, transportation, and the like.

1

1. Frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be released and made fully available. These funds, whether held in the master account or transferred, will be used for any final beneficiary payment determined by the Central Bank of Iran and will be fully available for use. The US will also issue all necessary permits and licenses on this basis.

12. A mechanism will be established to oversee the successful implementation of and future commitment to the final agreement.

13. Upon receipt of assurances regarding the commencement of implementation of Articles 4, 5, 10, and 11, Iran and the US will enter into negotiations for a Final Agreement solely with respect to the remaining Articles.

14. The final agreement will be approved through a binding resolution of the UN Security Council. Source I24 Israeli News

 

President Xi’s Thunderous SCO Summit Speech

Interesting speech. I don't intend to comment further here except to say I do not consider China a socialist or communist country. I am sharing so other workers can listen to an important speech at an important gathering of representatives from around the world. Conspicuously absent from the speech is any references to Jesus, God, heaven and other mythical concepts. 

There is also no thrashing of the US or claiming the US is a threat and other stuff like that. No praising himself as the creator of this or that important development, suggesting he should be nominated for the Nobel prize or that he has stopped six wars. No calling Biden a thug I notice. 

The Brics Take a Step in The Right Direction

Richard Mellor

7-16-25

 

Shame on the US and the western "settler colonial bloc" in their backing and support for this genocide against the Palestinian people. This settler colonial bloc, to use Ms Albanese term are not simply complicit, or enabling the Zionist regime in this genocide; they are leading partners, more responsible than the Israelis who could not have done this without their backing, financial, military and diplomatic support in violation of basic human rights and international law.

 

The leaders of the western settler colonial bloc have been very eager to have the institutions of the United Nations and other international institutions defend international law when it has been violated by leaders of the former colonial countries that are now dominated by imperialist policies. African leaders like Idi Amin and others are fair game for these institutions even when, as is the case with the US, they do not support the institutions or are signatories to their agreements.

 

In the face of heroic sacrifices made by the Palestinian people in their decades old struggle for the right to self-determination and to return to their land and homes form which they were driven by the Zionist settler regime, it’s evident that this US/Israel offensive has lost the war as the US did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.  Millions of people have died in the post war period as the US replaced the former colonial regimes as the dominant plunderer of the resources of the global south

 

In addition, thousands of young US workers have lost their lives as cannon fodder for these defeated ventures; workers that could be trained to be productive members of US society, benefiting us all. In addition, the US population has been denied social conditions enjoyed by many other industrialized economies as the US military budget consumes trillions of our tax dollars. Afghanistan alone is said to have cost the US taxpayer a couple of trillion dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. As I write, the profits of the major offense industry firms mount.

 

I have often said that the first victim of US imperialism is the US working class. The intense ideological warfare that spews out from the tightly controlled mass media, the institutions of capitalism like the universities, the pulpit, the entertainment industry and so on, has been very effective. 

It has been so in part due to the material conditions that pertained after World War Two and the death of some 57 million people, that is often referred to as the period of the American Dream which is gone never to return. Another is the betrayal of the heads of organized labor that worship the market and see no alternative to capitalism who parroted the capitalist propaganda that the individual is center stage, you can make it if you work hard and if you don’t or if you’re poor it’s your fault.  

And the failure of the left, not the Democratic Party left, but socialists, communists, anarchists and millions that would consider themselves anti-capitalist to root themselves in the working class and our communities and build a genuine mass movement at home and internationally that can defeat the global capitalist offensive and usher in a new economic and political system of production.

 

This Brics movement is not it. It reflects the decay of the domination of western capitalism and its ideals, but it is a positive step to witness divisions between the nations states of capitalism on an international scale.  

That new economic political system on the backs of international workers movement would have to be a global federation of democratic socialist states, working in cooperation with each other for the production of human needs in harmony with the natural world not at war with it. We can’t “dominate” nature, we are an integral part of it. 

It can dominate us though.

Richard Wolff: The End of US Empire and a Unipolar World

Richard Mellor

 

Richard Wolf is a useful source of information. He is a Marxist economist as far as I know. He has a show Democracy at Work which I haven’t seen in a while but it explains Marxist economic analysis in a way that most workers interested in exploring the issue will understand and benefit from. I am not familiar enough with his work to say much more except he has promoted worker cooperatives as a step toward or perhaps the step toward, workers control of the means of production, I am not exactly sure. 

 

But workers’ cooperatives as I understand it and I am thinking of the Mondragon Corporation or before it, the Rochdale cooperative for example or the Utopian Socialists Fourier, Saint Simon and Robert Owen whose socialism was taken up by Engels in his short book Socialism Utopian and Scientific are a form of idealism, hence utopian as opposed to scientific socialism of Marxism.

 

The issue Wolff raises here I think is basically correct. The end of the domination of US imperialism on a world scale is on the way. Gone is the period of the Best and the Brightest as Halbertam’s book was titled. Look at the decisions the US ruling class has made including and since the Vietnam War; Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and perhaps the most destructive of all, arming and supporting a genocide as the Apartheid state of Israel attempts to destroy an entire culture in real time as the whole world watches.  And only possible because the heavily armed US rogue regime supports it.

 

The calls from Christian Zionists, white nationalists and other neo fascistic members of the US body politic to openly violate international law and the decisions of international institutions and threatening to punish, meaning to attack the economy or in some cases invade, even allies that hold international law to a degree of legitimacy is another reflection of the rot that infects the US ruling class and its body politic.

 

For working people of the US and the world, potential disaster looms as the world’s hegemon is losing its number one spot in the pecking order and is a very dangerous animal indeed, armed to the teeth with nuclear and hi-tech weaponry. As the British Empire declined and was driven from its colonial possessions by the resistance, its response was more violent than ever. The same with the Apartheid regime in South Africa. A wounded major power will not retreat from the world stage easily and in this epoch, has the ability and is crazed enough to take us all with it.

America’s sick obsession with China will ruin itself and the world

Reprinted from the South China Morning Post Check the original for a video not in this reprint.

America’s sick obsession with China will ruin itself and the world

The US fixation on a China threat distracts it from its serious domestic challenges and holds the world back from addressing critical challenges, from climate change and wars to AI risks

Peter T. C. Chang
Published: 9:30am, 14 Apr 2024

Police officers trying to push back a pro-Trump mob attempting to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. America is deeply polarised, and the coming presidential election is unlikely to mend its fractured social fabric. Photo: Getty Images

The US is gripped by a debilitating fear of China, and unless this Sinophobia is addressed, it could lead to profound uncertainties for the world.

Earlier this month, during their first phone conversation since the San Francisco summit last November, US President Joe Biden discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping their collaboration on pressing issues such as narcotics control, climate change and artificial intelligence (AI), even as he defended the imposition of hi-tech sanctions on China.

Last month, the House of Representatives voted through a bill that could force a TikTok ban in the US, a move that saw bipartisan support and reflects the widespread apprehension towards China. President Biden has pledged to sign the bill into law once it is approved by the Senate.

Clearly, despite the San Francisco summit, US-China ties have yet to thaw. Marked by profound mistrust, the relationship continues to be defined by competition, rather than cooperation.

Meanwhile, the crises in Ukraine and Gaza persist with no foreseeable resolution. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reached out to President Xi about a proposed peace summit, while leaders in the Arab world are open to Beijing’s help to broker a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. China has declared its commitment to leverage its influence to facilitate a resolution to both crises.

Unfortunately, Washington still sees China as a threat to its global dominance. During his call, Biden cautioned Xi against escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Separately, several Republicans have called for America’s withdrawal from the Ukraine war to reallocate military assets towards countering purported rising threats from China.

Herein lies the paradox confronting China as it considers taking on a mediating role. Why would Beijing mediate for peace in Europe and the Middle East when this would free the US to pivot towards the Asia-Pacific to oppose China?

At the San Francisco summit last year, Xi and Biden struck a deal wherein Beijing agreed to limit the export of fentanyl precursor chemicals, and Biden reciprocated by easing some of its sanctions. The transaction underscores Xi’s insistence on a fundamental principle of cooperation: the quid pro quo expectation.

Like any other party, Beijing anticipates reciprocity for its help. Therefore, if the US seeks China’s collaboration in addressing the Ukraine and Gaza crises, it must reciprocate by mitigating the risk of open conflict in the Asia-Pacific.

Despite Xi’s commitment, however, experts doubt that restrictions on precursor exports alone can effectively curb the US opioid epidemic. 

This scepticism arises from the recognition that multiple factors fuel the American narcotic addiction, including inadequate regulation and weak oversight leading to over-prescription, pharmaceutical companies’ aggressive marketing strategies and socioeconomic distress.

The opioid crisis is a symptom of an ailing America haunted by fear. The nation, deeply divided, is wrestling with crises rooted in racial, religious and socioeconomic disparities. Adding to these complexities is the trepidation that adversaries like China could capitalise on these vulnerabilities.

Indeed, mired in a bitter rivalry, the US and China find themselves trapped in a cycle of distrust, where actions by one often reinforce suspicions in the other. In the US, this escalating mistrust has stoked apprehensions about China’s allegedly widening array of threats to homeland security.

These fear range from unsubstantiated accusations of spy balloons, shipping cranes deployed as Trojan horses, the weaponisation of Chinese-made electric vehicles on US highways and even conspiracy theories linking a Chinese cyberattack to the collapse of the Baltimore Bridge.

The US is gripped by a debilitating Sinophobia, a pervasive fear that could result in misdiagnosing problems, with potentially devastating consequences. For instance, the singling out of TikTok over security concerns has been widely criticised as a distraction from an industry-wide issue.

The spotlight on TikTok’s potential impact on the 2024 US presidential election is also diverting attention from more critical issues plaguing America’s increasingly fragile democracy.

The reality is that America is deeply polarised, and the election is unlikely to mend its fractured social fabric. Should Donald Trump secure victory in the November presidential election, he has vowed retribution for his enemies. If he faces defeat, the possibility of another uprising akin to the January 6 Capitol riot cannot be dismissed.

Merely focusing on external threats will not resolve the profound issues vexing America. The origin of these problems is intrinsic to the US and demand internal solutions, necessitating a critical process of self-reflection and self-correction.

On the global stage, the era of US unipolarity as the sole superpower has ended. China is playing an increasingly influential role in reshaping the world order into a more inclusive, multipolar one.

However, the US persists in viewing China as a challenge to the universal principle of rights and liberty. This fixation on the China threat is deflecting attention from the real and present dangers to world peace, notably the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, which risk escalating into broader regional conflicts.

The mistrust between the US and China ultimately has far-reaching consequences for humankind, undermining our collective ability to respond effectively to the pressing challenges posed by climate change and the potential risks associated with AI.

The US urgently needs to adopt a more balanced assessment of China. Neglecting to do so risks complicating efforts to resolve America’s domestic predicaments, disrupting the reconfiguration of the world order, and leaving us vulnerable to global crises that could adversely affect the fate of humanity.

Peter T.C. Chang is a research associate at the Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

BRICS: getting bigger, but is it any stronger?

by Michael Roberts

The three-day summit of the BRICS leaders ends today.  The BRICS are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.  Russian leader Putin was not present in person – he has plenty on his plate already!

The five BRICS nations now have a combined GDP larger than that of the G7 in purchasing power parity terms (a measure of what GDP can buy domestically in goods and services).

This sounds like a turning point in the world economic order.  But that would be an illusion.  First, within the BRICS, China (accounting for 17.6 per cent of global GDP) is dominant, followed by India at a distant second (7 per cent); while Russia (3.1 per cent), Brazil (2.4 per cent), and South Africa (0.6 per cent) together made up just 6.1 per cent of world GDP.  So this is no equally shared economic power.

Moreover, in nominal dollar terms, which in my opinion is what matters, the BRICS countries are still well behind the G7. Combined, the BRICS bloc had a GDP of USD26trn in 2022, which is about the same as the US alone. And when we measure GDP per person, the BRICS are nowhere. Even using PPP-adjusted international dollars, the United States’ per-capita GDP amounts to $80,035, more than three times that of China, which amounts to $23,382.

From this summit, more countries have been invited to join as full members:  Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.  But even if that happens, the BRICS group will remain a much smaller and weaker economic force than the G7 imperialist bloc.  Moreover, the BRICS are very diverse in population, GDP per head, geographically and in trade composition.  And the ruling elites in these countries are often at loggerheads (China v India; Brazil v Russia).

So, unlike the G7, which has increasingly homogenous economic objectives under the hegemonic control of the US, the BRICS group is disparate in wealth and income and without any unified economic objectives – except maybe to try and move away from the economic dominance of the US and in particular, the US dollar.

And even that objective is going to be difficult to achieve.  As I have pointed out in previous posts, even though there has been a relative decline in US economic dominance globally and in the dollar, the latter remains the most important currency by far for trade, investment and national reserves.

Approximately half of all global trade is invoiced in dollars and this share has hardly changed.  The USD was involved in nearly 90% of global FX transactions, making it the single most traded currency in the FX market.  Approximately half of all cross-border loans, international debt securities, and trade invoices are denominated in US dollars, while roughly 40 percent of SWIFT messages and 60 percent of global foreign exchange reserves are in dollars. The Chinese yuan continues to make gradual gains and the renminbi’s share in global FX turnover has increased from less than 1% 20 years ago to more than 7% now. But the Chinese currency still only represents 3 percent of global FX reserves, up from 1 percent in 2017.

And it’s even the case that ‘anti-US’ China remains heavily committed in its FX reserves to the US dollar.  China publicly reported that it reduced the dollar share of its reserves from 79% to 58% between 2005 and 2014.  But China doesn’t appear to have changed the dollar share of its reserves in the last ten years.

Moreover, multilateral institutions that could be an alternative to the existing IMF and World Bank (controlled by the imperialist economies) are still tiny and weak.  For example, there is the New Development Bank set up in 2015. The NDB has now appointed Brazil’s former leftist President Dilma Roussef as head, based in Shanghai. 

There is much noise that the NDB can provide an opposite pole of credit to the imperialist institutions of the IMF and World Bank.  But there is a long way to go in doing that.  One ex-official of South African Reserve bank (SARB) commented: “the idea that Brics initiatives, of which the most prominent thus far has been the NDB, will supplant Western-dominated multilateral financial institutions is a pipe dream.” 

Even so, international rivalry, politically, economically and militarily, is going to hot up in this decade.  The days of complete domination by the imperialist bloc under the US are over – because globalization ie unimpeded trade and financial flows of the last two decades of the 20^th century, is over.

As the profitability of capital fell back in the major economies in the first two decades of this century, the struggle for surplus value by the major capitalist economies has intensified.  And this is leading to a fragmentation of economic power.  The US-led imperialist bloc is still dominant, but its dominance is being questioned as never before.