As the US-Israeli aggression against Iran goes past the anticipated time of a few days to six weeks, the former vice-president and foreign minister of Iran, Javad Zarif, has advised the Iranian government to give up its uranium deposits meant for peaceful purposes and to enter a pact with the US to end the war. With US-Israeli aggression at its climax, these suggestions seem irrelevant, if not altogether phoney. Either the former foreign minister is too naive or completely alien to the dynamics of imperialism-a shocking revelation, since, while in power, he was the one who endured its tantrums the most.

Despite kidnapping Maduro and controlling the largest oil reserves in the world, what made the US-Israeli nexus launch aggression against Iran to seize and control its oil resources? It’s an existential question that can be posed to the distinguished foreign minister. Leaving the Israeli entity-an American airbase-aside, one needs to ponder the nature of imperialism-a stage in the ripeness of capitalism-with innate problems of overproduction and a falling rate of profit. Commodity production under capitalism is not directed toward consumption by ordinary human beings but toward the sole purpose of selling goods in the market. If they cannot be bought, either they’re sold to the countries of the Global South or are wasted. In the Western world, the wastage of tens of tons of food daily is one example. The falling rate of profit has many reasons: falling wages, lack of buying power, inflation, and even overproduction itself can become a contributory cause.

No one is saying that Iran is the Soviet Union or the Maoist People’s Republic of China, but it is resisting the entire Western hegemonic bloc and its Middle Eastern allies with heroic resilience.

No one is saying that Iran is the Soviet Union or the Maoist People’s Republic of China, but it is resisting the entire Western hegemonic bloc and its Middle Eastern allies with heroic resilience.

The US faces the dilemma of a falling rate of profit and the realisation of stagnant military-industrial capital through war and destruction, and later through construction. The war on Iran is not only fulfilling this logic of capitalism but also helping to recolonise the Global South. In this process of recolonisation and the status quo-political freedom but economic colonisation by metropolitan capital-Iran alone is standing up to the empire. This war, if won, could break the status quo and ultimately liberate the countries of the Global South from the clutches of imperialism.

Unlike Britain, US imperialism, lacking colonies, cannot attain surplus value created by the countries of the Global South. Even Keynes knew it; hence, to assist its expropriation, institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF were created. Despite their much-advertised efficacy, their only objective is to impose a neoliberal regime over their borrowers. Privatization, cutting social spending, minimizing the control of the state in day-to-day affairs, inducing wage cuts, while delivering control of the means of production to a few big fish that have the power to hire or fire workers, forcing them to work under inhuman conditions, and robbing the surplus value created by them with coercion are the salient solutions these monetary institutions offer.

Despite the aura of the introduction of technology, more than a billion workers are involved in the process of production, though they may not be working under the same roof as in the past. They’re the ones who create surplus value, which is transferred from the periphery (the Global South) to the centre (the Global North). From the imperialist point of view, this production is extremely important. Not only is it traded at a much lower value than its worth, but it also provides all the raw materials-crops, minerals, lithium, even diamonds-to the countries of the Global North, which they cannot produce. The US dollar is another hegemonic tool for imperialist power. The latter continues to print, and the world has to buy it and invest it back into US Treasuries. Since no human labour power is invested in this financial capital, and money is the measure of labour power, this fictitious capital-bonds, hedge funds, bank securities-exists only in books and, at best, is merely a promise of the possibility of future labour.

Western nations trade this fictitious capital with the real capital expropriated from the labour and resources of the Global South. The broad daylight robbery of Iranian oil and probably its uranium reservoirs falls in this category. Besides expropriating their wealth, physical control over the countries of the Global South will force them to trade their commodities in the greenback, making the dwindling dollar a dominant currency. The very threat to the dwindling dollar, devoid of any labour power and economic independence of developing countries, is the real threat to US dominance. This elaborates the dynamics of US aggression against Iran, which will not go away by subjecting Iran to the imperialists’ imposed peace, but by a decisive blow to the aggressor. It’s only a matter of time before rising fuel prices force the world to offer a dignified compromise to Iran.

For the US, what was once a looming threat from China has become a real one. It is the only country that has refused to bow to US tariffs, categorically telling Trump to mind his business. Now, if Iran can resist this empire and survive the onslaught, it will be a watershed moment in history.

In his analysis of the Iranian revolution, Samir Amin, a Marxist philosopher, wasn’t sanguine; neither was Aijaz Ahmad. Led by workers and peasants, the revolution culminated in a bourgeois revolution led by bazaaris (traders) and headed by theocrats. China, Samir Amin says, successfully built a sovereign national project, but because of its theocratic political structure and the limitations of the Islamic revolution, Iran was not able to develop a sovereign national project in the same way. However, when push came to shove, Iran has stood up to imperialism as if its sovereign national project were no less concrete than China’s, and for obvious reasons.

Despite differences, China and Iran share quite a few significant things. Both countries emerged from the cauldron of revolution. Both had to build the material conditions to lay down the bases of socialism, only if they wanted to build one. Both have built some form of state capitalism. Iran went through a different course. Despite theocracy becoming entrenched in the power structure, the revolution’s anti-imperialist character remained dominant. From taking over the US embassy in Tehran to fighting resolutely against the US-backed Saddam’s imposed decade-long war, to US sanctions, the Iranians suffered all the calamities of life that imperialism could impose upon them. Attempts by the US-Israeli nexus to topple the government from outside have proved futile.

Isolated from the international community as a pariah and forced to suffer prolonged, crippling sanctions by the US, Iran has effectively delinked itself from metropolitan capitalism. Consequently, it has not only developed an industrial base but advanced it to a level where it can subvert US interests in the entire Middle East and give a bloody nose to its client, the apartheid entity of Israel. The war has given Iran an opportunity to control oil flow from the Strait of Hormuz, potentially shutting down the world economy when its sovereignty is threatened, and to charge a toll tax on all ships crossing the strait-something unthinkable before the war.

The entire world is watching this asymmetrical warfare between imperialism and a regional power that has made its way out of the tempest of neoliberalism-the latter drowning humanity in the Global South-not unscathed, but with remarkable resilience, and now placing its foot on oil-the lifeline of the world economy. It shows how countries of the Global South can develop their economies without needing the crutches of international monetary institutions and falling victim to the neoliberal order. Unlike Iran, many countries of the Global South don’t have oil-but then, China doesn’t either.

No one is saying that Iran is the Soviet Union or the Maoist People’s Republic of China, but it is resisting the entire Western hegemonic bloc and its Middle Eastern allies with heroic resilience. Such resilience reminds one of the historical resistances offered by the Vietnamese in the past and by Palestinians and Cubans in our times.

The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. His Latest Work: “God’s Republic Making & Unmaking of Israel & Pakistan” is available in Pakistan & on Amazon.com. He can be reached at saulatnagi @hotmail.com

© Daily Times