U.S. Out of Mideast! Israel Out of Lebanon!

By Argiris Malapanis

It’s been two months since the allied U.S. and Israeli militaries launched their war against Iran. A war of plunder, aimed at regaining access to Iran’s resources — primarily oil and natural gas — and confronting China’s growing economic influence in the region and the world.

As World-Outlook noted in its March 7 editorial, End the Bombing of Iran; No Blood for Oil!, “Ranked third after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, Iran sits atop one of the largest oil reserves in the world. Taking control of these enormous assets would put the U.S. military in a better position to face a future war with China — Washington’s top competitor.

“All this is done at the expense of working- and middle-class people in Iran and across the region.”

The death toll in Iran during 40 days of relentless U.S.-Israeli bombing reached nearly 3,500, including about 1,500 civilians, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), the country’s state news service. Nearly 8,000 buildings were severely damaged or destroyed across Iran, including hundreds of residential buildings, 60 educational centers, and 12 medical facilities. A U.S. Tomahawk missile that targeted a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, the first day of the war killed 175 people, most of them children. Iran’s capital, Tehran, a city of 9 million people, is scarred by debris, rubble, and bombed out high rises.

Extensive strikes on Iran’s steel, pharmaceutical, and other plants inflicted significant damage to the country’s manufacturing industries. Many bridges, highways, railway lines, and oil depots have also been damaged or destroyed.

NEWS ANALYSIS

These facts show that U.S. and Israeli claims that they aimed their fire mainly at Iran’s military sites and infrastructure are a lie.

The simultaneous Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion of Lebanon — targeting Iranian ally Hezbollah — have resulted in more than 2,500 deaths, including hundreds of children, and over 7,700 injuries. More than 1.2 million people have been displaced. Thousands of buildings have been destroyed, particularly in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, according to BBC News.

The Israeli carnage continues, even after Israel and Lebanon announced a 10-day ceasefire on April 16, which was subsequently extended for another three weeks. Israeli troops occupy much of southern Lebanon, where they are carrying out large-scale demolitions, leveling entire villages.

That’s where Israeli strikes killed Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil and injured photo reporter Zeinab Faraj on April 22, rattling the tenuous ceasefire. Officials in Lebanon said the two were deliberately targeted as they sought shelter in a home after an initial air strike hit the vehicle in front of them, killing two men.

Iran’s surprising resilience

Despite the mass destruction, and degrading of its military capabilities, Iran has been able to inflict major damage on U.S military assets and on oil and other facilities in the Gulf and nearby countries allied with Washington.

Iran has caused billions of dollars in damage to U.S. military bases and equipment in the Gulf region.

As of early April, reports indicate significant U.S. aircraft losses during the war, with estimates ranging from 16 to over 40, including MQ-9 drones, F-15/F-35 fighters, C-130 transports, and Black Hawk helicopters.

Damaged U.S. bases include the Al Dhafra Air Base and Al Ruwais military base in the United Arab Emirates (UAE); Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia; Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan; Camp Arifjan, Camp Buehring, and Shuaiba Port in Kuwait; and the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.

The Pentagon has acknowledged 13 soldiers killed and 140 injured as a result.

Iran also fired 650 ballistic missiles at Israel. A not insignificant number of them evaded the country’s anti-missile shield, killing 20 and injuring more than 7,000. Iranian air defenses, allegedly obliterated, also shot down more than a dozen Israeli drones.

At the same time, Iranian missiles and drones hit oil facilities in the UAE, targeted Saudi Arabia’s Shaybah oil field, and damaged Bahrain’s refinery and desalination infrastructure. The image of these monarchies as prosperous and peaceful magnets of tourism, and their reliance on Washington for protection, have been shaken.

Most importantly, Iranian actions near the Strait of Hormuz — including laying mines and other threats to shipping — have slashed tanker traffic and choked off petroleum and natural gas commerce through the Persian Gulf.

Most of the initial U.S. rationale for the war — which zigzagged between “regime change,” preventing Iran from developing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S., or sparking a popular rebellion against Tehran — has been abandoned.

In fact, many U.S. media outlets report that a substantial number of Iranians who risked their lives by demonstrating against the clerical regime in early January are now either rallying on the government’s side or staying on the sidelines, directing their outrage at the U.S. and Israeli attacks.

“Did Trump really expect people to rise up against the regime when bombs are falling on their heads? He thinks we can mobilize an uprising when we are so depressed that we can barely function?” That’s what Yassi, 40, a resident of Tehran who works in business administration and took part in the anti-government protests in January, told the New York Times on March 16, in a typical example.

“I saw photos of Golestan Palace and Isfahan’s Naqshe Jahan Square damaged from Israeli airstrikes,” Yassi told the Times on March 11. “I was furious. Livid. It’s an outrage that they’re attacking our cultural sites, our beloved jewels. They do not care. More and more, I am hearing from friends and family that they are losing hope. Why did they wage this war?”

Trump’s bombast about “bombing Iran back to Stone Ages” and “wiping an entire civilization” on the eve of the April 8 ceasefire, the subsequent collapse of peace talks, and his unilateral and indefinite extension of the ceasefire, show the war is not going well for Washington.

The Iranian regime has so far stymied the aims of the U.S.-Israeli war.

After the U.S. Navy began enforcing a blockade of Iranian cargo in and out of the Persian Gulf — and extending it to international waters by stopping, boarding, and seizing Iranian tankers and other commercial vessels as far away as the Indian ocean — Iran aptly declared the blockade “an act of war.” It termed the seizing of its ships “an act of piracy.” And it retaliated by firing on and boarding commercial vessels trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has effectively kept the strait under its control and shut down.

In addition, Iran has hundreds of commercial ships in its “shadow fleet,” a number of which have already evaded the U.S. naval blockade.

Absent any coherent U.S. strategy, or rather any strategy at all, Iran is holding off against the U.S. military colossus and its Israeli ally.

U.S. war: ‘Ill-conceived, ill-planned, ill-executed and, so far, failing’

“[I]t isn’t too soon to offer a tentative judgment on the president’s biggest foreign-policy action to date: ill-conceived, ill-planned, ill-executed and, so far, failing,” declared Gerard Baker, an editor-at-large of the Wall Street Journal, in an April 13 column in the conservative daily.

“You don’t typically threaten to wipe out the other side’s civilization,” Baker, a supporter of the war, continued. “Not only because mass slaughter is a war crime and something the U.S. has generally shunned. You don’t threaten such villainy if you don’t need to. You make that kind of desperate, deranged threat only if things aren’t going your way.

“Winning doesn’t typically require a scapegoat, let alone a herd of scapegoats grazing in the hyperbolic pastures of presidential rhetoric. Only losers look for people and things to blame. So blaming the Europeans — the same Europeans you said two weeks ago weren’t fit for combat, the same Europeans whose governments you are committed to help replace with parties that will reverse the continent’s ‘civilizational erasure’ (how’d that work out in Hungary, Mr. Vice President?) — blaming these Europeans for failing to help finish a war you started without consulting them is a sign that you aren’t winning.”

Given the unpredictability, and propensity to act on impulse, of the one man directing the assault — Donald Trump, it’s impossible to foretell how this war will unfold in the future. A risk of a serious U.S. escalation remains. A third U.S. aircraft carrier strike group arrived in the Middle East on April 23, and we don’t know how close Trump came to ordering a nuclear attack on April 7.

But in the short term, Baker’s assessment seems spot-on.

Iran can withstand the U.S. naval blockade for a while. It has other routes to trade, including air freight and overland corridors — especially with China through Pakistan. China’s “contribution takes the form of a steady transfer of industrial materials, technological components and precision-enabling systems,” reported decode39.com on April 24.

Tehran is also getting significant help from China on the military front. Beijing is providing the Iranian armed forces with detailed maps of the locations and movement of U.S. and Israeli forces throughout the Mideast.

“Since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks against Iran in late February, Chinese satellite imagery of the conflict zone has proliferated — potentially offering battlefield guidance to Tehran and other U.S. adversaries,” reported an article in the April 23 Wall Street Journal.

Impact on world economy

Trump’s utter indifference to the consequences of his government’s actions, except those that may affect him and his family personally, make it probable that the devastating consequences of this war on the world economy will reverberate for a while and likely worsen.

These include hikes in the prices of natural gas, diesel, jet fuel, and other petroleum byproducts — driving inflationary trends, especially in Africa and Asia. The impact of the war has so far translated to the following (partial list):

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) losses: The United Nations Development Program estimates regional output losses between $97 billion and $299 billion, potentially plunging 8.8 million people into poverty.
• Industrial shutdowns and other disruptions: Shortages of liquid natural gas and helium (of which Qatar produces 30% of global output) have forced shutdowns in Taiwan’s semiconductor sector and South Korea’s manufacturing hubs. The global aluminum market is experiencing a “black swan” event as the war has triggered a supply shock that will likely lead to major shortages this year; the Mideast accounts for roughly 9% of the estimated global supply of aluminum — a key material for the transport, construction, and packaging industries.
• Aviation and logistics: Jet fuel shortages have led to widespread flight cancellations and emergency surcharges across Southeast Asia and Oceania. Europe has “maybe six weeks or so” of remaining jet fuel supplies, the head of the continent’s International Energy Agency said on April 16, warning of possible flight cancellations “soon” if oil supplies remain blocked by the war. Lufthansa, the main German airline, said it would cut 20,000 flights over the next six months to save jet fuel.
• Food insecurity: Rising diesel and fertilizer costs (urea prices rose 34%) are forcing farmers in Thailand, Vietnam, and India to reduce planting, threatening the 2026 rice and wheat harvests.

The same trends are felt within the United States — though not as acutely as the rest of the world. Higher gasoline prices at the pump, and rising diesel and fertilizer costs, are adversely affecting most working people, especially family farmers, and pushing low-cost airlines toward bankruptcy. These headwinds are contributing to the increasing unpopularity of the war in the United States. Disquiet about the war is also beginning to grow in the U.S. military.

Antisemitic conspiracy theories

This turn of events is widening a rift within the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, at the heart of Trump’s base. But Trump’s former ultra fans, now turned ultra critics, remain ultra rightists loudly peddling antisemitic conspiracy theories dangerous to the working class.

“Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States,” said Michelle Goldberg in an opinion column in the April 24 New York Times.

She was drawing out the reasons behind Tucker Carlson’s apology for his previous exaltations of Trump. Carlson is the former Fox News commentator who since 2023 hosts the right-wing talk shows “Tucker on X” and “The Tucker Carlson Show.” Carlson proffered such “remorse” in a podcast featuring a long conversation with his brother, Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter.

“On Tucker’s podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration, and now the war with Iran,” Goldberg noted.

“After World War I, when Germany humiliated itself in a war that it started, right-wing populists embraced the Dolchstosslegende, or stab-in-the-back myth, blaming Jews for their country’s defeat. Now, as the American right contemplates the entirely foreseeable catastrophe that an unbridled Trump has visited on America, some are creating a new stab-in-the-back myth about Zionism to make sense of it,” Goldberg continued.

“Such sentiments, on the margins of right-wing politics now, can turn into a wave of Jew hatred if the war doesn’t go well for the White House,” the March 7 World-Outlook editorial warned. Indeed, the war isn’t going well for the White House.

As the March 3 Jewish Currents newsletter put it, such conspiracy theories are “setting up American Jews to take the blame if the war goes badly, as it appears destined to do. Though left-wing and progressive Jews have tried to distinguish between Jews and Israel in the American imagination, mainstream Jewish institutions have done their best to confuse the issue, conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.”

Fascists and ultra-rightists always default to Jew hatred, one of the world’s oldest conspiracy theories. The Israeli leadership’s false claim that it speaks and acts for all Jews helps enable this.

For those demanding an end to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, it is essential to see that Carlson and company are no allies. They are deadly enemies.

One more reason to organize antiwar protests

This war has exposed once again U.S. imperialism’s slide from its previously unquestionable position as the world’s top economic and military power.

Rather than repeating the quick victory it scored in Venezuela in January, the massive, technologically superior, and supposedly invincible U.S. military is now mired in another Middle East war. Washington’s standing among its European allies is being undermined. The Yankee empire has come into clearer conflict with China. And opposition to Trump’s imperial designs has grown in the homeland.

In addition, this war has dampened Washington’s prospects of quickly taking on another adversary, closer to home. Trump has repeatedly threatened that Cuba is next on the list of U.S. targets. “We may stop by Cuba after we finish with [Iran],” he said on April 13.

But Iran’s resistance is tying down the U.S. war machine providing a bit of much needed breathing space to revolutionary Cuba — besieged by Washington’s decades-old economic war, intensified recently by the U.S. oil blockade.

Another Russian oil tanker, the Universal, is heading to the Caribbean nation, accompanied by a Russian frigate. If it manages to reach Cuba by its projected arrival on May 5, it would be the second time in about a month that Moscow would break the U.S. blockade. Even though that would still be a drop in the bucket — Cuba needs eight such tankers a month to meet its needs — it’s a sign in the right direction. It’s not a given this would be happening if the U.S. military wasn’t tied down across the globe.

One more reason to organize protests to demand: U.S. out of the Middle East! Israel out of Lebanon!

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