SAFTU condemns Trump’s murder of Iranian Army leader General Qassem Soleimani

7 January 2020

Trump is a warmonger

Trump is the world number one terrorist

Trump is a criminal

Trump is a liar

Trump is the threat to world peace

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) rejects with contempt and condemns in strongest terms another bloody US-imperialist aggression against the sovereign countries of Iran and Iraq. The murder of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis is an utterly reckless pre-meditated act of aggression which has no regard whatsoever to world peace and stability and bloody implications of Donald Trump’s escalation of the US belligerence against Iran.

Whilst Donald Trump bears a personal responsibility for this act, we should be clear that this is not merely an act of a maverick that he is. It is a politically-calculated act of provocation to justify US military intervention and imperialist war to restore the domination of US imperialism in the Middle-East region where it has been challenged by Iran amongst others. Donald Trump’s actions whilst clearly self-serving, they emanate from the interests of US imperialism in the oil and geo-political considerations in the region, not least to contain Iran, whose position, was ironically strengthened by US invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

All the previous President, including Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton, have during their terms in the office used lies and misinformation to justify similar imperialist interventions to attack perceived or real enemies. The reason behind this strategy is to protect the interests of US big business, especially the oil monopolies, arms-dealers, and to shape internal political and electoral balance of forces in favour of these interests. Whenever USA Presidents lose popularity, due to their own failures and the failure of the capitalists' system to meet the basic needs of humanity, they resort to a tried and tested trick, to scandalously opt to kill somebody prominent or invade another country under a false pretext.

The assassination of Soleimani is the latest of such gruesome murders sanctioned, and in this latest case ordered, by the highest office in the US under a false pretext. It is a deliberate act to provoke war and destabilise world peace in order to shift attention away from domestic US politics, in particular Trump’s impeachment for seeking to use a foreign country to influence the internal political affairs.

Quite clearly Trump sought to find a bogyman to instill fear amongst Americans and to present himself as the strong man who will save America from the people his propaganda machinery presents as bloodthirsty warmongers ready to kill all American citizens willy-nilly. His calculation is that the fearful nation will endorse him as the President again in the November elections.

This action recalls President George W. Bush’s false claim that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was in possession of deadly weapons of mass destruction. In the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq and Hussein’s execution-style murder, no such evidence was brought forward to justify such drastic action.

The irony is that not so long ago, Trump lambasted his predecessor Barack Obama, claiming that he wanted to attack Iran to gain domestic political mileage. Today he is using exactly the same strategy, which betray his own thinking!

But the underlying reason for all these invasions of other countries and the murder of opponents is the need to protect the profits of America’s oil companies, and to secure the border of the apartheid and Zionist Israeli murderous regime.

This policy which all American presidents pursued is not in the interests of the citizens but multinational corporations that fund their elections to the White House. What is different this time is the blatant way Trump articulates this strategic objective so unashamedly.

Once again it is the working class who will bear the brunt of Trump’s ill-advised adventurism. Working-class families will be receiving back their sons and daughter in body bags. Trump and the capitalist class have absolutely no regard for the human pain this is causing.

SAFTU calls on all the countries of the world to unite and isolate the Trump administration and cut all diplomatic ties with America.

We call on the working class of Iran, Iraq, Syria and everywhere else in the world to unite with their counterparts everywhere to demand social justice, solidarity based on a vision of a new world that addresses the current crisis of underdevelopment, poverty, unemployment, peace and instability.

Above all we call on the US working class to heed the call of that greatest son of their soil Eugene Debbs to “let the capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own corpses”, to join the international working class in resisting US imperialism and to intensify struggles this war is meant to cut across. SAFTU believes that the revolutionary task of resisting US Imperialism in Iran and Middle-East belong to its working people, not its capitalists and oppressive theocratic dictatorships of the clergy. Workers should also reject the attempt by the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world to use the American aggression to close ranks behind dictatorships that are oppressing their people.

The mass uprisings that swept many countries of Middle-East including both Iran and Iraq provide a solid basis to build a revolutionary mass parties and mass movements that can overthrew the civil and clerical dictatorships and to take into the public ownership and control of the working class the oil industry and commanding heights of the economy to utilize the wealth for the benefit of the impoverished masses and for a socialist transformation of Iran, and Middle-East.

Issued by Ntozakhe Mthukwane, National Spokesperson, SAFTU, 7 January 2020