USPC Action Alert: Expose the False Flag Operation in the Persian Gulf! Stop the Drive Toward War with Iran!

June 20, 2019

Since Trump took office in 2017, US aggressive policy toward the rest of the world has been put into overdrive. The Trump Administration’s foreign policy — supported by much of Big Business and wrapped in the deceitful cover of “Making America Great Again!” — is to vastly expand Pentagon spending and US arms exports, to bully allies, to impose crippling sanctions and threaten war on any state refusing to bend the knee to Washington, to rip up multilateral treaties that impose even the mildest constraints on US behavior, to concentrate military pressure and to wage trade wars against rising economic competitors, and to flout international law and the UN Charter. Creating manufactured crises in different countries and using false flag operations to justify the intensifying US aggressiveness has been an integral part of this administration’s policy.

Controlling the narrative in the early stages of a manufactured crisis is a predictable feature of US information management. “False flag” operations are a venerable institution of US empire, from the blowing up of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor (1898); to the imaginary attack of the North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin (1964) which stampeded Congress into authorizing escalation in Vietnam, to the non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” cited to justify the invasion of Iraq (2003).

In April 2018 Trump, with his newly appointed National Security Advisor Bolton at his side, ordered the bombing of Syria in response to the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons at Douma, Syria on April 7, 2018. We now know from leaked documents from the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which monitors allegations of the use of chemical weapons, that many of its experts thought the evidence at Douma was faked. (See: James Harkin, “What Happened in Douma?” The Intercept, February 9, 2019)

From the beginning, the Trump Administration’s policy on Iran has been to tighten the US alliance with two of Iran’s mortal enemies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, to ramp up tension in the region, to withdraw illegally from the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) despite Iranian compliance with its terms, to concentrate military forces in the Persian Gulf, to arm the Saudi monarchy in its genocidal war in Yemen, and to intensify sanctions against Iran. With the failure of the Administration’s Venezuela-Colombia border provocations earlier this year — armed caravans of trucks holding so-called “humanitarian aid,” and his abortive coup attempt against Venezuela — its schemes against Iran have now become even more frenzied.

No US peace activist should hesitate for a moment to conclude that the recent attack on two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz was a “false flag” attack by a US Administration eager to prod the Iranian government into a misstep that would give the US a pretext to attack Iran. Iran does not have the slightest motive to cut the world’s most important oil artery. The US, especially under its lunatic National Security Adviser John Bolton, who openly preaches regime-change in Iran, has every motive to stage a provocation. With Bolton, provocation is a policy.

A US war on Iran, a nation of 82 million people with a formidable military power, would be catastrophic for both countries, for the Mideast region, and for the world. The resulting destruction would reach far beyond the US madmen provoking the war.

The US antiwar movement can stop a war with Iran. Recall our victory not so long ago (2013) when Obama wanted to go in deeper into Syria. Thanks to the strength of the British antiwar movement, the British Parliament balked at deepening British involvement in Syria. Obama then threw the decision to Congress. We gained a precious week to mobilize phone calls to Congress. Hundreds of thousands of calls were made. It turned the tide against escalation.

More recently, the peace movement led by the Embassy Protectors won a giant moral victory by holding out for 37 days against the illegal handover of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC to the coup plotters. Their valiant struggle has galvanized the peace movement. We need to use this energy to stop another war in the Middle East.

WHAT WE NEED TO DO URGENTLY:

  1. Phone Congress 202-224- 3121 Phone your House member and your US Senator. Say No war with Iran! That is the most important message. Tell them H.R.2354 is in the House of Representatives and S.1039 is in the Senate. Both bills would prohibit the United States from using any federal funds to engage in military action in Iran without congressional approval or a declaration of war
  2. Phone the White House. 1-202-456-1414 (Switchboard) 1-202-456-1111 (Comments). Say No war with Iran! There is evidence some in the Administration are more cautious about an all-out war with Iran. They must hear that millions of us are unalterably opposed to an insane war.
  3. Write Letters to the Editor. Express your opposition to War with Iran.
  4. Hold Vigils and organize Rallies in your area and your cities against War with Iran.
  5. Take photos of yourself holding “No War with Iran!” signs. Post them on Twitter and Instagram. Send them to your House Representative and Senator. Encourage others to do the same.

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