Scott Morrison’s obsequious falling in behind the United States and
United Kingdom in targeting Iran again confirms the late former Prime
Minister Malcolm Fraser’s assertion that Australia does not have an
independent foreign policy.
At least elements of the media, unlike the Labor Party, are sceptical
about this decision, as they should be, given that it is so clearly a
crisis orchestrated by the Trump administration and British government,
and yet another deadly Middle East regime-change fiasco in the making.
So why is Labor supporting it? Once again, ALP stands for Another
Liberal Party—like with banking abuses, police-state laws now used to
raid journalists, and mistreatment of refugees, Labor is desperate to be
bipartisan on foreign policy, not just because it is scared of its own
shadow, but because it is also subservient to the Anglo-American war
machine. The only differences between Labor and the Liberals are in
degree and tone, not in substance.
More lies
The government claims it is deploying the ADF to the Strait of Hormuz
to “de-escalate” the situation, and to protect “freedom of navigation”
from Iran, which has been seizing ships. As usual, their claims are
premised on lies.
The current flash point in the Strait of Hormuz has its origins in US
President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw from
the nuclear agreement with Iran.
It escalated on 5 May when Trump’s National Security Advisor John
Bolton—one of the notorious neoconservative liars who orchestrated the
2003 invasion of Iraq—suddenly announced the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln
carrier strike group and a bomber taskforce to the Gulf in response to
an unspecified “number of troubling and escalatory indications and
warnings”.
Very significantly, on 14 May the top UK Commander in the region, Maj.
Gen. Chris Ghika, publicly contradicted Bolton in a Pentagon briefing to
state that there was no increased threat level from Iran. Just two days
later, the UK government overruled Ghika and agreed there was an
increased Iranian threat.
From that moment, the British escalated the situation, in coordination
with the Washington neocons. On 19 May the UK announced the deployment
of its waterborne SAS equivalent, the Special Boat Service, to “protect
shipping”. Only then did shipping incidents start to occur—indicating
that either John Bolton and his British cronies are the prophets of our
time, with greater insights than even local British commanders, or that
they have orchestrated the incidents to provoke an escalation that can
be the pretext for an invasion to achieve Bolton’s longstanding goal of
regime change in Iran.
The following shipping incidents have occurred after the deployment of US and British forces to the Persian Gulf:
-
In mid-June two oil tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman, which US
Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo instantly blamed
on Iran, based on “intelligence, the weapons used, the level of
expertise”, etc., which he claimed no other force present in the area
had. Not true; the British SBS does.
-
On 4 July, away from the Persian Gulf, British Marines seized an
Iranian oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean Sea,
on its way to deliver oil to Syria. The British claimed to be enforcing
EU sanctions against Syria, but aside from the fact that the USA and
EU’s sanctions on Syria are a crime against humanity in pursuit of
another regime-change war crime based on lies, those sanctions didn’t
apply to Iran—it was purely a provocative act of piracy. (On 19 August
Gibraltar let the ship go, over US objections.)
-
On 10 July, the British staged a provocation in the Gulf by having an empty oil tanker, the British Heritage, sail through the Strait of Hormuz without its transponder on and closely shadowed by British Navy Frigate the HMS Montrose.
Sailing without a transponder is a danger to other shipping, and as
Iran is responsible for shipping on its side of the Strait, an Iranian
ship attempted to intercept the tanker before the Montrose bore down and warned it off.
-
On 19 July, another British ship, the Stena Impero, was detained
by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard after also sailing with its
transponder off and moving in the wrong traffic pattern. It must be
suspected that this was the outcome the British hoped for: then-Foreign
Secretary Jeremy Hunt loudly and shamelessly pontificated that “these
seizures are completely unacceptable”, insisting that “all ships can
move safely and freely in the region” (but not Gibraltar apparently).
-
There are a number of other claims of Iran attacking or capturing ships
in the Gulf which are either unproven, or must be seen in the context
of the Anglo-American escalation.
Now, Australia is buying into the lying Anglo-American narrative,
citing the freedom of navigation chestnut to justify our presence.
A comparison must be made to China and the South China Sea, where our
Anglo-American allies use the freedom of navigation excuse to sail naval
forces with enough firepower to blow up the world. The two countries
that most depend on freedom of navigation in both the Persian Gulf and
South China Sea are not the USA and UK, but China and Iran.
Notwithstanding the current crippling US sanctions, Iran depends
entirely on shipping through the Gulf to sell its oil. Iran’s biggest
customer is China, which depends on shipping through the Persian Gulf
for half of its oil imports, which then must also be shipped through the
South China Sea.
Bizarrely, Iran and China are being demonised as the risk to the
shipping lanes they depend upon most, when in fact the real risk is
Anglo-American provocations. This demonisation was taken to its extreme
when Australian Liberal MP Andrew Hastie compared the rise of China to that of Nazi Germany,
and called China a “challenge” to our “democratic values”. Hastie made
the comments in a 26 June speech to the neoconservative Henry Jackson
Society in London, one of whose founders, Cambridge University professor
Brendan Simms, trumpeted his Society’s vision in a 2011 article
praising the Libya intervention entitled, “Democracy can be dropped from
10,000 feet” i.e. “democratic values” can be bombed into countries.
After destroying Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Hastie’s neoconservative
friends are now targeting Iran for a regime-change bloodbath, and
fantasise about ultimately overthrowing China.
Australians must face the fact that Iran and China are not threatening the world, we are.
It is our responsibility as citizens to demand our government withdraw
from the Anglo-American regime-change agenda, assert a truly independent
foreign policy, and support a new international economic order based on
sovereign nation-states respecting each other’s sovereignty, but
cooperating on economic development that can lift the world out of
poverty and ensure prosperity for future generations.
