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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

A lull in Lebanon

Everyone will welcome the ceasefire in Lebanon – not least the people of the south who have borne the brunt of the Israeli incursion that has cost countless lives of innocent Lebanese civilians and wreaked havoc on the villages and towns of the borderland. How long it will last is, of course, another matter.

The fact that the temporary truce was imposed by the USA shows who ultimately calls the shots in Tel Aviv. And the fact that Donald Trump had to do it to get the Iranians back to the negotiating table shows that the Americans have lost the initiative in this war that they started.

Trump gave them his best shots, starting with a treacherous surprise attack followed by the assassination of the Islamic Republic’s leaders in a terror bombing “shock and awe” campaign that the Americans and their lackeys thought would force the Iranians to beg for mercy in a matter of days. But the Iranians gave as good as they got, laying waste to America’s ring of bases across the Middle East and giving the Israelis a taste of their own medicine with wave after wave of missile attacks that has left much of Tel Aviv in ruins.

Trump open talked of regime change à la Libya and Iraq. Netanyahu bragged about a future “Greater Israel” that the Zionists believe will stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates. Both conjured up armies of traitors and quislings that they imagined would take to the streets of Tehran to do their bidding and welcome the imperialists with open arms.

But none of this happened. The Iranians stood firm and so did their Arab allies in Yemen, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon – the axis of resistance that refuses to submit to the Americans, the Israelis or their feudal Arab lackeys.

The Iranians throttled the Big Oil corporations when they closed the Persian Gulf. They watched US imperialism’s allies wash their hands of the American–Israeli offensive in Iran. They ignored Trump’s empty threats of annihilation and they’ve laid down their own terms for ending the conflict – terms that China, Russia and most of the Global South have endorsed as the basis for ending the conflict.

In Europe, the leading members of the EU have openly refused to join in Trump’s crusade. In Britain, the Starmer government sits on the fence, distancing itself from Washington over Iran while still supplying arms to the Zionist entity and allowing the American air-force to use some of the RAF’s bases in operations against the Islamic Republic.

These are volatile times. The old order is being challenged – and not just in the Middle East. On the street the masses have broken the bourgeois consensus that rarely goes beyond endless ‘debates’ on immigration and the EU, mealy-mouthed reforms and Atlanticism. The issues of war and peace, imperialism or socialism are once again back on the agenda…