HANDS OFF SYRIA! NO WAR ON IRAN!

The International League of Peoples’ Struggles (ILPS), Commission 4 on Just Peace condemns the recent airstrikes of the President Joe Biden-led US military on Syria. We call on all anti-imperialist and democractic forces around the world to stand in solidarity with the people of Syria against continued US-back aggression, which has included the military of the US and Turkey and their reactionary collaborators.

The US airstrike occurred on February 25 2021, nearly 5 weeks earlier than it took the Trump regime into its term to order its first airstrikes against Syria. The Pentagon characterized the strike as a defensive measure that “aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both Eastern Syria and Iraq”. The Pentagon further tried to claim that this so-called “de-escalation” was in response to Iranian-backed militias launching rockets into Iraq. This claim is no different from Trump’s early 2020 assassination of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani within an Iraqi military base. It is clear, therefore, that Biden has signaled that his administration will continue the same policy of aggression towards Iran that all of his Democrat and Republican predecessors have followed, once again using direct attacks against the people of Syria and Iraq as its strategy for military dominance.

As the Resist US-Led War Movement recently wrote in its own statement on the issue, “Rather than heeding the calls of the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets in Iraq and worldwide last year demanding ‘U.S. Out!’, Biden is digging in his heels and jeopardizing chances for true peace in the region. This should come as no surprise, given that Biden and his cabinet members namely U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin III have carried the near identical Democrat and Republican Party strategy of increased sanctions and warmongering.”

This airstrike marks the first known ordering of military force by Biden, who almost immediately upon taking office declared an end to US support for the war on Yemen. Rather than living up to this falsified claim as a peace President, these airstrikes show that the January Yemen declaration was merely a ruse attempted to placate the hundreds of thousands who took to the street globally to demand an end to this brutal war of annihilation against the Yemeni people.

The US has maintained its long support for the war on Yemen for the same reasons that it has maintained its policies of sanctions, airstrikes and US-backed civil war in Syria: to increase its military supremacy and political influence in the region, particularly against Iran. As ILPS Commission 4 wrote in our “No War On Yemen!” statement in January, “The Yemen conflict has been time and again shown as a war maintained by the ‘Houthi rebels.’ The truth is that Saudi Arabia brutally invaded Yemen and was provided intelligence, fuel and military support from the USA, Israel among other allies including NATO and other reactionary states such as Turkey.”

As a Commission of a global anti-imperialist alliance organizing against all wars of aggression, ILPS Commission 4 stresses seriously the recent airstrikes against Syria are tied inextricably to US imperialism’s strategic assaults against the people of West Asia and North Africa, among them the support for the war on Yemen, the backing of the Zionist occupation of Palestine and the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, the continued drone strikes against Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and the consistent military arming of fascist puppet states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. We call on all those who aspire for a just and lasting peace to struggle against these acts of aggression by the leading imperialist power of today. With reaction and fascism rising and imperialist aggression intensifying on many fronts, the peoples of the world must share knowledge, organize and mobilize to unite in action as one movement.

Hands Off Syria!

No to War on Iran!

US Out of West Asia and North Africa!

Resist US-Led War