With the assassination of the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp, General Quassem Suleimani, and the commander of an Iraqi militia group, Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, by a U.S. drone attack in Iraq, the danger of a full-scale war between the United States and Iran, and a general regional war in the Middle East has been greatly increased.

At the same time, the national sovereignty of Iraq has been violently assaulted by the Trump administration, while the U.S. Constitution, which reserves to Congress the exclusive right to declare war, is yet again undermined.

The Trump administration has justified the new attacks on Iraq and the likelihood of a war with Iran on the basis of a series of dubious claims about Iranian plans to strike U.S. targets, and is now moving thousands of new troops into the region. Forgotten is Trump’s 2016 election demagogy about getting out of wars in the region. But we hope and expect that the people of the United States will not have forgotten how the lies of the Bush administration about “weapons of mass destruction” got us into Iraq in the first place, and will not swallow the latest pretexts for violent escalation.

This latest action comes on top of a whole series of moves by Trump and his government to escalate tensions in the Middle East: The withdrawal of the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear project, the return to unilateral sanctions by the United States, the announcement of the moving of the U.S. embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the meddling in Syria, and the never ending horror of the Yemen civil war, to name just a few.

The U.S. intervention comes at a point, also, at which massive popular demonstrations in Iraq, demanding an end to corruption, have met with violent counter action. The U.S. attacks may undercut the message of these protests.

The Iraqi Communist Party, the Tudeh (communist) Party of Iran, and other left wing and people’s organizations in the Middle East and beyond have denounced the U.S. attack, pointing out the danger that Iraq now be turned into a battleground in the conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Fortunately, this time, in contrast to 2003, voices have been raised in Congress against it as well. Yet the Trump administration is likely to be undeterred unless the people of the United States speak out against the situation in our millions, and right away.

The Communist Party USA denounces the new aggressive and violent actions by the Trump administration, which are in flagrant violation of International and U.S. law, and calls for:

*Solidarity with the working class people of both Iraq and Iran against imperialist attacks and anti-people sanctions,

*An end to intervention by the United States and its Saudi, Israeli and gulf allies in all countries of the Middle East,

*Support for international and peaceful approaches to the resolution of the problems of the area, including via the United Nations and its agencies,

*Clipping the wings of the military-industrial complex in the United States, and the redirection of the massive military budget to peaceful uses such as health care for all and the Green New Deal,

*Pressure on our members of Congress and other elected officials to oppose, in word and deed, the violent and dangerous foreign policy of the Trump administration,

*Support for demonstrations and other protests against the new U.S. attacks, and

*A full turn out in the 2020 national elections to achieve the removal from power of Donald Trump and his allies, as an essential element in the fight for world peace.

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