Trump: the Frankenstein's monster of imperialism – weekly briefing | Counterfire
Lindsey German on gangster warmongering and a breakthrough for the Greens Donald Trump’s pledge that he would take the US out of ‘forever wars’ has been torn up in the first two months of 2026.
Lindsey German on gangster warmongering and a breakthrough for the Greens
Donald Trump’s pledge that he would take the US out of ‘forever wars’ has been torn up in the first two months of 2026. The attack on Iran, coordinated with war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, has killed the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and set the Middle East in flames. It follows the bombing of Venezuela and the kidnap of its president Nicolas Maduro, the siege of Cuba, and the imperialist carve-up which is the Board of Peace in Gaza.
Trump’s brand of gangster imperialism is at its most reckless. This attack is about regime change, but regime change by bombing has never succeeded. The history of the last 25 years is strewn with examples of supposedly bringing peace and democracy at the end of an American missile, and every time it has failed: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, it has brought much greater death and destruction and created chaos and civil war – and ended in US defeat. In Syria, the new government is compliant with the US, but that took a decade and a half of civil war and bombing for the US to achieve and has left the country divided and wrecked. They will not care if Iran suffers the same fate.
The idea that the state responsible for a genocide in Gaza, aligned with one that has the overwhelming advantage in military power anywhere in the world, and has invaded far more countries than any other, is going to do anything to improve the lives of Iranians, would be an absolutely sick joke if it were not so dangerous. The assassination of Khamenei is in breach of international law, as was the Maduro kidnap. The killing of 148 children when a school was bombed demonstrates the absolute lack of concern for civilians’ safety and life that are hallmarks of both Trump and Netanyahu.
This attack happened as negotiations took place over Iran’s nuclear power. It has repeatedly said it does not want to build a nuclear bomb, and that it wants a return to the nuclear deal established under US president Obama, which Trump tore up in his first term. Yet Israel the aggressor does have nuclear weapons, and the US is the only country that has used them in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The hypocrisy here is astounding.
The British government has made it clear that it played no part in the assault, but it has troops in US bases in the Middle East and its aircraft have been involved in activity in the region over the weekend. It will not condemn the US-Israeli action, and its complicity over the Gaza genocide has been a huge support to Netanyahu. It will be further drawn into support for this reckless and illegal attack. The BBC coverage already talks about Iran attacking several Middle East countries, without making it clear that these are attacks on US bases stationed there.
We know how the US and Israeli attack on Iran began on Saturday. The question however is how it ends. Trump has ramped up a much bigger war than anything he has done before. It will not end well. It is unlikely to succeed in regime change – even if it did, that would lead to further unrest and possible civil war. It will not do anything to help those who oppose the government, because change can only come from the Iranian people themselves, not from the military intervention of outside forces or their proxies within.
There will be more deaths of Iranians, US and British troops will likely be killed, and the threat of terrorist and other responses are very high. Oil prices will rise if the Straits of Hormuz are cut off or regarded as too dangerous for tankers to pass through. Already Lloyds has said they won’t insure tankers coming through the straits – so that’s Gulf oil now cut off. That will be at a cost to living standards of working-class people across the world as inflation shoots up. Meanwhile, Trump’s action is already very unpopular in the US, and that is likely to grow, along with his general unpopularity. There is no easy way back for him after this. It is in a different league from his attacks last June, because of the nature of the war aim and the death of Khamenei.
One group rejoicing about all this are the Iranian monarchists in the diaspora. They want the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty which was overthrown by the 1979 revolution. The Shah was backed by the US and widely hated and a world leader in torture, repression and execution. These people work closely with right-wing Zionists and far-right fascists against the Palestine movement. Only last week, fascists part of a monarchist demo in Manchester attacked a Stop the War meeting.
We are at a dangerous turning point and should redouble our efforts to oppose Trump’s wars, to call for an end to our government’s support for them, and to stop arming and backing Israel. They are bringing the Middle East to the brink of all-out war. And everyone who wants peace there must oppose this latest war of choice from a desperate and dangerous US imperialism.
Green success, Labour catastrophe, Reform defeat
The Green win in the Gorton and Denton by-election was a big victory for the party and its candidate Hannah Spencer, who came across as representing working-class people in a friendly and approachable manner. Her acceptance speech referenced the racist attack on a Manchester mosque in the previous days, talked about the concerns of those who work but never have money to pay the bills, and of her own life as a plumber and plasterer (something that seemed completely inexplicable to media and rival politicians alike).
The comfortable win for a left candidate was disastrous for Keir Starmer. He told us it was between Labour and Reform and that the only way to defeat the latter was to vote Labour. The voters disagreed and put the party’s hapless candidate in third place behind Hannah and Reform. Throughout the constituency there were reports of visceral reactions against Labour and Starmer in particular. No one believes the pathetic excuses for lost votes that the party needs to explain its policies better – it’s awareness about the right-wing policies that turns voters off.
Starmer deliberately blocked his rival Andy Burnham from standing in a seat he would surely have won. He now denounces ‘extremism from left and right’ even though the Greens are championing policies similar to those that would once have been seen as Labour. His Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has stated she is determined to keep tightening immigration laws, despite the by-election. These people are on the road to nowhere and deserve to lose. Their refusal to shift any ground to the left will doom them, and will see more losses to the left, as well as in some places to Reform.
But much less remarked is how bad a result this is for Farage’s party. Reform expected to win the seat and was claiming that it would right to the end. Its candidate Matt Goodwin would not have stood unless he expected to win. The humiliation and anger on his face when he came quite a far second to a female plumber was a highlight of the night. The choice of candidate was not a good one – his weird ideas about women having to be educated to have children early can’t have endeared him to many. His response in defeat was to blame an alliance of Muslims and the ‘woke’ for the Green victory.
The Greens are experiencing the kind of witch-hunting reserved for Respect in its previous election wins. No one ever talked about sectarianism or ‘family voting’ when most Muslims voted Labour. It’s only when they decide to vote for other minority parties that this happens. In fact Hannah Spencer got 40% of the vote, so clearly a large portion of her vote was not from Muslims. Across the constituency there will have been many of all faiths and none who support Gaza, care about the cost of living and don’t like Labour or the racism of Reform. Yet it suits Reform and much of the media to treat Muslims as a monolithic sectarian bloc.
The Greens show Labour can be defeated from the left. But with the Iran attacks the party will need to be much clearer in opposing imperialism and war – because the two are very much connected to the domestic agenda.
*This week: *I am speaking at an online meeting on Tuesday against war on Iran, and Stop the War and CND are organising a demo this Saturday in London. On Thursday there will be a Counterfire meeting on International Women’s Day, and on Friday a Palestine women’s protest. The following week’s Stop the War* *annual conference is of even greater importance.
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News Stop Trump's wars. Photo: Steve Eason / CC BY-NC 2.0 28 Feb 2026
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