Iran: the rumour of a strike after the midterms, or war as an electoral tool

According to Courrier international, the rumour of a "short and intense" operation against Iran, carried out by the United States and Israel after the American midterm elections, keeps swelling in the press of both countries. Still according to the magazine, it has gained strength since the Israeli elections: Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to stay in power for some time, and would have every interest in doing so.

Here is what we know. It is not much. The dispatch cites no official plan, no timetable, no identified source. These are whispers, passed along by newspapers. No decision has been announced. Everything else is our reading.

That reading starts with a simple question: who benefits from the noise? A war announced for after the vote is a war you let hang over the campaign. You do not launch it before the ballot box; you brandish it. It serves as an argument, a threat, a backdrop. The electoral calendar becomes a military calendar, or the reverse. Both governments find their account in it, and Courrier international says as much about Netanyahu: staying in power has its advantages.

This is where the old lesson about the state keeps its edge. The state is not an referee standing above society. It is the instrument of a class, and its foreign policy defends the interests of "its" bourgeoisie, whether or not it dresses them up in grand words. Lenin was already mocking those who cloaked the defence of predatory interests in phrases about "defending the homeland". Today we say "security" and "deterrence". The vocabulary has changed, not the function.

Second angle: the rivalry between great powers over resources, trade routes and spheres of influence. Sanctions, military alliances and arms contracts are, on this reading, the political wrapping of economic competition. Iran sits at the crossroads of all this. But beware: the dispatch says nothing about the economic interests at stake. We pose the question; we do not have the answer. Who would sell weapons, who would secure which markets, who would pick up the bill? Nothing establishes that at this stage.

What can be said, by contrast, is who usually pays. It is not the shareholders, nor the ministers. It is the populations under the bombs, and the taxpayers who finance what follows. If this "brief" operation were to take place, we will be told it was surgical. We know the tune: short wars rarely stay short.

For now, a press rumour remains a rumour. But a rumour that swells on the eve of an election is never innocent. It prepares minds, tests public opinion, and sets the frame for what will be judged "reasonable". Our job is not to predict the strike. It is to watch who gains from our talking about it, and to say so.