Trump threatens to 'destroy' what remains of Iran: war as state policy

According to Al Jazeera, which is running a live blog on the war in Iran, Donald Trump has warned that the United States may have to "destroy" what remains of Iran, adding that we would know "soon". That is all the dispatch says. No timetable, no targets, no casualty figures. What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

Let us start with what we do not know. We do not know whether this sentence announces an operation, prepares a negotiation or serves as pressure. We do not know what "the rest" refers to. We know nothing here of what will happen to civilians. Yet they will pay for any escalation: ordinary people who did not vote for this war or sign these contracts. Any analysis that forgets them is a bad analysis.

Now the awkward question: who benefits from the threat? Lenin described a capitalism that had reached its monopoly stage, in which banks and large groups seek abroad outlets, raw materials and spheres of influence. The world is divided, then redivided. Sanctions, alliances, arms contracts and energy routes are the political wrapping. Read this way, a threat of destruction is not a fit of temper: it is a tool of leverage in the rivalry between great powers over a region that concentrates oil, gas and maritime corridors. We put this forward as a working hypothesis, not as proof.

The vocabulary is a clue. There is no longer any talk of "stability" or a "rules-based order". We speak of destroying. At least here is an order that admits what it is: that of the strongest. Fine formulas about international law serve for as long as they are convenient; they are put away when they get in the way.

There is also the state machine. Lenin reminded us that the state is not a neutral arbiter: it is an apparatus of army, police, civil servants, taxation and public debt, placed above society and in the service of the ruling class. A war is financed through taxes and borrowing. Taxpayers front the bill; the suppliers of the military apparatus cash in. Rearmament has its beneficiaries, and they do not appear in the funeral processions.

Finally, the refrain is familiar. Lenin mocked those who, since 1914, have covered the predatory interests of "their" bourgeoisie with grand phrases about defending the fatherland or the republic. Today the fatherland is called security, and the bourgeoisie is called national interest. The method has not changed.

So: no triumphalism, on either side. A war is not a spectacle, and neither the Iranian nor the American people have anything to gain from watching their leaders play at who can destroy the most. We are waiting for facts: what Washington will do, how Tehran will respond, what civilians will suffer. In the meantime the question stands, and we will keep asking it: cui bono?