Cardiff protest as public turns against Iran airstrikes and wider war
Anti-war protesters are set to march through Cardiff this weekend in a major demonstration against US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, as public opposition to the conflict grows across Britain.
The march, organised by a coalition of peace groups, trade unions, anti-racist organisations, students and community activists, will gather at 1pm on Saturday 21 March at the Aneurin Bevan statue on Queen Street before moving through the city centre.
It forms part of a UK-wide Day of Action and is expected to be one of the largest anti-war protests in Wales since tensions in the region escalated.
The mobilisation comes as opposition to the war continues to harden. The latest YouGov poll shows support in Britain for US strikes on Iran has fallen sharply, with just 25% backing the war while 59% are opposed.
Campaigners say this reflects public scepticism over the arguments given for the war, growing unease at the scale of civilian deaths and fears of the longterm consequences of a regional war.
Adam Johannes of Cardiff Stop the War Coalition said the human cost of the war is already devastating. “By last week already nearly 1,300 civilians had been killed in US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran, including 175 schoolgirls and staff who died when missiles struck a primary school.”
“In Lebanon, hundreds more people have been slaughtered by Israeli airstrikes with a major ground invasion threatened to re-occupy the south of the country. Over a million people have already been displaced from their homes.”
He warned that the conflict is rapidly expanding. “What is unfolding is an ever widening regional war, which Israel is also using as cover to continue its assault on the Palestinian people,” he said.
“This is not a war to liberate the Iranian people. It is a war to reshape the Middle East in the interests of the US and Israel, with ordinary people paying the price, a war that will further destabilise the region and the wider world.”
Illegal
Trade union leaders are also backing the march. Marianne Owens, PCS union vice president, condemned the airstrikes in strong terms:
“PCS condemns the illegal wars on Iran and Lebanon carried out by the US and Israel and demands a return to diplomacy. We also call on the UK government to end its involvement,” she said.
“We are appalled by reports of civilian casualties and the bombing of schools, hospitals and medical centres across the region. Forced displacement of civilian populations is a war crime. Targeting medical staff and hospitals is a war crime. The deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime. ”
“We have seen the devastation caused by Western imperialist wars before in Iraq and Afghanistan – wars that brought nothing to ordinary people except death and chaos. No one has ever been liberated by bombs.”
Cardiff Stop the War Coalition also argued that ordinary people in Britain would be forced to bear the economic consequences of the conflict:
“As the Iran war drives global energy prices upwards, La France Insoumise, the main party of the left in France, has tabled a parliamentary bill demanding price freezes on household electricity bills. They are right to do so. When elites choose war, they too often expect the working class to foot the bill,” they said.
“Here in Britain, we should be demanding the same of our MPs. The majority of people oppose another illegal war in the Middle East, yet we are told to just accept the rising living costs and higher household bills that will come with it. If the costs of war appear in our electricity bills, then resisting those costs becomes part of resisting the war itself.”
Speakers at the rally are expected to draw parallels with past foreign interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya that did not result in stable democracies.
Hussein Said of Black Lives Matter Cardiff and Vale pointed to the legacy of regime-change wars: “I am an Iraqi who was told in 2003 that regime change would bring democracy and freedom… But what followed was sectarianism, militias, chaos and a country that fell to its knees,” he said.
“The only people who can free Iranians are people in that country, not external actors who claim to fight for their interests when in reality they’re only fighting for a regime change that benefits them.”
Organisers say the breadth of support for Saturday’s march reflects growing concern that the conflict is spiralling out of control.
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We are told we will have to take the brunt of the war, through higher energy costs, then ultimately higher inflation, by the British government, as the government is wed to big business and the markets. Big business totally controls governments these days. There are people making a lot of money from this war, particularly in the US, and we are helping to make the money for them. Society needs a change of direction, away from the rich getting richer and grabbing it all, and through independence we can try and achieve that change.
The photo at the top of the page has the Lion flag of Iran and that demonstration was against the Ayatollah’s savage regime and in favour of the bombing of the Islamists by the US and Israel. Even moderate Gulf states are in favour of the attack on the Islamist government and all its bomb making facilities. The Iranian people have suffered so much from the Islamic regime and want the mullahs removed.
Easy to be favour of bombing places you don’t live. The Gulf states and the UK host US/Israel bases and personnel that are being used to attack them.
Huh. We make them suffer more then by dropping a tomahawk missile on school girls and generally bombing the hell out of them and celebrated by a mad religious regime in the US.
How is it going?
Israeli settlers now hunting Palestinians off their lands. And trump now threatening more war crimes by destroying power in Iran.
The next US 9/11 is pretty much baked in now. Question of when.
No one marched for the 30,000 brave Iranians slaughtered by the regime. The UK is lost. Wales will gain independence and then lose independence to a greater force
Yes, there are many awful demonstrations in favour of the Islamist regime, but there are also Iranians demonstrating for freedom, and the photo at the top of the page shows a pro Iranian people demonstration with the Lion flag. Hopefully Iran will soon be free.
What so the Iran can have a the Shah back with his brutal regime instead? Or the Americans doing what the did to Libya, Syria and Iraq?
30,000 is the overestimated figure, but nonetheless, manufacturing consent to bomb and invade a country based on the diaspora opinions is meaningless.
Yes the Iranian regime is brutal and despicable. But that does not give the USA the right to intervene. The UN Charter specifically states that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of member states must not be undermined. How many times have illegal wars been justified on the grounds of “humanitarian intervention” when in reality it becomes an excuse for Imperialism? Iraq, Libya, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine etc?
But what they are the Persians who have been colonised by brutal Islamists to do? The Ayatollah was flown to Iran by France in 1979 and he started the mass killings of Iranians then. The people want to be free of sharia law and of the mullahs, how else can it happen? When they demonstrate they are killed in their 10s of thousands.
No one is denying the brutality of the Iranian regime. But the UN Charter (Article 2(4)) strictly prohibits using force against any state’s territorial integrity or political independence, except in self-defense or with UN Security Council approval, no exception exists for “humanitarian” regime change. War is only justified when it is an act of self-defense. Iran’s brutal repression is no different from that in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Belarus, North Korea, Russia, or China, where citizens have been brutally oppressed. Yet I don’t see Trump going after any of them, in fact Trump is pretty fond of Putin. Did you support the… Read more »
The Shah also killed thousands and torture many more.
He did but that is irrelevant. You appear to be fan of the current regime. Shocking. But, judging by many of your past posts, not a huge surprise either.
When these protestors are flying the Imperial Standard and chanting Reza’s name it is not irrelevant.
Tell that to the families of those tortured and murdered by his regime.
Equating me bringing up the brutality of the Shahs reign with me supporting the current regime. Shows the agenda you have Spike. Which seems to be one of supporting a regime that fails to declare its nuclear arsenal, perpetrated genocide, bombs neighbouring countries civilians and civilian infrastructure, commits war crimes daily and also allows pedophiles to find refuge there from prosecution.
So anyone who flees any country for whatever reason, even if they are in the minority, can ask a foreign country to bomb theirs to enact political change? That sounds a bit like terrorism…
All the war mongers who want this destruction should e**ing pay for it, be the only ones affected by price rises and send their kids and grandkids to fight.
Energy shock has not hit us yet, or the rest of the world.
But it’s coming, it is baked in now. How hard it hits us is yet to come out.
Farage best mate in the Whitehouse and Isreal did this.
All that green we have in the UK is now looking very good, but farage and kemi would bin it.
In little over a year and in Syria they have introduced a ban on the sale of alcohol, already regressing in freedoms in order to become more fundamentalist Islamic. The Shah or whomever they introduce will be equally as regressive in freedoms, there is no real political movement that has a solid vision of liberal democracy in Iran, atleast one that’s not at the expense of Iranian sovereignty.