Deployment means joining the war

The Lee Jae-myung government says that “nothing has been decided [yet]”. But a Ministry of Defense fact-finding team has already visited the Middle East, and the presidential office is toying with options such as a “non-combat search-and-rescue unit”. Their words are cautious, but the direction is clear. To not refuse Trump’s request, the government is looking for a justification and a format for the deployment.

This is where the first sleight of hand begins: the word “non-combat”. But sending warships into waters where a war is under way, to operate within a US-led command structure, is joining the war — whether or not that unit fires first. The Iranian government has already made it clear that it will regard any military intervention by foreign forces in the Strait of Hormuz as participation in invasion, regardless of the nature of the operation. An action that one of the warring parties defines as a hostile act does not become non-combat just because we call it “non-combat”. As the precedent of 2020 shows — when the operational area of the Cheonghae Unit [South Korea’s naval unit stationed off Somalia] was quietly extended to Hormuz — once the door to deployment is opened, its character can change at any time to suit the imperialist needs of the US.

Moreover, this deployment is no simple maritime patrol. Military control of the Strait of Hormuz is a key link in the US war plan against Iran. “Keeping the strait open” means neutralising almost the only means of response Iran has, and that means completing the blockade of and pressure on Iran. South Korean forces would become one part of that blockade net.

America’s war and Israel

“We were asked by the US; we are not helping Israel.” This counter-argument is the second issue, and a link in the chain that is easy to skip over. But this war on Iran has been a joint US-Israeli war from the very beginning. It was Israel that struck Iran’s nuclear facilities and military command, and the US backed it up before stepping directly to the front. The two states’ war aims are identical: to subjugate the last state in the Middle East capable of challenging Israel’s military supremacy.

Israel has long called Iran an “existential threat”. The reason is that Iran, by supporting the Palestinian resistance, forces in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, has constrained Israel’s freedom of action. If Iran is neutralised, that constraint disappears. That is why Israel sought to draw the US in to strike Iran, and why the US is trying to draw in its allies to share the burden. The deployment of South Korean troops sits at the very end of that chain. If South Korea lends a hand in blockading Iran, the benefit goes straight to Israel. That is why answering Trump’s request means providing support to Netanyahu.

Iranian repression and the Palestinian catastrophe

The third issue is this question: “The Iranian regime is repressive. How is defending Iran an act of Palestine solidarity?” The question sounds plausible, but it aims at the wrong target. Opposing the deployment is not supporting the Iranian regime. There is no reason to defend a regime that oppresses Iranian workers, women and ethnic minorities. Opposing the deployment means refusing to take part in the war being waged by Israel and the US, and opposing the consequences that war will bring.

Those consequences are obvious. At this very moment Israel is starving, bombing and driving out the Palestinians of Gaza. No pressure from any international body has stopped Israel. The only variables Israel has ever had to reckon with were the military counterforces in the region and the international Palestine solidarity movement. The war on Iran is a war to remove that variable. If Iran is broken, Israel will act more freely in Gaza, in the West Bank and in Lebanon. For the Palestinians, victory in the war on Iran is the announcement of the next massacre.

Therefore, the deployment of South Korean troops to Hormuz, regardless of the justification, ultimately serves as indirect support for the oppression of Palestinians. If those who took to the streets for the children of Gaza stay silent on this deployment, it is like condemning the massacre at the front door while sending ships to its perpetrators through the back door.

The deployment has nothing to do with the interests of ordinary Koreans

On top of the logic of Palestine solidarity, the deployment is also a disaster for the oppressed masses of South Korea themselves. The Lee Jae-myung government talks of “protecting energy shipping routes”. But what made the Strait of Hormuz dangerous was not Iran but the US-Israeli attack on Iran. Hoping the shipping route will become safe while joining in the escalation of the war is like pouring oil on a fire and hoping it goes out. Iran has warned that, in the event of a deployment, it may target South Korean assets and workers in the Gulf — in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and elsewhere. Tens of thousands of South Koreans work there. The deployment would hand them over as hostages.

The deployment also means sending working-class youth in South Korean uniform to a battlefield that has nothing to do with them. Ordinary Koreans have nothing to gain from this war. What the US imperialists gain is the legitimacy that comes from their allies’ participation; what the Israeli sub-imperialists gain is a free hand. What South Koreans gain is the stigma of being “America’s mercenaries” in the Middle East, and a resentment that will outlast the war.

The task of the Palestine solidarity movement

For the past three years, the Palestine solidarity movement has taken to the streets against the genocide in Gaza and the violence in the West Bank. The strength of that movement came from moral outrage. But to turn that outrage into real results, it must take aim at the machinery that makes the genocide possible. That machinery does not consist of the Israeli government alone. It includes the US that arms Israel, the allies that prop up America’s wars, and our own government, which is preparing to send warships at that alliance’s request.

Opposing the Hormuz deployment is not an “extension” for the Palestine solidarity movement; it is its core. If you oppose the genocide, you must oppose a war that strengthens those carrying it out, and you must stop our government from joining that war. The National Assembly’s consent is still required, and designating a unit will take weeks. That is the time given to us to stop the deployment.

South Korean troops must not go to the waters of Iran and Oman. Not for the sake of the Iranian regime, but for the sake of the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, the ordinary Iranians, the South Korean workers in the Gulf, and our own working-class youth in uniform. Let us not lend our name to America’s war. And together with the people around the world who stand in solidarity with Palestine, let us raise the cry: “Not in Our Name!”