COMMUNISTS issued a stark warning of a “new war danger” in the Middle East as they gathered at the weekend’s Fete de l’Humanite in Paris.

Representatives of communist and workers’ parties from Iran, France, Lebanon, Cyprus, Iraq, India and Britain issued a joint statement urging peace movements to step up their efforts to protest against “the resurgent threat of US military action against Iran.”

International tensions continue to escalate, with the US insisting that the weekend missile attack on a Saudi oil refinery was an Iranian enterprise and promising a retaliatory response.

As US warships continue to prowl the Straits of Hormuz, attendees in Paris condemned the “economic warfare” being waged by Washington via a sanctions regime imposed after it withdrew from 2015’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal.

The meeting pledged its support and solidarity with those struggling for democratic and human rights in Iran, where the regime has intensified its clampdown on opposition and trade union action.

Tudeh Party of Iran international secretary Navid Shomali said: “The sanctions are ruining the Iranian economy with high inflation, factory closures, mass unemployment and scarcity of medical supplies, devastating the lives of working people.”

Vera Polycarpou of the Party of Progressive Working People of Cyprus (Akel) exposed a new build-up of Western military forces in the eastern Mediterranean region, including British F-35 fighter aircraft that are carrying out bombing missions in Syria and Iraq from the British military base in Akrotiri.

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Robert Griffiths welcomed the recent sacking of US national security adviser John Bolton, who had clashed with US President Donald Trump over Taliban peace talks.

But he warned that a military strike against Iran by US or Israeli forces could still happen “at any moment.”

“Bolton is an inveterate warmonger,” he said, “but his sacking does not mean that the strategy of domination of the greater Middle East region by the US and its Israeli and Saudi Arabian allies has changed.”

French Communist Party international secretary Lydia Samarbakhsh outlined the preconditions needed for peace with justice in the region.

This included reinstatement of the Iranian nuclear energy deal, a viable Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, a halt to the Saudi devastation of Yemen, an end to the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus and to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s repression of his country’s Kurdish population.