Demanding “unconditional surrender,” Trump plots assault on Iran

Keith Jones

A firefighter calls out his colleagues at the scene of a bombing in a residence compound in northern Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 13, 2025. [AP Photo/Vahid Salemi]

American imperialism is rushing headlong into war with Iran, assuming direct command of a predatory conflict it has long plotted alongside Israel, its proxy in the Middle East. With US support and encouragement, Israel initiated the onslaught on Iran on the night of June 12.

In a series of bellicose, mafia-style posts on his Truth Social media platform Tuesday, President Donald Trump all but publicly declared that he has ordered the US military to directly enter the war.

Making no distinction between US and Israeli forces, Trump declared, “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.” This was followed by a direct threat to murder Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei. “We know exactly where” he “is hiding,” Trump menaced. “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But … Our patience is wearing thin.”

Some thirty minutes later, Trump demanded Tehran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”

The US-Israeli war on Iran is an act of brazen criminality. The direct entry of American imperialism into the war will have catastrophic consequences for the people of Iran—a historically oppressed country—as well as for the broader Middle East and the world.

It constitutes a massive escalation in the unfolding US imperialist-led global war. Washington has long viewed its drive to subjugate Iran and exert unfettered dominance over the world’s principal oil-exporting region and key ocean trade routes as critical to preparing for war with China.

US imperialism has never reconciled itself to the 1979 popular uprising that overthrew the monarchical dictatorship of the Shah. In declaring “unconditional surrender” the aim of the US-Israeli war on Iran, Trump is spelling out in his typical gangster fashion that Wall Street and Washington are intent on reimposing neo-colonial domination over the Iranian people.

In recent days, the US military has been surging warplanes, naval vessels and other war materiel to the region. With B-52s, which are designed to deliver nuclear weapons, now forward deployed, Trump’s call for the 9 million residents of Tehran to flee can only be interpreted as an implicit threat that the Iranian people could be targeted with nuclear bombs.

The corporate US media is repeating the lies of an “imminent threat” by Tehran, used to justify one criminal US-led war after another.

Assured of the support of Washington and the other major imperialist powers, Israel has already expanded the war to target energy infrastructure, the national broadcaster, hospitals and civilians, in addition to nuclear facilities, missile defenses and command structures.

At the same time, the Zionist regime is intensifying its drive to ethnically cleanse and murder the Palestinians of Gaza.

Trump’s statements, beginning with his Friday posts declaring the Israeli attack on Iran “excellent” and that he had been in on the planning, have demonstrated that from its very outset the war was a joint US-Israeli operation.

The White House’s claim that a sixth round of talks would be held in Oman last Sunday between US and Iranian officials on a peaceful resolution to the nuclear conflict was a ruse, designed to lure Iran’s political and military leaders into a death-trap.

While Trump leads the way, the leaders of the other imperialist powers are backing Israel’s criminal assault on Iran. Speaking Tuesday on the sidelines of the G7 summit, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed gratitude for Israel’s attack on Iran, saying Israel was doing “the dirty work … for all of us.”

Issued Monday evening, the “G7 Leaders’ statement on recent developments between Israel and Iran” casts Iran as the aggressor, and greenlights escalation of the war. It affirms that “Israel has a right to defend itself;” pledges the imperialist powers’ support “for the security of Israel,” and condemns Iran as “the principal source of regional instability and terror.”

What a lie! It is Israel, not Iran, that illegally acquired nuclear weapons with imperialist assistance, and that refuses any and all International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) oversight of its nuclear program or to otherwise abide by the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And it was Washington that in 2018 abrogated the UN-backed Iran nuclear accord, with Trump unilaterally imposing sweeping, globally-applicable sanctions on Tehran with the aim of crashing Iran’s economy and precipitating regime change. Western intelligence agencies have repeatedly conceded that there is no evidence Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and, even were it to do so, Tehran is years away from fashioning such a weapon.

The criminality and violence of the imperialist powers are rooted in their desperate crisis.

Whatever the initial outcome of the onslaught on Iran, it will ultimately prove a disaster for US imperialism and its Zionist allies.

Washington’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq ended in debacles. Two decades on, American capitalism confronts a deepening debt crisis, is beset by mounting social conflict, and is headed by a criminal oligarch who is attempting to pre-emptively stamp out mass working class opposition by erecting a presidential dictatorship.

Iran is a complex country with a population of over 90 million and a large and militant working class. The imperialist onslaught will radicalize the masses in Iran, across the Middle East, and globally.

The struggle against imperialism and the emerging third world war requires the development of an independent political movement of the working class animated by a socialist internationalist program.

The expanding Mideast war will undoubtedly produce more surprises and shocks. But there is no question that Iran’s bourgeois nationalist regime has been staggered by the initial attack.

This is not principally due to the US-supplied Israeli military having greater firepower and technological savvy. Rather it is rooted in the class character of the Iranian regime. The Iranian bourgeoisie lives in mortal fear of the working class—all the more so in that it has systematically rolled back all the social concessions made to Iran’s workers and toilers in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 Revolution.

Organically incapable of making a class appeal to all the oppressed masses—irrespective of ethnicity or religion—of the Middle East, including the Israeli working class, for a joint struggle against imperialism, the Iranian regime has sought to maneuver in the face of relentless US pressure, repeatedly seeking a rapprochement with Washington. In its delusion that it could strike a deal with Trump short of unilateral disarmament—the same Trump who scuttled the original nuclear accord and has threatened on multiple occasions to annihilate Iran—it walked into the trap laid for it by Washington and Tel Aviv.

The US ruling class is giving overwhelming support to this war of aggression. The Democratic Party has stated its support for Israel’s illegal assault on Iran, and Trump’s role in it.

In an interview on NBC Sunday, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff endorsed the attack on Iran, saying, “So I support those actions. And I support the administration’s actions in helping Israel defend itself.” He added that if Iran were to retaliate against US bases, “Iran opens itself up to potential attacks on Fordow [uranium enrichment refinery] or elsewhere.”

The international pseudo-left is silent on the attack on Iran. Addressing rallies over the weekend against Trump’s attack on democratic rights, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib did not even mention the ongoing bombardment of Iran. Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister who helped impose EU austerity on Greece, wrote in a post on X Monday, “Ignore the war with Iran. Iranians can defend themselves.”

Australia: Rich List highlights soaring wealth of billionaires

Leonard Johns

The 200 wealthiest Australians now control $667 billion, up $42 billion from last year, according to the 2025 edition of the annual Rich List published by the Australian Financial Review (AFR). This amounts to more than 36 percent of Australia’s annual gross domestic product.

In 1983, when the first Rich List was published, the total wealth of those included was $4.6 billion, the equivalent of $18.5 billion in today’s money. During this time span, the fortunes of the top 200 increased 7.7 times faster than per capita wealth and 26 times faster than per capita income. “The rich not only get richer, they increase their wealth faster,” stated the AFR.

Forty-two years ago, only media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his family had more than $200 million in collective wealth. This year, the list contains 161 billionaires, while the minimum fortune required to be included is $747 million—the highest ever threshold.

The list was dominated by representatives of the resources and property sectors, along with a growing number from the technology industry. These three categories account for more than half the holdings of the entire Rich List pack, including eight of the ten richest Australians.

Perdaman Group Vikas Rambal and Stonepeak co-founder Michael Dorrell [Photo: Perdaman Group, Stonepeak]

This year, six newly minted billionaires were featured, including the “highest-valued self-made debutant” in history, Michael Dorrell, seventh on the list “after quietly amassing an estimated $13.9 billion.” Dorrell is a co-founder of infrastructure investor Stonepeak, which manages $71 billion in real assets and infrastructure. The companies Stonepeak control enough renewable electricity for 200,000 households and transport close to 10 percent of the world’s seaborne natural gas.

The next highest-ranking first-time entry is Perdaman Group boss Vika Rambal, worth almost $5 billion from operations spanning the construction of a huge fertiliser plant in the Pilbara (in Western Australia), commercial real estate, pharmaceuticals and renewable energy. If not for Dorrell, Rambal would have been the highest-ranking starter on the list in any other year.

Topping the list for the sixth consecutive time is “iron ore queen” Gina Rinehart, with an estimated fortune of $38.1 billion, despite a 6 percent decrease in her wealth from last year, “due to lower iron ore prices.” Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting is a major rural landholder and investor, as well as the country’s biggest private mining company.

Fellow resource sector moguls in the top ten include Clive Palmer (No. 5), Nicola Forrest (No. 9) and former Glencore boss Ivan Glasenberg (No. 8), who made a billion dollars in dividends alone, despite the company’s share price sliding down 43 percent as a result of lower coal prices. In total, the mining sector accounted for $141.3 billion of the wealth covered by the list.

Property tycoon Harry Triguboff, held on to second place on the Rich List, increasing his personal wealth by 12 percent to an estimated $29.7 billion. His company Meriton—the largest apartment developer in the country—saw its revenues climb to $1.62 billion, up from $1.47 billion last year. Overall, $125.8 billion of Rich Listers’ wealth was derived from the property sector.

Gina Rinehart and Harry Triguboff [Photo: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade / Meriton]

The small minority running the housing market fills its pockets as the availability of homes falls far short of demand, and incomes cannot keep up with rising rents and prices. Chair of the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC), Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz stated recently that, for many, “securing a home that is affordable, fit for purpose and secure remains challenging, if not impossible.”

According to the NHSAC 2025 report, “50 percent of median household income was needed to meet repayments for the average new mortgage, while 33 percent was needed to meet rental costs for the average new lease.” Waiting time for a home deposit increased to 10.6 years and the dwelling price to median household earnings ratio climbed to 8.0.

The fastest growing sector in the list is technology, which accounts for $105.9 billion, almost twice what it did five years ago. The AFR noted that the wealth of tech-sector Rich Listers would have been even higher, “had this year’s valuation cut-off of mid-April not fallen in the middle of the equities markets free-fall triggered by US President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs.”

Moreover, Jack Zhang, founder of online payments platform Airwallex, was placed in the finance category, as was Chris Morris, founder of Computershare. The fortunes of crypto gambling billionaires Tim Heath, Ed Craven and Laurence Escalante could also have been added to the tech total, which would have put it within $2.5 billion of the property sector at $123.3 billion.

Scott Farquhar was the highest-ranking tech billionaire, coming in fourth with $21.4 billion. Farquhar co-founded software company Atlassian with Mike Cannon-Brookes, now worth $12.18 billion. Cannon-Brookes and his estranged wife Annie Cannon-Brookes missed the top ten as their billions were divided, sliding them to 12th and 13th place. Also featured were Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht (No. 6), co-founders of digital design giant Canva, worth a joint $14.1 billion.

Even among the multi-billionaires on the Rich List there is a disproportionate concentration of wealth at the top, with the ten richest controlling $202 billion—more than 30 percent of the total. While the total wealth of this upper echelon fell 9 percent from 2024, this was not enough to reverse the longer-term trend. The AFR commented, “despite the odd tumble, the wealthiest Australians are pulling away from the rest of the Rich 200 pack.”

At the same time, the AFR noted, “Many regular Australians banked fewer savings in the past 12 months due to years of above-average inflation.” The newspaper also lamented that cost-of-living pressures, while increasing revenue for retailers, had not increased their net profits.

The negative impacts on the country’s wealthiest individuals from the suffering of the working class were more than made up for, in the eyes of the financial press, by “the year’s most exciting Rich Lister story—the merger of Chemist Warehouse with Sigma, creating a $35 billion ASX-listed pharmacy giant.” This deal vastly increased the wealth of the Gance and Verrocchi families, who were already on the Rich List, but now control a total of $21.1 billion, up from $7.3 billion in 2024.

The AFR attempted to put a benevolent face on this pack of wolves, remarking that mega-billionaire Gina Rinehart’s “most memorable investment” had been providing financial aid to young girls in Cambodia. The ultra-rich are portrayed as sympathetic family-oriented people and survivors of personal tragedy. This is done under conditions of growing anger in the working class, amid an out-of-control cost-of-living crisis.

Research by the Australian Council of Social Service found that, based on its metric of $1,027 per week for couples with children or $489 per week for single adults, about 3.3 million people are living below the poverty line, among them 761,000 children. Half of the population relies on government aid through JobSeeker payments, and one third of single parents cannot afford essentials such as $500 for emergency savings, yearly dental check-ups, or a home.

This crisis has been overseen by the federal Labor government, which is carrying out a deepening agenda of austerity and war, including preparations to play a frontline role in a US-led war against China.

A symbol of the stepping up of militarism is the new presence on the list of Peter Smaller, a manufacturing billionaire in charge of Southern Steel. Smaller and Southern Steel are major owners of Bisalloy, a provider of armour for Israeli tanks in the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, backed by imperialist governments worldwide including in Australia, and a contractor on the $368 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine deal.

The money required for the machines of war will not be taken from the pockets of the 200 Rich Listers, but from the workers whose labour is exploited to create their mega-profits.

Israel launches attack on Iran’s nuclear program

Andre Damon

Smoke rises up after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi) [AP Photo]

Israel launched dozens of strikes on Iran Thursday, targeting its nuclear program. Israeli officials said that the strikes would continue for days.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israeli warplanes “are attacking a large number of targets across Iran.” He added that the goal of the attack is “to strike Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, Iran’s ballistic missile factories, and Iran’s military capabilities.”

“This operation will continue as long as necessary, until we complete the mission,” Netanyahu said.

Iranian state television announced that IRGC Chief-of-Staff Hossein Salami was assassinated in an Israeli strike in Tehran. Dozens of casualties were reported.

The move followed a discussion between US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu on Monday, during which Netanyahu discussed possible plans to attack Iran, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The US and Israel have been planning for decades to carry out an attack on Iran’s nuclear refinement facilities, a move that was widely seen as triggering a full-scale regional war. Over the past year and a half, the US has surged aircraft, missile defense systems and warships into the Middle East.

Since the events of October 7, 2023, Israel has carried out waves of attacks on Iran and its allies throughout the Middle East. This has created an opportunity for the US and Israel to launch their long-planned attack on Iran’s nuclear refining centers. Last year, Israel launched a series of airstrikes, with the support of the United States, on Iran’s air defenses, creating an opening for Thursday’s attack.

Israel’s attack on Iran is part of what Netanyahu has called a plan to create a “new Middle East” under US-Israeli domination. This includes the annexation of all of Palestine by Israel through ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, to be followed by the West Bank.

The attack on Iran takes place in the context of the ongoing coup being carried out by US President Donald Trump to transform the United States into a presidential dictatorship. The US has deployed thousands of active-duty combat troops to Los Angeles, and this weekend the Trump administration will be holding a military parade in Washington, involving the deployment of 7,000 troops and over 150 vehicles, including dozens of tanks.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared a state of emergency in Israel and warned the population to expect retaliatory attacks from Iran.

Video footage circulating Thursday night showed attacks on high-rise buildings in Tehran, likely indicating that Iranian government officials were targeted.

In a statement issued Thursday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target US interests or personnel.”

Rubio claimed, “We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.” However, the US military is expected to be directly involved in defending Israel against Iranian retaliation.

US Senator Lindsey Graham wrote on Twitter, “Game on. Pray for Israel.”

On Wednesday, Iran’s defense minister, Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh, threatened to attack US bases in the Middle East in retaliation for an Israeli strike on Iran. “If a conflict is imposed on us all US bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries.”

Amid media reports that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program could take place as early as this weekend, US President Donald Trump said on Thursday, prior to Israel’s attack, said that such an attack “could very well happen.”

He added, “We have a lot of American people in this area, and I said: ‘we gotta to tell them to go out because something could happen soon’,” adding, “I don’t want to be the one that didn’t give any warning and missiles are flying into the buildings.”

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, citing a senior Israeli official, said a strike “could come as soon as Sunday.” The previous night, the New York Times reported, “Israel appears to be preparing to launch an attack soon on Iran, according to officials in the United States and Europe.”

That day, the US announced that it is withdrawing non-essential personnel from its embassy in Iraq and authorizing the voluntary departure of US military family members from bases in the Middle East.

“Based on our latest analysis, we decided to reduce the footprint of our Mission in Iraq,” the State Department said in a statement to the media on Wednesday.

Asked about a potential Israeli attack on Iran, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied, “What I know is that Bibi Netanyahu is going to put his country first, and we’re going to put our country first, and we’re positioned properly in the region to ensure that we’re prepared for any potential contingency.”

The Israeli attack came amid ongoing US negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. On Thursday, the White House announced that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, would meet Iran’s foreign minister in Oman on Sunday for further negotiations.

In 2018, then-President Trump abandoned the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated under the Obama administration, reimposing savage economic sanctions and leading Iran to expand its nuclear program.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashes and explodes in India, killing at least 274

Wasantha Rupasinghe

An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner traveling from Ahmedabad, the capital of the western Indian state Gujarat, to London crashed Thursday afternoon, killing 241 passengers and crew. In addition, Reuters has reported that as many as 24 more people on the ground were killed when the plane crashed in a densely populated area shortly after take-off. A medical college hostel, where students had gathered for lunch, was directly impacted.

Parts of an Air India plane that crashed on Thursday are seen on top of a building in Ahmedabad, India, Friday, June 13, 2025. [AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool]

The only known survivor from the plane, Ramesh Viswahkumar, managed to jump out of the aircraft as he was seated near the emergency exit. He is currently under psychiatric care for trauma at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad. Among the dead were 168 Indian nationals, 53 British citizens, seven Portuguese nationals, one Canadian, as well as the flight’s captain, co-pilot, and 10 cabin crew members.

The long-haul aircraft was carrying over 100,000 liters (about 25,000 gallons) of fuel, with debris engulfed in flames and thick black smoke billowing into the sky. Parts of the plane’s fuselage were scattered around the smoldering building into which it crashed. The tail of the plane was wedged on top of the building. Visuals showed victims being carried on stretchers and rushed away in ambulances. Mobile phone clips revealed charred bodies, some burnt beyond recognition, evoking images of a war zone after a massive explosion.

“We were at home and heard a massive sound, it appeared like a big blast. We then saw very dark smoke which engulfed the entire area,” 63-year-old Nitin Joshi who has been living in the area for more than 50 years told Reuters.

The reports also showed families of victims camped out outside Ahmedabad’s civil hospital after submitting DNA samples to identify their loved ones.

While the public remains genuinely shaken by the tragedy, political leaders—including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other heads of states—have responded with empty expressions of concern and sympathy, visiting the crash site and hospitals. In a bid to save face, Tata Group, the owner of Air India, announced a compensation of 10 million rupees (approximately $US116,106) for the families of each crash victim, pledged to cover medical expenses for the injured, and offered assistance in rebuilding the B.J. Medical hostel damaged in the crash.

India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has initiated a formal investigation, according to Union Minister of Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu. The bureau also reported that aviation officials from the US and UK are sending investigators to assist with probe.

The crash is the worst involving a Boeing jetliner since the two crashes in 2018 and 2019, both involving a 737 MAX 8, which in total killed 346 passengers and crew. Boeing has since faced numerous investigations into the production of those aircraft, which found that Boeing executives were aware the planes were fatally flawed and pushed for their production and distribution anyway.

In one of the many examples of collusion between corporations and the capitalist state that protects them, Boeing recently reached a non-prosecution deal with the Department of Justice, avoiding any criminal prosecution for the MAX 8 crashes and paying only $1.3 million per death.

The exact cause of the crash over Ahmedabad is still unclear, with initial commentary discussing the plane’s flaps, landing gear, engines and more as potential issues that prevented the aircraft from generating the necessary lift to carry out its flight. Television footage and photographs captured the plane angled up, the pilot likely attempting to stay aloft, before crashing near the airport and erupting into a fireball.

One of the few things that is known is that the pilots reportedly issued a “Mayday” call moments after departure, signaling a life-threatening emergency, but failed to respond to further communications from air traffic control. On Friday, local authorities confirmed that both black boxes from the crashed aircraft had been recovered.

A BBC report cited expert speculation about the possibility of an “extremely rare double engine failure.” It noted that questions have been raised about whether the aircraft’s Ram Air Turbine (RAT)—an emergency backup system that activates when main engines fail—was deployed. Quoting a senior pilot, the BBC highlighted that such a failure could stem from “fuel contamination or clogging,” explaining that aircraft engines depend on a precise fuel metering system, and any blockage could lead to fuel starvation and engine shutdown.

Air safety experts have cautioned against jumping to conclusions. John M. Cox, a former airline pilot and chief executive of Safety Operating Systems, a consulting firm, told Business Today: “At this point, it’s very, very, very early. We don’t know a whole lot, but the 787 has very extensive flight data monitoring.” Both of the plane’s black boxes have been recovered.

The New York Times noted: “Planes and the aviation system have many redundancies to prevent a single problem from leading to a calamity.” As a result, crashes are generally the result of multiple failures and require a lengthy investigation to unravel.

There is no doubt, however, that Air India, the Modi government and Boeing will seek to deflect responsibility for the tragedy.

Air India, the country’s largest state-owned airline, had been struggling under a massive debt burden of 580 billion rupees ($8 billion) while still state-owned. The Modi government, as part of its push to privatize virtually all state-owned companies, sold the airline to the Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate owned by industrialist Ratan Tan in 2022 for a pittance. Last year, Tata completed a merger of Air India with Vistara, its joint venture with Singapore Airlines.

According to the Associated Press, the airline had suffered two previous fatal crashes while under the government control. In 2010, an Air India flight arriving from Dubai overshot the runway in Mangalore in southern India and plunged over a cliff, killing 158 of the 166 people on board. In 2020, an Air India Express flight—part of the airline’s low-cost subsidiary— from Dubai to Kozhikode in southern India skidded off the runway during heavy rains, split in two, and left 18 dead and more than 120 injured. Both incidents involved the older Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

Thursday tragic crash, occurring against the backdrop of recent incidents involving Boeing aircraft, have raised significant concerns about safety regulation compliance and manufacturing quality. This includes a midair nosedive of a LATAM Airlines’ Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner flying from Australia to New Zealand, which injured 50 people in March last year.

And while this is the first fatal crash of a Boeing 787, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) audit of Boeing’s Renton facility and its key supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, revealed “dozens of problems” and “multiple instances” of non-compliance with quality control requirements. Boeing failed 33 out of 89 product audits, with 97 alleged instances of noncompliance, while Spirit AeroSystems failed seven out of 13 examinations, including mechanics using a “hotel key card to check a door seal” and applying “Dawn soap to a door seal as a lubricant.”

The majority of failures involved not following “approved manufacturing process, procedure or instruction” and issues with quality control documentation, characterized by the FAA as “plant floor hygiene” and tool management problems.

These findings corroborate former quality manager John Barnett’s warnings about “catastrophic” safety failings, a “culture of concealment,” and Boeing prioritizing “profits over safety.” Barnett, who worked for Boeing from 1985 to 2017, had reported metal slivers affecting flight control wiring and found 25 percent of 787 Dreamliner emergency oxygen systems did not work properly, claiming management pressured employees “not to document defects” and install defective material.

Barnett is one of two Boeing whistleblowers who were found dead last year either before or in the midst of their testimony against the military contractor.

In his ongoing efforts to attract greater investment from Boeing, Modi has repeatedly praised the aerospace giant. During a visit to India on March 18, Boeing senior vice president Brendan Nelson told the Times of India that recent reforms have made the country a highly “attractive place” for companies like Boeing. Nelson revealed plans to “significantly increase” the company’s engagement in India, including boosting its annual sourcing from the current 100 billion rupees ($1.3 billion) across 320 suppliers. Simultaneously, Boeing expects to deliver two aircraft per month to Indian airlines over the next two years.

Whatever the official cause determined for the deadly Ahmedabad plane crash, both the Modi government and Boeing are more focused on safeguarding corporate interests than upholding passenger safety.