Only the mobilization of the working class can prevent a new massacre
Israel and the US have begun their criminal imperialist aggression against Iran, and international media outlets are reporting the deaths of Ali Khamenei and other senior officials of the fundamentalist regime in Tehran. If this is confirmed, the political significance of this aggression creates an unprecedented situation.
After weeks of building up powerful US military forces, including aircraft carriers and the equivalent of two naval fleets, Netanyahu's Zionist army, in coordination with the Trump administration, has bombed numerous military targets in Tehran and other locations in the country, causing more than 200 deaths according to Red Crescent sources. It has also been reported that Israeli missile strikes have destroyed a primary school in Minab, a city in the province of Hormozgan in southern Iran. The massacre may have left 85 girls dead.
The US president has indicated that there will be a “massive” intervention, and has called on the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the fundamentalist regime. Benjamin Netanyahu, too, after perpetrating a brutal genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, annexing key parts of the West Bank through force of arms with the help of fascist settlers, occupying southern Syria, and bombing Lebanon at will, has proclaimed with the arrogance of someone who believes he is untouchable that this operation will be “much stronger” and that he will not stop until he “eliminates the existential threat posed” by the Iran of the ayatollahs.
According to international press reports, Trump has promised the “annihilation” of Iran's navy, nuclear program, and missile capabilities, and “certain death” for all members of the armed forces, police, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who do not surrender. He has also acknowledged that this vast military incursion could result in casualties among US soldiers.
In short, after confirming that the so-called international community did not lift a finger to prevent this aggression, the EU looked the other way and gave its approval, and Russia and China did not react in the days leading up to the attack except through traditional diplomatic calls for negotiation and respect for the rules of “international law,” Trump and Netanyahu have embarked on this new military adventure to reshape the map of the Middle East to suit their interests.
After what happened on January 3 in Venezuela, with the kidnapping of President Maduro and the imposition of a neocolonial system with the collaboration of Delcy Rodríguez and the Venezuelan military, Trump has decided that now is the moment to unleash a devastating blow on Iran. He also speculates that the brutal repression that caused the deaths of thousands of people in Iran in January has weakened the reactionary government of the mullahs enough to precipitate an internal uprising, a coup d'état, or the collapse of the regime.
But these assumptions carry an obvious risk. It is unclear whether the fundamentalist leadership will fight with all the resources at its disposal, or whether China will so easily allow a regime change that would represent such a powerful strategic gain for the US in a country with which it has strengthened economic and financial ties and which is such an important source of oil supplies. But it is also no secret that Chinese imperialism's moves in recent months have been to tolerate US power grabs in regions of strategic importance to Washington, adopting a line of equidistance and obvious permissiveness.
Trump's lies about the fight against totalitarianism fool no one. This is not about defending democracy in Iran, the same democracy that Trump tramples on every day on US soil. This is about the interests of US imperialism in its struggle for global hegemony against the bloc led by China and Russia, and the determination of the US ruling class to strike with all its might to prevent further retreat on the world stage.
Although it is still too early to have a complete picture of the military operations, reports clearly indicate that Iran has responded to the aggression with missiles against Israel and US bases in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
A war of the magnitude being pushed by Trump and Netanyahu is unprecedented, but we must look at things realistically. After the catastrophic experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, the intervention of US and Israeli soldiers on Iranian territory is practically out of the question. Therefore, operations will be limited to airstrikes, obviously with the intention of causing
maximum damage to military infrastructure and seeking to decapitate the regime by eliminating key figures. But if the confrontation escalates and Iranian leaders respond forcefully, backed by China, the US and Israel's aggression could precipitate other consequences for Western imperialism.
For example, the possibility of closing the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to do, and through which 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas passes, could cause an earthquake in the global economy. If the conflict continues over time, mobilizations against imperialist war could also spread throughout the Arab world, in major European capitals, and of course within the US, where opposition to Trump's policies and his totalitarian agenda has shaken the streets of Minneapolis and numerous other cities.
This new and brutal imperialist aggression by the US and its Nazi-Zionist ally must be condemned and fought without reservation. We revolutionary communists do not remain neutral; we demand an immediate end to this criminal attack—Hands off Iran! All those on the left who cover up this aggression, brandishing the reactionary character of the Tehran regime, are helping imperialist plans in the region and around the world.
Ending the theocratic state is a task that falls to the Iranian masses, who in recent years have risen up again and again against their oppressors. And this struggle must not be led by counterrevolutionary forces, such as those of Shah Pahlavi, who is a puppet of Trump and Netanyahu. The struggle against fundamentalism, against the Iranian bourgeoisie, against the corrupt military that has stained the country's streets with blood, must be waged with a revolutionary, socialist, and class-based policy.
The goal is not to replace one set of executioners with another, in this case those aligned with Washington and Tel Aviv, but to overthrow capitalism, in alliance with all the oppressed peoples of the region, and to pave the way to a socialist workers’ democracy. This means openly confronting the ongoing imperialist intervention, denouncing its reactionary objectives, and making clear Iran's legitimate right to defend itself.
This aggression is being disguised as an operation to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And this is being said by nuclear powers such as Israel, which has devastated Gaza with a destructive force equivalent to several atomic bombs, and the US, the champion of imperialist barbarism and the only nation to have used atomic weapons against a civilian population.
International law, as Trump has pointed out with his usual transparency and as the Nazi-Zionists have demonstrated by massacring the Palestinian people, is a smokescreen for
Western imperialism. To appeal to it again, as the EU or the institutional left does, is a complete farce.
The reason Netanyahu, a war criminal on a par with Hitler and Mussolini, can do as he pleases and decide the future of the Middle East is simply that he serves the same ends as his Western imperialist mentors.
The escalation of imperialist interventions and militarism, increasingly reminiscent of what was experienced in the 1930s after the imposition of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, can only be defeated by the revolutionary mobilization of workers and oppressed people around the world.
The only effective weapon against the terrible genocide in Gaza has been internationalist solidarity, a global rebellion that spread across the US, Europe, Arab countries... and put the US government and its European vassals on the ropes. Now, in the face of this new aggression and the danger of a destructive and terrible regional war, which workers and the oppressed will pay for with thousands of deaths and more misery, it is necessary to raise the banner of internationalism once again and promote mass mobilizations and strikes to paralyze the US and Zionist war machine and that of all their allies in the region.
We need an internationalist mobilization that explains unambiguously that this new and brutal imperialist aggression, as well as the rise of the warmongering far right, is how capitalism naturally functions in this era of decline, and that we will only transform the situation for the benefit of humanity by raising the banner of socialist revolution.
Down with imperialist war! Socialism or barbarism!
We include below the link to our statement of February 13, an in-depth analysis of the situation in Iran, the role of Russia and China, and the objectives pursued by US imperialism and its Zionist ally.
Iran. Between savage repression of its people and threats of imperialist intervention
