The coordinated military offensive between the United States and the colonialist State of Israel against Iran, through aerial bombardments and attacks on multiple cities, is a war of imperialist aggression. We are facing a change in strategy by Donald Trump, previously reserved for limited objectives regarding the Iranian nuclear program, and now aimed at imposing a very harsh defeat and subjecting the Iranian people to the orders of the White House.
The combined attacks by Washington and Tel Aviv, the same people responsible for the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, have already killed hundreds of Iranian civilians (including dozens of girls at a school in the south of the country), destroyed dozens of infrastructure assets in Tehran and the rest of the country, as well as led to the assassination of Iranian Ayatollah and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Along with this, a contingent of the political and military leadership of the regime was eliminated, including the Ayatollah’s advisor, Ali Shamkhani, the head of the Armed Forces Abdolrahim Mousavi, the Minister of Defense Aziz Nasirzadeh and the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Mohammad Pakpour.
This opens up an unpredictable dynamic, with profound and potentially destabilizing consequences for the entire Middle East, with tendencies open to a regional war. All the more so that Pete Hegseth, Trump’s war minister, stated that there is no ‘end in sight’ to the aggression. Israel has launched a campaign of attacks on Lebanon and its capital, Beirut, causing dozens of deaths in a few hours, while Hezbollah militias launch missiles against Israel in response to the assassination of Khamenei. On the economic side, the rise in oil prices of more than 10% gives an idea of ​​the more general social effects.
Since the beginning of the attack, one of Trump’s stated objectives was, for the first time, to achieve regime change with military means (regime change), assuming for itself elements of the catastrophic neocon policy used in the imperialist wars against Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s. On the side of the European imperialists, France, the United Kingdom and Germany have expressed their intention to actively participate in the attacks against Iran and in the imperialist escalation, helping Trump from a subordinate position, as various analysts point out.
This imperialist aggression is the direct continuity of the policy of genocide and complete ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, carried out by Netanyahu with the unconditional support of the United States. The justification for the attack against Iran—after weeks of negotiations that took place under the threat of the concentration of the largest navy in the region since the Iraq War in 2003—is Iran’s refusal to accept the complete disarmament of the country. The US demanded not only the deactivation of the national nuclear program but even the abandonment of ballistic missiles, which constitute the only effective defense of the Persian country. This demand for total surrender of an oppressed nation, besieged for decades by Washington with harsh economic sanctions, is also at the service of the terrorist State of Israel being able to consolidate its militarily hegemonic position in the Middle East. To finish redrawing the regional map in its image and likeness, in the midst of the Palestinian genocide and the theft of Palestinian lands through the advance of colonizing settlements on the West Bank, Israel needs to weaken and condition Iran, either through a friendly and pro-imperialist government, or through a fate similar to the state fragmentation of Syria.
Furthermore, it is an imperialist aggression that follows the colonialist-extractivist act of war by the United States against Venezuela, part of the new US National Security doctrine, which demands absolute control of the “Western Hemisphere.” Along with the war against Iran, such expressions of imperialist warmongering have as a backdrop the reactionary attempt to reverse the accelerated hegemonic decline of the United States, amid the dissolution of the old liberal order and the so-called “rules-based international order.” It seeks to send a warning to all people in the world who think about challenging Washington’s dictates. Not in vain, Trump also seeks to suffocate Cuba’s economy, having already banned the shipment of Venezuelan oil, declared an oil boycott by imposing sanctions on countries that send hydrocarbons, and now trying to reduce Iranian oil deliveries to the island, with the aim of extinguishing what remains of the conquests of the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
It also seeks, if successful, to cut off China’s oil supply routes, with which the ayatollah regime has historically had a special relationship.
For all these reasons, it is imperative to categorically raise the political and military defeat of the United States and Israel in Iran . The anti-imperialist, socialist and revolutionary left must unconditionally defend the defeat of the United States and Israel (as well as the European powers that support them), that is, to be unequivocally in the camp of the oppressed nation against the oppressor nation .
We, from the Permanent Revolution Current, defend this anti-imperialist position with the most absolute class independence against the anti-worker, repressive and reactionary regime of the ayatollahs. Because no emancipation or freedom for the working class, women and the Iranian people can come from the bombs or interventions of imperialism and the State of Israel, which is carrying out a genocide.
The theocratic and ultra-conservative political regime, until now led by Ali Khamenei, is an implacable enemy of the working and popular masses of Iran, responsible for the persecution of women (emblematically symbolized in the murder of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in 2022), the Kurds and the repression of workers’ strikes in the country. In January, Khamenei orchestrated a massacre against thousands of protesters, drowning in blood the protests for legitimate demands, against the effects of misery, hunger and the national economic crisis that fell on the masses. Indeed, the theocratic dictatorship of the Ayatollahs arose from the political expropriation of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the most organic of the revolutionary processes in the Middle East, which defeated Reza Pahlavi and the USA, giving rise to the shorás (worker councils), which in their development could have opened a new regional situation, but which were brutally repressed by the clerical repressive apparatus.
This is the root of this regime and its repressive actions against the masses as a method of maintaining power. This behavior has systematically harmed the preparation for confrontation and anti-imperialist resistance in Iran. It is much more difficult for the Iranian working population, women and youth, to confront US imperialism and colonialist Zionism, the most counterrevolutionary forces of today, having the systematic repression of the reactionary regime of the Ayatollahs. For this reason, the defeat of the United States and Israel can only be carried out with total political independence from the government and the regional bourgeoisies.
As different analysts write, Iran is not Venezuela. It is located in a convulsive region, undermined by decades of destruction orchestrated by the United States, Israel and European imperialism (France, England, Germany, Italy, the Spanish State), besieged by the migration crisis and with a long history of confrontations against imperialist interventions. Furthermore, Iran, which has been suffocated by the United States with harsh economic sanctions since the 1979 Revolution, has more military and geopolitical resources than Venezuela, although they have been degraded since 2023, especially the pro-Iranian militias. As a result of the Zionist-American attacks, Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles against Israel and numerous US military bases – Al Udeid in Qatar, Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates, Ali Al Salem in Kuwait, Erbil in Iraq, as well as the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain – and carried out attacks against ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic route for Gulf oil. Iranian missiles destroyed buildings in Tel Aviv and killed Israelis in Beit Shemesh, as well as American soldiers. In addition, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Iran to protest against imperialist attacks, and US embassies and consulates were attacked by the population in countries such as Pakistan, Iraq and India.
In other words, the dynamics of the war and its outcomes will depend on the level of ongoing resistance and retaliation by Iran. Trump made a risky bet. Nowhere in the world, much less in the Middle East, has the United States managed to stabilize “regime change” operations by relying exclusively on airstrikes. Where it invaded with ground troops, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, it suffered historic defeats, in addition to having generated forces hostile to the American presence in the region. In Iran, entering with “boots on the ground” is not a simple option for Trump: although it cannot be ruled out, the vastness of Iranian territory, the possibility of closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the available internal resources and regional hatred towards the US make such an operation even more difficult. Internally, there is overwhelming rejection among the American population (including the Republican base) against any military invasion. Even more so, taking into account the weakening of Trump himself within the US, with the weak performance of the economy and especially with the national protests and the general strike in Minneapolis against ICE and its anti-immigration policy, responsible for the government’s first defeat in the field of class struggle. That Trump has gone from promising to “end all wars” to engaging in a full-scale war in the Middle East may deepen these contradictions.
In this scenario, some within the left put imperialist intervention and the reactionary regime of Iran on the same level—as does the French NPA-L’Anticapitaliste—without understanding that, beyond an elementary question of Marxism (the difference between oppressor and oppressed countries), it is an obligation for revolutionaries to position themselves in the camp of the oppressed, despite the reactionary nature of their leadership. Others limit themselves to demanding an end to the war, such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), without raising the imperious banner of the defeat of imperialism itself, the United States, and Israel. Furthermore, they suggest the “return of the US to diplomacy”, as if this means of extortion and blackmail, allegedly institutionalized by Trump, were a way out of the miseries of the Iranian people, oppressed for decades by the same economic and political diplomacy of Washington.
It is urgent to develop the international mobilization of workers and oppressed peoples, in the Middle East and throughout the world, for the defeat of the United States and Israel, for the triumph of the oppressed nation, with total political independence from the Iranian regime. This is a first order task for the unification in action of the anti-imperialist and socialist left, the pro-Palestine movement and the anti-imperialist struggle throughout the world. Especially in the United States (whose population pushed back Trump in his anti-immigration policy) and in all the central countries. Such a policy is an indispensable piece to fight for the expulsion of US imperialism from Venezuela and Cuba, as well as for the end of the genocide in Palestine.
Down with the imperialist war against Iran! For the defeat of the United States and Israel! For the complete withdrawal of US troops from the region! Down with the genocide of the Palestinian people! For a great world movement against imperialist aggression, with the working class and youth of the entire planet!
March 2, 2026
Permanent Revolution Current – Fourth International
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
