The coordinated military offensive against Iran by the United States and the colonial state of Israel — comprising airstrikes and attacks on multiple cities — is a war of imperialist aggression. We are witnessing a shift in strategy by Donald Trump. While the administration previously focused on limited objectives related to the Iranian nuclear program, it now aims to deliver a crushing defeat and subjugate the Iranian people to the dictates of the White House.

The combined attacks by Washington and Tel Aviv — the same entities 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 infrastructure in Tehran and across Iran, and assassinated Ayatollah and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A sector of the regime’s political and military leadership was also eliminated, including the ayatollah’s adviser Ali Shamkhani, Armed Forces head Abdolrahim Mousavi, Minister of Defense Aziz Nasirzadeh, and Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Pakpour.

This opens an unpredictable dynamic with profound and potentially destabilizing consequences for the entire Middle East, including a clear trend toward regional war. This is underscored by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s statement that there is no end in sight to the aggression. Israel has launched a campaign of attacks on Lebanon and its capital, Beirut, killing dozens of people in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, Hezbollah militias are launching missiles at Israel in response to Khamenei’s assassination. On the economic front, a rise in oil prices by more than 10 percent indicates the broader social effects of the conflict.

From the outset of the attack, one of Trump’s stated objectives was to orchestrate regime change by military means for the first time, adopting elements of the catastrophic neoconservative policies employed in the imperialist wars against Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s. European imperialists, including France, the United Kingdom, and Germany, have expressed their intention to participate in the attacks on Iran, supporting Trump from a subordinate position.

This imperialist aggression is a direct continuation of the policy of genocide and 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 conducted under the threat of the largest naval deployment in the region since the 2003 Iraq War — is Iran’s refusal to accept the complete disarmament of the country. The United States demanded not only the dismantling of Iran’s national nuclear program but also the abandonment of its ballistic missiles, which constitute Iran’s only effective defense. This was a demand for the total surrender of an oppressed nation that has been besieged for decades by Washington with harsh economic sanctions, a demand that would have allowed the terrorist state of Israel to consolidate its dominant military position in the Middle East. To complete the redrawing of the regional map in its own image, amid the Palestinian genocide and the theft of Palestinian lands through the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, Israel needs to weaken and control Iran, either through a friendly, pro-imperialist government or through a process of state fragmentation, as happened in Syria.

Furthermore, this imperialist aggression aligns with the U.S. colonial-extractive war against Venezuela, which is part of the new U.S. National Security Doctrine demanding absolute control of the “Western Hemisphere.” Alongside the war against Iran, these expressions of imperialist warmongering occur against the backdrop of a 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. The aim is to send a warning to all the peoples of the world who might consider challenging Washington’s dictates. It is no coincidence that Trump also seeks to strangle Cuba’s economy. The United States has already banned Venezuelan oil shipments to the island, declaring an oil boycott by imposing sanctions on countries that send hydrocarbons. It is now attempting to reduce Iranian oil deliveries to the island, with the objective of extinguishing what remains of the gains of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

Trump also seeks to cut off China’s oil supply lines, breaking its special relationship with the ayatollah regime.

For all these reasons, it is imperative to fight for the political and military defeat of the United States and Israel in Iran. The anti-imperialist, socialist, and revolutionary Left must unconditionally support the defeat of the United States and Israel (as well as the European powers that back them). In other words, we must stand unequivocally on the side of an oppressed nation against an oppressor nation.

The Current for Permanent Revolution (CPR-FI) defends this anti-imperialist stance with absolute class independence from the anti-worker, repressive, and reactionary regime of the ayatollahs. The emancipation and freedom of the working class, women, and the Iranian people will not come from the bombs and intervention of the imperialist United States and the State of Israel, which is still carrying out a genocide.

The theocratic and ultraconservative political regime, led until now by Ali Khamenei, is a relentless enemy of Iran’s working and poor masses. It is responsible for the persecution of women (emblematically symbolized by the assassination of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in 2022), the Kurdish people, and the repression of workers’ strikes in the country. In January, Khamenei orchestrated a massacre against thousands of protesters, drowning in blood demonstrations for legitimate demands against poverty, hunger, and the consequences of a national economic crisis. Indeed, the theocratic dictatorship of the ayatollahs arose from the political expropriation of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which defeated Reza Pahlavi and the United States and saw the rapid emergence of shoras (workers’ councils). These councils, had they developed further, could have opened a new dynamic of working-class power from below in the region, but they were brutally repressed by the clerical regime.

This is the root of this regime and its repressive actions against the masses as a method of maintaining power. This conduct has systematically undermined any preparation for confrontation and anti-imperialist resistance in Iran. It is much more difficult for the Iranian working population, women, and youth to confront U.S. imperialism and colonial Zionism — the most counterrevolutionary forces of our time — while facing the systematic repression of the reactionary regime of the ayatollahs. Therefore, the defeat of the United States and Israel can be achieved only with complete political independence from the regional government and bourgeoisies.

As various analysts have written, Iran is not Venezuela. It is situated in a volatile region — one ravaged by decades of destruction orchestrated by the United States, Israel, and European imperialism (France, England, Germany, Italy, and Spain); besieged by an immigration crisis; and having a long history of confronting imperialist interventions. Furthermore, Iran, which has been strangled by the United States with harsh economic sanctions since the 1979 revolution, possesses greater military and geopolitical resources than Venezuela, even though these have been degraded since 2023 (particularly in the case of pro-Iranian militias). In response to the Zionist-American attacks, Iran launched ballistic missiles against Israel and several U.S. 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 attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway for Gulf oil. Iranian missiles destroyed buildings in Tel Aviv and killed Israelis in Beit Shemesh, as well as U.S. service members. Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Iran to demonstrate against the imperialist attacks, and U.S. embassies and consulates were attacked by civilians in Pakistan, Iraq, and India.

In other words, the dynamics of the war and its outcome will depend on the level of resistance and ongoing retaliation by Iran. Trump made a risky gamble. Nowhere in the world, least of all in the Middle East, has the United States managed to stabilize regime change operations by relying solely on air strikes. Where it invaded with ground troops, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, it suffered historic defeats and generated forces hostile to the American presence in the region. In Iran, a military invasion is not a straightforward option for Trump: while it cannot be ruled out, the vastness of Iranian territory, the possibility of closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz, limiting access to internal resources, and regional animosity toward the United States make such an operation even more difficult. Domestically, the American public, including the base of the Republican Party, overwhelmingly rejects military invasion. Moreover, Trump’s position has weakened domestically. The economy is performing more weakly than expected, and the administration faces nationwide protests against ICE — including the economic shutdown in Minneapolis — which forced the first defeat of the administration on the terrain of class struggle. Trump’s shift from promising to “end all wars” to becoming involved in a large-scale war in the Middle East could deepen these contradictions.

In this scenario, some on the Left (including the NPA-L’Anticapitaliste in France, for example) equate imperialist intervention with the reactionary regime of Iran. Such positions fail to understand not only the basic tenet of Marxism regarding the difference between oppressor and oppressed countries but also the obligation of revolutionaries to position themselves on the side of the oppressed, regardless of the reactionary nature of their leadership. Others, like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), simply demand an end to the war without raising the need for the defeat of their own imperialist government and Israel. Furthermore, they suggest that the United States must return to the path of “diplomacy,” as if institutional extortion and blackmail by Trump were a solution to the suffering of the Iranian people, who have already endured decades of oppression from 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 across the world — for the defeat of the United States and Israel, and for the triumph of the oppressed nation, with total political independence from the Iranian regime. The anti-imperialist and socialist Left, the pro-Palestinian movement, and anti-imperialist movements worldwide must unite in action to take up this task. This is especially true in the United States (whose population forced Trump to back down on his anti-immigrant policies) and in all the core countries. Such a policy is an indispensable part of the fight to expel the United States from Venezuela and Cuba, as well as to end the genocide in Palestine.

Down with imperialist war in Iran! For the defeat of the United States and Israel! U.S. troops out of the region! Down with the genocide of the Palestinian people! For a massive movement against imperialist aggression, led by the working class and youth of the entire world!

March 2, 2026

Permanent Revolutionary Current — Fourth International

The post International Declaration: For the Defeat of the United States and Israel! Down with the Imperialist War of Trump and Netanyahu against Iran! appeared first on Left Voice.

From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.