The U.S. attack on Iran on June 21 marked a new level of imperialist intervention in the Middle East. Trump joined Israel’s war against Iran with a large-scale air strike on its nuclear and military facilities. Hours later, Trump threatened Iran with “much worse” attacks if it did not definitively give up its uranium enrichment program. At the same time, members of his cabinet presented the actions as “limited” and not a “declaration of war.”
Iran responded to the attack by launching missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. base in the Middle East, on the outskirts of Doha in Qatar. According to the Iranian authorities themselves, they warned the U.S. in advance of the strikes, and most of the missiles were intercepted without causing significant damage. This kind of “calibrated” response is an attempt to offer a symbolic reaction without entering into open war with the U.S., thus leaving the door open for negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program.
On Monday night, Trump posted on social media about a ceasefire agreement between Iran and Israel, congratulating himself on having helped bring an end to “a twelve-day war.” A few hours later, however, he returned to social media to accuse both Israel and Iran of violating the truce. In the end, Israel and Iran each announced separately that they would accept a ceasefire, although everything indicates that the truce may be fragile.
The U.S. military intervention led to sharp divisions within the MAGA movement in recent days, and to contradictions with sectors who voted for Trump based on his promise to “end forever wars,” which he is far from having done. Now, despite the initial triumphalist statements by the U.S. and Israel about the “total destruction” of Iran’s nuclear program, media outlets such as CNN and the New York Times, citing U.S. intelligence reports, claim that the damage to Iranian facilities is less than President Trump announced. For their part, the Iranian authorities have stated that they will continue with their uranium enrichment program.
Operation Midnight Hammer is the first large-scale U.S. military operation on Iranian territory in 45 years. Nonetheless, U.S. support for the Zionist state’s aggression and economic warfare via sanctions have been constant features of the last few decades. In 2018, during his first term, Trump tore up the nuclear deal with Iran and tightened the sanctions regime. In 2020, the U.S. assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. When he took office six months ago, Trump resumed negotiations with Iran, which were already in their fifth round but had stalled due to Iran’s refusal to accept a U.S. ultimatum to abandon all nuclear projects. These negotiations were finally broken off with Israel’s attack on June 13.
On June 13, Netanyahu launched an open war against Iran with several objectives. On the one hand, to deprive Iran of its sovereign right to continue its uranium enrichment program, warning of the “imminent” threat of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. Netanyahu has been warning of this “imminent” threat for 30 years! This narrative is reminiscent of the lies used by Bush, Aznar, and Blair to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when they claimed that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction.” Israel has also stated on several occasions that one of its goals is “regime change” in Iran, as part of its offensive to reconfigure the Middle East. Netanyahu also seeks to strengthen himself internally and to overcome his government’s crisis, after more than 20 months of genocide in Gaza without having recovered all the hostages or definitively defeating Hamas.
The reactionary Arab bourgeoisies are complicit in the imperialist interference in the region (as Trump’s tour of the Middle East showed) and in the genocide against the Palestinian people. Recently, the Egyptian government made a concerted effort to prevent the Global March for Gaza from reaching the border with Rafah, imprisoning, persecuting, and deporting hundreds of activists who traveled from around the world to break the blockade on humanitarian aid. Arab states aim to prevent their citizens’ enormous sympathy for the Palestinian cause and hatred of the genocidal State of Israel from turning into mobilization, which could quickly turn against these very governments.
The European powers support Israel and the U.S. in their imperialist aggression against Iran, just as they have been supporting the genocide in Gaza for the last 20 months. Despite some critical rhetoric, they have not broken off diplomatic relations with Israel nor imposed an arms embargo. All European leaders have argued that “Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons” and invoked Israel’s “right to defend itself.” Their calls for “deescalation,” just like Macron’s statements about the “illegality” of the U.S. attack, are pure hypocrisy. A few days ago, the German chancellor went so far as to say that Israel was doing “the dirty work” for all of them in Iran.
The NATO summit that began on June 24 has been marked by the surge in imperialist rearmament, the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Palestine, and the recent war against Iran. One of the key agreements of the summit will be the expansion of military spending to 5% of GDP. The “progressive” Spanish government claims to have obtained some flexibility on this demand, although its own plans for increased military spending are very close to the target anyway (in terms of direct spending). This surge of rearmament will be paid for with new social cuts and austerity measures for the working class, health care, and education in all countries, and will lead to new military escalations. The attacks against Iran, the genocide in Palestine, and imperialism’s reamrament plans show that we are entering a new historical stage, in which the tendencies of the era of crises, wars, and also revolutions are being renewed.
No to Imperialist War and Genocide in Gaza! No to NATO!
As the Trotskyist Faction, we condemn the surge in rearmament and the warmongering by the great powers. This will only lead to more wars, plunder, and pillage for the oppressed peoples and the working classes of the entire world.
At the same time, we condemn the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, a nation historically subjugated by imperialism. In this war, we stand for the defeat of the United States and Israel. This does not imply any political support for the brutal theocratic regime in Iran, where the masses, and women in particular, have risen up in recent years, as seen in the protests over the death of Mahsa Amini or in the wave of strikes by oil, gas, and other workers. This is a reactionary regime that does not hesitate to use repression, holds thousands of opponents in prisons like Evin, and systematically uses torture and murder. Even so, many voices opposed to the regime, including political prisoners facing the death penalty, have condemned the attacks by imperialism and Israel against Iran, pointing out that the Iranian people will not get anything progressive from imperialist bombs.
We must be clear: Neither the U.S. nor Israel has the right to decide which nations can have uranium enrichment programs or nuclear weapons, much less impose this through sanctions or bombing. Imperialist hypocrisy knows no bounds, as Israel is a nuclear power that is carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people and has been bombing Syria, Lebanon, and now Iran just in the last few months.
In the face of cynical rhetoric that aims to justify this aggression or future imperialist interventions as part of a struggle for “democracy” against the authoritarian Ayatollah regime, we need to clarify that imperialist interference has never brought anything progressive to the peoples of the region, as tragically demonstrated by the cases of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, with hundreds of thousands of people killed.
Argentinian president Javier Milei has displayed the most extreme subordination to imperialism by offering unconditional support to the U.S. attack on Iran. He has similarly expressed his support for the genocidal Netanyahu government at every opportunity. We condemn this in the strongest terms! We demand that all countries sever diplomatic ties with Israel!
In the context of accelerating militaristic tendencies and new imperialist interventions, it is urgent to launch a mass mobilization that can paralyze the war machine and put an end to the genocide in Gaza.
In the last few months, the Palestine solidarity movement has been reinvigorated, while Israel has massacred thousands of Palestinians and employed extermination techniques such as starving civilians by blocking humanitarian aid. In recent weeks, mass mobilizations have taken place in The Hague, the United Kingdom, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, and New York. The courage of the people on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, or of the thousands who travelled from many different countries to Egypt, getting to within 200 kilometers of the border with Gaza despite repression and deportations, are expressions of a profound and ongoing international solidarity movement. The Trotskyist Faction participated in this demonstration, sending a delegation of comrades from Argentina, Brazil, and Spain (who were deported from Cairo).
Solidarity is also growing for those who face repression for expressing their support for the Palestinian people. Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist in New York detained for more than three months, was released due to pressure from the movement. The rally for the acquittal of Anasse Kazib and another comrade from Révolution Permanente in France brought together more than 2,000 people after a major international campaign.
We need to intensify this mobilization on the streets, in schools and universities, and in workplaces to stop the genocide and war in the Middle East. Everywhere, we must demand that unions end their passivity in the face of this militaristic escalation, and take up the fight against rearmament. They must call for breaking ties with Israel, and speak out in support of the Palestinian people. Examples of picket lines in front of arms factories and blockades of arms shipments by dockworkers show the potential of the working class to stop the war machine if such actions were to become widespread. Only the revolutionary struggle of the international working class, together with the oppressed peoples of the entire world, especially the millions in the Arab countries, can succeed in expelling imperialism from the region and ending Israel’s genocide in Palestine.