The State of Israel resumed its attacks against Iran and the US is evaluating its direct intervention. Let’s dive in the current events, causes of the conflict and revolutionary proposals.
By Ruben Tzanoff
Millions of people around the world witness with revulsion the genocide in Gaza and with concern the fall of missiles on Tehran, Tel Aviv and other cities. The resumption of aggression by the State of Israel against Iran has set the Middle East ablaze once again and the situation may worsen if the US intervenes directly.
In view of the severity of the situation, it is essential to continue analyzing the current conflict, to review its causes and to raise a revolutionary policy to the height of the circumstances.
Complementary conversations and aggressions
Donald Trump’s policy toward Iran has combined dialogue with aggression.
During his first term (2017-2021) he unilaterally tore up the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) agreement between Iran and the Group 5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) that was signed in 2015, which involved limiting the Iranian nuclear program, imposed new sanctions, declared the Revolutionary Guard terrorists and in 2020 ordered the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.
At the beginning of his second term, he presented himself as a “peacemaker”, Trump promoted indirect negotiations with Iran, but after five rounds of meetings in Rome (Italy) and Muscat (Oman) there was no agreement and the dialogue stalled.
It was then that Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and Trump first disassociated himself from the escalation and then threatened Ayatollah Khamenei by posting on social media, “We know exactly where he’s hiding.” “He’s an easy target (…) We’re not going to take him out (kill him!), at least for now.” “Our patience is running out. And in another message, he demanded the “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” of the Iranian regime.
He did not stop there. White House spokesmen reported that Trump will consider for two weeks the possibility of direct military intervention. He fueled uncertainty about his next steps saying “I may do it, or I may not, nobody knows.”
Meanwhile, imperialism has reinforced its already considerable military presence in the Middle East with fighter planes and troop (45,000 troops in Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Oman, among others); destroyers, aircraft carriers, missile cruisers and submarines in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea.
For imperialism, diplomacy and war aggression alternate and complement each other as tools for the same objective of domination, but they do not necessarily translate into success and messages of stability.
Cracks and tense expectations
The assessment of what to do with Iran has caused issues among the Republicans themselves. Some sectors are pushing to join the attacks to “finish the job” started by Israel and others are pushing in the opposite direction.
Should Trump decide to attack, he would be abandoning one of his own election promises: “Under our Administration, we will not start any conflicts, we will end them.”
The media reports that Washington’s envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, still maintains contacts with Iran, although publicly the regime’s spokesmen have stated that they will not return to the negotiating table as long as Israeli attacks persist.
Uncertainty keeps the world on edge not only because of the decision taken by US imperialism but also because of the reactions that could be adopted by other powers, allies or enemies of the countries in dispute. Trump’s zigzags are strengthening the revulsion towards his policy and, rather than a new order, they are generating a new world disorder.
The conflict, which broad in its geopolitical scope, has been going on for decades.
The origin of the aggressions
U.S.-Iran relations were not always the same. During the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahleví, Iran was a key strategic ally of the United States. And, although it did not formally recognize Israel – in part because it was a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference – they cooperated on military, intelligence and trade (such as oil during the Arab embargo). They shared the goal of curbing Arab nationalism and the USSR.
In 1979 the monarchic regime was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution but it was not led by a revolutionary workers’ leadership but by a clerical and retrograde one, which usurped the process and stopped its potential development towards a socialist revolution. Thus the counterrevolution headed by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a new capitalist, reactionary, theocratic and repressive regime.
Since then, the imperialist-Zionist tandem has systematically attacked Iran for being a country that escaped their control, disputes regional power and has economic importance as a major oil exporter.
A prolonged confrontation
Imperialist hostilities to Iran and other Middle Eastern countries have continued over time. Just a few examples, during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), the US backed Saddam Hussein whom it later overthrew and assassinated. In 1988, a US ship shot down an Iranian commercial airliner, killing 290 civilians. Under Clinton, Iran was placed under a total economic embargo and under George W. Bush, it was included in the “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea.
Between 2006 and 2015, the US pushed multilateral sanctions at the UN under the pretext of curbing Iran’s nuclear program, implementing measures that stifled the country’s economy.
Imperialist interference has also affected other countries in the Middle East. The invasion of Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), the intervention in Libya (2011) and Syria (from 2014), which justification was the fight against terrorism and for democracy, actually caused destabilization, destruction, millions of dead and displaced people, and the strengthening of fundamentalist groups.
The past and present of the State of Israel and the U.S. in the region are marked by colonialism and the establishment of an enclave that wprks as a defender of the economic and political interests of imperialism and a counterrevolutionary gendarme against the peoples of the region, be they of Arab, Persian or other origin.

A principled program
It is on the basis of these considerations that the International Socialist League (ISL) proposes its transitional responses.
We do not recognize the Zionist and imperialist criminals’ right to condition Iran’s sovereignty, defense and independent nuclear development. We reject Israeli bombings and the threat of an eventual direct imperialist intervention! Stop the Israeli bombings of Iran! Out of the Middle East! We stand with Iran under attack against the aggressor powers!
This does not imply giving political support to the bourgeois theocratic, Bonapartist, repressive and anti-worker Iranian regime. That uses anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist rhetoric, but when it can, it does not hesitate to make pacts with the powers and conditions the defense of Palestine to its own interests. We do not share the policy of the camp sectors inclined to the imperialisms of China and Russia who are uncritical with the regime arguing that “it is opposed to the US”.
From Washington and Tel Aviv, cynical appeals to “democracy” are heard as another justification to attack Iran, when both Trump and Netanyahu carry out far-right, authoritarian and racist policies. Only the Iranian workers and people have the right to defeat the regime of the ayatollahs with mobilization, dual power organizations and revolutionary organization!
To the united mobilization against genocide, ethnic cleansing and colonization carried out by Zionism in Palestine; it is necessary to add the claims in defense of Iran, both have the right to defend themselves, their sovereignty and territorial integrity. down with bombings and aggressions against Palestine and Iran!
For the peoples of the region to have a just and lasting peace, to achieve full democratic and social rights, it is necessary to defeat the State of Israel and those who support it. That is why we raise two strategic demands: For a secular, non-racist, democratic and socialist Palestine! And For Socialist Revolution throughout the Middle East!