By Puntorojo Editorial Collective

For there to be peace and justice in the Middle East, Zionism and US Imperialism must be defeated.

After giving mixed and contradictory messages, the Trump administration joined Israel’s attack on Iran, bombing at least three sites in the country early on June 22. Trump justified the strikes as necessary to stop Iran’s nuclear program from developing, the same reasons given by Israel for its ongoing onslaught.

These lies, reminiscent of G. W. Bush’s 2003 claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, hardly mask the true imperialist and colonial aims of Trump and Netanyahu. The US cannot tolerate any country developing independently of its power and to be rival to its interests, as Iran has done in the Middle East over the past few decades.

Israel, in addition to being an imperial enclave of those same interests, is also driven by the necessity of permanently expanding its colonial project and Netanyahu’s immediate aim of escalating his genocidal offensive. The attack on Iran is part of the US-Israeli project to assert control and dominance over the region by weakening and toppling its opponents. These wars of aggression and the on-going genocide in Gaza will continue unabated unless Zionism and US imperialism are defeated and removed from the Middle East.

US imperialist aims in the region

The US has hindered, hurt and attacked Iran in every way it could since the Pahlavi Monarchy it sponsored was overthrown by a revolution in 1979, even after that process was hijacked by the conservative theocratic forces that have ruled the country ever since.

The decline of US global hegemony since the 2008 capitalist crisis and the withdrawal of most US forces from the region, allowed Iran to increase its influence in the Middle East. The US has since been attempting to reverse this situation through alternating sanctions and negotiations, while also building up military bases and war capacities throughout the region to enforce its imperialist aims.

Trump began his second term with a bold shift in US foreign policy, effectively disrupting the existing global imperialist configuration in an attempt to build a new order. He aimed to demonstrate US preponderance by ending the war in Ukraine and imposing a cease-fire in Gaza, thus far unsuccessfully. 

While Trump wholeheartedly supports the Israeli genocide, even proposing a swifter ethnic cleansing of the entire Gaza population, the conflicts it generates are problematic for his plans in the region. He needs some level of stability to resume the “normalization” of relations between Israel and many Arab countries, the so-called Abraham Accords. After the fall of the Syrian regime, it appeared that Trump wanted to avoid extending the conflict to Iran by reopening negotiations.

But Israel’s need to escalate its offensive proved stronger. This is especially the case given that the corrupt and criminal Netanyahu’s precarious hold on power can only be prolonged only by expanding further the war against Israel’s “enemies” who dare to resist its designs. A common enemy holds the anti-Netanyahu movement in Israel in check, since expanding and asserting Zionist power and control in the region is much more important than political ethics or the question of Palestinian genocide. Israel’s strikes on June 13 compelled the US to end negotiations and attack Iran. This became the case especially after it became clear that the Zionist regime’s attacks in Iran’s nuclear facilities not only failed—but backfired.

The Iranian state justifiably responded to the attacks and has punched back effectively, even as it has worked to avert war and engage in negotiations with the US over its nuclear program. Nevertheless, Israel doesn’t want peace, it wants war. In its unprovoked attack on Iran, it got more than it bargained for, leading Trump to enter the fray and attack Iran. In doing so, Israel exposed its vulnerabilities and its underlying dependency on US empire.   

Trump attacks to defend its weakened proxy

The US also intervened as Iran’s counter-attacks on Israel with an array of ballistic missiles that inflicted unprecedented destruction on the settler-colony, revealing a weakness and vulnerability of its defenses, especially its much-touted “Iron Dome” missile-defense system. Since US imperialist aims in the region depend on arming and projecting Israel power and invincibility, the spectacle of Israel getting bombarded struck a major blow.

People across the region and the world watched scenes of Iranian missiles inflicting devastation across Tel Aviv and other major cities and strategic military targets, leading the Zionist state to declare a press blackout. Israeli settlers experienced a small taste of the very violence and destruction they incessantly inflict on the people across the whole region. The optics and impact of the Iranian response showed that Israel is not invincible. It also revealed that the Israeli militarized state is in fact dependent on the US to ensure its role as regional power—and for its very survival as a colonial-occupying and genocidal entity.  

After watching Israel attack Iran and then get pounded, Trump was compelled to join the attack, deploying B-2 bombers to drop “bunker buster” bombs on the alleged nuclear sites—even as members of his own administration admitted that Iran had no nuclear weapons or any intention to build them. Beyond any tactical disagreements about how to more effectively “deal with Iran” according to Trump’s imperial designs, Israel and the US have opened another war of aggression that must be opposed–and they must be defeated.

The main threat in the Middle East

After Israel began its bombing campaign, Trump called Iran the “bully of the Middle East”. The hypocrisy is outrageous on many levels. First and foremost because a global imperialist power with a nuclear arsenal of over 5000 warheads and the only country to have ever used them to kill hundreds of thousands, has no right to determine any other country’s nuclear policy.

Furthermore, US imperialism has the worst track record in history since the British Empire in “bullying” weaker nations into submission around the world. In the Middle East in particular, its invasions, occupations and strikes have killed millions just in the last two decades.

While Iran has no nuclear weapons, Israel has an arsenal of anywhere between 80 and 200 warheads. Iran has allowed UN inspection of its nuclear installations, something Israel has always refused. Iran is not invading or occupying any neighboring country, while Israel maintains a decades long occupation of Palestine, and has also colonized parts of Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. It openly defends its expansionist settler-colonial policies, has repeatedly attacked, bombed and invaded its neighboring countries, and is currently perpetrating genocide, ethnic-cleansing, and committing countless war crimes.

The real “bully” of the Middle East is the artificially implanted Israeli colonial regime backed by the deadliest empire in history—the US. No lasting peace will be possible in the region without the dismantling of the entire Zionist project, and the defeat and ejection of US imperialism.

With the people not the regime

We support the right of Iran to resist attacks by the US and Israel. This does not mean we support the ruling state regime, or its policies within Iran or in the region. As anti-imperialists and Marxist internationalists, it is necessary and important to discern between supporting the right of Iran to resist the main threat to the Iranian people in the form imperialist aggression, while not supporting a reactionary, theocratic, and capitalist regime that represses the Iranian working class and oppressed national ethnic groups within its borders. It is also important to recognize that while Iran is justified in its military actions against its aggressors, that does not make it an “anti-imperialist” force.

The on-going Israeli genocide in Palestine and Israeli attacks across the region have exposed Iran’s anti-imperialist rhetoric as empty and self-serving. Its “Axis of Resistance” is not a movement for liberation of Palestinian people or for other oppressed peoples, but rather a tool for projecting and defending its own regional capitalist interests and influence.

Iranian capitalism exploits its own working class as anywhere else, and its ruling regime is extremely reactionary and violently repressive in its response to class struggles and social movements within Iran.

But no liberation or freedom has ever come from imperialist bombs, especially US bombs, nor is it even possible. Just as sanctions placed on Iran hurt its people much more than its rulers, and airstrikes kill hundreds if not thousands of innocent Iranians, any political change imposed by imperialism will only serve imperialist interests—and not those of the people of Iran. It is only the people of Iran that can get rid of their oppressors and replace them with anything better.

Imperialist “ceasefires” are a lie

While Trump declared a “ceasefire,” this should not be taken seriously. After all, Israeli “ceasefires”, like those previously declared in Gaza and in Lebanon, have already shown to be deceptive maneuvers to allow Israeli forces to regroup and restart their attacks. The US-Israeli war on Iran will very likely persist, just like the genocide in Gaza and the bombardment of Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. This is why we must organize an anti-imperialist anti-war movement now! We need a militant anti-war protest movement that demands an end to all US-Israeli aggression across the whole Middle East. At the same time, we need to build an anti-imperialist movement that recognizes that there can only be peace and justice in the region if the Zionist regime and US imperialism are defeated and dismantled.