Martin Suchanek
On 24 June, Donald Trump announced a ceasefire in the war between Iran on the one hand and the US and Israel on the other. Since then, the guns have fallen silent. Listening to the statements made by the three warring parties, it would seem that all have emerged victorious.
US President Trump proclaims nothing less than a “complete victory”, for which the “Daddy” is duly celebrated by the assembled team of NATO sycophants around Marc Rutte and Friedrich Merz. Trump claims nothing less than the “complete” destruction of Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons, while at the same time portraying himself as a successful warlord and peacemaker.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu even speaks of a “historic victory”. He says that Iran’s air defences have been destroyed, “the nuclear programme has been destroyed” and that “any attempt to rebuild it can be prevented”. That is why he agreed to the ceasefire – and immediately threatens the next war.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declares his country the winner. According to Tehran’s official view, Israel was forced into a “ceasefire” by its own missile and drone attacks, and Iran avoided bowing to the US by a counterstrike against the US base in Qatar, although it was purely symbolic and announced in advance to the enemy.
Who has won?
The Iranian regime can claim that it has survived the Israeli-American attack. But that is the extent of its “victory”. The rapid and effective disarmament of the last significant military force in the region that openly declares itself an enemy of Israel is in reality a victory for Israel and the US.
Even before the war, the Zionist state had massively weakened Iran’s (former) allies Syria and Hezbollah, bombarding them continuously and annexing territories. Iran proved incapable and too weak to come to the aid of its allies. Since the beginning of the genocide, its support for Hamas and the entire Palestinian people has been limited to martial rhetoric, while at the same time seeking to avoid military confrontation with Israel. This has not always been successful, as the bombing of Iran and other states is part of the expansionist policy of the Zionist state and constitutes part of the genocide against the Palestinians.
When Israel enters into war against militarily inferior countries or political forces, all Western states reaffirm their “unconditional” solidarity. The cautious and inconsequential criticism of genocide that emerged from some Western governments, and never went beyond half-hearted diplomatic threats from a few EU countries, has fallen completely silent in the face of the “threat”. After all, Israel’s “right to exist” would be threatened by Iran if it dared to exercise its right to self-defence.
In any case, the allegedly imminent nuclear capability served only as a pretext for the attack. In reality, numerous sources, including the US intelligence services, unanimously point out that Iran is not currently developing weapons and is still years away from having any at its disposal. Israel’s large-scale air offensive, which targeted all possible state targets, including national broadcasting, hospitals and residential buildings, and the call for the inhabitants of Tehran and other cities to “evacuate” the country, also make it clear that the destruction of nuclear weapons was not the goal. Rather, the weakening of Iran and a possible pro-Western regime change would destroy or at least weaken an obstacle to the Zionist genocide and colonisation of Palestine and to Western hegemony in the Middle East.
To this end, Israel waged another reactionary war of aggression in violation of international law and for the same reason, the US joined in the bombing. But no one in the Western democratic community cares. After all, Israel is doing “our” dirty work and acting as the outpost of US imperialism and its Western allies in the Middle East. It thus also represents their geostrategic and economic interests, even if the immediate ones may not always coincide. This is the core of the “solidarity” with Israel that has been glorified as raison d’état.
Consequences
The victory of Israel and the US therefore represents a victory for Western imperialism as a whole. The fact that a country like Iran, already weakened economically by a sanctions regime, was no match for the vastly superior army of the aggressors comes as no surprise to anyone. Ultimately, this also shows that the war was not between equals, but against a semi-colony that, while pursuing ambitions as a regional power, is by no means on a par with imperialism and its outposts.
Just as Iran ultimately left its allies out in the cold when Israel attacked, so that it could negotiate with the US and the West to lift sanctions, the mullah regime received no material, real support from its imperialist allies, Russia and China. Of course, they criticised the Zionist and US attacks and pushed for a ceasefire and the resumption of peace negotiations. But, unsurprisingly, both countries put their own interests above supporting their ally. For Russia, good relations with the US and a free hand in the war against Ukraine, as well as maintaining relations with Israel, are more important than risking all this for Iran. And China did not want to risk another conflict with the US either. Both major powers made it clear that they regard their allies as a means to an end and will abandon them without hesitation when it suits them.
Advance of reaction
All this means that the ceasefire dictated by the Trump administration has above all strengthened the geostrategic and hegemonic role of US imperialism in the Middle East. This is also evident in the reactionary Arab regimes and Turkey, which ultimately let the US have its way and congratulated it on its “peace”. The US can restore “order” again, at least for a while. In this, it differs not only from a massively weakened Russia in the Middle East, but also from the European imperialist countries. How little influence they have in Middle East diplomacy was made abundantly clear when the US itself bombed Iranian nuclear facilities while the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain were in Switzerland trying to mediate with Iran. All that remained for the European imperialist powers was to put on a good face for Trump’s game and to court the US president at the NATO summit to the point of self-humiliation.
Israel and the ultra-reactionary Netanyahu government also emerged victorious, even if they would have liked to continue the war for longer. Furthermore, the regime has once again shown that the “opposition”, including the racist trade union federation Histadrut, ceases to be any kind of opposition in war and defends the Zionist state unconditionally. Not only did the Israeli government kill over 700 Iranians in the war, many of them civilians, it has “naturally” also used it to further advance the genocide of the Palestinian people, to terrorise and starve the population of Gaza, and to push forward the expulsion of Palestinians in the West Bank in alliance with racist and fascist settler organisations.
There is no doubt that the victory of Israel and the United States has strengthened the reaction at all levels. That is why revolutionaries also stood for the defeat of Zionism and imperialism and for the defence of Iran – without giving any support whatsoever to the Islamist-capitalist dictatorship.
In Iran, despite all the ludicrous talk of “victory”, the war has exposed the false anti-imperialism of the regime to many. Precisely because the regime fears its own population, the wage earners, students, women and oppressed national minorities, it has intensified its repression. The working class and revolutionary forces must expose this connection in their struggle against the regime. The only progressive solution for Iran is to combine the struggle for democratic demands with the struggle for socialist revolution in the strategy of permanent revolution. When the regime enters a crisis, the Iranian working class must rediscover the heroic traditions of the workers‘ shoras (councils) and strike committees that have waged militant struggles in recent years, but it must also defend the country’s independence against all pro-American or pro-Israeli forces.
What is to be done?
Israel and the US may have won the war against Iran, but their victory is by no means final. They can be stopped:
- by strengthening the international solidarity movement with Palestine and fighting to ensure that the working class in the imperialist states stops all arms deliveries and breaks all economic and political support for Israel;
- by standing in solidarity with the resistance against the Zionist occupation, expulsion, war and massacres;
- by the working class and oppressed in the Arab states linking solidarity with Palestine to the struggle against their own regimes, which themselves support Zionism and imperialism.
Such a movement could inflict a political defeat on Israel and the Western powers and pave the way for the liberation of Palestine and a revolutionary upheaval in Iran and throughout the Middle East – for a united, socialist Palestine! For a socialist federation of the Middle East!