League for the Fifth International
The pretext for Israel’s latest attack on Iran is to put an end to the country’s alleged nuclear weapons programme. The fact that all sources, including the US intelligence agencies, agree that Iran was not presently developing a weapon, and is years away from being able to, is simply brushed aside by the Zionist propaganda machine—and Donald Trump. The widespread aerial offensive, targeting all kinds of state targets including the national broadcaster, as well as hospitals and civilian residences, the call on inhabitants of Tehran and other cities to ‘evacuate’ are proof that this is not a strike against Iran nuclear programme—but an attempt at regime change, with the aim of destroying and intimidating another obstacle to Zionist genocide and colonisation of Palestine, and western hegemony over the Middle East.
It is an integral element of the Netanyahu government’s regional strategy which has included the destruction of Hezbollah, and large parts of Beirut, the elimination of the Syrian air force and occupation of large parts of the country, and the earlier destruction of much of Iran’s air defence systems. Netanyahu hopes the widespread unpopularity of the clerical police regime will lead to its downfall. Seeing Israel’s successes, and Iran’s near helplessness, Trump came out into the open and endorsed its ostensible objective—the destruction of Iran’s nuclear installations, and demanded Iran’s unconditional surrender. The US president has deployed additional military forces to the region and boasted that he won’t kill Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ‘for now’.
The attack took Iranian military commanders by surprise, with many killed in their homes. Despite the fact that the US was due to hold negotiations with Iran days later, the government knew that Israel was preparing to assassinate its military leadership and scientific cadre. The US embassy in Iraq was quietly evacuated in the days before the strike. Plainly this war is a joint venture between the world’s pre-eminent super power and its regional gendarme. It serves not only to intimidate and demoralise their Arab client states, but as a warning to China and Russia who have proved politically and military incapable of protecting first Syria, and now Iran.
All Israel’s allies have rushed to defend the aggressor from retaliation by the victim. Countries that the day before were starting to object, in the mildest tone possible, to Israel’s sadistic starvation and butchery in Gaza, switched overnight to ludicrous denunciations of the ‘existential’ threat to Israel. Russia and China, whilst rejecting the Israeli attack as a violation of international law (whatever that is worth), have not given any real support to their ally in Teheran.
The flattening of Gaza, the neutering of Hezbollah, and the fall of the Syrian regime, and the projected destruction of any lingering prospect of resistance from Iran, proved that the so-called Axis of Resistance was a paper tiger. Israel cannot be defeated by conventional or guerilla war, as long as it fulfils a function and retains the support of, its imperialist sponsors. The Israeli war in Iran is not a conflict between two equally reactionary states for regional domination, but a reactionary attack by Western imperialism’s enforcer against a semi-colonial country whose independence has become intolerable.
The self-styled crown prince and multi-billionaire Reza Pahlavi has called on Iranians to ‘rise and get rid of this regime’. A return of the Shah or pro-imperialist ‘democrats’ on the point of Zionist bayonets would end no better for the Iran than it did in Iraq. The Iranian regime is a mortal enemy of the rights of Iranian workers, women and the country’s national minorities. It deserves to be swept away, and we are convinced that Iran’s workers have the will and capacity to do so. But the end of the regime at the hands of an unconditional surrender to US-Israeli aggression, and its replacement by a new puppet Shah, would merely replace a counter-revolutionary regime hostile to US interests, with one that is more amenable. It would not strengthen the revolutionary forces in Iran, but place them under the heel of a pro-Zionist client. In Israel it would strengthen Netanyahu and his fascist coalition partners and further encourage the genocidal war against Gaza and annexation of the West Bank.
The arch-reactionary and counter-revolutionary nature of the Ayatollah’s regime alters in no way our characterisation of the Zionist war. The defeat of the US-Israeli attack would self-evidently be a major setback for the imperialists’ plans for regional domination, and in the forefront, of Israel’s bloody genocide in Palestine. In this context, Iran has a duty and right to defend itself; thus, without giving an ounce of political support to the Iranian regime, communists advocate and work for the defeat of the Zionist state.
In Iran, the war has demonstrated the fake anti-imperialism of the regime and the working class and revolutionary forces will need to expose this in their struggle against the regime. The only progressive solution for Iran would be the development of a democratic and socialist—i.e. a permanent—revolution in Iran, spreading to all the states of the region. If the regime goes into crisis the Iranian working class must rediscover the heroic traditions of the workers’ shoras (councils) and the strike committees that have waged militant battles in more recent years, but it should also defend the independence of the country against all an any pro-American or pro-Israeli forces.
However, ending the Zionist onslaught will not and cannot be achieved by military means alone. Israel’s military preponderance rests on the support it receives from its imperialist allies and the tacit cooperation of their Arab clients. Despite massive protests in the west, the decisive political and military support provided by the imperialist powers to Israel has not been seriously threatened, thanks to the pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist stance of the leaders of the social democracy and trade unions. Things are not better in the Arab world, where the dictators’ wretched dependence on US investment and arms supplies ensures they will not come to the aid of the Palestinians and certainly not to that of their great rival Iran. The popular hatred of these dictatorships seen during the Arab Spring has led them to do all they can to shut down the Arab Street from expressing any degree of protest or participation in the movement to end Israel’s attacks.
But the war against Iran can be defeated, and Israel’s terrorism of the entire region can be ended. What is needed is a global mass movement fighting to stop the military, economic and political support for the Zionist aggression and a possible direct US attack on Iran by a mass movement on the streets and, most importantly, by workers’ action to sabotage the transport and production of war materiel or imports, and by civil servants to obstruct western government’s support for Israel’s illegal wars. Across the Middle East socialists and all working class and progressive forces should mobilise against their own rulers’ passivity and in support of Iran and Palestine, fighting to cut all ties with the Zionist state. Such a movement could inflict a political defeat on Israel and the Western powers and open the road for the liberation of Palestine and a revolutionary upheaval in Iran and the whole Middle East.
- Defend Iran: defeat Israel’s reactionary war! US and imperialist hands off Iran!
- Western imperialist navies, armies and bases out of the Middle East. End Western economic, military, intelligence support for Israel!
- Mass demonstrations, strikes and a workers’ blockade against Israel, enforced by militant class struggle methods!
- For a workers’ revolution in Iran, against the clerical-police dictatorship at home and the imperialist-Zionist bloc abroad!
- Stop the genocide: end the siege of Gaza! IDF out of Gaza and the West Bank!
- Smash the Zionist state through socialist revolution! For a united, secular, socialist Palestine! For a socialist federation of the Middle East!