Hands off Iran!

Juni 13, 2025

Martin Suchanek

During the night of June 11-12, Israel launched a massive attack on Iran. Around 200 aircraft were deployed, and more than 100 targets attacked with missiles and drones. At least six nuclear facilities were hit, including the uranium enrichment plant in Natan, and some severely damaged. At least six scientists there were killed, as well as leading military figures such as the chief of staff, Mohammed Bagheri, and the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Hussein Salami. In addition to drone and missile attacks from the air, Israel also carried out targeted acts of sabotage in Iran.

Zionist war mongering

Netanyahu triumphantly announced the success of the “pre-emptive strike”. Once again, Iran was said to have been on the verge of completing its own nuclear weapons. Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, could not allow others to have these weapons of mass destruction. Whereas Israel’s nuclear weapon is of course for deterrence, Iran’s would constitute an existential threat to Israel. Israel already justifies its region wide rampage, from Lebanon and Syria to Yemen, and even the Gaza genocide, as, “self-defence”. And that’s not all. Netanyahu himself says that the attacks were only the “opening salvo” and announces further air strikes in the coming days. These are to continue until the “threat” has been eliminated.

Once again, the pogromist Netanyahu justifies attacks on other states with a cynical reversal of reality. Once again, he brands other states as “terrorist centres” that must be eliminated. And, as the attacks on Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen show, you don’t need to have a nuclear programme of any kind to be targeted by the Zionist war machine.

In reality, the terrorist state in the Middle East is Israel itself. No other state claims with the same self-confidence the “right” to bomb any other state “preventively”. Of course, other states also intervene militarily in neighbouring states in pursuit of their own reactionary goals, but no other state can be as sure of the backing of the US and its Western allies, above all Germany.

Almost all states in the Middle East—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and others—have condemned the attack on Iran. Not so the US and Germany. The German government, which, unlike the French government, was informed of the attacks in advance, once again vowed to defend Israel’s “right to exist”. Even though the US denies having been directly involved in the attack, Donald Trump nevertheless confirmed that the US would stand by Israel in the event of any counterattacks. Several hours after the attack he congratulated Israel for the strikes and threatened Iran with further military action, if it would not sign a nuclear accord on US terms. Meanwhile, Britain and France restrict themselves to urging “both sides” to exercise restraint and “return to diplomacy”.

Such calls for “restraint” are merely camouflage for siding with the aggressor even though neither the US nor Germany wants the conflagration in the Middle East that Israel is willing to accept. And, as always, most countries, whether Britain or France, China or Russia, are joining the calls for a return to negotiations. Once again, the UN is proving to be a powerless farce, where a US veto is enough to sweep any effective sanctions against Israel off the table. The call by the US and its Western allies to Netanyahu and his cabinet to show restraint is, on the one hand, a typical cheap diplomatic manoeuvre in which the aggressor is defended, albeit with a warning not to escalate too much, while the real warning is directed at Iran, which is under attack but should refrain from retaliation as far as possible.

Western hypocrisy

On the other hand, the call for “restraint” also conceals the differing interests of the racist Zionist state of Israel on the one hand and the US and its Western allies on the other. The US is seeking longer-term stabilisation in the Middle East, which is also intended to include a balance between Israel and the reactionary regimes in the region, above all Saudi Arabia. This is why the US negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Houthis and why it engaged in negotiations with Iran, which were successfully sabotaged by Israel’s attacks. This is also why the US is striving to revive the Abraham Accords, which is impossible as long as Israel continues and even intensifies its genocidal attack on Gaza.

Israel and the increasingly powerful ultra-right Zionist bloc do not share this goal. Indeed, they view it as a threat to their project of expanding the Israeli state “from the sea to the river”, solving the Palestine question for ever and completing the genocide. With the help of Western political, military, and economic support, Israel has become the strongest military power in the region, able to attack other states with impunity, without them being able to strike back with equal force. This is also revealed by the latest attack on Iran. While Israel struck around a hundred economic, military, and “naturally” civilian targets, such as apartment blocks, and while Iran’s air defence proved totally ineffective, Israel was able to shoot down almost all of the 100 drones that Iran deployed in a counterstrike.

This military balance of power basically confirms that a possible war between Iran and Israel would not be a war between equals, but a reactionary war by an outpost of the imperialist world order, the Israeli state, against a semi-colonial country. Even if Iran is a capitalist, Islamist dictatorship that brutally oppresses its own working class, women, and national minorities, Israel’s attack is thoroughly reactionary, and Iran has a right to defend itself against it. In a war between Israel and Iran, revolutionaries therefore advocate the defeat of the Zionist state, without however giving any political support to the Iranian regime and without postponing the building of a revolutionary party and opposition. But the defeat of Iran would not strengthen the revolution, but rather imperialist influence in the country, and it would further strengthen the Zionist state and its reactionary role. We therefore advocate the defeat of Israel—just as we did during its occupation of Lebanon and Syria and, of course, in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.

How to defeat the Zionist aggression?

However, we have also seen that the struggle against the Israeli terrorist state and against genocide is not only, or even primarily, a direct military issue. The strength of the Israeli state ultimately rests on the support it receives from the US, its Western allies, and also from reactionary Arab regimes. Although they regularly condemn Zionist attacks, they also keep their own populations quiet. This ultimately also applies to Turkey and even Iran, which actually wants to make peace with the West and is prepared to abandon the Palestinians to achieve this. However, Israel itself wants to prevent this.

We must therefore continue to support the heroic struggle for survival of the Palestinian people. We must do everything in our power to stop the Zionist war machine against Iran and all other peoples of the Middle East.

In the Arab states, this means taking up the fight against the complicity of the various forces with Zionism and imperialism. Egypt, for example, is holding 200 activists from the “Global March to Gaza” in Cairo, interrogating them and deporting them. The al-Sisi dictatorship is once again acting as a henchman for the US and Israel. But at the same time, the anger of the population over the Zionist attacks and the genocide of the Palestinian people is growing. An explosion of this anger could spark a new Arab Spring and thus a revolutionary wave in the Middle East—providing the Palestinian resistance with the allies who can stop Zionist terror: the workers and peasants of the Middle East.

No less important is the struggle of the working class and the solidarity movement with Palestine in the Western imperialist centres. The attack on free speech and the universities by Trump is related to the scale of the students’ protests for Palestine over the past 19 months. The solidarity movement must now link the struggle against genocide with the struggle against Zionist attacks on Iran—without any concessions or whitewashing of the regime there.

We must direct our actions and mobilisations toward breaking the material and military support for the Zionist state. This means stopping all arms deliveries to Israel and ending all economic ties.

Even if some Western states have stopped arms deliveries, this does not apply to the main exporters, the US and Germany. Other Western governments want to exert pressure on Zionism more symbolically than in reality, because for them, too, the Zionist state represents the outpost of their order in the Middle East, despite individual differences.

No wonder, then, that the governments of the US and Germany, as well as the right-wing governments in the European NATO states, are intensifying their attacks on the solidarity movement, a kind of repressive preventive strike against a feared shift in the mood of the masses. In many other countries, we have been witnessing mass demonstrations for months that could not possibly grow any larger. But they remain at the level of mere protests and marches.

It is necessary for trade unions to block the delivery of weapons and other goods to Israel and for workers in banks and financial institutions to interrupt transactions. This requires strikes, walkouts, and blockades supported by a mass movement. In recent months, there have already been some encouraging initial actions, such as the successful refusal of dockworkers to load military goods bound for Israel. Similar blockades have also taken place in Greece and Norway. These actions must be generalised and coordinated internationally.