By developer (Note : The following article was written before the ceasefire came into effect)
It has been over three decades since the last time Iran was invaded, that was in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. It was arguably the deadliest conflict in the region’s modern history costing nearly a million lives. Now, war has once again come to Iran’s doorsteps, brought on by the genocidal settler colonial state that is Israel.
Since October 7th of 2023, Israel has been engaged in a genocidal war on Gaza, as part of their campaign to ethnically cleanse all of Palestine. This has resulted in one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the 21st century. Despite being dragged to the International Criminal Court on genocide charges, Israel has not stopped the massacres of innocent Palestinian civilians.
Every day, a new horror story emerges of dozens of Palestinians being gunned down, while an unknown number starves to death, or die from illnesses because Israel destroyed the entire healthcare infrastructure in Gaza. Since the operations on Gaza began, Israel conducted an invasion of Lebanon with the aim of destroying Hezbollah, and repeatedly bombed Syria, all in defense of its genocide on Gaza.
Neither the intervention against Syria nor the invasion of Lebanon bore fruit, Israel had to limit its aims in Lebanon and though battered, Hezbollah continues to survive organizationally and militarily. Nor was Israel successful against Houthis in Yemen who have imposed a blockade against Israel in solidarity with Palestinians. All the while, the largest supporter of these groups, the Islamic Republic of Iran, remained steadfast.
Iran has had a nuclear programme since the time of the Shah of Iran, one that the present Islamic Republic revived with the ostensible purpose of procuring nuclear missiles. In the light of America’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, this seemed the only real deterrence to a possible invasion. Iran has been the most consistent and steadfast opponent of Israel in the region, backing Hezbollah and the Houthis. Iran was also the main pillar of support for the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad, till his downfall last year.
Iran and Israel have traded blows before, Iranian missiles struck Israel in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Iranian soil which killed Ismail Haniyeh, one of the main leaders of Hamas. However, this did not escalate further, and diplomacy won the day. The present situation is different. One week earlier, Israel initiated the so-called operation ‘Rising lion’ and attacked several nuclear sites and military installations in Iran. This provoked a retaliation from Iran.
While Iran and Israel (with US backing) have waged a proxy war in the shadows and over other countries, this is the first time that direct conflict has emerged between the two states with an unprecedented intensity. Iranian missile barrages continue to batter major Israeli cities, while Israeli missile attacks continue to hit Iranian cities. The disparity in civilian casualties is glaring, while only 24 civilians have lost their lives due to Iranian attacks, over 200 Iranians have lost their lives to indiscriminate Israeli assaults.
On the 22nd of June, the USA joined the war by initiating a bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, turning this into a wider regional war in West Asia. Two days later, President Trump suddenly declared a ceasefire which has since been denied by the Iranians.
It must be clear, that there is no distinction between the geo-strategic goals of Israel and the USA, the larger aim of subjugating Iran back to the sphere of American influence is parallel to the Israeli demand for regime change. Considering these factors, we must support Iran in this war against the USA and Iran.
The Iranian state and the struggle against imperialism :
We must understand the character of the Iranian state clearly. Historically, Iran did not undergo the brutal colonization that befell India, even though Iran was occupied by Russia and Britain. These occupations wrecked Iran’s fragile backward economy and caused famines that killed millions, particularly the British occupations in World War 1 and World War 2.
Since the 19th century, Iran has been under Imperialist domination. Britain and Russia both carved out territories or spheres of influence over the country, and Iran was ill prepared to meet the challenge posed by the advanced capitalist powers of Europe, for the same reasons that the Indian states and China were unable to fight Britain. These were absolutist, Centralizing states which stunted the development of capitalism within their territory.
As had happened across Asia and Africa, pre-capitalist Iran would be subjected to the constant battering by the forces of capitalism, and find itself subjected to the imperialist ambitions of Britain and Russia during the so-called ‘Great game’. For most of its modern history, Iran has remained under the imperialist influence of Britain, and partly that of imperial Russia. One of the consequences of this, was the development of an indigenous Iranian bourgeoisie.
In 1905 the Iranians had a bourgeois democratic revolution which ended the absolute monarchy of the Qajar dynasty. This revolution brought in a constitutional monarchy with a parliament. This revolution would be crushed by the combined interventions of the Shah and the imperialist forces of Russia and Britain. However, they had shaken the absolutist monarchy, and created the institution of the Majlis.
Many of the elements of this revolution would be seen again in 1979 during the Islamic revolution, chiefly the alliance of the petty bourgeois and clergy as one of the main drivers of the revolution, as well as the desire for an Islamic constitution. By 1925 the Majlis would depose the Qajar Dynasty and install the Pehlavi dynasty.
The Pehlavi dynasty would be the last Imperial dynasty to rule Iran, their rule would be marked by imperialist occupation, famine, and the tightening of imperialist influence by direct influence. The first Pehlavi Shah, Reza Shah, would find himself deposed by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941, Iran would remain occupied for the entire duration of WW2 and suffer a brutal famine that killed at least 2 million people.
In the aftermath of this occupation, Iran would see the emergence of Iran’s most important Communist party, the Tudeh party. This was a landmark in the history of Iran’s political history, not just because of the character and programme of the party, but also because this marked the beginnings of an Iranian proletariat, whose numbers would grow over the next few decades.
The Communist movement in Iran did not begin with the Tudeh party, there was a Communist party of Iran which was founded in 1917 as the Justice party, this party supported the Baku Soviet. In 1920, Iran faced its first Communist led insurrection under the leadership of Mirza Kuchik Khan of the ‘Jangali’ movement.
The Communist movement would play a decisive role in the movement to nationalize oil in Iran. Anti-imperialist sentiment grew in the aftermath of the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran, of particular importance was oil, which had become the central pillar of the Iranian economy. Petroleum was discovered in Western Iran, soon after the Anglo-Persian oil company (APOC) was founded in 1909 for the extraction of oil. This company would go on to have a virtual monopoly on oil extraction in Iran, and by extension most of the Iranian economy. The APOC was the precursor to modern day British Petroleum.
Understandably, this company and the oil became the chief target for anti-imperialist movements in Iran. In 1953, the newly elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh would initiate the nationalization of oil in Iran, backed by the Tudeh party. While most Iranians supported this, the imperialists were horrified. The British and US imperialists hatched a strategy to defeat Mossadegh, and reinstate the Pehlavi dynasty on the throne of Iran. The result was a military coup orchestrated by the CIA and MI6 which ousted the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran and imposed the Pehlavi dynasty again.
The coup of 1953 was a watershed event, which changed the geo-strategic situation of West and South Asia, it became a template for later coups in Latin America conducted under operation Condor. The rule of Mohammed Reza Pehlavi was marked by brutal suppression of dissent, absolutism, and surrender to Western imperialism.
This period spanning roughly 25 years also marked the rapid industrialization of Iran, fueled by oil exports, and forced urbanization of the rural populace. This was the period when Iran was hailed as a great ‘ally’ of the United States during the cold war. Liberals and Western apologists of imperialism often showcase whitewashed pictures of this era of women in skirts heading to university, to give a rose tinted view of a brutal dictatorial regime, while hundreds languished in prisons suffering brutal torture by the Shah’s secret police.
Since at least the late 19th century, the people of Iran have been locked in a struggle against imperialism. The bourgeoisie attempted and failed to dislodge the forces of imperialism, first in 1905, then in 1925, and again in 1953. As the decade of the 70s approached, another attempt would be made, this time more successfully. The revolution of 1979 would see the leadership of the petty bourgeois bazaaris and clergy once again taking the mantle of an anti-imperialist bourgeois democratic revolution, but this the working class intervened in force.
The 1979 revolution has been described as a solely reactionary Islamist revolt against a ‘liberal’ ‘pro-western’ regime. This is not true ! The 1979 revolution succeeded because of the intervention of the working class led by the Tudeh party, it was the fatal error of the Stalinist line of the party, that it failed to make a decisive break with the petty bourgeois Islamist reactionaries, and fight for the leadership of the anti-imperialist revolution. Trotsky’s warning came true in Iran, as the failure of the revolution to advance towards socialism resulted in the victory of Islamist reactionaries, who wasted no time in destroying the Communist forces, crushing the working class, in order to stabilize a bourgeois role.
The Iran that emerged from this revolution was a reactionary capitalist state that relies on an Islamic theocracy in order to consolidate its power. This consolidation was made possible by the brutal destruction of the Tudeh party and the US sponsored Iraqi invasion of Iran between 1980-1988.
Whilst the Iranian theocratic state is unquestionably reactionary in its outlook and methods, it could not sustain itself without some progressive concessions. The empowerment and education of women is one of the areas of such progressive concessions. The Iranian regime also instituted mass literacy programme making Iran one of the most literate countries in the world. At the same time, the condition of the working class remains miserable, especially so at present. Almost a third of the country lives below the country’s poverty line, a fifth of the working class population is unemployed. All the while, the regime maintains itself through a brutal secret police and a reactionary ‘Islamic revolutionary guard corps’ which controls much of the economy.
Time and again, the workers and youth of Iran have fought against the Islamic regime, the largest of these mobilizations in recent times was in 2009-10, and once again around Mahsa Amini. The workers of the oil sector in Khuzestan fought a sustained struggle against the Iranian regime in 2021.
Iran is a highly militarized Bonapartist state that oppresses other nationalities, such as the Balochis, Kurds and Arabs of Khuzestan. This is a direct reaction to imperialist pressure and the result of the historic weakness of the Iranian bourgeoisie, which has historically been a failure in its fight against imperialist domination. Iran’s bourgeoisie can only maintain itself as long as it can keep the working class pacified through a combination of brute force, and anti-imperialist posturing. It is for this reason, that Iran always takes a steadfastly anti-US stance, and is particularly committed towards the Palestinian cause. This is what brings Iran and Israel, two of the foremost reactionary powers of West Asia, to war.
Zionist Israel and the genocide of Palestinians:
The character of the state of Israel must be understood correctly to have a complete picture of the war. It is critical to understand its motivations and material interests, which has driven it to war with all of its neighbours.
No matter the gaudy claims of the Zionists, Israel as it stands has a history that only goes as far back as the late 19th century to the activities of the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl. In 1895, the idea of European Jews founding a separate homeland in Palestine found mention in Herzl’s work “the state of the Jews”, where he spoke of Jews as a separate nationality. The logic of assigning a nationality to an ethno-religious group would be repeated decades later in India, under the two nation theory.
In the decades that followed Theodor Herzl would continue to propagate the idea of a separate Jewish homeland, sometime proposing a colony in East Africa (the Uganda plan) and at other times positing Palestine as the location for this imagined new homeland. In 1897, the First Zionist Congress was held in Basel Switzerland, establishing the World Zionist Congress. This marked the beginning a process of European Jewish immigration to Palestine, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire.
It is worth remembering that this period of European history was marked by violent anti-Jewish pogroms, particularly in Eastern Europe and the territories of the Russian Empire. Czar Nicholas in particular was infamous for his anti-Semitic world view, and held Jews in the Empire guilty for revolutionary activity. Anti-Semitic pogroms were encouraged by the Czarist state, as a strategy to suppress revolutionary activities. Rather than challenging such reactionary views, Theodor Herzl’s solution to anti-Semitism was to sponsor the colonization of another country and people.
Despite waves of violence against Jews in Europe, there was little appetite for the programme of Zionism, the initial settlement programmes yielded little to no success, prompting the sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 to adopt the so-called Uganda plan. This had the backing of the British colonial secretary at that time.
It is important to remember that the Zionist movement neither had any mass support among the majority of European Jews who were largely peasant, working class or petty bourgeois. The largest Jewish organizations were left wing unions and associations, Jews were among the most educated and class conscious people in continental Europe, as well as among the most persecuted. This combination of factors led to many European Jews entering revolutionary politics.
Zionism on the other hand, was a purely bourgeois intellectual movement, which aimed at colonization backed by the then dominant imperialist powers. Britain in particular had an interest in backing the Zionist project, to further their own imperialist interests. This became clear in the course of World War 1, when Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour declaration for the creation of a ‘National home for the Jewish people in Palestine’. This is what ‘Israel’ is rooted in, not the bible.
Sponsored by Jewish bourgeoisie like Lord Rothschild of Britain, Zionist inspired immigration to Palestine picked up. Jews did not comprise more than 3% of the original inhabitants of the territory of Palestine, these were Jews who were indigenous to the land having inhabited for centuries. The European Jews who came after the First World War were largely colonists from Europe, backed by the British Empire and the Zionist project. This would be the beginning of a long tragedy which would culminate in the genocides of Palestinians.
Over the next two decades Europe would witness the horrors of the Second World War and the rise of fascism. European Jews would be subject to a brutal extermination policy, led by Nazi Germany. The destruction of European Jews went hand in hand with the destruction of most left wing organizations in Europe. The Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis in the hopes that the persecution of Jews would spur more Zionist migration to Palestine. The Fascists served the Zionists in another way, by destroying and discrediting most left wing Jewish organizations, it left the field open for Zionists to present their reactionary ‘solution’ as the only viable way to save European Jews.
The persecution of the European Jews became the perverse justification for the persecution of Palestinians. As the British Empire unraveled, the question of Palestine came before the United Nations. The British presented a partition plan, giving much of Western and Northern Palestine to Israel, while Palestinian Arabs would be left with a truncated nation along the West Bank, Gaza and the South. The rejection of this plan led to the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948, and the event known to Palestinians as the Nakba.
Zionists armed by the Soviet Union, Britain and its allies conducted a genocide of Palestinians, while Palestine’s Arab ‘allies’ sat back and watched. The Zionist army, terrorist death squads and militias conducted dozens of massacres killing thousands of civilians in some of the most blood curdling acts of mass murder. Mass murder and terror induced a quarter of a million Palestinians to flee their homes, often carrying the keys to their homes, thinking this to be a temporary situation, still hopeful of return.
The state of Israel was founded on this enterprise of terror over the bodies of tens of thousands of Palestinians. This was the seminal tragedy, which prepared the ground for the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Israel was envisioned as a settler colonial enterprise from the get go, justifying itself on the historical persecution of European Jews. We see the full realization of Theodor Herzl’s original vision in present day Israel.
The Zionist project was supported by the forces of European imperialism out of geo-political considerations. They would prove their usefulness to imperialism when Israel intervened on the side of Britain and France in the Suez war of 1956. However, Britain and France lost that war, thanks in large part to the pressure of the USA and Soviet Union. Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal and began to secure their independence from imperialism, but this could never be fully achieved without the destruction of the Zionist state, which was a settler colonial imposition on the Arab people.
Israel’s victory in the war in October 1967 destroyed the secular Arab nationalist project. Israel expanded massively, all Palestinian territories fell to Israel, and more expulsions followed. From this moment, Israel’s settler colonial ambitions aligned with the geo-strategic ambitions of US imperialism. The birth of the unconditional support for Israel in the USA emerged in the aftermath of the 1967 war, now Israel would act as the hammer of US imperialism on the Levant, to ensure US imperialist domination over the region, and most crucially protecting the status quo of American power over the Arab peninsula.
Despite losing the 1977 Yom Kippur war to Egypt and Syria, where Israel had to cede massive chunks of territory to Palestine and restore the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, US imperialism consolidated in the region. The maintenance of Israeli military power was assured, as was the settler colonial enterprise. In the decades thereafter, Israel continued to build on the conquest of Palestinian land, perfecting its military machinery, and acting as a defender of US imperial interests in the region. Israel is a highly militarized but dependent minor imperialist state, deeply indebted to the USA, and dependent on it for military supplies. The Israeli state can only maintain itself as a Jewish supremacist entity by constant annexation of Palestinian land, exploiting their labor and resources through enforced apartheid.
The much vaunted scientific and economic achievements of Israel owe much to the displacement and annexation of Palestinians. Now, we are witnessing what is perhaps the last chapter of this eight decade history of colonization in the genocide of Gazans. Israel’s recent wars on Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen are all in service of US imperialism, ensuring any threat to US imperialism is snuffed out before it can become a problem. In return, the United States gives full unconditional diplomatic support to Israel, even when its blatantly illegal actions are exposed before the highest international institutions.
The geo-political situation in the region:
Our generation grew up with the Gulf war in 1991, then the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, for most of our youth we have seen the United States or Israel embark on invasions across West Asia. For most of the last 30 years, the region from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Western border of South Asia has been plunged into chaos by the actions of US imperialism and its allies. With another West Asian war we can be almost certain that the same or similar consequences would flow.
The chaos of the ISIS insurrection has not yet died down, the Houthi uprising in Yemen has not yet been defeated, even though the Syrian civil war has ended, the new government is proving itself to be a disappointment as they capitulate to Israel and US imperialism. Israel and the gulf monarchies are directly involved in much of this tumult, with Israel repeatedly bombing Syria, it had recently invaded Lebanon a third time, meanwhile the gulf monarchies have engineered a brutal famine in Yemen which has cost the lives of nearly 400,000 people so far. In the midst of this imperialist sponsored chaos, the youth, workers and peasants of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, and the gulf countries, keep fighting against their oppression.
The US invasion of Iraq destabilized the wider region, and unleashed both reactionary and progressive forces. In the aftermath of the revolutionary processes in West Asia and North Africa, we have seen several Arab nationalist regimes collapse, notably that of Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria, while other uprisings such as the one in Bahrain was crushed by the forces of Saudi Arabia. The Syrian revolution and civil war allowed the Kurdish national movement to grow in strength, likewise the weakness of the Iraqi state allowed the Kurds to acquire greater autonomy.
An unintended consequence of the US invasions of Iraq, was the emergence of Iranian influence over Iraq. With the Iraqi state in complete shambles and the army largely dismantled, Shia militias emerged to fill in the power vacuum, and through them, Iran. This influence was seen more fully in the course of the war on ISIS. Iran gained by posing itself as the main regional defender against Western Imperialism and a protector of Shia Muslims. Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and its ally in the Houthi movement have been armed to the teeth by the Iranian state. Neither the United States nor Israel appears to have an answer to the threat they posed. Even in the most recent invasion of Lebanon, Israel had to limit its territorial goals and return with little to show for its losses, while the Houthis continue to harass Israeli shipping, their blockade remains intact.
At the same time, the United States finds itself having to compete with rising powers of Russia, China and India, making its dominance over Asia all the more tenuous. The emergence of China and Russia in particular has added another layer of complexity in the region, with Russia and China being directly involved in equipping Iran’s armed forces. Russia played a destructive and reactionary role in Syria during the revolution and civil war, defending Bashar Al Assad’s regime with air strikes.
It was in this context that the Palestinian uprising on 7th October took place, under the leadership of the Islamist Hamas. Israel’s response to the insurrection has been to conduct a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The struggle of the Palestinian people have galvanized the youth and workers of every Arab country to mobilize in solidarity, often against their own governments. For the forces of US imperialism and their reactionary allies, this is a major threat. The Palestinian struggle threatens Israel to its very core, US imperialism cannot tolerate the loss of Israel, because it would upturn the entire structure of US imperialist dominance in the region, and therefore by extension its position in the world.
While the governments of most Muslim countries have been forced to at least give token support to Palestine, the gulf monarchies remain silent, even as they pretend to stand for Palestine. The despotic monarchies of these state maintain large oppressive state apparatuses to ensure the maintenance of US imperialist dominance. Crucially, they ensure American financial control over the oil industry, the central pillar of US global financial dominance.
The nature of this war and where we stand:
Israeli strikes on Iran is not new, the last time they had conducted a strike into Iranian soil, it was to assassinate one of the leaders of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh. The United States in coordination with the Israelis had attacked the leadership of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Kassem Soleimani. President Trump, who now pretends to be the peacemaker president, had personally authorized this strike on one of the top military leaders of Iran, bringing the two countries closer to war.
The United States’ desire to overturn the Iranian regime is no secret, nor is it a secret that they have never forgiven the loss of control over oil from the nationalist Islamist regime that took Iran. The loss of the Shahi regime on Iran was not just a defeat for US imperialism, it also meant the creation of a powerful new enemy for Zionist Israel. The present war must be seen in this historical context, it is through and through a reactionary imperialist war, waged by the United States and Israel to secure their complete dominance over West Asia.
The Islamist regime in Iran is rooted in the struggle against Western Imperialist dominance and the absolutist rule of the Shahs of Iran. For most of the 19th and early 20th century, Iranian nationalism was bounded together with Islam, and for most of modern history they had failed to dislodge imperialism. This present regime is by far the most success the Iranian bourgeoisie has had in combating imperialism both at home and abroad. The success of the 1979 revolution was only possible because of the role played by the working class. Ceding power and space to the mullahs and their petty bourgeois mob base was the most criminal act of treachery that the Tudeh party did, and the world has been worse off for it.
Since seizing power, the new Iranian theocracy has attacked the working class as its main enemy, even more so than the forces of imperialism. The regime has not lessened its oppression of the Iranian working class and youth, or the oppressed nationalities of Kurds and Balochis, even as it faces the gravest threat from imperialism yet.
We do not defend the Iranian regime, we cannot defend their oppression of women, the working class and oppressed nations. We do not defend religious states, or the supremacy of any religious group in a nation. We do however, defend the workers and youth of Iran against the threat of imperialist subjugation. We have only to look at Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen to see what a US imperialist intervention looks like. We have only to look at Gaza to see what kind of ‘liberation’ the Zionists promise the Iranian people.
The present war initiated by Israel has chiefly two short term goals, both of which are deplorable. First, is the defense of its genocide of Palestinians, which is the foundation on which Israel stands. Second, is the elimination of the only large capable military that stood against Israel, and dared to defy it. The far more dangerous objective behind this war, is to ensure long term US dominance over West Asia, in particular to maintain its hegemonic position with respect to West Asian oil.
The Iranian working class now rallies for the defense of their country, the world’s working class must rally with them. This is not a defense of the Mullahs, this is a defense of the lives and livelihoods of the Iranian working class, and this is also in defense of the people of Gaza who struggle for their very survival in the face of the most brutal genocide of the 21st century.
HANDS OFF IRAN !
HANDS OFF GAZA !
FREE PALESTINE !
DOWN WITH ISRAEL ! DOWN WITH ZIONISM !
DOWN WITH US IMPERIALISM !