the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
March 16, 2026
The current attack that the U.S. and its junior military partner, Israel, have launched on Iran is not the first. Imperialist powers, first Britain and then the U.S., have intervened in Iran, at times violently, ever since the early 1900s, when oil was first discovered in the Middle East. In fact, when the U.S. first intervened in Iran in a major way in the 1950s, it was to overthrow Iran’s government.
Behind this long-standing siege of Iran—as well as other oil-rich countries in the Middle East and other regions, like Venezuela in South America—is U.S. imperialism’s never-ending pursuit to control important resources like oil. But while fabulous amounts of wealth have been generated off oil, the populations of many oil-exporting countries have been forced to live in constant poverty and endless wars. The following is a brief history of Iran—whose people today are once again suffering the horrors of war, violence and death on a massive scale—since the discovery of oil there.
By the late 19th century, Britain was in control of the Persian Gulf and the south of Persia, as Iran was known back then. So, when oil was discovered in the area at the turn of the 20th century, the British Empire was able to quickly take control of it. In 1901, the king of Persia, the Shah, granted British interests the right to exploit oil on almost the entire territory of today’s Iran for a small fraction of the huge fortune that was to be made off Iranian oil for decades to come.
In fact, British Petroleum (BP), one of the major oil companies in the world, was founded in 1908 as Anglo-Persian Oil Company, specifically to exploit the large, newly-discovered oil reserves in the Khuzestan province in southwestern Persia.
Starting in the 1940s, a wave of anti-colonial uprisings against Western imperialisms shook the world. In this upheaval, the stranglehold of the oil companies was also called into question.
Mexico, which had nationalized the oil companies already in the 1930s, became an example for other countries. In 1948, the Venezuelan government demanded an equal division of the profits from oil extraction. This “50/50 formula” between the oil-producing country and the companies exploiting the oil was later implemented in the Middle East also.
These measures did not necessarily cut into the profits of the oil companies—in part because imperialist governments boosted companies’ profits with tax cuts, and in part because a lot of the companies’ profits came from refining, petrochemicals and distribution, and not extraction of oil. But still, oil companies did not readily agree to give up any part of the profits.
So, when Iran’s government made similar demands in 1951, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), as BP was called at the time, refused the 50/50 profit split. Against the backdrop of nationalist protests and a strike in an oil refinery at Abadan, Iran’s parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry.
The Iranian government was willing to negotiate, but the AIOC, with the British government behind it, refused any compromise. The AIOC closed its Abadan refinery, while the British navy anchored in the Persian Gulf, blocking Iran’s oil exports.
Iranian masses rallied behind the nationalization. It was no surprise: while Iranian oil workers, like the majority of the country’s working class, lived in poverty, the AIOC acted like a state within a state, with its luxurious residences, swimming pools, restaurants, etc., exclusively for the British. At the same time, the taxes AIOC was paying to Iran were less than half of the taxes it paid to Britain. The company’s net profit for 1950 alone exceeded all the royalties received by Iran in fifty years of operation.
In the summer of 1952, a political standoff emerged between the Shah and Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Since the Shah was widely regarded as a representative of British interests, the population of Tehran, the capital, rose up in support of Mossadegh—even though Mossadegh came from a very wealthy family and represented the Iranian elite. The people confronted the army and its tanks for five days and, despite hundreds of casualties, virtually took over the city. Riots shook other major cities as well. The Shah gave in.
The U.S. oil companies and government, who had been waiting in the wings, decided to make their move to put an end to the popular revolt in Iran. In August 1953, the CIA and the U.S. embassy in Tehran, in collaboration with the British secret service and some of the Shah’s generals, organized a military coup d’état to overthrow Mossadegh’s government. Tanks rolled into Tehran and a massive, bloody wave of repression followed, with thousands of arrests and hundreds of executions.
For the next 25 years, a military dictatorship led by the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ran Iran. The backbone of the regime was the political police, SAVAK, set up and trained by the U.S. CIA and known for its systematic practice of torture against the regime’s opponents.
This brutal dictatorship catered to U.S. imperialism, whose first priority had been to seize control of Iran’s oil. In 1954, a consortium of oil companies was established, effectively overturning the nationalization of the oil. U.S. companies gained a 40% stake in Iran’s oil, matching the share of BP. Four years later, Nelson Rockefeller, Special Assistant to the President for Foreign Affairs, was able to assure President Eisenhower: “We have been able to ensure total control of Iranian oil.… At present, the Shah cannot undertake the slightest change in the composition of his government without consulting our ambassador.”
Thus, taking advantage of a nationalist revolt against British imperialism, U.S. oil companies had broken Britain’s monopoly on Iran’s oil. In addition, with the Shah’s large, modern army, also built with U.S. help, U.S. imperialism had gained an important military ally in policing an oil-rich and strategic region of the world.
The Shah’s viciously repressive regime drew resentment and anger from practically all parts of the population. This anger finally exploded in a persistent wave of protests throughout 1978. Large demonstrations in major cities overwhelmed the regime’s repressive apparatus, while strikes in key industries, above all the oil industry, paralyzed the economy. In January 1979, the Shah fled the country, leaving behind a discredited government and hated generals. But none of the organizations that had led the protests were prepared to take over control of the Iranian state.
This power vacuum was filled by Shiite clerics, the mullahs, who were historically tied to the merchant class known as the bazaaris. The Shiite religious leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, had already been forging relations with imperialist governments as well as Iranian capitalists from his exile in France.
The mullahs’ rise to power was also aided by the stance taken by the leaders of left organizations, who told their followers to accept the mullahs as allies against imperialism. The mullahs declared an “Islamic republic” based on medieval religious law which, among other things, forced women to be accompanied by males and cover their heads in public at all times.
Then, the mullahs quickly proceeded to set up their own repressive forces, which included many of the Shah’s generals who had defected to the new regime. So, the mullahs physically eliminated the same left organizations that had helped them become Iran’s new rulers. Another target of the mullahs, many of whom were wealthy businessmen, were the Iranian workers, whose strikes had played a crucial role in toppling the Shah.
U.S. politicians and media commentators have presented the mullahs’ dictatorship in Iran as a staunch anti-Western, anti-U.S. regime. It’s true that the mullahs have always verbally attacked the U.S. as an “evil empire”—not surprisingly, since the mullahs owe their rise to power to an anti-imperialist revolt. But the Islamic regime has also helped U.S. imperialism in the turmoil of the Middle East on many occasions—for example by helping the U.S. set up a new government in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion of that country, or helping the U.S. to fight against Sunni militias in Iraq and Syria in the 2010s.
But the U.S. has regarded the Islamic regime with suspicion because it has tried to maintain a level of independence from U.S. imperialism—by establishing relations with U.S.’s historic military rival, Russia, as well as economic rivals in Europe and China, and by arming Shiite militias in the Middle East to contain the influence of its regional rivals, Israel and Saudi Arabia, both staunch U.S. allies.
So, the U.S., under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has maintained some level of pressure on Iran for decades—from encouraging Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980 which killed half a million people between the two countries, to blocking, on and off, Iran’s oil shipments, to besieging Iran’s economy with a brutal trade embargo. The embargo, started under the Democratic Obama administration in 2010 and tightened under the Republican Trump administration in 2017, has severely worsened the conditions for Iran’s population, even causing famine among working-class Iranians.
But the U.S. has also been careful not to escalate tensions into a violent confrontation, a stance reciprocated by the Islamic regime—until recently, that is, when the Netanyahu government in Israel, emboldened by the U.S.’s unwavering military support despite Israel’s unspeakable atrocities in Gaza, started last year to attack Iran directly, and the U.S. military joined in.
Today, the U.S. is in the middle of a full-fledged bombing campaign against Iran, raining down death and destruction. But while he is bombing Iran, Donald Trump had the nerve to “call on the Iranian people” to overthrow the mullahs’ regime. The son of the last Shah, Reza Pahlavi, who lives in the U.S., has also declared himself ready to restore himself to his father’s throne.
It’s true that the Iranian people have risen up against the Islamic regime’s brutal rule many times in the past decades, and suffered bloody repression—most recently two months ago, when the regime’s police and army responded by killing tens of thousands of protesters. But the Iranian people certainly have not forgotten the Shah’s brutal dictatorship, or the fact that it was U.S. imperialism that propped up that bloody regime.
The Iranian working class is the only social force that has the ability to stop imperialism’s attack. Today, the Iranian people may be under siege, and the Iranian working class may not be organized enough to lead other parts of the population in a fight to drive out the mullahs and U.S. imperialism. But that can change—as it happened 48 years ago, when striking workers played a decisive role in bringing down the Shah’s regime, which was supported by U.S. imperialism. What was lacking was an organization the working class built to put its own interests forward.