When Trump started the recent war against Iran, perhaps he thought that it would mirror the U.S. war against Venezuela: the U.S. and Israeli militaries could take out the Iranian top leadership and the regime would quickly capitulate.
Trump, like all megalomaniacs, may have mistaken his wishes for reality. But, forced into a corner by the viciousness of the new assault, the Iranian regime chose to send drones and missiles against Israel. They also bombed U.S. military bases across the Middle East, killing and wounding U.S. soldiers. They targeted U.S. embassies in the region, including the one in Saudi Arabia which held a CIA hub. Iran began to target the oil infrastructure of countries which contained U.S. bases. Using drones, missiles and mines, Iran attacked ships and threatened all shipping, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.
Instead of the quick victory it had expected, the Trump regime found itself in a war with Iran. And not just a war with Iran, but a war that has spread throughout the entire Middle East. It is a war that has disrupted the world economy and threatens to provoke a world economic crisis. As more countries are impacted by the war, they could become participants in the war. It’s not wrong to say we may be entering World War III.
But even if this U.S. war against Iran ends soon, it is just one sign, among many, of a world ravaged by regional wars, moving into a world war. The U.S. government has been right in the middle of these wars.
Trump got elected by promising the population that he would keep the U.S. out of wars. But since taking office the second time, the Trump administration has bombed Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Venezuela, and Nigeria, not to mention blowing up boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The Trump regime continued the war in Ukraine, using Ukrainians as pawns to weaken Russia. Trump, like Biden, supplied the Israeli regime with weapons as Israeli forces massacred the population in Gaza. Today, Trump is side-by-side with Netanyahu, as the Israeli regime is waging war against the population in Lebanon, a war that has killed hundreds of children and displaced almost a million people.
Bombs are being dropped on schools, and cities are being destroyed. It is madness. It may look like a lunatic is running the world’s most powerful country, using its wealth to carry out widespread destruction. But Trump could not be carrying out this war in Iran if the U.S. capitalist class that he represents was against it.
The U.S. war with Iran did not start with Trump. The U.S. capitalists have been hostile to Iran for the last 47 years, since a revolt threw out a U.S.-backed dictator. In fact, the hostility goes further back than that (see our article on Pages 6–7). The Iranian regime today is repressive, but this is not why U.S. imperialism targets it. The U.S. capitalist class treats Iran as a prime enemy because it won’t bow down to every U.S. command.
Today, U.S. imperialism’s domination of the world is being challenged, and the U.S. reaction is to go to war against anyone who questions it.
This is what stares the working class in the face today. The “masters of the universe,” the capitalist class of the U.S., is preparing to send the workers of this country to war against the workers of other countries.
That is the madness of war that we are facing. But it does not have to be our future. The world today has the technology, the knowledge, the resources and the potential wealth to provide a decent life for all of humanity, and to do it without wars. This can happen when the workers of the world unite to put an end to capitalism and build a new society.
“The United States is the largest oil producer in the world, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” Trump posted online.
What do you mean, “we?”
Clearly, for a politician like Trump, “we” is his fellow billionaires, who are making a lot of money. Not workers like us, who end up having to pay the bill for higher gas prices.
On February 28, young Iranian girls between the ages of 7 and 12 were studying when U.S. Tomahawk Cruise missiles hit their school. Missile fragments at the site confirm the weaponry. This school no longer exists. Many children and teachers died as a roof collapsed on them. In all, 165 were killed and 95 wounded.
Located in the city of Minab, the Good Tree School was near a key Iranian Naval hub, overseeing the economically strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has blamed Iran. He said to reporters, “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen—that was done by Iran.… They are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions.” Adding, “A Tomahawk is very generic. It’s sold to other countries.”
Reporters tracked down that this missile has NOT been sold to Iran by the U.S. It is only sold to Britain, Australia and the Netherlands.
A U.S. Pentagon investigation of the bombing is “preliminary” and “ongoing.” Already confirmed by the Pentagon are two facts. First, the weapon was a U.S. Cruise Missile. Second, the elementary school WAS on the approved target list, but was misidentified as a “factory.”
The investigation is “preliminary” because the Pentagon says it is still determining if the current use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) played a role in the error of targeting an elementary school. And, in addition, exactly what “human error” was involved.
Trump may deny it, but the Pentagon has admitted that the U.S. government killed a school full of young Iranian children.
The Pentagon estimated the first week of war against Iran cost perhaps 11 billion dollars, which is written 11,000,000,000 dollars, most of it spent on munitions like Tomahawk missiles. That means in one week the U.S. government spent as much money just on dropping bombs as it spends for an entire year on Head Start, the national daycare program. The estimate the Pentagon gave Congress did not include regular spending for troop wages, nor fuel to move aircraft carriers and bombers to the Middle East.
One Tomahawk missile costs over three million dollars to make at the sole supplier, Raytheon Corporation, and over two years to deliver. What happens when these big bombs run out and the promised “short” little war keeps going?
For comparison, the Iraq war turned out to be eight years for a country one quarter the size and population of Iran, and might have cost two trillion dollars, not to mention the lives lost among the Iraqi people and among U.S. troops. That cost in the trillions of dollars does not include the cost of veterans’ health care and other benefits guaranteed for the rest of their lives.
We cannot begin to guess at the costs of war in human terms for the soldiers serving, for the families who have already lost loved ones. We are not the unfortunate people currently facing bombs falling on our homes and work places—like people all over the Middle East are. In addition, the war is already the excuse for the rise in gas prices and for prices in many other parts of the economy. Our local mayors and governors will use it as an excuse for why they cannot pay for what they already say they cannot pay for—schools falling apart, people without health benefits or food stamps or unemployment, infrastructure repair.
War is an excuse for every politician and a money-maker for every big industry.
In rural areas, around 90% of emergency departments increasingly operate with few or no physicians amid a nationwide shortage of doctors. One in thirteen emergency departments in the United States lacks 24/7 attending physician coverage.
A Boston hospital study found that in 15 states, including those with substantial rural populations such as New Mexico, Nevada, and West Virginia, rural hospitals had no emergency departments.
In one stark example, Dahl Memorial, an emergency department in Ekalaka, Montana, hasn’t had a physician on staff in at least 30 years. This hospital’s head, Darrell Messersmith, said he would hire one if a doctor lived in the area. Messersmith also noted that other rural hospitals may have physicians who are either permanent staff members who leave after a few years or contract workers who fly in for a few weeks at a time.
Due to a shortage of competent doctors, these rural hospitals often rely on physician assistants and nurse practitioners to fill the gap. If a patient is in a critical condition that medical practitioners cannot handle, they transfer the patient by plane to a regularly staffed emergency room at a distant site. Such cases occur when these rural emergency departments encounter more complex cases, such as emergency childbirth and severe trauma. In certain situations, it was recorded that because of the medical staff’s lack of training, knowledge, and experience, the patients were misdiagnosed, leading to their death.
The physicians and their associations point out that some hospitals are just trying to save money by not employing them. For example, in Vermont, the state’s hospitals cut physicians from their emergency rooms to “improve” the state’s “troubled” health care system.
Therefore, the lack of healthcare funding for low-income individuals is the primary reason for the shortage of doctors in rural emergency rooms.
In large cities like Los Angeles, conditions may also be dire, even if for different reasons. Because emergency rooms are money-losing or non-profitable departments, big hospitals, even those of wealthy universities like the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, don’t have emergency departments. Instead, the Los Angeles County Hospital, located adjacent to the USC medical department, is tasked with handling emergency cases. The county picks up the costs of this emergency department. By contrast, in the wealthy areas of Los Angeles, the affluent receive proper medical care when they need it, including emergency care.
Capitalist society, with its sole focus on profit, condemns the working class and low-income people to poor medical care and eventual preventable death.
The 20 companies with the lowest paid workers on average in the U.S. are Amazon, Autozone, Best Buy, Chipotle, Costco, Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, etc.), Dollar General, Dollar Tree, FedEx, Home Depot, Kroger, Lowe’s, MGM Resorts, O’Reilly Automotive, Ross stores, Starbucks, Target, TJX, Tyson Foods, and Walmart. These companies together have 6.7 million workers in the U.S., according to a recent investigation by the Institute for Policy Studies called “The Low-Wage 20.”
At 16 of these companies, half the workers are under the level to be eligible for Medicaid or SNAP food stamps for a single parent with two children. Walmart probably has almost half a million workers who are on Medicaid, and Amazon probably has far over half a million workers on Medicaid.
At half of these companies, median pay went DOWN between 2019 and 2024 when considering inflation. Meanwhile, their CEOs average 18.9 million dollars per year, each, which is 899 times the median workers’ pay!
These companies also spent 260 billion dollars from 2019 to 2024 to buy back their own stocks in order to inflate the stock prices to benefit their owners, which include 16 billionaires.
Ayman Ghazali, a 41-year-old immigrant from Lebanon who became a citizen 10 years ago, recently rammed his truck into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan and exchanged gunfire with security guards there.
There are differing accounts between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI as to whether Ghazali was shot by the security team or died of a self-inflicted gunshot. His truck’s engine compartment caught fire and he may have been carrying fireworks in the truck.
Temple Israel is the largest Reform Jewish synagogue in the U.S. and contains a school with an early childhood center and kindergarten. There were 140 students there at the time of the attack. Fortunately, there were no injuries other than those suffered by Ghazali.
It turns out Ghazali’s two brothers and his niece and nephew were killed and his sister-in-law injured by an Israeli airstrike on their home in Lebanon one week before.
Clearly, the deaths of his close family members do not justify Ghazali’s antisemitic attack on a synagogue which endangered the lives of Jewish children and adults who had nothing to do with them. But it does at least explain what may have motivated him to carry out the attack.
In the meantime, both CBS and NBC News cited an anonymous Lebanese official saying Ghazali’s two brothers were affiliated with Hezbollah, the Lebanese group with links to Iran. Interestingly, the New York Times also cited an anonymous Lebanese official saying the brothers were not affiliated with Hezbollah. Who’s more believable? The New York Times is hardly friendly to Iran.
These attempts to justify the killings and injuries to Ghazali’s relatives by linking them to “terrorists” is not unlike how members of the Trump administration tried to justify the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by claiming they were “domestic terrorists.”
The violence and deaths connected to the wars in the Middle East will not be solved by individual terrorist attacks against people with no responsibility for those wars. That will require ending the system that produces and requires endless wars, the capitalist system.
Several members of Congress have made hateful anti-Muslim comments since the outbreak of the Iran war. Representative Randy Fine from Florida said, “We need more Islamophobia, not less.” Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee said, “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas advocated, “No more Muslims immigrating to America.” Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama posted pictures of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani next to a picture of the 9/11 terror attacks, as if Mamdani had anything to do with them!
So let’s see here. The U.S. and Israel start a war against Iran while the U.S and Iran are involved in disarmament talks and somehow Islam is to blame?
Perhaps they’re simply following the lead of Donald Trump. After two young men who may have been inspired by ISIS threw Improvised Explosive Devices at far-right protesters outside Mamdani’s mayoral mansion, Trump blamed the attacks on the genetics of the suspects. He said, “They’re sick people and a lot of them were let in here.… The genetics are not exactly—they’re not exactly your genetic.”
These remarks by Trump and the members of Congress are just plain, blatant racism from highly-paid servants of the wealthy capitalist ruling class who want to divide the working class and convince American workers to support their war against Iran. Workers beware of their tricks!
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.
When the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, Israel also attacked Lebanon—once again.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justifies this bombing of Lebanon as another attempt to destroy Hezbollah, the Iran-backed political party and militia that is a major political force in Lebanon. Israel claims that after the Israeli military began bombing Iran, Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel. Now Netanyahu says that if Lebanon wants to stop Israel from carrying out a land invasion, the Lebanese government must itself “disarm Hezbollah,” though this would likely require a civil war.
The Israeli military just fought a war to eliminate Hezbollah less than two years ago, and yet Hezbollah can still supposedly launch missiles into Israel. When asked about this, Netanyahu claimed that before that 2024 war, the group had “the capacity to bring down the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv and cause devastation in central Israel and beyond, with 15,000–20,000 fatalities,” and now it is much weaker. This time, Netanyahu says, the Israeli state is committed to eliminating the militant group altogether.
Of course what Netanyahu claims Hezbollah might have done in Israel is exactly what Israel itself has done in Lebanon.
Israel’s massive bombing campaign killed at least 850 people between March 2 and March 15, and shows no signs of letting up.
The Israeli military also ordered the entire population in the southern half of Lebanon to leave their homes and move north, away from the Israeli border. In reaction, 830,000 people fled. Many went to Beirut, the country’s capitol city—but Israel is also bombing there. Nowhere is safe.
In addition to bombing, on March 13, the New York Times reported that Israel dropped leaflets on Beirut referring to the “remarkable success in Gaza.” This “remarkable success” by Israel amounted to destroying the entire area, killing more than 70,000 people. The survivors have been left to try to eke out a living in the ruins, with almost no food or medical treatment available. This reference to Gaza is a direct threat aimed at the Lebanese population.
Now, Israel is threatening a ground invasion—which would be the seventh Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the last 50 years. During the last one that ended only in January 2025, the Israeli military killed almost 3,000 Lebanese people. It also destroyed or damaged more than 10,000 structures in southern Lebanon, including homes, mosques, cemeteries, roads, parks, and soccer fields.
Far from keeping the Israeli population safe, these wars fuel the anger and desperation of the Lebanese population. Even if Hezbollah itself is eliminated, the death, destruction, and desperation created by these wars creates an unending stream of potential recruits for groups like Hezbollah. And so the Israeli population is also caught in unending, accelerating war.
This article is translated from the March 6 issue, #3005 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Donald Trump is not happy with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “He has not been helpful. I never thought I’d see that,” he said, adding that Starmer “should have helped.”
One of Trump’s grievances against the U.S.’s typically staunch ally, England, has to do with an airbase on the island of Diego Garcia. Allegedly, Starmer delayed on authorizing the flight of American bombers from the base to attack Iran.
Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Islands, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that the British empire separated from Mauritius when granting Mauritius independence in 1968. All Chagossians were then deported without due process. London ceded the island to the U.S. to build the strategic base. In addition to a deep-water port and communications and surveillance facilities, the U.S. stations bombers on Diego Garcia that were used during the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and presumably now Iran.
But in recent years the International Court of Justice and the United Nations General Assembly have condemned England for this colonial-era control. England signed an agreement in October 2024 to let the Chagos Islands revert to Mauritius, but with England and the U.S. retaining control of Diego Garcia for 99 years. They would pay Mauritius around 140 million dollars rent a year. It’s a drop in the ocean compared to their military spending! Trump approved the plan but now criticizes it, even though it doesn’t harm the U.S. one bit. But we know that the White House and Mar-a-Lago occupant likes to play games.
For now, imperialist bombers can continue to use the base. It’s very convenient for the two gangsters. Surely, they’ll soon make a deal.
This article is translated from the March 13 issue, #3006 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
On February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran, which Israel calls “Lion’s Roar.” Since then, the everyday life of the population of Israel has been punctuated by alerts and trips back and forth to bomb shelters to protect themselves from Iranian missiles and drone attacks, which killed 10 people by March 12.
In an effort to win public support, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeats over and over on TV that this is an “existential” war. He promises that Iran’s defeat will guarantee Israel’s security. But this war is merely the latest link in a chain of endless escalations of violence across the Middle East.
Gaza has been dropped from the headlines. But nothing has been resolved there. Palestinians continue to die in the ruins of two years of intensive bombing. In the West Bank, settlers spread more terror now than ever, safeguarded by Israeli soldiers, whose numbers have increased since the start of the war with Iran. For example, about 100 settlers were able to attack the village of Abu Falah northeast of Ramallah with complete impunity on March 8. They killed three Palestinians. “Under the cover of war, the cooperation between the military and Israeli settler militias is deepening the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank,” notes Israeli non-profit B’Tselem, which reported 15 gunshot wounds in one week. At least 1,040 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli settlers or soldiers since the start of the Gaza war.
Distinguishing between settlers and troops is becoming increasingly difficult. Nonprofit Yesh Din reported in late February that “Israel has equipped thousands of settlers with military firearms and uniforms and given them lethal powers without adequate oversight mechanisms.” Using the war with Iran as a pretext, far-right Interior Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir issued a statement on March 9 under the title “Jerusalem Has the Right to Arms” that 300,000 residents of the city are now entitled to carry weapons.
Netanyahu has been escalating his military policy since October 7, 2023. He boasts of being able to wage war on seven fronts simultaneously, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and now Iran. He presents each front as a new “existential war,” alleging it guarantees Israel’s security. This narrative is echoed by all Israeli political parties, which have all closed ranks behind Netanyahu and his far-right government. Under the weight of this propaganda, no wonder dissenting voices struggle to be heard in the Israeli population. Only a few dozen people bravely participated in rallies in Tel Aviv and in front of Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem recently to proclaim, “War is not normal; we must refuse to become accustomed to it.”
Beyond these protesters, certainly many Israelis are not enthusiastic about almost constantly having to wear fatigues. There is no count of how many of the 100,000 reservists called up after March 1st actually joined their units. In fact, since the war in Gaza and its proliferation of periods of reservist mobilization, only a minority of reservists have responded to the call, fewer than 40%. So now they are called “permanent reservists.” A significant portion are from far-right circles.
Netanyahu’s policies are dragging the Israeli people into endless war and a spiral of violence against all their neighbors. Peace can never come from this.
For the Israeli people to coexist with neighboring nations and with their own Arab citizens, they will have to oppose their leaders and break with the colonialist and expansionist policies pursued by successive governments of Israel since 1948. Offering the peoples of the Middle East an alternative to perpetual war means fighting warmongers like Trump, Netanyahu, and the leaders of all the imperialist powers.
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of March 9, 2026.
The U.S. war machine has attacked Iran.
Donald Trump blames the Iranian regime, which, he says, is headed by “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”
To American soldiers, Trump had this to say: “Lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.” Yes, it does, and people like Trump are never the ones who pay its price.
To the Iranian people, Trump had this to say: “When we are finished [bombing], take over your government. This will be probably your only chance for generations.… America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.… This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”
It’s true, the Iranian regime, a regime based on reactionary religious law, is vicious. The Iranian people don’t need Donald Trump to tell them that. Over the last eight years, they have taken to the streets four times in mobilizations that aimed at getting rid of that regime. But their goal was certainly not to bring the U.S. back into Iran.
Forty-seven years ago, the Iranian population had engaged itself in a vast social uprising that chased the Shah of Iran from power. Put in place by an earlier military coup, armed and paid for by the U.S., the Shah had ruled Iran for two decades, using widespread torture and prison. His regime protected U.S. and British oil companies.
In 1978–79, the strongest detachments of the popular revolution which brought him down were workers in Iran’s heavy industry, and especially its oil industry.
When the mullahs put themselves forward as defenders of the poor and opponents of U.S. and British oil companies, left organizations in Iran fell in line behind them, calling for “national unity” against imperialism. The working class was disoriented, the revolution hijacked. The mullahs set up a so-called “religious republic,” based on reactionary religious law.
As the Iranian working class discovered, it was not enough to drive a hated tyrant from power. It was necessary for the working class to organize its own power, to reorganize society. This wasn’t done; the opportunity for social revolution was lost.
To keep popular support, the mullahs nationalized British and U.S. oil companies, using some of the money for social support for the poor. In response, the U.S. encouraged Iraq to invade Iran. The war that developed lasted eight years and cost half a million lives on the two sides.
Left in a shambles, its people still more impoverished, much of its industry turned over to war production, Iran struggled to hang onto its nationalized oil industry.
When the regime which had nationalized oil didn’t collapse, the U.S. sought other ways to get its oil. Sometimes, Iran’s oil shipments were blockaded. Sometimes the West’s financial markets froze out Iran. Sometimes Israel, with U.S. backing, carried out bombing. Sometimes, the U.S. offered deals to the Iranian regime.
This put the Iranian working class between the devil and the deep blue sea, between enemy #1, the regime of the mullahs that repressed them at home; and enemy #2, the big imperialist powers, the U.S. first of all, which impoverished the country.
Today, Trump pretends to be a friend of the Iranian people, calling on them to come back out in the street in support of the U.S. war, pretending the U.S. will support them if they go up against the Iranian regime. The Iranian people have already seen how useless that support was two months ago, when they were left dangling, facing the regime’s violence. Tens of thousands died.
No, the only thing the Iranian working class can count on is itself—and the links it can forge with other workers. Just as the only ones American workers can count on are ourselves and the links we can have with other workers.
The wars that imperialism carries out are aimed, among other things, at dividing workers from each other, inside each country and across national borders. Our perspective must be to forge and reinforce the unity of our class. Our strength lies in our possibility to become an international class.
Not us, as gasoline shoots up 60 cents per gallon and the majority drive to work, or we get stuff that came on a truck, like food and clothing, or even have to fly for work.
The top oil producer in the world is the United States, followed by Saudi Arabia, then Russia, Canada and China. Every hour that oil cannot go through one of the world’s most important shipping lanes is an hour in which the largest oil companies have another excuse to raise their prices, and therefore, their profits.
Within the U.S., Texas is the largest oil-producing state, followed by New Mexico and North Dakota, so the rise in oil prices is ever so nice for their tax base. Not to mention over 400 oil rigs digging up oil night and day in the Gulf of Mexico.
There was a reason ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and the other oil majors used to be the richest corporations in the world. As the current war continues, they might beat out those tech stocks that have been speculated up to the top of the stock market. We know who war benefits!
Childcare is totally unaffordable for most working-class families. Forget about having one parent work and one stay home on today’s wages. Plus this society grinds up huge numbers of parents: they have their own untreated health problems that keep them from being caregivers, or are caught up in addiction, or are in prison. And in this society, where the fate of a child depends on the luck of what family they are born into, today’s children bear the brunt.
Luckily, many children have grandparents. Across the country, grandparents are picking up more of the slack to help raise children. Of course, grandparents have always been important in children’s lives. But fewer grandparents are able to be the fun ones who play with the kids and give them back, and more are having to take on the main caregiving responsibilities. It’s nice to be in the grandkids’ lives, but it’s also nice to have a choice about it!
According to one study, more than one million children under 18 are now cared for by grandparents, more than half by a single grandmother.
Many grandparents raising kids skip meals themselves, put off going to the doctor, or keep working well past the age of retirement. The share of Americans working past the age of 65 has doubled since the 1980s. And an analysis by Business Insider found that the rate of people working in their 80s has gone up by about 50% just since 2010. Today, about 550,000 American workers are in their 80s.
These working class grandparents have created huge amounts of wealth over their lives, more than enough that they should be able to retire. But that’s not how this capitalist society is organized!
Since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran on February 28, at least a dozen oil tankers and cargo ships have been hit by missiles in or near the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials have claimed responsibility for some of these attacks, and they have threatened more. As a result, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has come to a near standstill—falling from more than 150 ships per day to less than 10, of which most are probably Iranian ships.
Since about 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas is transported through the Strait of Hormuz, experts are already calling this crisis the biggest disruption to oil supplies in history. Oil prices have soared to around 100 dollars a barrel—a 40% increase since before the war began. And many countries around the globe are already experiencing an oil shortage and an increase in gas prices—not to mention the shortage of other crucial industrial goods shipped out of the Middle East, such as plastics, fertilizers and helium gas.
Commentators say that the U.S. oil supply is not directly affected by this crisis. No matter, U.S. gasoline suppliers have also begun to jack up the price at the pump sharply, using the war as another excuse to boost their profit.
No one knows when the Strait of Hormuz will open to traffic again. Trump has issued threats to Iran, but so far military threats alone don’t seem able to resolve the crisis. The Iranian regime has been digging in and fighting back. Whether the U.S. expected it or not, this war it started has been escalating.
The war also carries the risk of spreading beyond the Middle East. For example, seventy percent of all crude oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz is destined for Asia, so this disruption is affecting some large Asian economies like Japan and India. As for China, it seems to have prepared itself, building up a much bigger oil reserve than anyone else.
This war, and the Strait of Hormuz crisis in particular, show how dangerously we all live in a world marked by capitalist competition. Imperialist powers, above all the U.S., start wars to better control the world’s resources for the benefit of their own capitalists. But even these big powers cannot control the fires that they are throwing the world into.