On Thursday evening, under the cover of darkness, Israel launched a massive air and missile assault on Iran, striking air defenses, nuclear facilities, key military personnel and command centers.
At least 78 people were killed and over 300 injured in the largest attack on Iran since the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Israel assassinated six nuclear scientists and 20 high-ranking military personnel, including the Chief of Staff of Iran’s military and the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The World Socialist Web Site unequivocally condemns Israel’s illegal and unprovoked assault on Iran as a brazen act of imperialist aggression. The increasingly unhinged Israeli regime—already carrying out a genocide against 2 million people in Gaza—has now deliberately provoked war with a country 10 times its size, threatening catastrophic consequences for the entire region.
Israel’s claim that it acted in “self-defense” against an alleged Iranian nuclear program is an absurd and transparent fraud. It is well known that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, acquired in violation of international law.
Prior to the assault, Iran was engaged in negotiations with the White House over its nuclear program. In the days leading up to the strike, every major imperialist government—including the United States—made statements saying they opposed an Israeli attack on Iran, calling instead for a negotiated settlement.
The United States even went so far as to announce a new round of talks with Iran on Sunday just hours before Israel, with US foreknowledge and complicity, began raining missiles down on Tehran. Within the span of 24 hours, the White House went from vocally proclaiming it opposed an Israeli attack on Iran to publicly gloating about it.
Asked by the Wall Street Journal Friday whether the US got a “heads-up” of the attacks, US President Donald Trump replied, “Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. It was, we know what’s going on.”
In reality, the so-called “negotiations” were a treacherous charade, designed to provide Israel with the opportunity to kill Iran’s military leaders in their homes. Among those targeted and killed in Israel’s Thursday night attack was top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Shamkhani.
Citing US and Israeli officials, Axios reported Friday that “Trump and his aides were only pretending to oppose an Israeli attack in public—and didn’t express opposition in private. ‘We had a clear U.S. green light,’ one claimed. The goal, they say, was to convince Iran that no attack was imminent and make sure Iranians on Israel’s target list wouldn’t move to new locations.”
The fact that Iran allowed a significant portion of its leadership to be killed—apparently while they were in civilian dwellings vulnerable to missile strikes, even as the American press openly telegraphed an Israeli attack—is a devastating exposure of the Iranian regime’s strategic bankruptcy. The regime placed immense confidence in the good faith of the Trump administration. Ignoring and forgetting all that has happened, including Trump’s authorization of the murder of General Suleimani in January 2020, the Iranian leaders were convinced that the United States would restrain Israel while negotiations were pending. They fell for a simple trick, like a child taking candy from a stranger.
But there are politics behind the Iranian regime’s astonishing naivete. Terrified of its own working class, the Iranian capitalist elite is desperately seeking an agreement with the imperialist powers, who have demonstrated their full commitment to Iran’s destruction and subjugation.
Israel’s attack on Iran has also exposed where the European imperialist powers really stand, despite their recent criticisms of aspects of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The German government announced that Netanyahu had informed Chancellor Merz of the planned assault. Both the French and German governments issued statements affirming Israel’s “right to defend itself” and condemning retaliatory strikes by Iran.
The attack on Iran is the direct outcome of the longstanding US-Israeli drive to create a “new Middle East” under imperialist domination, intensified in the wake of the events of October 7, 2023. It was made possible by the immense political, military and intelligence support Israel has received from the United States for decades, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The Pentagon and Israeli military have long planned and war-gamed an assault on Iran and its nuclear program—an attack that Trump has repeatedly vowed to authorize.
US imperialism has never accepted the outcome of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which overthrew the dictatorship of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a key American ally in the Middle East. Washington backed Iraq in its brutal war against Iran throughout the 1980s. Even as it turned on Iraq—waging war in 1990–91 and invading in 2003—the installation of a US-aligned regime in Tehran remained a central objective.
Today, Iran is grouped with Russia, China, and North Korea as a major obstacle to US global hegemony—one that Washington is determined to eliminate at any cost.
The ultimate aim of this assault is the imperialist domination of the Middle East—the world’s most important oil-exporting region and home to critical trade routes and strategic chokepoints, including the Persian Gulf. By subjugating Iran, a key ally of both Russia and China, the United States aims to strengthen its global position in preparation for direct confrontation with its principal strategic rivals.
History has shown that imperialist wars lead to unforeseen and catastrophic consequences. Just as the US invasion of Iraq unleashed a regional disaster, so too will Israel’s assault on Iran. The people of the Middle East will not remain passive as their countries are turned into battlegrounds for imperialist domination.
The international working class must respond by building a conscious movement against imperialist war and the capitalist system that gives rise to it.
The World Socialist Web Site calls for the defense of Iran from imperialist violence and subjugation. But this can not be waged through the support of any bourgeois government. It requires the independent mobilization of the working class of the Middle East and the whole world, in opposition to all ethnic, racial and religious divisions, on the basis of a revolutionary socialist program.