The US-Israeli assault on Iran over the past week has opened a new front in an escalating war that is expanding throughout the region and the world.
On Thursday, the Trump administration announced that it would make a decision “within the next two weeks” on whether to directly attack Iran, rather than relying on its Israeli proxy, which initiated the war a week ago with military strikes. Israel has launched daily attacks on Tehran and other targets, which continued on Thursday.
In the US media there is open speculation that Trump’s delay of a decision for two weeks could be “a cover for a decision to strike, immediately.” As retired Admiral James Stavridis put it in comments on CNN, a “ruse to lull the Iranians into a sense of complacency.” This would conform to the gangster methods used by Israel and the US last week, when Israel seized on the opportunity created by supposed negotiations between the US and Iran to assassinate top government and military officials.
Earlier this week, Trump said he would make a decision on whether or not to launch direct war against Iran “one second before” doing so. The New York Times also noted that a delay of two weeks would give the US time to “bolster [its] own military options,” while Israel continues its bombardment.
One unintended consequence of Trump’s delay is to further explode the lying narrative, promoted by Israel and all the capitalist powers, used to justify an illegal act of aggression. Israel claimed it launched the strikes in order to defend against what it called an “imminent threat.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Iran is “a clear and present danger to Israel’s very survival” due to its purported nuclear weapons program.
The real goal of the war—the overthrow of the Iranian government—has quickly come to the fore. On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared that Israel’s supreme leader Khamenei “cannot continue to exist.”
In making this statement, Katz was reiterating the declaration earlier this week by John Bolton, the Bush administration’s ambassador to the UN, that “the only lasting foundation for Middle East peace and security is overthrowing the ayatollahs. America’s declared objective should be just that.”
As always, there is a staggering level of hypocrisy in every word uttered by Israel and its imperialist backers. Katz proclaimed that the murder of Ayatollah Khamenei was necessary because of an Iranian missile strike that hit an Israeli hospital building, with 80 people suffering minor injuries. Meanwhile the Israeli government murders dozens of Palestinians at aid centers on a daily basis, after having destroyed nearly every hospital on the Gaza Strip.
Hypocrisy is accompanied by lying on a colossal scale. The propaganda to justify war against Iran mirrors the lies used to justify the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Then, lies about “weapons of mass destruction,” were used to sell an illegal war of aggression that culminated in the sectarian lynching of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The war led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the destruction of an entire society.
Today’s lies are even more brazen. Even US intelligence agencies acknowledge that Iran is not seeking to build nuclear weapons, and the country has opened its nuclear energy facilities to international inspectors. Israel, on the other hand, has amassed an arsenal of nuclear weapons in defiance of international law.
As for being a “clear and present danger,” Israel has engaged in a systematic campaign of murder and assassination of Iranian leaders and has, for the past 20 months, been waging a campaign of extermination directed at the Palestinian people.
What is the real aim of the war? American imperialism, utilizing its proxy Israel, is seeking direct domination of the vital, resource-rich region and its arterial corridors of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea. For the ruling class, this is considered critical not just in itself but as an essential preparation for a planned conflict with China.
In pursuit of this aim, US imperialism is willing to commit any crime. In a post on X, Jacqui Heinrich, an anchor at Fox News, reported that the White House denied “that any options (including tactical nukes) have been taken off the table.” In other words, the United States is actively contemplating the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.
American imperialism has never reconciled itself to the loss of Iran as a central client state in the Middle East. From 1953—when the CIA orchestrated a coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh—to 1979, the Shah ruled as Washington’s gendarme in the Persian Gulf. The 1979 revolution that overthrew the brutal US-backed dictatorship of the Shah was a major blow to American imperialism.
The launching of the “war on terror” by the Bush administration aimed to reverse all of these setbacks through the unleashing of limitless imperialist violence. The Bush administration had a goal of waging, in the words of retired General Wesley Clark, “seven wars in five years,” including regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
Ultimately, the Bush administration was only able to launch wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, which became bloody quagmires for US imperialism. The Obama administration overthrew the Libyan government and launched a regime change operation in Syria that ultimately led to the overthrow of the al-Assad government in 2025. Under Biden and Trump, Israel launched a program of mass killing and bombing that wiped out the leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon. But the greatest prize for US imperialism in the Middle East, the toppling of the Iranian government, is now on the agenda.
The war against Iran, as with the genocide in Gaza that preceded it, can only be understood as a component part of a global war of imperialist domination and counter-revolution. Whatever the differences within the American ruling class, all factions—Democrat and Republican—are united on this strategic imperative. The American media, true to form, has quickly fallen in line, parroting the propaganda of the Trump administration and braying for war.
As for the imperialist powers of Europe, they are once again concerned that the United States is cutting them out of the spoils, while backing Israel’s bloody violence. “This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared earlier this week—that is, murdering in order to subjugate the Middle East to imperialist control.
In a statement posted on X earlier this week, Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister in the Syriza government in Greece, declared, “Ignore the war with Iran. Iranians can defend themselves. Palestinians need us to KEEP TALKING GAZA!” This statement, by a prominent representative of the international pseudo-left (who helped impose EU austerity), is a declaration of political bankruptcy.
One of the central issues that the main organizers of the protests against the genocide in Gaza have sought to cover up was the relationship between the slaughter of the Palestinian people and the broader imperialist war of which it was a part, including the US-NATO war against Ukraine and the developing conflict with China. With the war against Iran, the reality of this global conflict has erupted to the fore.
At the same time, the war has laid bare the complete bankruptcy of the Iranian bourgeois regime. Even now, under conditions of direct military assault, the Iranian government continues to appeal for negotiations. But imperialism cannot be reasoned with. Its aim is the total subjugation of Iran and the plundering of its vast resources.
The Socialist Equality Party is issuing an urgent call for mass opposition to the Trump administration‘s imminent attack on Iran. In the United States, millions poured into the streets last weekend in demonstrations against Trump’s fascist government, deportations, repression and dictatorship. These protests have shown that there is a deep and growing opposition to war and authoritarianism within the heart of the leading imperialist power. But this opposition must be armed with a clear political program. It must be organized consciously as a movement of the working class, independent of and opposed to all factions of the capitalist ruling class.
The struggle against war must be inseparably linked to the fight against inequality, dictatorship, and exploitation. It requires the building of a unified, international movement of the working class against capitalism and for socialism.