18 June 2025
The decision by Netanyahu to escalate the brutal genocide of Gaza by launching new and unprecedented attacks on Iran has dramatically increased the danger of an all-out regional war raging across the Middle East.
Fast shifting events are taking place, with the situation changing on an hourly basis. Already it is clear that there is significant loss of life, particularly in Iran, and huge material and environmental damage – especially with oil and gas supplies being targeted. On top of this is the real danger of a nuclear catastrophe.
The potential for further escalation and for unpredictable, dangerous consequences is implicit in the threats uttered by Trump, who is demanding the immediate capitulation of Iran, and is discussing the use of US air forces to support the Israeli military. Over the last 48 hours, Trump has called on the residents of Tehran to flee, argued he knows where the Ayatollah Khamenei is “hiding”, and deployed military aircraft and warships into the region.
The attack on Iran also conveniently shifts attention away from the genocide in Gaza where the daily massacres and humiliation of the starving masses — over 300 people have been slaughtered and more than 2,000 wounded while trying to collect aid from the US backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation since May 26 — merits little more than a passing comment from the rulers and media outlets of the imperialist powers.
Indeed the statement by Macron, Starmer and Carney in mid-May criticising the attacks of the food aid convoys have been quickly forgotten as once again, the western powers have swung behind Netanyahu. Starmer has already sent fighter jets to the region ready for action if needed.
As public pressure, fueled by the harrowing images of deliberately starved children, mounted and began to create visible cracks and shifts in tone within Western governments, it is clear that the timing of Israel’s attack on Iran was no coincidence; it was designed, in part, to disrupt that momentum and restore a degree of consensus among key allies by resurrecting the narrative of the Israeli state’s supposed victimhood.
False claims
As if mirroring the attack by western powers on Iraq in 2003, with its non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the ongoing barrage of attacks started on Friday (the Israeli military itself claims it has hit 1,100 targets in Iran in 5 days) is based on the spurious claim of the imminent production and use against Israel of nuclear bombs.
Netanyahu has partly built his political career on claiming that Iran was on the point of producing nuclear weapons – in 1992 he claimed the regime was only three to five years away…and he has been making the same claim, as well as urging military intervention, for over 33 years.
Yet in recent months an IAEA report concluded that it had “no credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear programme” and the US Director of National Intelligence has discounted the idea that Iran was involved in a nuclear weapons programme.
Ironically, as a result of the attacks, the Iranian regime is now threatening to leave the NPT, or nuclear non-proliferation treaty. By leaving the NPT, Iran would no longer be obliged to forgo nuclear weapons or to accept international inspections.
Rather than preventing the Iranian regime from going nuclear, this attack is providing it the strongest incentive to do just that. As for the official claim that these attacks would enhance the security of ordinary Israeli citizens, it is fundamentally undermined by the deadly missile retaliations launched by Iran in response, which have directly harmed civilians within Israel —including Palestinian citizens living within the ‘48 borders, many of whom are excluded from access to the country’s bomb shelters.
Trump jumps on bandwagon
With the Israelis apparently winning aerial dominance, Trump seems to be now more explicitly jumping on the bandwagon to claim credit, although he changes his position from day to day. Trump now says that the Iranians should negotiate, forgetting the fact that there was already a programme of negotiations underway which Israel’s actions effectively torpedoed.
Echoing the way in which Israel killed Hamas leader and Chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh last year to delay peace talks, the recent attacks against Iran have targeted Iran’s nuclear negotiators. Israel has clearly not been interested in negotiations at all as they deem violence and destruction to be the most effective method of changing the regional balance of forces more decisively in their direction.
And it shouldn’t be forgotten that the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the so-called Iran nuclear deal, was the result of a painstaking process of negotiation between Iran and the US, China, Russia and other countries, which was sabotaged in 2018 during his first term when Trump unilaterally abandoned US involvement with the support of Netanyahu and the right wing in the US and Israel.
Much of the brutal strategy adopted by the Israeli military in Iran follows the Gaza playbook. It is not just military and nuclear sites that are attacked, but key infrastructural facilities, including telecommunications, television and radio and energy as well as a hospital in western Iran, all of which directly impact on ordinary peoples’ lives. And ordinary workers with no stake in the regime live by or work on these facilities, as cleaners, technicians, secretaries, and they are now paying for this with their lives.
Meanwhile, echoing events in Gaza, millions of residents of Tehran are told by the Israeli regime to flee for their lives. What of the sick or the old? And what will be left of their neighbourhoods if and when they return? Trump now repeats the call, grotesquely suggesting that he does so out of concern for saving life.
Israel seeks more than just an end to the uranium enrichment process. The aim is to degrade Iran’s overall military capability, especially the missile programme, as well as seeking the disbandment of the militias linked to the Iranian regime.
The logic is to exploit the window of opportunity presented by the considerable weakening of Iran’s strategic sphere of influence in the region —following Assad’s downfall and the heavy blows and partial leadership decapitation suffered by Hezbollah and Hamas over the last one year and a half— in order to decisively roll back Iran’s regional presence and reshape the regional balance of power in favor of the US-Israel axis.
Trump’s empty promises
They would like to see the overthrow of the Islamic regime and may dream of a return to the rule of the Pahlavis who ruled in happy collusion with Israel and the US right up to the Iranian revolution of 1979.
As far as ending uranium enrichment is concerned, that would require direct US intervention via their stealth bombers to attack the enrichment site at Fordow. Only American ‘bunker busters’ are apparently capable of reaching targets 90 metres underground.
Netanyahu has long tried to embroil other countries in this conflict, and Trump may decide to intervene directly – even though at the outset of the attacks, he claimed that the US was not directly involved. This denial was motivated by the fact that his administration had, over the preceding period, supported an attempted diplomatic solution before being pulled into Netanyahu’s hawkish agenda, and by his promises made during the election campaign that he would not involve the US in foreign wars.
After the blatant failure of his Ukraine diplomacy and the outright sabotage of the Gaza ceasefire, Trump’s promise to “end all wars”—a message that resonated among a significant part of his electoral base—is increasingly going up in smoke. A direct US military intervention in Israel’s war on Iran could exacerbate the contradictions within Trump’s presidency and trigger serious turbulence within the ‘MAGA’ movement.
In reality, the US has been involved from and before Day 1 of this war. It provides the military hardware, technology, intelligence and training without which the Israeli armed forces would not be able to conduct their murderous activities in either Gaza or Iran. The military support underwrites the political backing the US gives to Israel at the UN and elsewhere. For Israel to have acted as it did on 13th July, it would have required at least the foreknowledge and acquiescence of the US.
Elon Musk’s ‘Starlink’ satellite system has announced it will now provide internet services across Iran, after Tehran shut down their own system. Presented as a ‘humanitarian’ decision, Starlink is widely used by the military in controlling the new drone technologies. Apart from Ukraine, Starlink has recently provided services to Israel reportedly to guide new actions against Hezbollah and against the Houtis.
Starmer, alongside the other leaders of the G7, meekly tail the US support of Israel, wag their fingers at Iran, talk anew of Israel’s “right to defend itself” regardless of the fact that it has lashed out in an unprovoked aggression and continues to kill scores of Palestinians every day. They continue to sell Israel weapons and train Israeli soldiers.
Return of the Shah?
The exiled royalist Iranians, together with an assortment of political organisations and US based Iranian media outlets, have all enthusiastically supported Israel. Some organisations have probably worked in cooperation with Mossad to provide intelligence on the ground to enable the assassination of a number of regime-linked figures.
Their calculation is that the regime has no popular support and this attack provides the opportunity for the overthrow of the Islamic regime. To be replaced by what? For the royalists, it means the return of the Pahlavi dynasty, although there is no evidence of any desire for them within Iran, despite the efforts of BBC Farsi who consistently promote them.
Those that do support a restoration choose to forget the vicious repression, the gaping inequalities and the dire economic crisis of the late Shah’s final years. For our analysis of the role of the Pahlavi dynasty see “Iran: Stop the Hijacking of the Revolution!” first published in 2023.
It is possible, if the war continues, that civil society could fracture in Iran. Over recent decades the authority and legitimacy of the existing order has been called into question by workers strikes, by movements against national oppression, by the Green Movement of 2008, and, more recently, by “Woman, Life, Freedom”. At the end of last month, a nationwide truck drivers’ strike —one of the largest labor protests in recent years— spread to over 160 cities over the course of several weeks, and was met with large public support.
The regime hangs on through repression but is riven by division and corruption. There has been an erosion of confidence within the regime, and that has been reflected in the declining quality of its ‘cadre’ – such as the Revolutionary Guards. It is highly probable that Israel’s intelligence concerning key individuals has been assisted by bribery and corruption, indicative of the collapse of the moral authority of the regime.
The Supreme Leader Khamenei, now old and ill, has long promoted a vision of Iran as challenging Saudi Arabia for the moral leadership of the Islamic world, with the support of powerful international movements and nations that shared their outlook. This was never a vision endorsed by large sections of Iranian society, most of whom have in recent years become increasingly preoccupied with the daily struggle for economic survival.
With the eclipse of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the overthrow of their key ally Assad in Syria, as well as the ever-deteriorating economic situation in Iran itself, Khamenei has looked increasingly isolated. The regime prided itself for its skills internationally in walking a diplomatic tightrope and generally avoiding all out confrontation. The apparent failure to defend itself effectively from attack, and the doubts over the regime’s ability to sustain retaliatory attacks in the days and weeks ahead can all further erode confidence in Khamenei and the ruling elite.
Opposition to Israeli attacks
And yet, it appears that the brutality of the Israeli attacks, and the malign role of Trump and the US tend, for now, to swing the public mood in favour of a nationalist resistance, even if not in unqualified support for the regime.
The Guardian mentions a resident of Tehran who, while initially against Iran getting nuclear arms, is now in favour in order to defend the country. He is quoted as saying: “Many Iranians may criticise the government, but history has proven that Iranians unite when attacked by a foreign country.” Whether that sentiment is the same throughout Iran, for example in the Kurdish areas, is more questionable.
Another article based on interviews with mainly young opposition and trade union activists demonstrates how many see both Khomenei and Netanyahu as responsible for the brutality. “I am one of many young Iranians who want change. But this war is not helping us. It is destroying us. It is silencing the very people it claims to save” is the view of one young activist.
Neither the so-called moderate wing of the Iranian leadership around President Pezeshkian, nor the hardline wing of the leadership is undamaged, although in the short term the hardliners may be strengthened.
Any direct US involvement could lead to the Iranian regime attempting to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil supplies passes. The impact on the world economy of such a step would be disastrous and could in and of itself lead to an attempt by military intervention through troops on the ground, to keep the Strait open. On the other hand, such a move by Iran would also involve an element of self-inflicted economic damage, given that most of its own oil exports have to pass by the Strait.
New anti-war protests
Demonstrations against the war have started internationally, many of them will merge with the struggle against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and can also draw inspiration from the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement.
The statement by four women political prisoners — Reyhaneh Ansari, Sakineh Parvaneh, Verisheh Moradi, Golrokh Iraee — smuggled out of the notorious Evin Prison will inspire the protests. It reads:
“Our liberation, the liberation of the people of Iran from the ruling dictatorship, is only possible through mass struggle and by relying on social forces — not by placing our hopes in foreign powers. These powers — driven by exploitation, colonialism, war-mongering, and mass killing — have always brought devastation to this region. And for us, they will bring nothing but new forms of destruction and modern-day colonialism.”
There is already serious discontent at the way in which the Iranian regime has led the country into this dangerous impasse, that it has wasted huge amounts on uranium enrichment whilst there has been no serious plan for civil defence for ordinary workers. While many are able to flee Tehran, many more are not, either for economic reasons, because they have nowhere to go, or because the regime restricts travel.
It is absolutely sickening that one of the first fatalities of the Israeli rockets was the brave Zahra Shams, a devout hijab-wearing Muslim who publicly supported the 2022 protests. She died under a missile intended for her neighbor, a regime official.
The way forward
The lack of protection was highlighted last October by workers at the Kharg oil terminal. They warned:
“Considering Israel’s threats of a military attack on the oil facilities, the officials and management of this company don’t value the lives of the personnel and don’t even have a plan for the possibility of an attack on their agenda … There is no shelter, no equipment, no documents and no instructions on what to do, where to go and how to protect ourselves in case of an attack!!!!They have abandoned people here and only hire us to work with low wages and to be silent …Food for thought.”
This is indeed food for thought. It leads to the conclusion that only the independent organisation of the working class, the independent unions, and the struggle committees set up in the 2022 movement – can offer a way forward, even if at first that means a militant struggle to win effective protection. This would also raise the need to resist the attacks of the Israeli regime, as well as the overthrow of the Iranian regime itself.
The first inspiring steps have been taken in Iran, the peak of which was the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, and subsequently other strikes and protests, most notably the recent truck-drivers strike. Even though the first days of the brutal missile and rocket attacks will leave workers across Iran worried about their own lives and families, the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane workers and Tehran Bus Company workers are stepping up to show a lead.
In their statement they declare:
“We call on all labor unions, human rights groups, anti-war movements, environmental activists, and peace-seeking forces around the world to raise a united voice in demanding an immediate end to war, bombing, the slaughter of innocent people, and the devastation of the environment. We ask them to stand in solidarity with the struggles of the Iranian people and other peoples of the region to end genocide, militarism, and authoritarian repression.” [The full statement can be read below]
It is indeed true as the statement says that it is the “entirety of the global capitalist system, its profit-driven logic, and imperialist powers are the main causes of wars, human catastrophes, and environmental destruction.” This can only lead to the conclusion that it is necessary to build working class based, revolutionary forces across the region so that capitalism, imperialism and the different authoritarian regimes can eventually be defeated.
Statement from a Collective of Independent Iranian Organizations Opposing War and Warmongering Policies
Given the current volatile and dangerous conditions in Iran and across the region, the undersigned organizations find it necessary to adopt a collective stance.
The working people of Iran — including laborers, teachers, nurses, retirees, and other wage earners — have never benefited from war, militarization, aerial bombardment, or the policies of domination and exploitation, nor will they ever.
Israel’s military strikes, including the bombing of hundreds of targets across various parts of Iran — from key infrastructure and industrial sites to refineries and residential neighborhoods — are part of an aggressive war agenda. The price for this is being paid by ordinary people, particularly the working class, through loss of life, livelihoods, and daily insecurity.
Israel’s claims that it bears no animosity toward the Iranian people are blatant falsehoods and political propaganda. Only yesterday, Israel’s defense minister threatened to “burn Tehran.” Repeated threats from Trump and other U.S. officials — alongside the full backing of Western powers for such actions — have only further escalated tensions and destruction across the region.
The governments of Israel and the United States are leading perpetrators of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and countless other atrocities throughout the region and the world. International bodies like the United Nations, which strike poses of peacekeeping while remaining silent in the face of these crimes, are complicit in the global system of domination. The capitalist world order — with its profit-driven logic and imperialist centers of power — lies at the root of war, humanitarian catastrophe, and ecological collapse.
The Iranian working class not only gains nothing from war but is directly targeted by its consequences. Continued sanctions, vast allocations to military spending, and the suppression of freedoms will only deepen poverty, intensify repression, and bring about greater hunger, death, and displacement for millions.
We, as independent workers’ and grassroots organizations in Iran, hold no illusions that the United States or Israel intend to bring freedom, equality, or justice to us — just as we hold no illusions about the repressive, interventionist, warmongering, and anti-worker nature of the Islamic Republic.
For decades, Iranian workers and the oppressed have paid a heavy price — prison, torture, execution, dismissal, threats, and assault — for demanding basic rights and a dignified life. We are still denied the fundamental rights to organize, to assemble, and to speak freely. Workers and the toiling masses of Iran are justifiably enraged and alienated from a regime — and the capitalist class it protects — that has amassed immense wealth over four decades by enforcing a state of perpetual insecurity and dispossession. All those responsible for the suppression and murder of workers, women, youth, and the oppressed in Iran must be brought to justice by the people themselves.
Our struggle is a social and class struggle — rooted in our own power, continuing the trajectory of recent popular uprisings, from Bread, Work, Freedom to Woman, Life, Freedom. It is a struggle that aligns with the international working class and all forces committed to justice, freedom, and equality.
The continuation of the current war path will bring nothing but further destruction, irreversible damage to the environment, and new human tragedies. The Iranian working class and the country’s marginalized majority — like the oppressed peoples of other countries in the region — are the chief victims of this reality.
We call on all labor unions, human rights groups, anti-war movements, environmental activists, and peace-seeking forces around the world to raise a united voice in demanding an immediate end to war, bombing, the slaughter of innocent people, and the devastation of the environment. We ask them to stand in solidarity with the struggles of the Iranian people and other peoples of the region to end genocide, militarism, and authoritarian repression.
The peoples of the Middle East urgently need an end to the catastrophic power struggles between regional and global forces — and the establishment of a lasting peace, one built on grassroots organizing, mass participation, and democratic self-determination.
No to war — No to warmongering policies
An immediate ceasefire is our urgent demand
Signed by:
- Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company
- Syndicate of Workers of Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company
- Retired Workers of Khuzestan
- Retirees’ Unity Group
- Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers’ Organizations
- Retirees’ Solidarity Group
June 17, 2025