We have exposed from day one onwards that the unjust, pillaging, and terrorist character of the war the US and Israel launched on Iran in coordination with each other on February 28th. The US and Israel have continually targeted the civilian population and the civilian and economic infrastructure after bombing a girls’ school in the city of Menab with three Tomahawk missiles on the very first day of the war. Trump had addressed the people of Iran at the very outbreak of the war in his video message: “The hour of your freedom is at hand”, and had added, “Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” It was a huge lie that the US and Israel were waging war on a regime consisting of bad guys for the benefit of the people of Iran. Even before they could take shelter, the people of Iran became targets of imperialist-Zionist terror. Israel is making its terrorism permanent and expanding it from the launch of its ground offensive in Lebanon to its closing down of al-Aqsa Mosque to the Eid prayer.
Whenever the imperialists mention freedom, they never mean the struggle for bread and freedom that the people of Iran are laying down their lives for. Imperialism and Zionism are the enemies of people’s dignity. Those whom Netanyahu addresses when he says “The help has arrived”, or those who Trump calls upon when he says “when we are finished, take over your government”, are not the toilers of Iran. They address a collaborationist minority who can stoop so low as to see this terror that is wreaking havoc on their own country and slaughtering their own people as an opportunity. And they know well that it is not enough to destroy military targets or assassinate the important figures of the regime, that the people also need to be put down by terror, and they determine their fighting strategy accordingly.
The US and Israel are committing the same acts of terror in Iran and Lebanon to win the war that they had in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and most recently in Gaza. This is the method of imperialism and Zionism. The aim is to put down the people by fear and terror and thus break their resistance. Iran, on the other hand, is defending its homeland, and thus waging a just war. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is also responding to Israel’s ground offensive with a defense of the homeland. If the Houthis of Yemen also join the war tomorrow and close the Red Sea to navigation with their missiles, they will also be waging a just war. Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, who held a military parade in Gaza as the war was going on, are demonstrating that one of the most important fronts of the just and legitimate war against imperialism and Zionism is still active and standing.
The winds of defeat in the US
Despite the fright they created from the first day of the war onwards, the imperialist-Zionist terror front is now feeling the winds of defeat. Not even the shocking chain of assassinations that began with the top leader of the Iranian state, Ali Khamanei, and continued with the most recent murders of the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani and the Minister of Intelligence Esmail Khatib can turn this tide of defeatism. And the defeat of imperialism and Zionism is not just a state of mind. Concrete facts also point in the direction of a tendency towards defeat. The US has so far failed to militarily compel Iran to concede any of the demands it had brought to the negotiation table before the war. On the contrary, the US is stepping farther and farther away each day from bringing Iran’s nuclear program under control, halting its missile development projects, or liquidating its Axis of Resistance policies. At this point in the war, the Iranian side is attempting to gain psychological superiority by raising demands such as war reparations.
We are also witnessing that imperialism is losing its grip on such important points of priority as keeping the Strait of Hormuz open or controlling the energy supplies, named openly in the declared US security and defense strategy documents. Even though the strikes against the US Navy and Air Force do not cause strategic losses, they are nonetheless causing psychological destruction in the US rear that makes it difficult to continue the war. The opinion polls show clearly that the war is unpopular, and the support for it is collapsing further. There are cracks even within the MAGA movement, on which Trump leans. The opposition within the US is cornering the Trump administration through the open and revealed intelligence documents that state that Iran does not constitute a close security threat to the US. The oppositional voices that say “This is not our war” or “We do not want to be in an endless war for Israel” are growing louder within the US by the day.
And finally, just as the US is trying to generate chaos within the established regime in Iran, the US State is experiencing internal tremors. The sorry state that Tulsi Gabbard, the US National Director of Intelligence, found himself in during the US Senate Intelligence Committee session, as her own report was full of statements that refuted Trump’s justifications of the war, and as she faced verbal questions from the senators, was an open admission of the American-Israeli war’s illegitimacy on the side of the aggressors. The resignation of Joseph Kent, the former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, with the words “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”, are obviously only the tip of the iceberg.
Israel’s war is the US’s war! The survival of Israel is the guarantee for the American imperialist interests!
It is true that this began as Israel’s war. Israel has always attacked with Trump’s blank cheque, from the genocide in Gaza to the 12 Days’ War. If the US is giving a blank cheque to Israel’s war, then this is an American war also. Of course, that is, if Israel had not obtained this blank cheque through blackmail. Or if the risk that this war creates is not a part of some irrational agenda from the decision-makers’ point of view… Such as the Evangelical and Christian Zionists’ efforts to offset the War of Armageddon to prepare for the Doomsday and the Second Coming of Christ! Even though these themes are very popular, they conceal the unity of material interests between US imperialism and Israel’s Zionism. There is no need for blackmail for the US to engage in Israel’s wars! Within the US, the Evangelists or Christian Zionists have not begun this war; quite the contrary, they have been chosen as the agents who will continue this war in the interests of the US finance capital with utmost zeal and fanaticism.
Behind Israel’s genocidal and expansionist aggression lies the question of survival that Israeli Zionism has been experiencing since the Palestinian resistance took the step of al-Aqsa Flood. Zionism is responding to this question with an aggression that includes expanding towards Eretz Israel and eradicating the obstacles, such as the resistance potential in Palestine, through genocidal methods, the destruction of Iran’s conventional capacity and nuclear potential, and disarming the elements that make up the Axis of Resistance in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. Even though this aggressive strategy is deemed to be an expression of a Zionist motivation and the priorities of Israel, it is also quickly and directly becoming a part of the strategy of American imperialism. The US strategy consists of controlling the entire Western Asia through a structure with Israel at the center, and Turkey (through NATO) and the Arab regimes (through the Abrahamic Accords) group around this center. Israel is the keystone in this structure. If Israel falls, this entire structure collapses.
The US defeat in Iran shakes up the global imperialist strategy
If the US imperialist dominion collapses in West Asia, the American imperialist finance capital’s economic and military competition with China would suffer a mortal wound. Trump sees even the Ukrainian War as an obstacle to focusing on China, and he is trying to outsource stopping the Russian threat to the NATO-member countries of Europe. In Western Asia, he already has a proxy that can carry out his deeds, and that proxy is Israel. The US engaged in Israel’s war with full force precisely to avoid another Ukraine-like quagmire in Western Asia, but found itself stuck in a quagmire worse than in Ukraine.
The quagmire that the US war machine is stuck in is triggering a massive crisis in the US rear, and increasing the tension between the US and its allies. Trump’s calls on NATO members to take military initiative to open the Strait of Hormuz are rejected one by one. The Gulf states that Iran hits are seeking the security that the American air defense systems failed to provide in alternative diplomatic openings, especially with China. The US has shouldered Israel’s war as a necessary component of its global strategy. It has been compelled to prioritize the war against an enemy force of secondary importance compared to China, in a geographical area (Western Asia) of secondary importance compared to the Pacific, outside of its will and plan. It cannot get out of this war without guaranteeing an Israeli victory. But as the war continues, its weaknesses grow, the chaos inside the country grows, its sphere of influence contracts, the centrifugal tendencies among American allies increase, and most importantly, Russia and China, which the US is focused on bringing into submission globally, win the initiative.
This is our war! The path to peace runs through the defeat of imperialism!
As the hue and cry of “This is not our war” increases within the ranks of imperialism, the working class and the oppressed must claim this war as their own. We are not speaking of politically embracing the regime in Iran or any other fighting force. We are rather speaking of embracing this war that strikes blows against imperialism and Zionism as our own, and using the conditions the defeat of imperialism and Zionism creates for a proletarian revolution. We say that the path to peace runs through not wishing it but through the defeat of the imperialist reaction that brings about the war.
The way the war is going demonstrates that the people laying down their lives in the struggle for bread and freedom against the bourgeois and despotic regime in Iran cannot expect even the smallest good deed from imperialism and Zionism. The US and Israel are not fighting solely against a regime, but are fighting against the entire people of Iran. It is not only targeting civilians to compel the people into submission through terror; it is also wreaking havoc on all objective possibilities for a future independent of imperialism with Iran’s economic infrastructure. Iran’s poor and toilers, its enduring youth and women, and its peoples from all nationalities and regions will never abandon their struggle for bread and freedom. They shall neither forgive nor forget the oppression they have endured in this struggle. At the same time, they shall never submit to imperialism or Zionism. The instruments of war of the Revolutionary Guard can only break the imperialist and Zionist aggression. But these same instruments reveal Iran’s gravest and most mortal weakness against imperialism when they are used to suppress the people. The only force able to break through the imperialist chains in Iran is the government of toiling people under the leadership of the working class.
For the oppressed nations also, the Kurdish people foremost among them, the path to liberation runs not through the victory of imperialism, but through taking advantage of the conditions that the defeat of imperialism would generate. In the path imperialism opens, there are only the nations being set up against one another. In the path opened up against imperialism, on the other hand, there is the fraternity of peoples. Today, the task for the world working class and all oppressed is to join the struggle to bring down imperialism and Zionism, against whom the Palestinian people hit the first blow.
Turkey’s side should be those who are defending their homeland, not that of imperialism and Zionism!
This is what the Revolutionary Workers Party (DIP) in Turkey has been calling for since our declaration in front of the US Embassy on the very first day of the war, on February 28th. Of course, our primary task is to work in this direction within our own country. That Turkey has not entered the war with Iran on the side of the US, that the Incirlik Base in Turkey is not being used effectively by the US, that Turkey is following a cautious path despite the NATO countries’ and the US’s exploitation of a few missiles and aircraft destroyed on the Turkish border to provoke Turkey into entering the war - these are all important but not enough. Further, these do not cancel out the fact that the government in Turkey has not declared the US and Israeli attack illegitimate or that it actually condemned Iran, which is defending its homeland. The Kürecik Base in Malatya is providing intelligence to the illegitimate US-Israeli aggression.
The people’s reaction against imperialist and Zionist aggression is also leading to a partial weakening of the religious sectarianism that the government has been fomenting for years. Similarly, the people’s reaction is also forcing the bourgeois opposition, which used to recommend that NATO attack Iran prior to the war, to take up a stance against the US and Israel. These are all positive developments, of course. But the colonialist bourgeoisie of Turkey has always banked on, and is banking on, the victory of imperialism and Zionism. If the tide of the war had turned towards a US-Israeli victory, it would be just a matter of time for the sectarian scoundrels, Britophile Caliphate-mongers, pro-NATO and pro-EU leftists, Zio-Panturkists, vultures hellbent on exporting democracy to Iran - in short, servants of imperialism and Zionism of all colors and stripes - to step back up. The rightful indignation of the toiling people against imperialism and Zionism must merge with a revolutionary anti-imperialist program.
Turkey out of NATO! Shut down all imperialist bases, İncirlik and Kürecik foremost!
Take over the American assets in Turkey! Nationalize the American capital under workers’ control!
Turkey out of the European Customs Union! Ban the Dollar! Refuse the foreign debt!
Full embargo against Israel! Economic, diplomatic, cultural, and academic boycott!
Military, economic, and diplomatic support to Iran for the US-Israeli defeat!