“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable” wrote Howard Zinn about the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986. Forty years later, the megalomaniac duo Trump-Netanyahu and their regional and European allies are trying to do just that in their never-ending and ever-expanding war throughout the Middle East.
Reaching new heights of cynicism, both authoritarian leaders appealed to the courageous mass uprising in Iran to bring down the dictatorial Ayatollah regime. This, despite the fact that it is their war itself that pushed back the mass movement. This imperialist war of aggression serves no ordinary person in the region, but only the fanatical wishes of the ruling class in Jerusalem and Washington.
Neither is there any prospect of national liberation for the peoples of the Middle East from the claws of oppression. Instead, US and Israeli imperialism seek to transform Iran from a Russian-Chinese ally to a US-Israeli client state. The cost is paid by the people in Iran and the region. As of day 17 of the war, 1,444 people have been killed and 18,551 injured in Iran alone according to Al Jazeera. The Iranian Red Crescent says more than 18,000 commercial buildings in Tehran have been destroyed.
The Israeli government, in 2.5 years of genocidal war in Gaza and throughout the region, has destroyed the lives of millions of ordinary people and has not solved any fundamental issue facing working people in Israel either. In fact, millions of Israeli workers have seen their living standards deteriorate, are living in constant fear of missile and terror attacks, losing their employment, and facing lack of shelter from missile attacks.
From the point of view of ordinary working people everywhere, the defeat of the Israeli and US war machine is in the best interests of those fighting for genuine freedom, security and equality. Such a defeat will not be achieved militarily at the hands of the Tehran regime or its allies in the region, but by mass working-class struggle, both throughout the Middle East and within the US. While fully opposing this war of aggression, socialists do not give an inch of support for the oppressive Ayatollah regime which in the course of a few months massacred many thousands of ordinary people in the country.
It is the task of the Iranian working class, with the support of workers everywhere, to bring down the Iranian dictatorship and replace it with a genuine workers’ democracy.
In a recent statement portraying Netanyahu’s fake claim that he prepared the ground for a new Iranian revolution, he said, “You can lead someone to water, you can’t make them drink.” This is an especially cynical appeal, coming from a corrupt war criminal who butchered tens of thousands of Palestinians and many more thousands of working and poor people throughout the region.
After two weeks of heavy bombing, both US and Israeli officials have admitted that the Iranian regime is less likely to collapse. True to typical imperialist behavior, the US-Israeli terror machine has prepared the region for more bloodshed and repression.
Bloodshed Continues in Lebanon
Under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israeli state terror has unleashed a new murderous onslaught on Lebanon, killing close to one thousand people since March 3.
Israeli jets have rained down relentless missile attacks on the civilian, Shi’ite-majority, southern district of Dahiya, where Hezbollah’s headquarters are based. Israeli far-right cabinet member, Bezalal Smotrich, said that Dahiya would resemble the decimated city of Khan Younis in Gaza. This goes beyond Israel’s horrific “Dahiya Doctrine” which focuses on the bombing of civilian infrastructure allegedly used by terrorist organizations. The bombing of a power station in the district in recent days will only add to the misery of ordinary people already facing severe energy shortages.
While Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) generals send contradictory messages about Israel’s war aims, Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, made a statement confirming a military ground invasion. In preparation, the IDF has called on civilians living south of the Litani River to evacuate. In addition to the bloodshed, it is reported that up to a million have been displaced, with hundreds of thousands evacuated from Southern Lebanon and hundreds of thousands more in and around Beirut.
It is possible to interpret Katz’s words as a new prolonged Israeli military occupation of South Lebanon, similar to the occupation of 1982-2000. This scenario will be extremely unpopular throughout the region, including in Israel itself. Some still refer to this chapter in history as “Israel’s Vietnam War.” However, both the Israeli regime and Hezbollah claim preparedness for long-term war.
In a speech on March 13, Hezbollah general-secretary, Naim Qassem, said that after 15 months of continued Israeli bombings in Lebanon following the 2024 so-called “ceasefire” and after the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, it was time to join Iran in the counter-offensive. A year and a half after the Israeli regime assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and spread mass destruction and death from Southern Lebanon to Beirut, it is clear that they failed in their attempt to completely neutralize Hezbollah.
Moreover, since the two forces signed the ceasefire agreement, large pieces of land within Lebanon and border points remain under Israeli occupation. It is clear that the Israeli regime never meant to reach an end to hostilities.
Hezbollah joined Iran’s counter-offensive with rockets launched into Israel. The Israeli military reported that in the first days, 200 rockets were launched per day, double the level in comparison to the previous bloody war in 2024. While the Israeli military clearly has the upper hand, Israel has warned the US it is running dangerously low on ballistic missile interceptors.
On March 12, it was widely reported that Hezbollah fired shells toward Syrian military positions along their border, although Hezbollah denied it. As this war spreads regionally, it still has the potential to swallow into it every force – from Turkey, to Iraq, and Yemen. This is, indeed, what the capitalist system has to offer impoverished working people in the Middle East and worldwide.
Lebanon in Crisis
The fragmented Lebanese government is too weak to respond to the crisis. President Joseph Aoun proposed negotiations with Israel, overseen by the US, that include disarming Hezbollah. Recognizing the weakness of the central Lebanese government and military, the Israeli government refused and decided, instead, to wage this war on their own. Growing frustration is showing its signs. Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, considered firing the army chief for his lack of action against Hezbollah.
The new round of war is just one aspect, albeit a significant one, of a total crisis in Lebanon. The country hasn’t yet recovered from the 2019 economic crisis that saw inflation spiking and foreign investment leaving. The influx of refugees from war in Syria totalled around 1.5 million and internal displacement from South Lebanon saw hundreds of thousands more. In addition, an estimated one million Lebanese left the country in recent years. In 2024 the World Bank reported that 44% of Lebanese live in poverty, 36% of them in extreme poverty.
It was the mass protest movement against government corruption and nepotism in 2019 that brought all the different sections of Lebanon’s working class together to demand better conditions. But since then, violent sectarianism has raised its ugly head, threatening to bring back the specter of civil war. Poverty is the lifeline of recruitment for reactionary forces such as Hezbollah and the Shi’ite nationalist Amal Movement in Lebanon. As long as war and poverty exist – under the direction of world imperialist forces, regional warmongers such as the Israeli government, and the corrupt capitalist Lebanese government – nationalism, sectarianism, and reaction will flourish. As 2019 showed in Lebanon and other countries – only a mass movement of a united working class can pose a real alternative to the horrors offered by a decaying capitalism.
Lebanon’s government isn’t alone in their subordination to imperialist interests. “Opposition parties” in Israel and the US either enthusiastically stand with the war effort, or present its “illegality” as their empty criticism. Workers should have no faith in these so-called oppositions, but rather expose them and build a fight for a real alternative. Workers worldwide have the urgent task of building new mass antiwar working class parties.
Daily Horrors Continue in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Under the cover of the Iran war, military-backed Israeli far-right settlers are escalating their terror against Palestinians in the West Bank. In the first two weeks of the war, Palestinians in a series of villages reported Israeli settler terrorists setting farms on fire. In the village of Tammun, occupation forces shot a man in the head while driving his car. His wife and two of their sons, aged five and seven were killed as well. The following night, settlers killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank, the fifth Palestinian to be murdered by settlers since the war in Iran began. In Humsa, dozens of armed settlers cuffed and beat Palestinians. International volunteers who protected the local children were reportedly dragged away and hundreds of livestock were stolen. In the Palestinian village of Si’ir, settler terrorists opened fire on Palestinian residents. Settlers began constructing a new dirt road in lands belonging to the Al-Mughayyir village in yet another act of land theft and expansion of Israeli settlements.
The Israeli state killing spree also continues in Gaza. Since the so-called “ceasefire”, occupation forces have killed 663 Palestinians, bringing the total to 72,239, according to the Gazan authorities. For Trump, the hypocritical talk about the “peace plan” and “rebuilding” has completely disappeared.
Who Pays for the Billionaires’ War?
During the first World War, the antiwar socialists who met at the Zimmerwald Conference stated, “New fetters, new chains, new burdens are arising, and it is the proletariat of all countries, of the victorious as well as of the conquered countries, that will have to bear them.”
The new bloody wave of war does not benefit ordinary working people in Iran, Israel, the US, Lebanon, or anywhere else. Its aim is solely to serve the wishes of the warlords in Jerusalem and Washington to fundamentally alter geopolitical relations in the region in their favor.
Despite a clear momentum on the side of Israeli and US imperialism, the regimes in both countries face mass unpopularity. While spending the last two weeks running to the shelters (for those who have access) the Israeli working class faces waves of austerity measures to fund war after war. Large sections of the population are sent to the front lines – on seven different fronts! – businesses close on a regular basis, and no end is seen in sight.
This is already the most expensive war in Israel’s history, when calculated per day. And that’s before calculating repairs to damaged infrastructure and economic implications. The government is planning a massive $300 million budget cut on the backs of working people.
The sentiment of desperation in society was expressed in a recent article titled “Why Israel’s national resilience is cracking” by Ron Ben-Yishai, war-correspondent and normally a mouthpiece for the Israeli military: “We are not given factual updates on the war situation, but instead are showered with clichés that create unrealistic expectations. A third of the population doesn’t have access to proper shelters, and the politicians are using us for their own survival. Is it a surprise that we’ve lost confidence?”
Small protests against the war are organized, but often have to end early due to missile alerts. Wartime is not a time for class struggle to take the backseat, but on the contrary – wartime calls for the acceleration of class struggle. All those forces who oppose “their” corrupt and repressive leaderships – from Iran, Lebanon, Israel, and the US – need to now mobilize twice as much and join the fight against imperialist war of aggression with the fight against exploitative capitalism at home.
The working class has the power to bring down all oppressive regimes and build a socialist alternative. International Socialist Alternative calls for a socialist confederation of the Middle East that ensures all resources are used for the social needs of everyone. Minority rights must be protected as part of workers’ solidarity. Only a socialist society with a democratically-planned economy can eradicate poverty, crime, and alienation and with that – eliminate sectarianism and militarism.
