In the second week of the US- Israel war on Iran, the situation is escalating through Trump’s threats of hitting Iran even harder if they continue to control the oil flow within the Strait of Hormuz. Following Trump’s assault on Venezuela, threats to Cuba and coveting of Greenland and alongside the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, this latest phase in his imperial ambition is deeply threatening, especially to the peoples of the Middle East but also more widely.
The aggression against Iran is directly related to the Zionist offensive against Palestine. Israel maintains its offensive against Gaza and continues to block the entry of humanitarian aid.
Israel has also intensified its military operations against Lebanon. Bombings and evacuation orders in the south of the country have already resulted in hundreds of deaths and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. Everything indicates that the Israeli government seeks to exploit the regional war to consolidate its strategic project of a “Greater Israel”.
Since 28 February the US-Israeli war on Iran has killed more than 1300 people in Iran including 200 children and tens of health workers. Iran has responded to the attacks by hitting US military bases in the Middle East, Hezbollah has attacked Israel in defence of Iran and Israel has killed more than 500 people in Lebanon and caused many thousands to be displaced.
Attacks on the military bases of the US and its allies and on the support infrastructure of the US/Israeli assault against Iran are legitimate responses to such aggression. We emphasize that we support Iran’s right to defend itself against the US and Israeli gangsters. The US and Israel are the aggressors, and they can end this war at any moment by ceasing their aggression.
Claiming to attack only military and strategic facilities, US and Israeli forces disguise the reality that the main target of the attacks, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has gone beyond being a military corps. It has become a huge social and economic institution controlling more than one third of Iran’s GDP, with its affiliated foundations dominating many sectors from agriculture and food production to construction. Iran has been ruled by a strongly institutionalized Islamic Regime embedded in all sectors of life for more than 40 years, which renders the claims for “targeted attacks” untenable.
The attack on Iran has led to ecological devastation, in particular the bombing of the oil refinery in Tehran which filled the sky with black smoke filled with toxic hydrocarbons, sulfur oxides and nitrogen compounds. This toxic smoke filling the lungs of Iranians is only the latest example of war leading to the poisoning of the natural world which all humans rely on, from the ecocide in Gaza to the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine by Russian bombing in 2023.
Trump’s inconsistent and cynical discourse on the aims and targets of US-Israeli war against Iran in these two weeks, has ranged from branding the assault as a helping hand to the Iranians’ fight for democracy and as a pre-emptive war against Iran’s nuclear program, to threatening the whole nation with annihilation1. It is clear that an entrenched authoritarian regime such as the Islamic Republic of Iran will not be brought down simply by assassinating its 86-year-old leader or demolishing its cities. What the United States appears to seek is the creation of a chaotic situation in which a new authority, presented as the “lesser evil”, will be accepted in order to stop the bloodshed. History may record this moment as the hijacking of a popular uprising through war and massacre.
We stand with the Iranian people in their struggle against tyranny
Iranians have been fighting for decades against their oppressive regime. Major examples include the 1999 student uprisings, the 2009 Green Movement, and the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. They have not only fought against the oppressive regime through protests, but also by building civil society institutions wherever possible and by pushing for gender equality despite heavy repression.
The last example of these protests started in the last days of 2025 and faced brutal suppression by the Iranian regime with an estimated death toll ranging between 10,000 to 30,000 people. Due to the highly repressive nature of the regime, this number remains unconfirmed. If these estimates are accurate, this would constitute the largest massacre carried out by the Iranian regime in decades.
From the standpoint of a political perspective based on the self-organization and self-emancipation of the masses, the imposition of Khameini or Pahlavi hereditary rulers can only aggravate the situation and once again block Iranians’ decades long struggle for social justice and democracy. Foreign interventions hijacking Iranians’ fights against authoritarian rule is not new. From British support to the first Pahlavi’s coup in 1921 and his abdication by Allied Forces in 1941 in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to the US and British orchestrated coup in 1953 against democratically elected prime minister Mosaddegh who nationalized Iranian oil, to decades long economic sanctions against the current regime that has not weakened the government but damaged the social and economic lives of millions of Iranians, imperialist foreign interventions have crushed the possibility of a democratic future for Iran and have helped create the conditions for the Islamic Republic to exist and rule.
There is no possibility of liberation under war. While cities are demolished and thousands of people are killed, the possibility of building a democratic movement is crushed further. The Fourth International’s fundamental compass has always been the perspective of the self-emancipation of the working masses. History has shown us dozens of times that any intervention carried out “in the name of freedom” from above, whether through compromises or through bombs, only produces another form of barbarism for workers, women and youth.
As we saw in the Iran-Iraq war after the 1979 revolution, the state of emergencies imposed due to wars can only crush opposition further. At this moment, pro-democracy forces inside Iran, including but not limited to thousands of political prisoners, are among the main targets of the Islamic regime, and their lives are in danger under the pretext of war. For this reason, we demand the immediate end to this imperialist assault on Iran, reaffirm that we stand with the struggle waged by the people of Iran against the oppressive Islamic Regime and support Iran’s right to defend itself against US and Israeli gangsters.
Down with US imperialism.
Stop US and Israel’s war
Free political prisoners in Iran
Build international opposition to this war - support pro-democracy, pro-women's right activists
No war, no dictators — hands off Iran.
12 March 2026