The attack by the Zionist state, in Israel, on 100 targets, in Iran, has, in one fell swoop, destroyed the narrative presented, by NATO, and parroted by the social-imperialists. Firstly, no one believes the US claims that, it and its NATO allies, particularly Britain, were not involved in this attack on Iran. The Zionist state does not have the independent technological capability to do so, besides which, in the last week, the US openly withdrew personnel from the region, signalling that something was afoot. Both Trump and his friend Netanyahu have confirmed that they were fully informed, before the attack. Secondly, by engaging in such an attack, the Zionist state, its NATO sponsors, and the social imperialist apologists, have given the lie to the argument they have used in relation to Russia's attack on Ukraine.
The Zionist state has argued that “it had no choice”, but to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran, hitting 100 different sites, using 200 planes, and also, using MOSSAD special forces, inside Iran, to first take out Iranian air defences. In fact, with international nuclear inspectors already on the ground in Iran, and talks between Iran and the US, taking place, on Iran's nuclear programme, its not at all clear, why “it had no choice”, at this particular moment. There is no suggestion that Iran has a nuclear weapon, let alone the capacity to turn one into a warhead that could be delivered, nor, even that it is close to obtaining such a weapon. Even if it were, there are other channels that could have been used, before just launching such an attack. Moreover, in international law, attacks on nuclear facilities are illegal, a fact that is repeatedly stated whenever explosions go off near Russian controlled, Ukrainian facilities, in Eastern Ukraine.
As many observers have noted, the likely result of the attack, is, in fact, that it will give Iran an excuse to kick out the international inspectors, end the talks with the US, and press ahead with the development of such a nuclear weapon, on the basis that, if it has one, the Zionist state would be less likely to undertake such violations of its sovereignty in the future. What, is more likely to have caused the Zionist state to feel it “had no choice”, at this moment, is that having implemented the strategy of US imperialism in carrying out the genocide in Gaza, and with that proceeding into the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, imperialist states, particularly in Europe, have begun to cover their backsides, and to apply pressure to the Zionist state, to give them more leverage in the coming years, and the geo-strategic developments in the region.
Even the UK, with its Zionist Prime Minister, and Foreign Secretary, backed by the Zionists of Blue Labour, have been led to try to pick up a fig-leaf of cover, by imposing modest sanctions on two of the most egregious Zionist war criminals Gvir and Smotrich, which only, all the more, begs the question of why only them, and not the whole Zionist regime, starting with Netanyahu? Even as they impose these sanctions, the UK, continues to supply the Zionist state with the weapons, the technical assistance, the high level intelligence and so on that allows that regime to continue with its genocide and other war crimes. But, the fact that the UK was led to adopt even that fig-leaf of cover, along with other EU countries, shows that the politicians are also worried about their own skins, as the reality of the genocide and those war crimes is aired in the courts, in coming years.
The Europeans never intended the ICC to be used to put them, and their allies in the dock, and, they should clearly have listened to the US imperialists, and the Zionists, who stayed well clear of any such entanglement, ensuring that they could be free to continue to commit war crimes, and crimes against humanity, unimpeded, without having to justify themselves to any such international tribunal. Not surprisingly, therefore, the US placed sanctions not on the Zionist war criminals, but on the international judges of the ICC, for having dared do their job, and bring the Zionist war criminals to the dock. Not surprisingly, US imperialism has also condemned its other NATO allies, for having imposed sanctions even just on Gvir and Smotrich.
Those disagreements, also, reflect the differing interests of US imperialism, and European imperialism, and the jockeying for position between the two, as the further geo-strategic, chess game in the region proceeds. But, that, also, is why the Zionist state really considered it had no choice but to strike at this time. It sees, the NATO alliance that stands behind it as fracturing, just as a similar fracturing of it has occurred as a result of the inter-imperialist war between the US and Russia in Ukraine, and between the US and China in the Pacific. The world's attention has been drawn to the genocide in Gaza, and its continuation in the West Bank. The US, first under Biden/Harris, and continued under Trump/Vance, promoted and enabled that genocide, and continues to do so. In the US, Biden/Harris violently suppressed any opposition to the genocide, utilising the now routine claims about any criticism of the Zionist state, being “Anti-Semitic”, using the definition of that term by the IHRA. Trump has simply picked up where Biden/Harris left off, in that regard.
But, the US was already becoming increasingly isolated in its stance, even under Biden/Harris, and is even more so, now, under Trump/Vance. For European politicians, as well as for liberal US politicians, Trump is a problem, because Trump is clearly a moron, but, worse for them, he is a moron who does not realise it, and who simply blurts out, and implements his reactionary agenda for all to see, much, indeed, as have the Zionist war criminals in Israel. Trump has separated US imperialism from the EU, as well as Canada and Mexico, as a result of his idiotic imposition of tariffs. Trump is just a US manifestation of the same petty-bourgeois, nationalist politics of Zionism, and of the likes of Brexitism (including "Left" Brexitism) of Farage, and Starmer. He is bringing about the same kind of bifurcation in European politics that he has created in the US – a brutal, boorish petty-bourgeois, nationalist camp, versus the rest, which, in the absence of any organised working-class camp, amounts to an effete, liberal camp damned by its own previous actions, and with one eye, looking over its shoulder, in case anything it does provokes the working-class into action, which would quickly roll over it.
Trump's international isolation, and failures, the disaster his actions are creating for the US economy itself, his rupture with Musk, and so on, provoked his own invasion of California. In the same way that bourgeois liberals in Europe have had to raise, of course, in the mildest and politest tones their disapproval of the genocide being undertaken by the Zionist regime, so the bourgeois liberals in the US, have had to begin to criticise Trump and his regime for their invasion of California, and more significantly, have, now, openly, had to begin pointing out that Trump's behaviour is not part of some clever, negotiating and business skill, as part of “the art of he deal” (which Trump probably never even read let alone wrote), but are the consequence of him just being a boorish, ignoramus!
These are dangerous developments for the bourgeoisie, because what does it say about the narrative it has always presented about capitalism being a meritocratic and democratic system, in which hard work and ability is rewarded, and the cream, thereby rises to the top? And, not just in respect of Trump. The liberal, bourgeoisie, in the US, via their media, now openly ridicule nearly all of Trump's Cabinet as intellectually defective. Rather than Trump being some kind of business genius, and negotiator, the facts about his serial business failures and bankruptcies are laid out, and he has acquired the epithet of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out).
In Europe, Trump had the acolytes of Farage and Boris Johnson, in Britain, pushing Brexit, as well as the likes of Le Pen, Wilders, and so on in the EU. That division is sharpening. Those Trumpist, petty-bourgeois, nationalist elements continue to drive in that direction. In Britain, Farage has simply supplanted the Tories, and vies for the support of that large, reactionary petty-bourgeois mass with Starmer. In the meantime, the bourgeois liberals (Blair-rights, soft lefts) inside Labour are silent, and cowed, as he sucks up to Trump and his increasingly authoritarian, Bonapartist regime, whilst the bourgeois-liberals inside the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats appear like rabbits caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, about to run over them, incapable of understanding the changed conditions they face.
So, the decision of the Zionist state, to engage in this attack on Iran, has taken advantage of those conditions. If Iran responds, besides the fact that its response will be ineffective, it will provide cover for US imperialism, to focus only on the response as it has done on previous occasions, rather than the attack, but, will also draw in NATO to counter the Iranian response. If Iran fails to respond, it will simply emphasise its own weakness.
The argument used by the Zionist state, is, basically, the same argument used by the US for its encirclement of Cuba, in 1962, and threat to start WWIII. It is, also, the argument used by the Zionists and social-imperialists of the AWL, twenty years ago, when they set out the arguments to be used to justify any Zionist bombing of Iran. Unfortunately, for imperialism, and for the social-imperialists, that argument immediately undermines the argument they have made in response to Russia's attack on Ukraine.
Of course, if you view the world from the perspective of nation states, or alliances of such states, the argument that every state has the right to defend itself, to assert national independence, and self-determination, is legitimate. What is more, as Lenin described, no sensible state would simply stand by and allow other states to encircle it, or build up forces on its borders, accumulating weapons ready to strike. On the contrary, it would seize the initiative, and strike first.
“Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims – seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence – with such ideas as “safeguarding peace against the aggressors,” “defence of the fatherland,” “defence of democracy,” etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people. “The question of which group delivered the first military blow or first declare war,” wrote Lenin in March 1915, “has no importance whatever in determining the tactics of socialists. Phrases about the defence of the fatherland, repelling invasion by the enemy, conducting a defensive war, etc., are on both sides a complete deception of the people.” “For decades,” explained Lenin, “three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia, and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?””
That is what the US did in threatening nuclear war in response to the deployment of soviet missiles on Cuba, its what the Zionist state has done in attacking its neighbours on numerous occasions, and now with Iran, and it is, also, what Russia has done in response to the continued expansion of NATO up to its borders, and threat of Ukraine joining NATO. So, those who view the world from the perspective of states, and specifically of bourgeois states, can legitimately set out their case for such pre-emptive strikes, but, in doing so, the hypocrisy of their argument in relation to Russia's invasion of Eastern Ukraine, is fully exposed.
For Marxists, however, we do not view the world from the perspective of states, least of all bourgeois states, but from the perspective of classes. In doing so, we proclaim ourselves as militant champions, not of any state, but of one of those contending classes – the working-class. So, having set out the hypocrisy of the Entente, in WWI, in their argument against Germany, for having started the war, Lenin and the Bolsheviks found no reason, either to defend or justify Germany and its allies. Our interest, in that case, lay with the workers on each side, thrown into a meat-grinder, not for the furtherance of their own interests, but the interests of their own ruling classes.
Similarly, whilst Marxists highlight the sheer hypocrisy of NATO imperialism, and of the social imperialists, in attacking Russia for an “unprovoked” attack on Ukraine, that is no reason for us to back Russia either. Our interest, and our solution resides in the action, not of states, but of the working-class, as a global class, and the building of the maximum unity of that class, across borders. Our principle is “The Main Enemy Is At Home”. It is the bourgeois ruling class, and its state. On that basis, as Lenin and Trotsky set out, we give no credence to the claims of a right of states to defend themselves, or as it is presented “defence of the fatherland”. We support only the right of the working-class to defend itself against the attacks of the bourgeoisie, and its state. Our means of achieving that is via international working-class solidarity, opposition to all standing armies, and foreign wars, and the creation of workers' militia, under the direct democratic control of workers councils.
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