Hands off Iran! No to imperialist ‘regime change’!

13 June 2025 marked a dangerous turning point in the Middle East. Israel, backed by US imperialism, launched unprecedented strikes on Iran, targeting military sites but also causing heavy civilian casualties.

This war was not chosen by the Iranian people. Yet we bear its brunt. We have suffered through years of sanctions, poverty, repression, and now, bloodshed. 1,054 are reported dead and 4,476 injured, many of them civilians.

Israel claims to have struck strategic military and nuclear facilities, yet the destruction tells a different story. Civilian areas near alleged military sites were hit, and eyewitnesses report damaged homes and non-combatants among the dead. Particularly horrifying is the reported strike on Hakim Children’s Hospital in Tehran – a grotesque violation of even the most basic humanitarian norms.

While the regime obscures the full toll, the truth is clear: innocent lives are being sacrificed. Responsibility lies not only with the aggressors in Tel Aviv and Washington, but equally with Iran’s corrupt and incompetent rulers.

Delusions of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu

The Israeli aggression is not an expression of strength, but a desperate attempt by a politically embattled regime to shore up its collapsing authority. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a deep political crisis: a wave of protests over his judicial reforms, corruption charges hanging over his head, splits within his own ruling coalition, and growing discontent even among sections of the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus. The government is increasingly isolated and unstable.

In this context, war becomes a tool of survival. By escalating conflict with Iran, Netanyahu seeks to deflect attention from domestic turmoil, unite a fragmented ruling class, and reassert his authority. The long-standing demonisation of the Iranian regime – fed by decades of imperialist propaganda – provides a ready-made justification for this aggression. But this war is not about ‘security’ or ‘defence’, as far as Netanyahu’s calculations are concerned – it is a cynical manoeuvre to externalise internal contradictions and maintain a grip on power.

Netanyahu seeks to deflect attention from domestic turmoil, unite a fragmented ruling class, and reassert his authority / Image: public domain

It is a calculated attempt on Netanyahu’s part to deflect from the deep internal crisis facing the Israeli state: political instability, economic uncertainty, the erosion of trust in state institutions, and intensifying divisions among the ruling class, the military, and the population at large. The brutal occupation of Palestine has further exposed the contradictions of Zionism. The regime's decades-long cultivation of hatred toward Iran serves as a convenient distraction – an external enemy used to rally national unity and suppress dissent. But this war is nothing more than a cynical manoeuvre to project strength abroad while the foundations at home are crumbling.

Israel’s ruling class has nothing in common with the Iranian masses, nor does it care for their suffering. But Netanyahu has long framed Iran as an existential threat, not because of its internal repression, but because it disrupts the balance of power in the Middle East. He has repeatedly pushed for regime change. In a 2018 speech, he said: “When this regime finally falls, and one day it will, Iranians and Israelis will be great friends once again.” In another statement, he urged western powers to “help the Iranian people liberate themselves.” But this ‘concern’ is deeply hypocritical. The Israeli state has no issue cooperating with brutally repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, so long as they align with US-Israeli interests.

This call for regime change is not about freedom or democracy – it is about removing an obstacle to imperialist dominance in the region. Israel does not seek to support the Iranian people, but to maintain its own hegemony by weakening any state that refuses to bow to its military and economic interests.

Israel's animosity towards the Iranian regime has nothing to do with the aspirations or well-being of the Iranian masses, despite Netanyahu’s propaganda-laden messages of ‘support’ for the Iranian people. The Zionist state itself is an instrument of brutal reaction in the Middle East, founded on dispossession, occupation, and militarism – values fundamentally opposed to the revolutionary traditions of the Iranian working class and youth.

While millions of Iranians rightfully despise the Islamic Republic for its corruption, repression, and poverty, they harbour no illusions in western imperialism either. The bitter memory of the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup, decades of sanctions, and constant military threats have made clear that the so-called ‘democratic’ powers are no friends of the Iranian people. Netanyahu's calls for “regime change” are not expressions of solidarity – they are a cover for domination.

In fact, the biggest threat to any revolutionary movement in Iran today is western imperialism. Intervention by the US or Israel would not liberate the masses – it would strengthen the regime’s hand by allowing it to pose as a victim of foreign aggression, and derail the class struggle by redirecting it along nationalist lines. True liberation can only come through the independent organisation of the Iranian working class – not from imperialist bombs or cynical speeches from Tel Aviv or Washington.

Under Trump’s renewed presidency, US foreign policy has taken an even more aggressive tone. Trump has openly supported Israel’s military actions while weighing his own ‘options’ regarding Iran, which include expanded sanctions and possible direct intervention. His administration, filled with neoconservative and pro-Zionist elements, has given Israel a green light to escalate, supplying it with advanced weaponry, intelligence, and full diplomatic backing on the world stage.

The US views Israel not just as an ally, but as a strategic outpost to secure its dominance in the region, control energy routes, and counter both Iranian influence and China’s growing presence. Although Washington may not seek a full-scale war – especially with its attention increasingly focused on China – it is playing a dangerous game. In arming and backing Israel, it is fanning the flames of a conflict it may not be able to control.

Israel under Netanyahu is not simply a puppet. It is increasingly acting with reckless autonomy, dragging the region into war to serve its internal political needs.

The war is not merely an Iran–Israel confrontation – it is a product of US imperialism’s long-standing strategy of domination, destabilisation, and proxy warfare. The Iranian regime, while a reactionary force, is being used as a scapegoat in a much broader imperialist chess game.

Hands off Iran: no regime change – only revolution

The current crisis has brought renewed, insidious calls for ‘regime change’ from multiple reactionary camps. The Israeli ruling class, echoed by western politicians, openly supports toppling the Islamic Republic – not out of solidarity with the Iranian people, as we have explained, but to install a more pliant regime that would serve imperialist interests. At the same time, monarchist exiles and liberal opposition groups – some even backed by the West – dream of restoring a regime that would return Iran to the days of the Shah, when US corporations plundered the country and political dissent was met with torture and execution.

But the Iranian working class has not forgotten its history. We remember the US-UK coup of 1953, which crushed the national movement and imposed decades of dictatorship. We’ve seen how imperialist-backed ‘regime change’ in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan led to chaos, war, and misery for the people. That’s why we, as revolutionary communists, reject all forms of externally imposed ‘regime change’.

he Shah's regime was built on the complete subjugation of the Iranian people to US imperialism / Image: public domain

Our struggle is not for a change of faces at the top, but for a complete overthrow of the capitalist system – whether in its theocratic, monarchist or democratic form. And this can only be achieved through the conscious, organised struggle of the Iranian masses themselves. The Iranian working class, hardened by years of struggle, exploitation, and betrayal, does not need foreign saviours. It needs class unity, revolutionary leadership, and a socialist programme to overthrow both the Islamic Republic and the imperialist system it currently opposes in words.

In this charged atmosphere, two particularly dangerous currents have emerged. On one hand, the monarchists – a thoroughly discredited and reactionary force – are attempting to capitalise on the crisis by presenting themselves as a ready-made alternative to the Islamic Republic. Their so-called ‘Crown Prince’, Reza Pahlavi, speaks of freedom and democracy, but represents nothing more than the restoration of a brutal dictatorship that was overthrown in 1979 by a mass revolutionary movement.

The Shah's regime was built on the complete subjugation of the Iranian people to US imperialism. It handed over the country’s oil and resources to foreign corporations, crushed all independent trade unions, and ruled through the SAVAK secret police, which tortured, murdered, and disappeared thousands of leftists, workers, and student activists. The working class remembers not just the repression, but the humiliation of being treated as subjects in their own country, ruled by a comprador elite loyal to Washington.

The monarchists offer nothing but a return to that dark era: exploitation, dependence on imperialism, and savage repression of all dissent. That is why, despite all the media propaganda and western funding, their base of support remains limited to a narrow layer of the petty bourgeoisie and the exiled rich.

Propped up by certain western imperialist circles, they offer nothing but a return to a dark past of oppression and subservience to foreign capital. The Iranian working class, having suffered under the Shah's dictatorship, instinctively rejects this backwards-looking ‘solution’.

On the other hand, a segment of the revolutionary youth groups who rose up in the 2022 Mahsa uprising have fallen into the ultra-left trap of adventurism. As is evident in their recent pronouncements, some have echoed calls for immediate, unorganised uprisings and strikes, even suggesting that the current war is an opportunity for a swift overthrow of the Iranian regime. They declare:

“What we are witnessing is not only physical casualties at the command levels, but a crippling blow to the decision-making and military and strategic command pillars of the Islamic Republic. This security and management void within the IRGC and the army is a sign for us of the collapse of a regime that has kept itself alive for years based on the most inhumane actions.”

This approach is completely disconnected from the mood and readiness of the Iranian masses. While the hatred for the regime is profound and widespread, calling for generalised strikes in the midst of an imperialist attack is a dangerous miscalculation. It risks isolating the advanced layers of the working class from the broader population and playing directly into the hands of the regime, which can then portray any internal dissent as collaboration with the enemy.

Their call to “deal the final blow to the regime” through “targeted strikes, boycotting cooperation with governmental and state institutions, and a nationwide uprising and organisation of struggle and protest in neighborhoods, schools, factories, and streets” fails to grasp the complex psychology of the masses during a period of imperialist attack. Currently, there is no revolutionary leadership of the working class, and the foreign-backed opposition is the only political alternative on offer to the masses.

The mood of the Iranian masses is complex but clear. They despise the Islamic Republic. The decades of repression, economic mismanagement, corruption, and the systematic looting of national wealth have bred deep resentment. But, as we have consistently observed, the same workers who were openly cursing the regime in their Telegram channels just days before the war are now reposting security announcements and cursing Israel. This is not a sudden embrace of the regime, but a visceral rejection of external aggression and a deep fear of imperialist intervention.

The masses understand, even if implicitly, that while the regime is abhorrent, these external forces offer no genuine liberation. They hate the regime, but they hate monarchists, the US, and the West even more, and they rightly fear any form of ‘regime change’ orchestrated from outside. The struggle against the regime and the struggle against western imperialism are inextricably linked. The task of revolutionaries is to bridge this gap, to explain that the Iranian regime is weak, self-interested, and ultimately incapable of defending the true interests of the Iranian workers and poor. It is a regime willing to sell out the nation for a precarious agreement with the imperialists.

A socialist Iran can fight imperialism – turn imperialist war into a class war

The only true defence against imperialism, and the only path to genuine liberation, lies in a socialist revolution. Why? Because only the working class has both the objective interest and the material power to break with imperialism completely. Unlike the capitalists and clergy, who rely on foreign deals, private profits, and political repression, the working class has nothing to lose from expropriating foreign and domestic capital, ending all exploitative relations, and mobilising production for human need, not profit.

A socialist Iran, democratically controlled by the workers and poor, would immediately cut off all ties of dependence on imperialist powers. It would nationalise the commanding heights of the economy under workers’ control, end the looting of national wealth by both foreign corporations and local capitalists, and build real solidarity with oppressed peoples across the region.

It would not rely on shady deals with China or Russia, nor posture with hollow ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric while brutally repressing its own people – as the current regime does. It would mobilise the revolutionary energy of the Iranian people not only to resist imperialist aggression, but to inspire working-class uprisings across the Middle East.

The regime’s repression of workers, students, women, and national minorities has once again shown its political limitations / Image: khamenei.ir, Wikimedia Commons

The Islamic Republic, despite its anti-American slogans, is a capitalist regime that defends private property, makes deals with foreign powers, and fears its own working class far more than it fears Israeli bombs. Its military is bloated with corruption, unaccountable command structures, and political cronyism. This was evident in the intelligence failures which allowed Israel to overwhelm the regime as it embarked on its attacks. Its ‘resistance’ is not guided by the masses, but by narrow elite interests that have left Iran technologically backwards and isolated, as its allies and proxies in the region have suffered blows from Israel. All of the setbacks of the regime and its allies in the past period can be traced to its capitalist nature, which has left a weak economy and a society rife with corruption at all levels.

The regime’s repression of workers, students, women, and national minorities has once again shown its political limitations. Had the Iranian workers been in power, they would have mobilised all oppressed layers in Iran and in the region as a whole for a joint revolutionary socialist struggle against the imperialists, and the rulers of each country. But given its narrow bourgeois outlook, the Islamic regime restricts its ‘anti-imperialism’ to the struggle for getting a seat at the table as a major power in the region. That is the limit of the anti-imperialist struggle of any national bourgeoisie.

The 2025 Iran-Israel war is a tragic illustration of the dead end of capitalism and imperialism in the Middle East. The historical task of the hour is the painstaking construction of a hardened revolutionary party, independent of both imperialism and Iranian capitalism. This party must patiently explain to the working class that neither the clerical regime nor the discredited monarchists, nor any other bourgeois force, can offer a way out of this impasse. It must equip the working class with the theoretical clarity and organisational discipline necessary to lead the fight for its own emancipation.

The anger of the masses is palpable, their desire for a better life undeniable. But revolutionary sentiment alone is not enough. The recent struggles, from the truckers' strike to the previous uprisings, have shown the immense power of the Iranian proletariat, but also the crucial absence of a leadership armed with a clear Marxist programme.

The path forward is difficult but clear: to unite the struggles against poverty, exploitation, and repression with the struggle against imperialism; to expose the regime’s weakness and its willingness to betray the people for the sake of the narrow interests of the ruling class; to explain that true security and prosperity can only be achieved through a workers’ state. Only then can the Iranian working class throw off the shackles of both domestic tyranny and foreign domination, transforming this period of imperialist war into the prelude for a victorious socialist revolution.

For a Revolutionary Communist Party in Iran!

Death to the Zionist and imperialist dogs!

For a Socialist Republic of Iran as a part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!