Drunk with success in Venezuela, Trump thought that the same methods could be used to force Iran to submit. Either a threatening naval force encircling the country would lead to capitulation, or a short sharp decapitation strike would produce regime change through the emergence of a new leadership willing to comply with imperialists’ demands (a ‘Delcy in Teheran’ as some put it).

Following the US and Israel's scandalous, unprovoked attack on Iran, we are republishing the following article, which was first written after the 12-Day War in June 2025. It remains every bit as true as then.

In the morning of Saturday 28 February, Tehran was shaken by a series of loud explosions as US and Israeli missiles struck the capital of Iran. Clouds of smoke were also seen rising from Tehran, Qom and other Iranian cities, announcing the commencement of war.

Once again, the eyes of the world are fixed on every word and gesture of the man in the White House, Donald J. Trump. With one third of the entire American Navy assembled in the region, and with Trump oscillating between threats and calls for negotiations, the question on the lips of millions is: will there be war with Iran?

The western imperialist vultures are circling the Iranian regime. Donald Trump has already threatened to intervene in Iran three times since the protests began. Meanwhile, the Israeli state has sent ominous messages through Mossad’s Farsi X account, including: “Let's come out to the streets together. The time has come. We are with you. Not just from afar and verbally. We are with you in the field as well”. 

On 29 December, the Iranian rial fell to a record low against the dollar, sparking a bazaar strike in Tehran with massive processions in the main streets chanting the slogans: “Close, close!”, “Death to the dictator!”, “Death to high prices!”, and, “This is the final message; the target is the entire regime.”

There was a time when international diplomacy was a relatively stable affair – undoubtedly complex, but at the same time fairly predictable. The great powers decided policy quite cynically, in line with their own national interests. 

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.

On June 21, Trump took the momentous step of bombing three nuclear sites in Iran with “bunker-busting” Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP) and Tomahawk missiles. This was the largest attack by the US on Iran in modern history.

“NOW IS TIME FOR PEACE,” wrote US President Donald Trump on Truth Social on Saturday. On the same day, the US carried out its biggest military attack on Iran in modern history. Trump was backed by European leaders, including his obedient servant in Downing Street, all of whom have been calling on Iran to show “restraint”, to “de-escalate” and to return to the negotiating table.

As I write these lines, the attention of the entire world is focused on one man. His every word is studied, dissected and analysed in the most extraordinary detail, in the hope that one might derive some sense as to what it may, or may not, signify.

In the early hours of Friday, 13 June, Israel launched a massive attack on Iran, taking out part of its military leadership and hitting some of its nuclear facilities. A second wave of Israeli strikes is ongoing at time of writing, hitting targets in Tehran, Keraj and Qom, as well as the Natanz Nuclear Enrichment Facility for a second time. This brazen act of aggression threatens to unleash a deadly regional conflagration with far-reaching consequences.

Since the 1st of Khordad, 1404 (22 May, 2025), Iran has witnessed a significant eruption of class struggle as lorry drivers and truckers launched a nationwide strike. This is a determined protest against intolerable working conditions and a spiralling cost of living crisis, highlighting the ever-deepening crisis of Iranian capitalism.

Storm clouds are gathering over the Middle East as Israel, backed by the western imperialist powers, pushes the region ever closer to a devastating all-out regional war, highlighting yet again the choice before humanity: either socialism or barbarism.

The death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash was celebrated by hypocritical imperialist governments and newspapers in the West, who gloated at the end of the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ – while preserving harsh sanctions that subject millions of ordinary Iranians to hardship, and continuing to support Israel’s butchery in Gaza. The communists make no common cause with these characters, who are themselves murderers representing the same vile capitalist system as the Mullahs ruling Iran. From our own perspective, we say: Raisi’s bloodstained legacy is one of counterrevolutionary reaction. May the revolutionary Iranian masses soon bury the Islamic Republic alongside him.