On Tuesday night, October 1, Iran launched a barrage of some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. Most all of them were intercepted by the anti-missile defense systems of Israel and U.S. warships stationed nearby. Some of Iran’s missiles did land, but there was only one fatality and very little damage was done.
This attack by Iran did not come out of the blue.
Iran and Israel have been regional adversaries for decades. The clash between the two had been escalating since Israel launched its barbaric genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israeli soldiers and civilians. But Iran’s October 1 missile strike was triggered by a growing number of Israeli attacks and provocations, especially over the past several months.
Key among these was Israel’s July 31 assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief, while he was in Iran to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president. That same day Israel tried to assassinate a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, Lebanon. Both Hamas and especially Hezbollah are allies of Iran. Hamas and Iran felt Israel had taken its attacks on them to “new levels” by assassinating Haniyeh.
Then on September 17, Israel unleashed a concerted attack aimed at Hezbollah. First, Israel detonated pagers used by Hezbollah, wounding thousands of its members as well as civilians, and crippling its communications. Then between September 23-27, Israel carried out a massive bombing campaign. The Israelis killed more than 700 Lebanese, and assassinated the long-time leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Next, on the morning of October 1, Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon.1
Iran understood these moves as an effort to gravely weaken if not destroy Hezbollah, probably Iran’s closest and most important regional ally, and to seriously weaken Iran itself and its influence in the region. So Iran may have felt it had no choice but to strike back.
Israel Threatens Major Escalation Against Iran—Biden: U.S. Is “fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel”
Immediately after Iran’s October 1 missile barrage against Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu (aka Netan-Nazi) and other Israeli leaders threatened a major attack on Iran. Biden quickly backed up Israel’s threat: “Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” and that the U.S. would help Israel “exact severe consequences.” Harris did likewise.
These weren’t empty words. Not only does the U.S. provide Israel billions in military aid every year, and continue to give Israel whole-hearted diplomatic support for its genocide in Gaza, but it is also actively involved in Israel’s defense. On October 1, U.S. Navy destroyers helped shoot down incoming Iranian missiles. And now the U.S. is dispatching several thousand more troops and three additional aircraft squadrons, to join the 40,000 U.S. troops already stationed in the Middle East, along with two aircraft carrier groups and other warships which patrol the seas surrounding the region.
The world is holding its breath, waiting to see what these “severe consequences” promised by Netan-Nazi and the U.S. imperialists will be… and what they in turn will give rise to.
Three Take-Aways
One: Both Israel and Iran represent reactionary interests. Israel is not only an utterly illegitimate settler-colonial state, it is the main henchman for the dominant oppressive power in the region, the U.S.
From its founding in 1948, by the violent expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians with the backing of the imperialist powers until the present day, it’s been an illegitimate state. Israel is keeping some 2 million Palestinians within Israel and more than 3.2 million in the occupied West Bank in a state of subjugation, and now is carrying out a terrible genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Iran is a reactionary religious dictatorship, itself aiming to become a more dominant regional power, and is increasingly aligned with the imperialist powers of Russia and China.
Neither side should be supported.
Two: There would be no Israel as it exists today without the United States and other imperialist powers.
We live within the U.S., which has backed and funded Israel since 1948 and developed it into a regional attack dog for American imperialist interests. As Biden himself said 40 years ago, "If Israel didn't exist, we'd have to create it." In other words, the U.S. needs a force like this to act as its "enforcer" in the Middle East, a region which is crucial to the functioning and global dominance of the U.S. capitalist-imperialist system.
Three: Israel has no right to defend itself.
Because Israel is an illegitimate state, it has no "right to defend itself," despite the squawkings of imperialist politicians like Biden and Harris, not to mention Trump.
In his @BobAvakianOfficial social media message REVOLUTION #6, “Taking on the ‘justifications’ for Israel's genocide of Palestinians,” the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian demolishes Israel’s claim to a right of “self-defense”:
Israel is a nuclear-armed military power, heavily supplied and supported by the dominant imperialist power in the world, the U.S.; and in its relation with the Palestinian people, Israel is the dominant nation that has, for generations, imposed apartheid oppression on the Palestinians….
The truth is that Israel, like apartheid South Africa before it, is an illegitimate state—and as such, it has no legitimate right to “defend itself”—and its so-called “defense” has repeatedly involved the deliberate killing of civilians, including large numbers of children.2
On top of all this, this whole conflict now poses the very real danger of breaking totally out of control, up to the point of nuclear war.
As Bob Avakian analyzes in his social media dispatch REVOLUTION #87, “The U.S. military—sexual slavery, and other crimes against humanity—enforcing a criminal system” (issued before Israel’s massive escalation in Lebanon):
In arming and backing the actions of Israel, the U.S. government is not only enabling the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians but is also increasing the possibility of a war with Iran, and perhaps an even wider and more destructive war. At the same time, by massively providing weapons, as well as intelligence and strategic direction to Ukraine, the U.S. government, headed by the Biden/Harris administration, is already indirectly at war with Russia, while also making preparations for military confrontation with China—all of which could lead to world war, between nuclear-armed imperialist powers, with the possibility of wiping out human civilization as we know it.
These words of BA are true and important, and need to be taken very seriously. Stay attuned to developments and to revcom.us and @BobAvakianOfficial.
