Israel directly attacked Iran early Saturday morning, October 26, with some 100 fighter planes (including advanced U.S.-supplied F-35s) and drones. The Israeli attack hit targets in Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran provinces deep inside Iran over a three-hour span.¹ This marked the first time a foreign air force had attacked inside Iran since the 1980s and the Iran-Iraq war. 

It appears that Israel’s strike was carefully calibrated to try to avoid further escalation and give Iran a face-saving way out by not striking at the heart of its regime. Israel hit 20 military targets, not Iran’s oil facilities or nuclear infrastructure, avoided civilian casualties (four Iranian soldiers were killed). And they did not attempt to assassinate Iran’s leadership.

On a very basic level, as of this writing, it does not appear that the military confrontation between Israel and Iran will escalate, at least right away. Israel has announced its military operation is concluded. Iran claims Israel’s attack did little damage, and while it has reaffirmed its right to defend itself, it has not pledged to take revenge. Instead, it says it is willing to lower tensions if there is a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon. 

Dangerous New Territory

However, the war between Israel and Iran has now entered dangerous new territory. Israel and Iran have been waging a shadow war for decades, fighting through proxies or covert operations that they didn’t publicly take credit for. But in recent months, those old “rules of the game” have gone by the wayside, and the war has taken a leap, with both Israel and Iran openly and directly striking each other’s territory. And there are no longer any established “rules” or “understandings” between the two parties—heightening the danger of miscalculations.

More importantly, the wars and contradictions roiling the Middle East have grown more—not less intense. This is a tinderbox—one that could easily explode. As Bob Avakian has stated, and as this article will underline:

We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They must be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that humanity does not have to live this way.

Israel’s U.S.-Backed Attack: A Dangerous, Reactionary Act of Imperialist, Zionist Aggression

The U.S. was closely involved in Israel’s attack: the plan was the product of intense discussions between the U.S. and Israel. Once Israel agreed not to strike Iran’s oil or nuclear facilities, the U.S. rushed more military forces into the region (including an advanced missile defense system), assured Israel the U.S. would protect it, and warned Iran not to strike back. 

Both Israel and the U.S. framed Israel’s attack as legitimate “self-defense” and “retaliation” for Iran’s October 1 missile barrage against Israel.² 

But as the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian argues in his social media dispatch @BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #77, “Genocidal Mass Murderers Cannot Be Enlightened ‘Liberators’”: 

In determining the essential nature of any war, the crucial and decisive question is not “who fired the first shot?” or “who initiated the conflict?” No, the essential factor is: what is the nature of the opposing sides in that war?

The U.S. is the world’s dominant capitalist-imperialist exploiter and oppressor, a power which has rained more death, destruction and suffering on people around the world than any other in the last 80 years. Israel is its henchman in the Middle East, an apartheid, Jewish-supremacist state based on the vicious ethnic cleansing and genocide of the indigenous Palestinian people.

For the U.S., these wars, interventions and attacks are not being waged to bring “peace,” liberation, or a better life to the people. These wars are waged to maintain America’s deadly, suffocating stranglehold on the Middle East and the world, and to ensure the continued existence and regional dominance of their mass-murdering partner, Israel. 

Iran is a country oppressed and dominated by world imperialism. Its Islamic Republic is a reactionary, patriarchal theocracy. Its aim has never been to break out of imperialism’s grip on Iran but rather to increase its own influence and position within the global capitalist-imperialist system, including by making deals with the U.S. when it can, or with other imperialist powers such as Russia and China.

Neither side in this war should be supported. But by far the greater aggressor and danger to humanity is represented by the U.S. and its Middle East outpost, Israel. And people within the U.S. have the responsibility to vigorously oppose the crimes and war moves of both the U.S. and Israel. 

The Clashing Reactionary Interests Driving the Danger of Wider, More Destructive War Haven’t Receded… They’ve Intensified 

After Israel concluded its attack on Iran, Biden said, “I hope this is the end” of the escalating back-and-forth attacks between Israel and Iran, and that it would now be possible to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, lowering tensions in the region.

The reality, however, is that Biden and the leaders of Israel and Iran fundamentally are driven to act by the nature and workings of the systems they represent, and how they perceive what’s necessary to maintain and strengthen those systems. And the workings of the capitalist-imperialist system, which all of them are enmeshed in, pit different capitalists, different factions of the ruling classes, and different countries against each other in various, sometimes unpredictable, ways.

Right now those conflicts are extremely sharp in the Middle East and have been getting sharper and sharper over the last year in particular. Israel’s “restraint” in its latest attack on Iran doesn’t change that.

Take the U.S. Biden and Harris are both staunch supporters of Israel as a crucial bastion and armed enforcer for the U.S. in the Middle East. Both share Israel's goal of containing, weakening or outright defeating Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. But on the global stage, it is also crucial for the U.S. to position itself as a defender of “human rights” and international law—i.e., the current U.S.-dominated order. In that light, indiscriminate, blatantly genocidal actions by Israel in Gaza create problems for the U.S. on that front. And in the Middle East, U.S. dominance doesn’t just depend on having an Israel in the region but also on alliances with other reactionary Arab regimes—including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States. And Israel’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon are making it difficult, if not impossible, at the moment for the U.S. to forge the kind of anti-Iran coalitions they’ve been seeking.

Meanwhile, both Russia and China contend for influence in the region against the U.S. China, for instance, recently hosted talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, in a bid to pose as the peacemaker between two regimes that contend for regional influence… and begin to pull a key American ally (Saudi Arabia) out of the U.S.’s tight orbit.

Take Israel. The outlook of the dominant political forces in Israel are that this Zionist state cannot continue to exist indefinitely without “resolving” the issues of the Palestinian people and Israel’s external enemies. That is what has driven its frenzied, barbaric genocide against the people of Gaza and its terroristic assaults on the people of Gaza. Netanyahu’s party, Likud, literally calls for the Jewish state to stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—that is, all of historic Palestine.

And most in Israel’s leadership consider Iran an existential threat, especially if it’s able to produce nuclear weapons. These forces are now emboldened—especially following the severe blows they’ve inflicted on Hezbollah in Lebanon—by the sense that they may have a once-in-a lifetime opportunity: “The strategic goal at the end of the day is creating a reality that Iran won’t pose any threat, not now or not in the future,” one Israeli analyst said.

This is why right-wing Israeli politicians are already criticizing Netanyahu for not seizing the moment to carry out a much broader attack. Israel’s fascist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Saturday’s strikes should only be an “opening blow.” And further attacks aimed at “damaging Iran’s strategic assets” must come next. A former Prime Minister wrote, "The decision not to attack strategic and economic targets in Iran was wrong. We could and should have exacted a much heavier price from Iran."

Israel may already be planning follow-on attacks, perhaps after the U.S. elections. And they may be further emboldened by the U.S. warning to Iran not to respond to Israel’s latest attacks, or else they would face a “U.S. response.”

Israel could also be emboldened because their attacks on Saturday may have significantly degraded Iran’s air defenses and missile capabilities, including around key energy installations, leaving Iran more vulnerable. 

Take Iran’s Islamic Republic. It is facing a host of contradictions. Much of its legitimacy internally and externally is based on the perception that it’s the only (or one of the few) states standing with the Palestinian people and against the U.S. and Israel. So there are real compulsions, pushed by a more anti-U.S. faction of Iran’s ruling class, to retaliate for Israel’s latest attack, including because Israel is battering the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank and Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

At the same time, the regime is rightly and increasingly despised by much of the population, a sentiment that burst onto the streets two years ago following the murder of Mahsa Amini in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising which took 20,000 arrests to quell. And many of these and other Iranians oppose the regime’s actions in the region. All this is coming at a moment when who will succeed Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khameini is being very sharply posed by reports that he’s gravely ill. 

It is impossible for Israel, the U.S., and Iran—let alone all the other forces on the international terrain—to fully predict how each other will act on their freedom and necessities at any given point. This means that as tensions escalate, the danger of miscalculations and misunderstandings that could lead to escalations and war may become more and more likely, even if that wasn’t the intention. Add to this the element of accidents: if Israel had hit civilian sites or caused significant civilian casualties in this latest attack, even by accident, that could have tipped the balance for Iran and forced them to retaliate.

In light of all this, Bob Avakian’s social media dispatch @BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #87, and his analysis of the stakes in this remains urgently relevant:

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.

Stay attuned to developments and to revcom.us and @BobAvakianOfficial.