The two regimes of Israel and the Islamic Republic [IRI] are cousins, because they are basically the product of the normal functioning of the same worldwide socio-economic system called capitalism-imperialism. In this article, we take a look at the reality of this [Israel-Iran] war—the underlying reasons for it, and its widening scope—apart from the claims of the parties who beat the war drums and accuse one another.
As of October 9, 2024, the date that this article was written, it is not clear what further tragedies the people of the Middle East, and especially Iran, will witness in the coming weeks. Intoxicated by its campaign of genocide in Gaza and its carnage and destruction in Lebanon, Israel has announced that it is preparing to launch crushing attacks deep inside Iran. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that they would turn Tehran into a Gaza and a Beirut. This is not an empty threat. It is consistent with Israel's military doctrine. Simply put, the Israeli Defense Force [IDF] will attack, despite the certainty of high civilian casualties. Under international law, this is a war crime. But Israel has never considered itself bound by such laws.
Reza Pahlavi,1 who has become Netanyahu's [Iranian] spokesman, encourages the Israeli attack, while other supporters of the Israeli attack vow that Israel's bombing of Iran “will not hurt the people,” and that “Iran will be liberated!” And on the other hand, Khamenei claims that the reason for the war and instability in the region is the presence of the U.S. and the West. All of this is propaganda intended for a bunch of naïve people.
In this article, we aim to show the audience the bigger picture and prove that the root of this war lies in the structure of the world capitalist system (imperialist capitalism). Even the regimes of Israel and the IRI are themselves products of this system and a particular expression of its nature and functioning. Understanding this issue will prove that this war is not a war of the people in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and other parts of the world. Rather, it is a war between the various imperialist powers over competing interests in the Middle East, with Israel representing one side, and the IRI the other. Inevitably, the various governments of the world, whether great powers or regional governments, are now, or will be, siding with one of the parties—either openly or covertly. Because of the chaotic collapse of the old world order, each is striving for a greater share of power in whatever “new order” may emerge—which is just as oppressive, or more so.
But the decisive factor for a positive future will be the [masses of] people in every country, and especially in Iran, consciously uniting against both of these sides and [instead] uniting around their own interests and the interests they have in common with the people of the world, and rejecting any political movement or policy that wants to turn the masses of people into cannon fodder for evil political/class interests.
It is not enough to simply condemn this war and the parties involved in it without calling out the social system that creates such wars and the interests that its actors represent. Without this, judging and drawing conclusions merely based on appearances and on claims, anyone—even with those with good intentions—can be drawn into siding with one of the two reactionary, anti-people poles of this war.
Who Is the Enemy?
In his speech at the Friday prayers on October 4, Khamenei said, “The enemy of the Iranian nation is the same as the enemy of the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Egypt. The enemy is the same, but it uses different methods in different countries.” But actually, it is the IRI and Israel that are parts of the same common enemy [of the people] whose methods differ in different countries.
Netanyahu has announced that his goal in expanding the scope of Israel's wars to Lebanon and Iran is to “create a new order in the Middle East.” This, according to Netanyahu, will cleanse Lebanon, Iran, and Palestine of the presence of the IRI and its proxies, and thus “liberate” Iran. Afterwards, “peace” and “prosperity” will reign in the Middle East! Who can believe these words when post-World War II history tells us that with every war, every coup, with the strengthening of every bloodthirsty tyrant, with each cruel massacre of secular [revolutionary] nationalist and communist forces in Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, etc., the U.S. imperialists promised development, prosperity and democracy to the people of the Middle East?
And, on the other side of this horrible war, is the fascist theocratic regime of the [IRI], whose members—wherever they fall on the spectrum, from reformist to fundamentalist—are immersed in corruption, plunder, and the ruthless repression of the masses of people. Financially and politically, this regime is stone-to-the-bone dependent on the Chinese imperialists and, militarily, on the Russian imperialists. And both of these are striving to advance their own imperialist plans in competition with the U.S. Ostensibly, they are sitting on the sidelines. But they are using the IRI to weaken U.S. imperialism’s structures of domination and influence in the Middle East.
Alongside [the IRI] are the mercenaries of the “Axis of Resistance,” who are in competition with the [Reza] Pahlavi supporters of Netanyahu for the military and nuclear power of the “Great Tsar.”2 These naïve followers of Netan-Nazi or Putin-Nazi should beware: what they smell is not tasty roasting kebabs, but the flesh of donkeys sizzling under a hot branding iron.
When Reza Pahlavi says that the IRI's war is not a national-patriotic war, he means that the Iranian people must align themselves with Israel against the IRI.3 When the leaders of the IRI speak of “defending Iran and Iranians,” what they mean is defending the IRI [regime]. The propaganda of both sides is about making the people cannon fodder for a war in which the chains of captivity and the suffering of the people will increase, no matter which side wins. In the same way, Masih Alinejad4 considers this war “the war of Khamenei and his terrorist IRGC,” and completely exonerates the other side of the war.
Incidentally, by taking a closer look at the positions of the bourgeois class and its political representatives, both within the government and in the bourgeois opposition, it can be seen that despite their claims that “this war is not our war,” they are necessarily one of the parties to this reactionary war! The argument of all of them is the common-sense thesis that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” which has no material basis [in reality].
What Kind of War Is This?
The year-long genocide in Gaza, which is still ongoing, was not the result of the [October 7] Hamas attack, no matter how ugly and reactionary that attack was. This genocide is a continuation, and a leap in consolidation, of 76 years of Israeli colonial rule over the Palestinian people. In fact, it is a contradiction between a colonial state and a colonized nation. But its current complexity lies in the fact that it is intertwined with two other currents: the expansion of the influence of Islamic fundamentalism in Palestine that has imposed itself on the anti-colonial resistance of the Palestinian people over the past 30 years, particularly with the assistance of Israel and the IRI; and the development and concentration of contradictions of the imperialist capitalist world order into the conjuncture that is currently engulfing the world. This manifests itself in the collapse of the power relations established between the great powers after the Second World War and the international institutions that were established by the imperialist powers in order to regulate the world. These power relationships and institutions provided a framework for the rivalries and collusion of the imperialist powers. But all of this has been falling apart in an unprecedented way.
It is in this context that, since 2015, the U.S. imperialists and Israel have been working on a plan called “MENA,” of which the Abraham Accords are a part. In fact, “MENA” is about the reorganization of the Arab countries of the Middle East and Israel, [bringing them] into a massive military pact known as the “Middle East NATO.” Former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz (a [political] opponent of Netanyahu) has defended an attack on Iran in order to overthrow the IRI, saying that it is needed in order to strengthen the MENA plan.5 The rival of the U.S./Israel is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), whose two main members are China and Russia, of which Iran is a permanent member.
In short, the actions of Israel and the IRI are an expression of the crisis in which this global system is engaged at this juncture. The warmongering greed of these two regimes and the fact that their appetite for crime is constantly increasing, is an expression of this crisis that is boiling in the foundations. Capital needs terrible wars—not for the profits of the arms industry, as is said by some, but for a more fundamental reason: capital, in a time of a crisis of accumulation, can only expand through [massive] destruction. The crisis arises from the contradiction that the [home] base for imperialist capital accumulation is domestic—that is, in a given imperialist country—but accumulation takes place on a global scale.
The IRI's fundamental alliance with the imperialists of China and Russia put it on the road to confrontation with U.S. imperialism and with Israel, which is the U.S.’s military garrison in the Middle East. Although the U.S. is objectively on this same collision course, it does not want a full-scale military involvement in the Middle East at this juncture for two reasons: First, the ruling body of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie, from top to bottom, is engaged in a hostile rift that has brought them to the brink of civil war. This disintegration is part of and a reflection of the collapse of the imperialist world order. And second, it fears that it will be plunged into the quagmire of another war in the Middle East and that will make it less able to focus on confronting the imperialists of China and Russia. In fact, it is this division within the U.S. ruling class that fuels the tension between the White House and the Netanyahu regime, which takes orders more from Trump than from Biden.
The confrontation between the IRI and the U.S./Israel also puts pressure on the political alignments of the opponents of the IRI, dividing them in two, as they try to turn the masses of people into cannon fodder in the armies of one side or the other. If it were not for the necessity and possibility of bringing forward another way, the argument that “this war is not our war” would be less crucial.
Why Is This War Not Our War?
Calling out the fact that “This is not our war,” is not based solely on the past and present criminal acts of the two regimes, the IRI and Israel. It is not even based on the fact, no matter how much it is actually the case, that today this war is steering the Middle East—a region with nearly 400 million people—towards a destructive war that could take on a nuclear dimension and have consequences for the people of this region for decades, [causing them] to die or live a painful life.
The foundations of the assessment that “this is not our war” go even deeper, because it is based on the actual structural realities described earlier. The two regimes, Israel and the IRI, are cousins because both are basically the product of the normal functioning of a socio-economic system all over the world called capitalism-imperialism. The criminal military race between these two regimes is, ultimately, a military and arms race between the two poles of imperialist capitalism of the U.S. (and Europe) on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other. Neither Israel nor the IRI can make a move without their imperialist guardians. That is why we said that the overall enemy of all the people of the world is the same. But in different countries, this general enemy takes a concrete form.
The conflict between the IRI and Israel has nothing to do with supporting the “oppressed people of Palestine and Lebanon” and Israel's conflict with the IRI has nothing to do with the “freedom of the Iranian people.” The nature of their quarrel is clear. The slogans and ideology with which each is waging this enmity has no effect on the actual nature of the matter at hand, nor does it affect the outcome of such a war. The demagogic propaganda of both sides exists like this because, as [V.I.] Lenin put it, even the reactionaries cannot do anything without the masses. They need people to carry out their crimes. That is why both Israel and the IRI are trying to polarize the people to line up with themselves. The fascist Netanyahu promises “freedom” to the Iranian people, and the fascist Khamenei promises “freedom” to the Palestinian people, so that some will cheer for Israel and others for the IRI.
For whom and for what should they cheer? For Israel, which has crossed new frontiers in genocide and is now “promising” to make Tehran like Gaza and Beirut? For an IRI that has been dubbed the Execution Republic and considers the liberation of Iranian women to be a bigger security problem than either Israel or the U.S., that blinds unarmed youth by [shooting them in the eyes] on the streets, whose prisons are full of the finest from all corners of this land, that buries workers in the depths [of collapsing coal mines]? All this leads to the conclusion that we should never forget Lenin's warning:
People always were and always will be the foolish victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics until they learn to discover the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. [The supporters of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realize that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is maintained by the forces of some ruling classes.]6
The road ahead is complicated, and this complexity is not only due to the insufficient information we have about the maneuvering going on behind the scenes. Rather, for the powers involved—even for the world's number one power, the U.S.—the situation is so complicated that they cannot make decisions easily. Any action in this situation can turn [into its opposite]. This is a fact that many cannot comprehend if they look only at the military capabilities of Israel and the U.S.
There are no simple answers to this complex situation, be it mediating to reconcile the irreconcilables or be it cheering for one camp or another. The situation requires radical responses because the system is in a structural crisis. It needs to be restructured. And this restructuring will not take the form of a peaceful transition!
As far as revolutionary strategy is concerned, we should know that this pivotal situation, which is at the heart of the expanding military confrontations, also makes it possible for the system itself to derail. In the meantime, the conscious revolutionary forces must take advantage of the opportunities—as we experienced in the previous century, i.e. the October Revolution during World War I and the Chinese Revolution following World War II—and use these rails to push forward the dynamics of revolution.
We do not start [reactionary] wars, but we can be the determining factor in their outcome. Wars don't just bring suffering, they also offer the possibility of changing the situation, and sometimes they make regime [or revolutionary] change more possible. One of the reasons for making such a change more possible is the erosion of the legitimacy of the ruling class and the weakening of its control over people's thinking. Although currently the illegitimacy of the Israeli regime spontaneously favors the IRI, and the illegitimacy of the IRI spontaneously favors Israel, by relying on the potential within the illegitimacy of both, the conscious forces can change the coordinates of the battlefield toward opposing both of them, and all the discrimination and oppression they produce—in favor of [real] revolution.
Is Every War Bad?
The solution to this situation is not a pacifist approach that preaches morality to reconcile bloody rivalries without taking into account the necessity confronting the imperialist capitalist world that makes such wars inevitable. Nor is it the real-politik approach of fatalist-determinist-realism that remains within the boundaries of what already exists—i.e., either the IRI and the “Axis of Resistance,” or Israel and the U.S.—and, seeing no possibility other than these two, concludes that each group, based on what they consider to be their short-term interests, must become the cannon-fodder for one of these two armies.
The solution is to bring forward another way: a way other than what the IRI is, and a better future than they could ever offer; a way other than becoming cannon fodder for the Chinese and Russian imperialists in their confrontations and competition with the imperialism of the U.S. and Israel; a way other than the future being prepared by U.S./Israeli imperialism and the right-wing opposition of the IRI within Iran—especially those in alliance with the fascist faction of Trump and the Republican Party—which will necessarily inherit the IRI's apparatus of repression and discrimination and, in the name of foreign investment, will suck every last drop from the environment and from people's lives. We need a way that offers a future determined by the revolution that establishes a new socialist republic.
We, the people of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, and the whole world, need this revolution more than anything else. In the words of Bob Avakian, “If you don’t understand why we need a revolution, and how that revolution could be possible, then you don’t know what you need to know.” In order to make a revolution, we must fight the ruling powers and transform people's thinking in the direction of a revolution that is becoming ever more urgent. The most important preparation is the expansion of revolutionary consciousness and of revolutionary organization around this consciousness.
We are against this reactionary war and against any other reactionary war. But revolutionary victory, which is necessary, depends on victory in a revolutionary war. However, the prosecution of our war, the purpose of our war, and the method of our war will be different. Our tools and means of war will be consistent with its purpose. And this means, in the first place, that millions of people in Iran, the Middle East, and all over the world must scientifically realize the fact that their real enemy is the ruling regimes in every country, which are the products of a class system called imperialist capitalism, and that the only alternative to such a system is a socialist revolution that overthrows the power of the capitalist class and empowers and liberates the people to put an end to capitalist exploitation and to eradicate [all] the social oppressions that arises from it.
The “Seven Fault lines” are the way this oppression manifests itself in Iran today:
- Putting an end to the interference of religion in the affairs of the state and society;
- Ending political repression, imprisonment and executions;
- Ending regional wars;
- Ending poverty and unemployment;
- Ending oppression of women and of LGBTQ people;
- Putting an end to discrimination and oppression against the oppressed nationalities of the Kurd, Baluch, Arab, Afghan, Turkic, Turkmen, etc. people.
- Ending the destruction of the environment.
Millions of people are becoming aware and are organizing for just such a future today, through the struggle on these seven fault lines [in Iran] and to end them. With this orientation, a broad alliance can be formed against the enemy at home (the IRI) and the international enemy (the imperialist capitalist system and its governments).
Notes [by the author with some added by translators for clarification]: