The war Trump and the U.S. imperialists are desperately trying to find “good options” for winning is a totally unjust war of imperialist aggression.

“I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it," Trump told Axios.com on July 23. 

The next day he met with his Friday night “war council.” Afterward, Trump set aside his plans for a “massive attack,” but did not announce a new course of action. 

The U.S. has halted its daily bombardments for now. Iran said it would do likewise as long as the U.S. did. 

Trump and his regime are already spinning this decision to make it look like the U.S. is acting reasonably since there are lower level “talks” continuing. Reasonable in gangster terms—with Trump saying the U.S. “is locked and loaded” and ready to “[knock] out everything they have."

This is not mere political theater. The Trump regime is confronting the reality that it has created very dangerous new necessity—serious problems in which all of their options could bring major setbacks or worse. 

Strategic Risks for U.S. Imperialism 

Trump and his fascist team discussed three options: “military escalation, economic crackdown or declaring victory and getting out.” They reportedly didn’t like any of them.

1. Declaring victory and getting out. This means Trump and the U.S. essentially giving up on the objectives they set out to achieve in starting the war: eliminating Iran’s nuclear capacity and changing the Iranian regime to one favorable to the U.S. This could mean settling on the terms of an agreement both Trump and Iranian regime signed in June which cedes ground to Iran. Among other things, it grants Iran significant say in controlling traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran didn’t have this before the war, and obtaining it now would be a signboard of weakness—representing an extremely significant, strategic defeat for the U.S. 

2. Economic blockade. The U.S. is already doing this with little visible affect, and the longer the current no-war-no-peace stalemate goes on, the deeper the damage to the world economy and millions and millions of people, with no clear resolution in sight. (See box.)

3. Military escalation. The U.S. could opt to radically escalate and go for a decisive victory, but that would likely require invading with ground troops. Such an invasion would have no guarantee of success, but would carry the strong possibility of suffering significant losses and the real possibility of outright defeat, along with massive damage to U.S. allies in the region from Iranian retaliation, and with very little public support in the U.S. now. Trump and his advisors were very concerned that a major escalation of the war could “dangerously drain the Pentagon’s already diminished stockpile of Patriot antimissile interceptors and other air defense munitions in the Middle East,” according to the New York Times. Finally—and this is important—depleting weaponry would also leave the U.S. less prepared for any confrontation with their imperialist rivals in China and Russia. And we’re not here getting into the even greater horrific death and destruction that this would visit on millions of Iranians, who are already suffering terribly.¹

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Trump’s war council worried that each of these options could widen the war across the Middle East, further alienate and harm key U.S. Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia, create serious energy shortages, do even more damage to the world economy, and even trigger massive refugee crises as fuel shortages impact food production in Africa and Asia. 

At the same time mainstream media and military analysts warn that escalating the current cycle of attacks and counterattacks risks a wider war that neither the U.S. nor Iran may be able to contain.²

Each of these options poses great risks for the U.S. rulers and the potential for seriously damaging their strategic dominance and even fundamental interests. 

A Criminal War of Unprovoked Aggression—Then AND Now!

Let’s be clear: the war Trump and the U.S. imperialists are desperately trying to find “good options” for winning is a totally unjust war of imperialist aggression.

Five months ago, on February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched an unprovoked war of imperialist aggression on Iran, a country which has never had nuclear weapons and posed no immediate threat to either of them. This makes the U.S.-Israeli attack a criminal act under international law—a war crime. 

Everything the U.S. has done since then—the threats, the attacks, the blockades, the maiming and killing, and the suffering inflicted on millions worldwide—is a continuation and result of that criminal imperialist war for control of the Middle East and the world.

They’ve done horrific things. From February 28 until a ceasefire went into effect on April 8, U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles hit Iran a staggering 23,000 times. Since then the U.S. has carried out further bomb and missile attacks including some 300 in one three-day period this month. These have struck military and civilian targets—including bridges, hospitals, homes, schools, businesses and more. At least 3,468 Iranians, including seven infants and at least 376 older children, have been killed and at least two million displaced from their homes. 

When the U.S. imperialists are talking about options, they’re talking about options to attempt to crush and dominate a country of 93 million people. Trump even spelled this out this past week, threatening to systematically destroy Iran’s power plants, bridges and other civilian infrastructure, including in Iran’s capital Tehran; attacking nuclear facilities; possibly seizing key oil shipping facilities. 

A Situation in Flux…With Heightened Dangers 

After five months of war, the Trump fascist regime has not developed a viable way out of its Iran war. And the Democrats—as an imperialist ruling class party—now face the same necessity to advance and not undermine the U.S.’s imperialist position in the world. Even those Democratic politicians who are critical offer hollow words and petty amendments. 

The cul-de-sac they find themselves in now increases the pressure to do something dramatic and dangerous to break out of it…even as that something dramatic carries huge risks for their position in the world and the stability of their rule. This is a real, ongoing danger people must remain alert to.

The fact that the U.S. has no good “options” in Iran doesn’t just reflect a Trump strategic blunder; at a deeper level it concentrates the reality that this system is driven to commit unending devastation and destruction to maintain its position in the world. The whole situation bound up with the U.S. war on Iran could possibly spin into a major political crisis at a time when the U.S. ruling class and the key institutions of the state are irreconcilably divided. In moments like this, the possibility for an actual revolution could arise if there is a vanguard force of thousands with the ideological, political and organizational capacity to lead millions who rise up determined to fight for a radically new and a fundamentally different system. 

We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and to determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible.

Bob Avakian