June 28. For the last four days, the U.S. and Iran have exchanged military strikes despite the ceasefire and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that both signed on June 17. This MoU committed them to halt military operations against each other, and while both sides say they are committed to further negotiations, this new round of fighting could derail the talks and potentially lead to wider, even more destructive war.¹

These strikes began on June 25 and are focused on whether Iran’s Islamic Republic or the U.S. and its allies will have control over shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait, through which some 20 percent of the world’s transported oil flows, is a critical chokepoint for world trade and the global economy. 

The recently signed MoU states that Iran “will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days.” And that after that, Iran, together with Oman, will “define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz,” in consultation with other Gulf states and in line with international law.²

Iran, the victim and target of an unprovoked war of aggression by the U.S. and Israel, is insisting that this MoU (with its general, non-specific language³) gives it the right to control shipping through the Strait, including charging fees for passage (after a 60-day period). During a recent trip to the Persian Gulf, Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly insisted the Gulf was an international waterway that no country had the right to control (this despite the language of the MoU which clearly gives Iran some role in shaping navigation through the Strait). ⁴

June 25-June 28—a New Wave of Attacks and Counter-Attacks

On June 24, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) denounced a new U.S.-backed plan by Oman and the International Maritime Organization to create a temporary shipping corridor near Oman. The IRGC warned it was “unacceptable” and “completely dangerous” and that passage would only be safe through routes approved by Iran.

The next day, a commercial ship using the corridor near Oman was hit by a drone strike, reportedly by Iran. The U.S. denounced this as a ceasefire violation and on June 26 and 27, launched a wave of attacks on Iranian military sites, drone and missile storage facilities, radar nodes, and command centers. On June 27, Iran launched drone strikes on another ship and on Bahrain, a U.S. ally. The attacks continued with U.S. strikes early on June 28, and then with Iran striking a U.S. naval base in Bahrain and a Kuwaiti air base, and warning that the peace process could come to a "complete halt" if the U.S. continued its attacks. 

"A Negotiation By Arms" That Could Spin Out of Control

Both the U.S. and Iran insist they want to continue their negotiations and blame the other for violating the MoU. These tit-for-tat military strikes (which have so far been seemingly limited with no reports of casualties) could well be a form of “negotiating” in which each side uses military force to jockey for advantage, or create “facts on the ground,” in the context of shaping the negotiations and the final agreement. 

(Some of these attacks could also reflect the influence of factions within the various powers involved who may want to disrupt or even sabotage the talks altogether.)

Yet whatever is driving this attack-counter-attack cycle, both sides now see fundamental interests at stake at this point and this kind of situation can acquire a dynamic of its own, and whatever the immediate trigger, it could well spiral out of control and develop into a situation in which both sides feel compelled to go back to all-out war to prevent the other from gaining a strategic advantage that could put core interests of the other side at risk. 

In this light, no one should dismiss Trump’s genocidal threat of June 27 as mere bluster: 

“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

How Did We Get Here… and What Gives the U.S. the “Right” to Decide Who Lives and Who Dies Halfway Around the World (or Anywhere Else)? 

This latest round of attacks and counter-attacks in the Persian Gulf has been treated by this system’s rulers and major media, to a large degree, as a question of who shot first—Iran or the U.S. And since Iran reportedly launched the first of this round of attacks, they’re to blame.

But wait a minute! Why are the U.S. and Iran even fighting each other? They’re fighting because on February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched a war of unprovoked aggression on Iran. This is a war crime and in the process thousands of Iranians have been killed, hundreds of billions of dollars of damage was inflicted on Iran, and around the world hundreds of millions of people are being impacted by the war’s fallout, especially the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

And step back again: What the fuck is the U.S. even doing in the Middle East and Persian Gulf? Why does it have over a dozen permanent and temporary military bases across the region with 40,000-50,000 U.S. troops? Why does it support the genocidal terrorist state of Israel to the tune of billions a year? Why, for the last 70 years, has the U.S. been murdering people, wrecking people’s livelihoods and lives, and creating economic havoc that is now risking things getting out of control into global conflict and even world war? 

What gave the U.S. the “right” to do any of this, like using the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mossadegh, in 1953 and installing their puppet the “Shah [King]” of Iran who looted the country and tortured dissidents for over 25 years? 

The fact that the U.S. even has military forces in the region is rarely, if ever even questioned, it’s treated as a “fact of life.” Same goes for the history of U.S. imperialism’s 70-year crime spree in the region. This unquestioning acceptance of the U.S.'s right to rampage around the world enables the crimes to go on, and on…. 

As we said last week:

Those Are Their Interests… But Where Do Our Interests Lie?

There are many voices in the media right now, from MS NOW to Fox to all the major politicians and beyond, all clamoring about what “we” should do and how “we” should look at it. For all their differences, though, when they say “we,” they mean Americans. 

But as we have said at this website, “Stop thinking like Americans. Start thinking about humanity.” How about approaching this war and everything else from the standpoint of the eight billion people in the world and their interests in a better life, worthy of human beings? 

• Humanity has no interest in the U.S. being able to dominate and even threaten total destruction against Iran while it funds, arms and diplomatically backs Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine. 
• Humanity has no interest in the U.S. succeeding in its reactionary imperialist wars that have murdered 15 million people just since the end of World War 2. 
• Humanity has no more, or less, interest in the reactionary theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran getting nuclear weapons than it does in the U.S. and Israel—who do have them—using them to blackmail and bully the whole world. 

In fact, if you proceed from the interests of the eight billion people on our planet, nobody should have these monstrous weapons! And that especially goes for the U.S., the only power ever to use them—and the only power whose lunatic and sadistic head of state right now constantly threatens to use them.

In the words of Bob Avakian:

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. And it is a scientific fact that humanity does not have to live this way.

This means raising our voices NOT to take sides in the debate between the imperialists, but to demand an end to this war—NOW! And it means—most of all, in this urgent moment when humanity is truly on the brink, to get into the only way out of the madness: the new communism, brought forward by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian.