Thirty-one days ago, the U.S. and Israel launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran on the wings of two big, blatant lies: that Iran’s Islamic Republic posed an immediate nuclear and missile threat to the U.S., and that Trump, the U.S. and Israel were fighting to help free the Iranian people from an oppressive regime. 

Since then, the U.S. and Israel have unleashed daily barrages of bombs and missiles—over 20,000 attacks and counting¹—targeting Iran’s military and civilian infrastructure and its people.

Targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure, or attacking indiscriminately, without regard for civilian casualties are war crimes. And that’s exactly what the U.S. and Israel have been doing—even as the major U.S. media very rarely, if ever, utter those two words.

They have hit homes, apartment buildings, and schools. They’ve devastated whole residential neighborhoods. And they’ve damaged or destroyed infrastructure critical to the lives of Iran’s 90 million people, including natural gas fields, steel plants, electrical installations, hospitals, commercial centers, and more. At this writing over 2,000 Iranians have been killed, over 200 of them children. More than 24,000 others have been injured (figures that are very likely significant undercounts.)²

The Terror of Life—and Death—Under U.S. and Israeli Bombs

“Today in Tehran, a scene of horror. Rescue workers dig through the rubble, looking for the living and the dead, a lifeless body hanging from the destruction, as onlookers pray to end the suffering and comfort a community in grief… After Israel overnight launched a new wave of strikes across Iran.” 

            - Ali Rogan, PBS NewsHour, March 27

Such scenes are happening everyday, all across Iran, as U.S. and Israeli airstrikes kill, injure, terrorize, and/or displace millions of Iranians. 

That same day, U.S. and Israeli attacks on a residential area in Isfahan killed 26 people, including seven children.

The day before, Reza Sayah of PBS reported that more airstrikes had taken place in Tehran starting in the evening: “We heard the unnerving roar of jet fighters above the skies in Tehran, followed by several earth-shaking explosions. State media reporting the airstrikes targeted at least four locations in Tehran, including some near Mehrabad Airport. This is the civilian airport in Tehran that has already been targeted a couple of times in this conflict.”

Iran’s Red Crescent Society condemned the U.S. and Israeli attacks:

Claims that only military areas are targeted and not residential areas are completely false. They're lying. All the areas being hit now are residential. Around 20,399 commercial units where people work have been damaged and targeted; 290 medical centers have been targeted.

“Iran’s Ministry of Education reported Tuesday (March 24) that 241 students and teachers have been killed and 183 wounded across 17 provinces since the start of the war,” Drop Site News reports, “with 644 schools and educational facilities damaged or destroyed. Students account for 190 of the deaths and 164 of the injuries, while 51 teachers were killed and 19 were wounded.”

Destroying Iran’s Infrastructure Is One Objective

This past week, the New York Times reported (March 27) that the U.S. and Israel were stepping up and broadening their attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. One of the main targets hit—a major steel plant—is key to Iran’s civilian economy, and that was the point of attacking it.  

The U.S. and Israel are waging an imperialist war aimed at crushing Iran as a regional power with a robust economy, the ability to defend itself, influence across the Middle East, and ties with U.S. global competitors like China and Russia. Destroying Iran’s industrial and military base are key to that objective. 

The War’s Devastating Impacts on Millions Worldwide

This U.S.-Israeli initiated war has led to Iran restricting the shipment of oil, fertilizer and other goods from the Persian Gulf. The head of the World Trade Organization has called this the world trading system’s “worst disruptions in the past 80 years... Fertilizer prices are climbing as a result of disruptions in the Middle East, putting global food supplies at risk”—along with the lives of many millions across the globe.

Another World Health Organization official is warning, “A total stop to hostilities in the Middle East is needed to halt a ‘health crisis unfolding in real time,’” the Guardian reports. “Hospitals and other healthcare facilities must be treated as ‘safe havens,’” she said. She also warned that attacks on nuclear sites, water desalination plants, and other key infrastructure would be “a disaster” that could impact millions of lives.   

U.S-Israel Poised to Unleash Massive, Extremely Dangerous Escalation

The war has already drawn in 16 to 20 different countries across the Middle East.³ It has given Israel a further opening to launch yet another genocidal war on Lebanon, continue its ongoing genocide in Gaza, and step up its reign of terror and displacement in the Palestinian West Bank.⁴

And now, in the face of all this death and suffering, the U.S. and Israel are threatening to make it even more horrific for humanity.

On March 26, Axios reported that the Pentagon was preparing a massive "final blow"—“a crushing show of force to conclude the fighting” on U.S. terms, create more leverage in talks with Iran, “or simply give Trump something to point to and declare victory.”

This “could include the use of ground forces and a massive bombing campaign.” 

Meanwhile, as many as 17,000 more U.S. troops have arrived or may be on their way to the Middle East, including 2,000 or more paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division. Several more fighter jet squadrons are also being deployed. 

According to U.S. officials that Axios interviewed, the options being considered include invading and seizing key islands in the Persian Gulf, invading or blockading Kharg Island where 90 percent of Iran’s oil is shipped from, or “blocking or seizing ships that are exporting Iranian oil” through Strait of Hormuz. “The U.S. military has also prepared plans for ground operations deep inside the interior of Iran to secure the highly enriched uranium buried within nuclear facilities.”

Any of these scenarios could gravely escalate the war and have unpredictable and potentially catastrophic consequences for the peoples of Iran, the Middle East and the world.

This War Must Stop!

This orientation from Three Dividing Lines: From the Revcoms, on the U.S.-Israeli War Against Iran is now more urgent and timely than ever:

It is crucial that protest against this massive war crime, committed by the U.S. and Israel, be manifested, as powerfully as possible, in a timely way—and every political force needs to be evaluated in terms of where it stands, and what it does, in regard to this.

And it is crucial that people look seriously into the deeper problem in the system that is driving this madness, and the revolutionary solution to bring about a radically different and far better world.

Stop the U.S.-Israeli War on Iran!

In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!

This Whole System Is Rotten and Illegitimate—We Need and We Demand a Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System!