“The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is a massive, ongoing war crime on the part of the U.S./Israel, with the potential to develop into something even more terrible, beyond its current horrific dimensions.”

—Three Dividing Lines, From the Revcoms, on the U.S.-Israeli War Against Iran, March 9, 2026

The last week has borne out the above point. The U.S. and Israel have stepped up their criminal aggression—dropping an incredible tonnage of bombs, wreaking havoc, murdering civilians, and issuing threats that are criminal and literally genocidal. This is already spiraling out into an extremely dangerous regional war, and even holds the danger of a confrontation between nuclear-armed powers.

Today’s war is the outgrowth of 47 years of U.S. and Israeli efforts to contain, weaken, and sometimes to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. These efforts stretch from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war instigated and fueled by the U.S, to decades of crippling sanctions on Iran, to cyberattacks and assassinations of Iranian leaders, to direct U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and its allies over the past several years. 

The Islamic Republic of Iran is itself a reactionary regime—though in regard to sheer criminality it cannot hold a candle to the genocidal terrorist state of Israel, let alone Israel's patron, U.S. imperialism. Even so, it still poses a major obstacle to what the U.S. and Israel arrogantly perceive as their interests and rights in that part of the world. These so-called rights include unfettered domination of the Middle East, which is home to over 50 percent of global oil reserves, and is a critical transit point for global trade.

This control is crucial to the ongoing functioning and dominance of U.S. capitalism-imperialism in the world. From the perspective of this system, there is also a need to fend off growing challenges from Russia and particularly China, the U.S.’s main global imperialist rival, with a growing presence in the region. 

This is the underlying basis and driving force behind the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression against Iran that is now entering its third week. 

U.S.-Israeli Aggression Marked by Repeated and Unapologetic War Crimes

The U.S. and Israel have already hit a staggering and devastating 15,000 targets in Iran—and they’re still escalating. The U.S. is deploying more ships, 5,000 more military personnel, including 2,000 Marines, and threatening to destroy Iran’s oil production facilities—the backbone of its entire economy. Israel is also escalating its murderous, unjust war on Lebanon where, as of Sunday night, March 15, anywhere from 800,000 to 1 million people have been made homeless! But that pales before the figure of 3.2 million Iranians now driven from their homes by American and Israeli bombardment of residences, high-rises, hospitals, shops, schools, public squares, government buildings and other civilian infrastructure. 

Again, all in two weeks! Here are some horrific examples of U.S.-Israeli atrocities in just the past week—a week when the U.S. and Israel ran an average of 1,000 air attacks a day, with vows to step it up this coming week.

* Toxic Oil Rain Chokes Tehran
On the evening of March 7-8, Israel bombed a number of major oil facilities and fuel depots in several Tehran neighborhoods, and nearby Karaj. The air strikes ignited huge balls of fire that lit up the night, and propelled massive plumes of fuel oil into the sky. Later, oil-laden rain was reportedly falling in some parts of Iran. In the morning, nearby residents described “overwhelmingly thick smoke had blackened the entire sky,” and feeling like “acid had been poured down our throats,” when they went outside, according to Drop Site news. 

The head of the World Health Organization warned Tehran’s nine-plus million residents: “Damage to petroleum facilities in Iran risks contaminating food, water and air—hazards that can have severe health impacts especially on children, older people, and people with pre existing medical conditions.”

“As if to signal what the nature of their war on Iran will be, on the first day [February 28] the U.S. attacked a girls’ grade school in the town of Minab in southern Iran,” we wrote last week, “killing at least 175 people, mostly girls between 7 and 12 years old, along with some teachers and parents.”

Trump and Hegseth preposterously claimed Iran fired a U.S. Tomahawk missile at one of its own schools. But a video analysis by the New York Times quickly confirmed that it was a U.S. missile—fired by the U.S.—which was responsible for this vicious war crime.

When confronted with this report, Trump claimed that his government was still investigating, but nonchalantly said, “Whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with.”

Think about it. The U.S. slaughters more than 160 young girls in an instant? No sweat. Trump can live with it. And that’s not all. Trump recently threatened to obliterate Iran: “We will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world, if they do anything.”  

Iran Responds with Asymmetric Warfare

In response, the Iranian armed forces have found ways to cause serious economic damage to the U.S., the Arab gulf nations aligned with the U.S. (Saudi Arabia, Oman, and others) and European imperialist powers. They have used what is called asymmetric warfare to do this—that is, they use “low-tech” methods and ingenuity to find and exploit the weaknesses of their much-better-armed enemies. At this point, Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s oil is shipped, by shelling ships that enter it, as well as laying mines in the Strait. Oil prices have risen sharply, economic dislocation is spreading, and neither Trump nor Israel have as yet figured out a way to counter this. This seems to have caught the Trump regime off-guard. As we go to press, the U.S. finds itself still searching for a response to this. 

At this point, things are extremely uncertain and potentially even more explosive. Without indulging in speculation, the point to keep in mind is that once begun, the course of any war is extremely unpredictable. And this criminal war in a volatile world could spiral out of control in ways that nobody anticipated, which holds great danger for humanity. 

With that dimension in mind, these words from Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader and architect of the new communism, ring out all the more urgently:

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. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.

And as we write in Three Dividing Lines: From the Revcoms, on the U.S.-Israeli War Against Iran:

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!