A mother huddling with her small child in the bathroom, trying to shield them against the explosions rocking their neighborhood. Younger relatives frantically wheeling a 90-year-old bedridden patriarch to the hallway minutes before the windows shattered. A family of four descending from their 22nd-floor apartment by staircase, avoiding the elevator for fear the power may go out. These were some of the scenes unfolding in Tehran … on Friday night and into early Saturday…

“I thought, ‘OK, it’s over. We are all dying.’” [another resident] said. “I don’t know what to say, what just landed was very near and terrifying.”

“Iran is being destroyed in front of our eyes,” wrote Afshin, a 58-year-old business owner, adding, “What if we are left here to rot in the hands of this regime with no connection to the outside world?”

—Iran Is Being Destroyed in Front of Our Eyes, New York Times, April 3

The illegal and illegitimate U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is now entering its sixth week. The killing and the war crimes continue daily, and now the fascist Trump is threatening to take U.S. imperialist murder and depravity to a whole other level. On the morning of Easter Sunday, Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s power grid and its bridge system: 

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.

This is a sick and blatant war crime: under the Geneva Conventions, attacking power plants and bridges used mainly by civilians is forbidden. 

This is an immediate and a deadly threat to the lives of Iran’s 93 million people! There needs to be a mass global outpouring of protest against these criminal threats, within the U.S. most of all.

An Unprovoked War of Imperialist Aggression

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is an unprovoked war of aggression based on blatant, transparent lies—that Iran posed a nuclear threat, that it was building missiles to hit the U.S., and most despicably that Trump was coming to “the aid of the Iranian people.” 

Coming to their aid? Aside from the fact that fascist monsters can't be liberators, viciously and murderously targeting the Iranian people is the reality. The U.S. has struck no less than 12,300 targets in Iran so far. Israel has dropped over 16,000 bombs on 4,000 separate targets. (And this U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran has ended up fueling nationalist sentiments, which at this point has led to increased internal support for the reactionary Islamic Republic, at least for now.¹)

These aren’t just military targets—as criminal as that is given that this is an illegal war of aggression. The U.S. and Israel are targeting apartment buildings. Hospitals. Factories. Bridges. Airports. Shops. Steel mills. Pharmaceutical companies. Twenty universities and dormitories across Iran. More than 600 schools and education centers. Iran’s civilian infrastructure is in the crosshairs—some 115,000 civilian units (apartments, homes, shops, etc.) have been damaged so far, over 44,000 in Tehran. 

On April 2 alone, the Human Rights Activists News Agency recorded “at least 275 attacks across 130 incidents in 16 provinces.” Among the targets—the Pasteur Institute, Iran’s largest medical research and educational center, and the tallest bridge in the Middle East, where eight people were killed and dozens wounded. Trump hailed the death and destruction and threatened more: “MAKE A DEAL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE, AND THERE IS NOTHING LEFT OF WHAT STILL COULD BECOME A GREAT COUNTRY!”

Targeting medical facilities, educational institutions, humanitarian facilities, religious sites, and other civilian infrastructure is precisely the U.S.-Israeli strategy and objective. They are working to devastate Iranian society—and its people—set them back decades if not more to the point that it’s no longer a modern society, no longer able to defend itself, no longer able to influence developments in the Middle East. This is part of an overarching strategy to destroy any significant opposition to the U.S.-Israeli stranglehold on the Middle East, to lock in their domination, and to radically remake the entire region. 

What does it say about the U.S. and the capitalist-imperialist system that its leaders brag about savage mass murder and revel in war crimes and crimes against humanity? It says, as the revolutionary leader and author of the new communism Bob Avakian argues:

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. 

“Back to the Stone Ages”

On April 1, for the first time since the war began, Trump addressed the U.S. There was the usual blizzard of hype, lies, double-talk, and promises of victory: “We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” Trump said. 

But mainly there were grave threats of even greater crimes and mass murder to come: “We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” while also claiming that discussions with Iran “are ongoing.”

Shamefully, most mainstream media and Democratic Party commentators focused on Trump’s lack of a plan, as if (a) the decimation of Iran isn’t the core of the U.S.-Israeli plan and (b) this criminal war would somehow be justified by better planning.

U.S. Has Wreaked Havoc and Horror, but Has Not Yet Achieved Its Aims

Trump’s speech did reflect, as many have noted, that the U.S. had run into greater difficulties than it had anticipated, that it’s still in the throes of dealing with them, and the ultimate outcome of this war is far from clear. 

As we wrote last week in Analysis: Week Five—The Criminal U.S.-Israeli War on Iran Becomes Even More Dangerous:

The U.S. imperialists have wreaked havoc and horror on Iran and in some ways upended the global economy in the process… but they seem so far to have been unable to achieve any of their strategic objectives. Despite an unprecedented month of targeted assassinations of dozens of Iran’s military and political leaders, as well as relentless bombing of the Iranian armed forces, the vaunted U.S. military has seriously damaged but not destroyed the war-making capability of the Iranian regime and its army....

Instead, the Iranian armed forces—while themselves being the military of a reactionary regime—have shown themselves able to adapt to what the U.S. throws at them and to bring their strengths into play. So cheap Iranian drones tie up or destroy far more expensive and complex U.S. military equipment. Iranian speedboats plant mines in narrow sea passages (or straits) that oil tankers must use, tying up the oil trade and causing shortages that have upset the global imperialist economic system....²

“The depletion of Iran’s military capabilities, impressive as it may be, is not yet translating into a strategic victory,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz sums up.

This was dramatically brought home this past week when Iran, for the first time and reportedly using a new anti-aircraft system, shot down two U.S. fighter jets and damaged two helicopters flying over Iranian territory. This took place just two days after Trump declared that Iran’s anti-aircraft capabilities had been completely destroyed and that the U.S. had total command of the skies over Iran (the U.S. had even begun flying slow-moving B-52s on bombing runs over Iran). 

(On Saturday night, in an operation inside Iran, the U.S. military located and extricated the second Air Force pilot who had been shot down by Iran on Friday.) 

All this reflects the fact that the U.S. and Israel aren’t the only ones shaping the course of the war. The Iranian regime has been able to carve out initiative and Iran is reportedly assessing that it can weather the storm of war and emerge with some kind of victory, including because it has been able to seize control of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz—at least for now—and this has given it significant leverage over the world oil market and the global economy.³

To be clear, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a reactionary Islamic fundamentalist regime that has brutally repressed its people and should not be supported. But no one should allow "the highly oppressive reactionary nature of the Islamic regime to obscure the fact that the whole history and present role of U.S. imperialism in relation to Iran has been in fundamental opposition to the basic interests of the Iranian people, and has been responsible for horrendous suffering inflicted upon them." (From Three Dividing Lines: From the Revcoms, on the U.S.-Israeli War Against Iran)

Enormous Stakes for the Trump Regime and U.S. Imperialism

The U.S. and Israel launched this criminal war on Iran, and now they face a lot of necessity to prevail. 

For decades, controlling the Middle East, in close alliance with Israel, has been key to U.S. global predominance. The dynamics and functioning of the global capitalist-imperialist system demand that major powers seek to control key markets, resources, and regions—while preventing rivals from doing likewise. The Middle East—with the world’s largest concentration of oil reserves, crucial trade routes, and strategic location at the juncture of Asia, Africa and Europe—is one such region.

The U.S.’s global rivalry with China and Russia is heating up, and neither can be allowed to significantly strengthen their hand in the Middle East region. The U.S. also faces real necessity to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for global shipping. And it can’t be seen as “mercurial,” vacillating, or unreliable in the face of crisis or difficulties.

All this seems to have propelled the Trump regime to continue to build up its military forces in the Middle East. This includes a third aircraft carrier group, the USS George HW Bush, thousands more Marines and airborne troops, over 200 more airplanes, and other military forces.⁴

As this buildup is taking place, the U.S. has escalated its attacks on Iranian forces stationed along its 1,500-mile Persian Gulf coastline and the Strait of Hormuz. 

While the future is extremely uncertain and unpredictable, there is speculation that the U.S. may be considering some sort of ground assault, possibly to seize one or more Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf. Trump might do this as part of attempting to take control and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a move which some analysts argue may not quickly end the war, but instead could “risk prolonging and widening it.”⁵

“The Potential to Develop into Something Even More Terrible, Beyond Its Current Horrific Dimensions”

When the U.S. war on Iran was just one week old, we wrote:

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.

That potential danger is looming ever larger at this writing.

Again, we cannot predict what action the U.S. may or may not take in coming days and weeks, what the outcome of it will be, or whether the Trump regime will strike some deal with Iran before the war escalates further.

But first, as Bob Avakian has analyzed in REVOLUTION—number 114, 

Trump fascism is a regime that openly and aggressively strips away basic rights and blatantly declares that there is no rule of law and due process of law other than what it dictates, and that raw destructive power is what must rule in the international arena, without even the pretense of adherence to international law or concern about the sovereignty, or even the right to exist, of less powerful peoples and countries.

Second, it is clear from this analysis and from Trump’s maniacal threats, the non-stop U.S.-Israeli killing spree in Iran, and the forces it is amassing in the region, that while there’s not a certainty—there IS a very grave danger that this war will escalate further, more dangerously, and potentially more unpredictably.

All this underscores the urgency of STOPPING THIS WAR NOW!

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!