STATEMENT OF THE WORKERS LEAGUE

28-02-2026: The United States of America (US) has assembled the largest array of forces in the Persian Gulf since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. President Donald Trump is hesitating but could yet launch a catastrophic regime change war on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Such a war would be a disaster not only for the Middle East and the world, but for the US and the Trump Administration itself. Yet again, US imperialism is threatening to start a war which could ignite World War III. Working people the world over must be prepared to prevent imperialism from plunging the planet into a global conflagration. The current repeated threats of regime change against Iran comes barely 8 months after the US/Israeli launched 12-day war on Iran, from which Israel tapped out and pleaded for a ceasefire. It also comes weeks after the US and Israeli states self-admittedly waged a deadly regime change operation throughout Iran at the start of January, arming and facilitating terrorist attacks against innocent civilians and public infrastructure.

Western economies in danger

Workers around the world need to oppose an imperialist war on Iran, and not just out of recognition of the immorality of launching war against yet another nation which has never threatened to attack Washington. Large sections of the world economy would be in immediate danger if Iran took the understandable step of closing the Strait of Hormuz. Some 40% of the world’s oil transits this area, and Iran is more than capable of closing the 33-kilometre stretch of water. The likely result would be a tripling or quadrupling of oil prices, leading to gas and petrol jumping to simply unaffordable prices overnight. The flow on effects when the price of energy jumps, let alone triples or quadruples, is usually that the price of everything jumps, as the costs of transportation becomes prohibitive. The economies of the West could be thrown into recession, to say nothing of the effect on the economies in the Middle East and West Asia itself. And this is before the appalling loss of innocent lives that would inevitably occur is considered. While mass anti-war opposition is not yet mobilised, as many as 70% of those in the West do not favour this war.

While US imperialism has sought regime change in Iran ever since the 1979 revolution, the stakes are today higher than they have ever been. Clearly, the current threat of war on Iran is aimed at the multipolar world and the entire Global South. Iran is today a key pillar of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa plus 15 other states) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). It is a key hub of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), led by the gargantuan economic power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Indeed, Iran has a 25-year strategic partnership with the PRC, and the majority of its oil is purchased by Beijing. Washington is seeking to isolate China from its key trading partners, but particularly its BRICS allies. Venezuela was the next in line to join BRICS, which is arguably why the US kidnapped its President. Cuba is a BRICS partner state, and it is in the process of being throttled by a medieval fuel siege. Washington is also attempting piracy on the high seas by interdicting Russian tankers destined for its trading partners, on top of continuing the Ukraine proxy war against Moscow via the arming of Nazis and the expansion of NATO. Capitalism in the West is entering a terminal phase, and not just because it is historically exhausted its capabilities. Imperialism is faltering fast because the Global South led multipolar world is now able to offer an alternative to 500 years of colonial conquest and domination by Europe and the US, given the related dysfunction of the Western post-World War II institutions.

One War

It is openly acknowledged that the PRC is the ultimate target of US imperialism, and the war on Iran is a stepping stone towards the incredible goal of regime change in Beijing. Capitalism only has the option of war on China because it is basically too late. US and European deindustrialisation more or less hands the baton to China, which is now an industrial, manufacturing, scientific and technological superpower. The PRC has been able to achieve this due to its socialistic state, with public ownership of the major and strategic means of production, nationalised land and a planned economy. The fruits of its 1949 revolution have risen to world prominence in the last 25 years. Yet the headache for Washington is the fact that the PRC has built alliances with the Global South and with its BRICS partners is reshaping the economic and political order to the benefit of working and oppressed people the world over. Its production of an abundance of products and technologies at affordable prices even makes the lives of working people in the West somewhat easier. Day by day, capitalist imperialism is being exposed as the dinosaur it is.

The West’s war on Iran is thus not separate to the war on Venezuela, the war on Cuba, the war on Russia and the eventual war on China. It is also not separate to the cost-of-living crisis in the West for working people. The cost of housing, rent, food, utilities, transport, medical care, education and more is outrageously high and unaffordable for those on lower incomes. The governments of the West are increasing their political repression, with constant restrictions on, or even outlawing, free speech. As the immense contradictions within society in the West reveal themselves further and further, the capitalist state becomes more and more oppressive. All of these dire privations for working people in the West are not separate to imperialism’s war on Iran and its war on the multipolar world. This is one war waged by the tiny elite billionaires of the West against “their own” people and the teeming masses of humanity.

The reason for the US/Israeli genocide on Palestine is now revealed – it was one more precursor to a regime change war on Iran. Imperialism destroyed Iraq and Syria in order to set up a war on Iran. It attempted to destroy Afghanistan, but today the Sunni Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has pledged to defend largely Shia Iran against a US led war. Iran’s Shia allies in the region – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah in Yemen, anti-ISIS militias in Iraq and others – are also prepared to fight Washington. The Russian Federation and the PRC have rushed military and surveillance systems to Iran in preparation, while simultaneously conducting military exercises in the vicinity of the Gulf. US imperialism may have 400 Tomahawk missiles to fire at Iran, but Iran has the capability to strike all US bases in states surrounding it and to potentially damage half of Israel if it is attacked. There remains the extreme danger that the Israeli state may resort to using its never declared nuclear weapons in response.

Workers of the world must defend Iran and its multipolar allies in this ongoing imperialist onslaught. The very living conditions of the majority of humanity may be in the firing line. It is acknowledged that the governments of the multipolar world do not aim to combat capitalism through a class struggle for socialism, but their self-defence against the dark forces of world capitalism does not contradict this.       No War On Iran! Lift the Sanctions! US/Israel: Get Out of Syria!  No Weapons for Israel, Ukraine,Taiwan!

Workers League

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