WORKERS UNITE TO DEFEAT THE U.S. WARS FOR OIL!
U.S. Out of West Asia, Nigeria, Venezuela!
Turn imperialist war abroad into revolutionary war at home!
The pending Trump/Netanyahu war against Iran is an escalation of the east west confrontation between the U.S. led bloc vs the China Russia bloc. This inevitable war is symptomatic of the massive contradiction between the failing U.S./NATO and booming BRICS to repartition the world. Countering this war drive is an accelerating isolation of the USA and its announced world domination project. This is a contradiction that results in a new one point alliance of nation states gathering around a Canada-centered Commonwealth bloc who want no part of this war, and this alliance can influence the timetable of the U.S. Israeli strike. Following the Rubio dog whistle to fascism in Munich, the coalescence of the new bloc is rapidly gaining support. Consider India shifting quickly from BRICS to Trump to Carney; consider the France defense pact with Canada and Japan’s fighter jet contracts with the British Aerospace. The new bloc has been bullied out of support for Washington’s role as the first among NATO equals. Trump can still blunder into a nightmare threatening nuclear annihilation of Israel. But there are now three international blocs, two of which seek to prevent his war and grander world leadership plans.
The level of Iran’s deterrence has increased since last year. Because of the support of Iran’s position by Russia and China, the new naval and military support, and technical and financial assistance from BRICS nations should give Washington pause. China’s GPS satellites can read missile launches and air forces from over the horizon. Iron dome as a concept has been defeated and can no longer be depended on. Military tactics are changing rapidly, the aircraft carriers have to move further from the targets as the new radar capabilities push the fleet further offshore, rendering the naval air forces increasingly vulnerable. It is possible Trump would retreat from the war and do any number of transactional deals that would necessarily leave Netanyahu isolated. This is the “box” Trump has been maneuvered into, and it does not correspond to his aims. Iran is now part of the world. What happens in Iran affects the whole world.
U.S. Imperialism in decline
The semi-colonial world has been navigating for a new course out from under the jackboot of the U.S./EU imperialist bloc. Seeking refuge in the BRICS orbit as an escape hatch is being peddled to the masses by the Stalinist and ‘tankie’ left. A pivot towards China and its “market-socialist” alternative is sold as a Popular Front against imperialism. Of course this pivot has not led to socialist revolution and independence, it was never an escape plan for the masses; however, it always was and remains an option for the comprador national bourgeoisie to prevent permanent socialist revolution. Trump and Rubio want the world to know that option will be met with war, genocide and fascism. The Popular Front with China and BRICS has disarmed the masses leaving the international working class unprepared to oppose the wrath of the dying empire and today the empire is striking back! Argentina was recaptured by electoral means, Venezuela by kidnapping; Cuba is being starved into submission while Iran is targeted under the pretext of nuclear disarmament, where the real issue is saving the petrodollar.
Today it is Iran, not Israel, fighting defensively for its existence against the U.S./Zionist expansion plans. The defeat of the U.S. in a war against Iran is in the interest of the workers of both Asia and the West because it will hasten the downfall of the imperialist system and the defeat of the capitalist ruling class. The ultimate destruction of imperialist power over West Asian peoples will only be developed by workers states of the masses’ own revolutionary construction across the region. Thus U.S. workers should extend military support to the – regime ONLY where it fights U.S. imperialism and give no political support whatsoever to the theocratic regime. We are for the survival and triumph of the Iranian working class!
The antagonist, Israel, exists and operates as an extension of the U.S., as a tool of the parasitic imperialist U.S. ruling class. It is historically a colony of the U.S.. Zionism is the bourgeois occupation of Palestinian land to act as the gendarme of western imperialism over west Asia in the form of the bogus “Greater Israel.” It exists to suppress the permanent revolution in the region. Because the unfinished national democratic tasks of bourgeois revolution and the economic demands pressed by the masses confront imperialism and its agents in every nation, the contradictions can only be resolved by the victory of socialist revolution spreading across the region. Or nuclear annihilation.
Iran remains a semi-colony of western imperialism as a result of its oppression by the west. The compounded effects of the west’s imposed sanctions for 46 years has limited its ability to advance its forces of production while simultaneously sustaining a repressive regime that holds back permanent revolution in the region. Bessent, Trump’s finance secretary, took responsibility for manipulation of Iran’s currency and instigating economic crisis, a crisis which was largely responsible for the December(25)-January(26) protests emanating from the bazaars. For decades leftist’s in the west have actively defended Iran from the U.S./EU/Israel offensive; however Stalinists (tankies) have abandoned the forces of socialist revolution which alone can defeat imperialism and Zionism. Such is the legacy of the Stalinist/Menshevik stagist theory of revolution which builds popular fronts: the political alliance with the national bourgeoisie and today with Chinese imperialism. To defeat imperialism, both east and west, workers need their own class independent united front to defeat the popular front in class political struggle for state power in the semi-colonies.
The non-proliferation subterfuge
Western powers can’t enforce an anti-nuclear claim over a country and at the same time credibly claim it is independent! Western imperialist hostility has resulted in Iran joining the SCO, BRICS and the New Development Bank and features of the BRI including arms cooperation for its self defense. In this circumstance the Iranian regime is demonstrating surprising strength in the face of nuclear blackmail. The regime is aware of the diminished support for Trump 2.0 in the U.S. and within the western alliance. This bolsters their defensive resolve, since it must. Not one voice in the bourgeois liberal political sphere has called for Israel to abandon nuclear arms and the Samson Option; the open secret IAEA estimated 250-300 nuclear weapons.
The U.S./Zionist plan for west Asia is one of many fronts in the inter-imperialist repartition of the world. The trade for oil in Yuan represents the leading edge of the war for the control of the oil receivables which serve as collateral for the loans, the rent payments upon which the “Petrodollar” sustains the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency. The west, having lost the economic war for production of use values to China, it is the hegemonic role of the dollar alone that floats the wealth of the U.S. capitalist class. The war over Iran is for control of the rentier capital, the borrowing capacity the parasitic bourgeoisie lives off. The petrodollar vs the Yuan is behind the military attacks on Nigeria and the kidnapping of Maduro. LIkewise the U.S. arm twisting of India to stop buying Russian oil is confronted by class struggle played out in real time against a historic general strike where 300,000,000 workers downed tools in opposition to the U.S. trade deal. This strike portends greater revolutionary upheavals, whipsawing the Modi regime in inter-BRICS friction, as Modi seized 3 U.S.-sanctioned oil tankers to please Trump.
Is this the slow motion roll out of WWIII?
Netenyahu proclaimed ‘I’m attacking Iran with or without you!’ His forever project is to accelerate the U.S.’s regime change timeline for Iran. This is the tail attempting to wag the dog. His stated plan is to attack Iran on March 30th regardless of U.S. backing; Trump has sent the armada to back him up. They demand the end of Iranian support for Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the Shia militias in Iraq and elsewhere. They demand the end of uranium enrichment and the facilities for all nuclear development, and abandonment of conventional missile development. This is a demand for abject surrender. As a matter of survival Iran has no choice but to reject these demands.
Democrats, Schumer announced, are ready to buy Israel any weapons they request, but are even less likely than their Republican counterparts to go further than supporting limited attacks. Iran’s most authoritative spokespersons have rejected the threats and have affirmed that ANY ATTACK will henceforth bring a total war response. Iran’s bold stance brought Trump to the negotiation table in Geneva in a high stakes standoff. Iran’s negotiators, under threat of imminent U.S. strikes, are offering limited nuclear concessions but continue to reject the Zionist demand to abandon the ‘axis of resistance.’
The masses need this rejection far more than the bourgeoisie or the clergy, who can flee the consequences in private jets, should their defenses collapse. Clerical regimes use populist and anti-imperialist rhetoric even as they remain the class enemy of the working class. Yet while they fight an imperialist enemy workers must extend military support, but not one whit of political support. The ongoing rule of the Iranian bourgeoisie is an unfortunate legacy of the “unfinished” revolution of 1979!
Defeat of the regime by the U.S./Zionist intervention would be a setback for the Iranian masses who would be directly subordinated to the will of western oil conglomerates likely enforced by a monarchist Pahlavi regime. Russia and China have been supporting the regime and know its defeat will chip away at their economic ascendance; Lavrov has warned of serious consequences if Trump acts militarily. A military victory of Iran alone will not resolve the basic social contradiction of the exploitation of the proletariat across west Asia. But it will boost the fighting spirit, strength and expectations of the masses. The existential threat to the peoples of the entire region will not be expunged without victorious regionwide socialist revolution, the workers’ state power! We call for an international workers’ anti-imperialist United Front to thwart imperialist wars, genocide and ecocide!
The masses in the U.S. have no appetite for endless wars for oil or hegemony!
Commentators say Netanyahu has got Trump in a box, but Trump understands that getting Americans incinerated in overseas bases or in the loss of a super carrier are non-starters politically. If Iran destroys a U.S. aircraft carrier or U.S. military bases in the region, that would trigger a nuclear response as a matter of doctrine. Only a handful of Republican legislators have joined with Democrats to assert and reclaim the congressional authority to declare war. They are hesitant to set off a nuclear war which would trigger mass uprisings in the region and this makes stealing Iranian oil all the more difficult.
The Gaza genocide and the population removal expanding across the West Bank and wars for control of west Asian oil and sea lanes are an affront to the conscience of the masses internationally. Zionism has been exposed, discredited and defeated ideologically in the U.S. and across the west; only the capitalist ruling class, dependent on Israel’s counter-revolutionary role, still adhere to the Zionist project–their hegemonic rule depends on it. A class divide exists between the oil barons, bankers and billionaires versus the masses taking to the streets from Minneapolis to Buenos Aires to the docks of Italy and the workshops and factories of India. The world is in a pre-revolutionary situation.
When the U.S. masses speak in the streets and polls they oppose these wars. To stop these wars the labor movement must take the lead and show the links between these wars abroad and the war against immigrants and workers at home. Both are the result of the decline of the industrial might of the U.S. and its waning role as world hegemon; the decaying beast is lashing out! Workers need an international United Front against imperialism, war and fascism to defeat it.
The workers movement in the U.S. must launch the general strike against wars abroad and fascism at home. We call for labor to initiate mass assemblies of workers in total opposition to wars on Iran, Palestine, Venezuela and Nigeria, to stand with the workers of Argentina in their February 19th general strike against Milei’s slave labor legislation. The workers of the United States must declare our solidarity with the nations under attack and unite workers of the world against the U.S. war machine.
Our main enemy is the U.S. ruling class and its imperialist parties. Their politicians and media personalities stumble over each other to take the podium to assert their fealty to the U.S.-led Zionist project and feeding the military industrial complex. Thus Lindsey Graham visits Israel and says this is “…where the wars of the future are being planned.” This causes no objection we can detect from the “opposition,” the Democrats, though we see an administration budget request that increases military spending another $700 Billion (to $1.6 Trillion)! This is how the class enemy plans to forestall its looming financial crisis, having failed to extract the price of it from the consumer with Trump’s tariffs.
Workers in the U.S. do not yet have their own fighting workers labor party to stand against imperialism and fascism. The Trade Union bureaucracy and leadership still tie the base to the imperialist Democratic and sometimes the Republican parties. The urgent task of building a class political independent party arrives just as the masses are clamoring to extend the limited “General Strike” and resistance movement which confronted ICE in Minneapolis. Class struggle militants must unite the call for class independence in the unions alongside the fight for a United Front against imperialist wars and ICE raids against immigrant workers.
Troops must refuse illegal orders but also refuse the legitimacy of those who give them! Elect your own officers! Organize a service persons’ Industrial Union! And close the bases! We demand U.S. bases close across west Asia and removal from overseas entirely! U.S. workers are not conquerors and have no reason to rule the world.
We want the U.S. troops to say NO and take over the bases and elect their own officers, and organize a “Let’s go home movement!”
Our program is clear, we advocate unconditional defense and a military bloc with the regime (not only the people!) that resists imperialism. Aid from the BRICS bloc is OK until it intervenes to fight directly against the U.S./NATO. Should the character of the war change and become an inter-imperialist conflict, no longer a war of defense, Iran will be transformed politically into a proxy of the China Russia bloc. In this case workers must adopt a dual defeatist position and argue that only united workers of the world can defeat both blocs by turning our guns on the ruling classes and preventing any nuclear hell from breaking out!
Today, as at all times, we call for the defeat of the U.S.-led imperialist project and its Israeli gendarmes and any color revolution or Pahlavi restoration. Defense of the peoples of Iran requires the purely military defense of the population and territory by the international working class.
The International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT) has among its functions as a revolutionary pole for the world’s workers the illumination of the class memory of the Shoras, the workers’ councils of the democratic revolution against the Pahlavi dynasts and their imperialist sponsors!
Workers of the World Unite, We have Nothing to Lose But Our Chains! We fight for socialism! Imperialism fights for a no-future barbarism!
For Labor actions at Home and Internationally against U.S. imperialist war!
No War for Oil! U.S. troops out of West Asia Now! Victory to Iran!
For a New Zimmerwald! For a new Revolutionary Workers International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution!
- International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT), 02/21/2026
