On June 20, US-Iran tensions intensified, after an Iranian missile shot down a US spy drone and the US threatened an armed response, later withdrawn. But US military action remains a strong possibility. This was preceded by 2 small attacks on commercial vessels in the Gulf, which the reactionary, Islamophobic Trump administration attributed to Iran, but without evidence.  

In recent months, the US administration has used bloodcurdling language against Iran, as seen in Donald Trump’s May 18 tweet threatening “the official end of Iran,” an obvious reference to a nuclear attack. Clearly, a real danger of war exists. 

These US threats have received open backing — and demands for more — from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, all of which have planes capable of striking the country, and with Israel also in possession of nuclear weapons.

While it is unclear if the US will launch an outright military strike, especially given mass opposition at home to any new war, it does say it will devastate the country economically, and has begun to do so. Trump unilaterally abrogated the Iran nuclear agreement in May 2018, followed by very severe economic sanctions last fall. More recently, the administration is threatening to sanction third parties that purchase Iranian oil, among them China, Turkey, India, and Japan. The sheer weight of the US economic sanctions, augmented by new technologies of control and surveillance that cut Iran off from global financial networks, is unprecedented. And here, the real victims are the Iranian people. Since it is one thing to make a population suffer, but another to actually dislodge a regime, the US sanctions constitute a kind of brutal “experiment” in international domination, with the Iranian people as guinea pigs. 

The Trump administration is using a similar strategy against Venezuela, whose proximity to the US, plus the fact that its opposition is led by pro-Trump conservatives, places its regime in even greater danger. 

Our opposition to US military threats and economic strangulation in no way signals support for the anti-worker, anti-women regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including its propping up of the murderous Assad regime in Syria. At home, the regime has been facing new ferment against its reactionary rule, from the working class, from the rural poor, and from women activists.  It has arrested and imprisoned labor and feminist leaders, most recently the noted feminist attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh.  We support those progressive, feminist, and socialist oppositionists, all of whom have firmly condemned US imperialist threats, also noting that the regime is using US threats as an excuse to crack down. 

Today, the US has the most reckless and aggressive regime in its history, as seen not only in Trump himself but also in high officials like John Bolton, who has been dreaming of war with Iran for decades. A war with Iran, even a “limited” series of airstrikes, could spin out of control, devastating the region and the global economy, with terrible consequences for the people of the world. 

We call upon workers, women, LGBTQ communities, youth, and oppressed minorities all over the world to oppose US imperialist threats against Iran, while in no way giving political support to a reactionary regime. It is only these kinds of forces that can truly stop imperialism and war. 

–Approved by a vote of the membership of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization