Stop bombing Iran – Stop the genocide!

The US and Israel have launched their long-planned attack on Iran, aiming to obliterate the last obstacle to US hegemony in the region. Donald Trump, fresh from failing to secure the Nobel Peace Prize, has decisively opted for war—first in Venezuela, now in Iran. The scale of the blitzkrieg exceeds George W Bush’s ‘shock and awe’ campaign against neighbouring Iraq in 2003. The killing of up to 180 schoolgirls and teachers in Minab will not be the last atrocity.

Lies and damned lies

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have twisted and turned trying to justify a war that clearly contradicts international law. Regime change was announced then quietly dropped, as it risked alienating Trump’s MAGA base. Then came a ‘pre-emptive’ strike framing claiming self-defence. Next, we were told Iran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon—despite the US having supposedly destroyed its nuclear facilities in strikes last year. Finally, the justification shifted to destroying Iran’s ballistic missiles, on the grounds they could serve as a delivery vehicle for a nuclear warhead.

All lies. Trump had narrow, opportunistic motives: to distract from growing dismay in his base over economic mismanagement and his association with the Epstein files. Benjamin Netanyahu and the Christian Zionist evangelists in the US administration have long sought war with Iran as an opportunity to complete the Palestinian genocide and advance the Greater Israel project. Ultimately, the US and Israel aim to reshape the Middle East in their image—US hegemony over the region, backed by its Zionist attack dog, would control the world’s energy supplies and crucially curtail both China’s access to oil and Russia’s regional influence.

Starmer’s dilemma

Caught between the Gorton by-election two days prior and Trump’s surprise attack on 28 February, Starmer has scrambled for a position that avoids a 2003-style mass movement on the streets. He initially refused to allow the US to use British bases for its attacks, but quickly buckled under Trump’s pressure and has now permitted their use for ‘defensive’ operations.

This is Orwellian doublespeak. Just as the RAF has been providing intelligence and assistance to the IDF’s invasion of Gaza, British jets are already involved behind the scenes in combat air patrols alongside US and Israeli efforts to establish a no-fly zone in southern Iran.

The truth is, Britain is involved up to its neck in the war spreading across the region. Stock markets plummeted and oil and gas prices soared after Iranian strikes hit facilities in the UAE and Qatar. This will feed into higher retail prices for fuel and transport. If rising interest rates and inflation deepen the cost-of-living crisis, Starmer could become Britain’s first political casualty of the Iran war. All of this demonstrates that a multipolar world does not lead to peace, but to intensifying rivalry between the US, China, and other imperialist powers over markets, trade routes, and resources—hence the aggressive new ‘Donroe Doctrine’ guiding US policy, including plans to prop up Europe’s ‘patriotic’ far-right parties.

International solidarity

The working class movement must oppose this war. A US-Israeli victory over Iran would be a defeat not just for the regime in Tehran, but for the workers, women and oppressed peoples of Iran and the wider region. It would not bring freedom or democracy, but plunge the country into civil war as the US and Israel seek a government that serves as an instrument of imperial order.

But defending Iran against aggression is not the same as supporting the theocratic dictatorship. The freedom of the Iranian people can only be won by the Iranian people—by the workers, women and youth who have already paid an enormous price fighting their own regime. Our solidarity is with them.

We need a mass international movement capable of cutting off the supply chains of aggression and isolating the aggressors politically and economically.

We demand an end to Britain’s involvement in the war, the closure of US military bases, the lifting of sanctions that primarily harm ordinary Iranians, and the severing of all military, diplomatic, and economic ties with Israel. Against the Zionist genocide, we fight for a single, secular, and socialist Palestine. That means supporting strike action, demonstrations, and direct action targeting the war machine—and confronting our own government’s complicity in it.