Against the Current editors
THE U.S.-ISRAELI WAR of “regime change” against Iran opens a fresh stage of catastrophe in the Middle East. This entirely illegal war — under both U.S. and international law — is an imperialist adventure with unknown global consequences.
The peoples of the region will pay an enormous price, and it will become clear that this war is not separable from the Trump regime’s ongoing war on the rights of the U.S. population and assaults on the nations in the Americas.
As media and political attention is diverted from Palestine, Israel’s continuing Gaza genocide and military-settler ethnic cleansing of the West Bank will only accelerate toward the goal of eradicating the Palestinian people’s life in their homeland. This war is also designed to give new lease on life to Netanyahu’s far-right governing coalition and Israel’s descent toward neo-fascism.
The people of Iran, who have been slaughtered by the murderous regime and strangled by imperialist sanctions, will not be “liberated” by U.S. and Israeli bombs and Tomahawk missiles.
If the “Islamic Republic” were to collapse after the assassination of “Supreme Leader” Khamenei and other top officials — the regime’s fate is unpredictable at this early moment — its replacement might be anything from the kind of chaos and civil war in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion, to a Washington-backed monarchist or military client regime, or fragmentation of the country as some Israeli ideologues seem to advocate. In the latter scenario, forces like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State could gain new operating spaces.
If the Iranian regime were to survive, it is likely to become even more brutal. None of this would bring the freedom and democracy that so many courageous Iranians went into the streets to achieve.
The war’s impacts on the unstable and factionalized states of Iraq, as well as Syria and Lebanon which are already under constant Israeli bombing and partial occupation, are also potentially devastating.
And for all of Trump’s triumphant bluster, the United States may not be able to control the outcomes. If the war is protracted and Iran moves to choke the Strait of Hormuz, for example. the Gulf kingdoms might be drawn into a wider regional confrontation.
But is this criminal imperialist war about more than Trump’s bloated personal ambition to “remake the Middle East” (and rake in huge profits for his family and cronies)? To some extent we think it is: Erasing Iran as a strategic factor, leaving Israel as the unchallenged regional power, might solidify Israel’s alliance with Saudi Arabia and Gulf kingdoms and enable U.S. policy priorities to “pivot” elsewhere.
Yet this war itself could embroil the United States, for a very long time, in Middle East chaos of Washington’s own making. We’ve seen other examples where imperialist intervention creates deadly contradictions it can’t resolve.
We do know that this war in Iran is connected with events closer to home. After seizing control of Venezuela and now proposing a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, Trump in gangster-boss fashion seeks to cripple the national independence of every country in the Americas, from Colombia and Mexico to Canada (while also ceding Ukraine to Vladimir Putin). This marks an exceptionally dangerous moment in a new carveup of the world.
At the same time, the Trump gang’s reign of terror against immigrant communities, and its war on the democratic rights of the U.S. population, continue. The war against Iran is also intended to prop up this administration’s collapsing domestic support, and its schemes to rig the midterm elections by mass voter suppression and potential military and mob violence.
Defending our rights at home, and opposing this imperialist war, are parts of the same struggle. Both must be central to the March 28 “No Kings Day” and May Day mobilizations.
U.S. Hands Off the peoples of Iran and the Middle East, Cuba and Latin America, and our communities and civil rights!
The editors of Against the Current, March 1, 2026