18 January 2026
Fresh off the kidnapping and imprisonment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on spurious charges of “narco-terrorism,” the administration of US President Donald Trump has threatened military action against Iran, declaring the American war machine “locked and loaded and ready to go.”
The possibility of an imminent US-led assault on Iran—carried out in alliance with Israel—appears to have receded, but the danger remains. Last June, US imperialism, working in coordination with Israeli commando units and Mossad operatives on the ground, bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer during the Iran–Israel Twelve Day War. The Israeli state has long favored, and worked to bring about, regime change in Iran, while the US has never formally recognized the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The pretext for threatening intervention this time was the cynical claim that Washington—which has deployed the president’s ICE hooligans across the United States to arrest, brutalize, disappear and murder migrants, protesters and bystanders—seeks to “rescue” anti-government demonstrators in Iran. Trump has pledged that “help is on the way” and has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, to the region.
As with Venezuela, the humanitarian pretenses are growing thinner and thinner. Trump’s November 2025 National Security Strategy document spells out the real reason for seeking to control Iran while trying to avoid an Iraq-style quagmire:
“We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass while avoiding the 'forever wars’ that bogged us down in that region at great cost.”
The “adversarial powers” it fears are Russia and China, with BRICS-member Iran being designated “the region’s chief destabilizing force.” While Trump’s preference would seem to be a Venezuela-style decapitation and subordination of the government, this in no way rules out a regime change operation or a coup d’état that could plunge Iran into chaos. As we noted in “The Empire Lashes Out” (1917 No.49) last year:
“Washington seeks to limit the influence and expansion of BRICS, particularly in the Middle East and Western Asia. BRICS now includes—in addition to founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. The toppling of the Assad government in Syria was a strategic victory for the US and Turkey and a setback for Russia, which had gained an important foothold in the region. Israel remains a key US ally in part because it can serve as a destabilizing force in the Middle East—and the Israeli objective of overthrowing the Iranian regime, even if it leads to civil war and chaos as opposed to an anti-BRICS client, might appear as the best option to foolhardy Trumpites who somehow imagine that the US would not be drawn into a costly regional quagmire.”
The international working class must unambiguously oppose a military attack by American imperialism and its rabid Israeli attack dog. We call for labor action against any imperialist intervention, above all by workers in the belligerent imperialist countries against the actions of their “own” ruling classes. Revolutionaries demand the withdrawal of all imperialist forces from the Middle East. Hands off Iran!
The mass protests that erupted in Iran last month against the rising cost of living drew in large numbers of students, workers and youth across the country. While the demonstrations appear to have subsided in the face of state repression and the threat of foreign intervention, they are likely to resume in the near future, as the underlying causes remain.
Mass discontent with the mullah-led regime is rooted in severe economic hardship caused by crippling US-led sanctions, soaring inflation and the collapse of the Iranian rial, all of which have made basic necessities increasingly unaffordable. This in turn has made the stifling theocratic rule of the mullahs even more unbearable, including for the largely secular middle class of the urban centers, who have increasingly flouted the backward restrictions on women’s rights and other personal freedoms.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza and humiliating downgrading of Hamas and Hezbollah, coupled with the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria and the damage done to Iran’s nuclear program last June, have further weakened Iran’s position and deepened popular anger. These setbacks have only exacerbated the already widespread perception of the regime as corrupt, unaccountable and incapable of addressing the needs of the masses.
The central demands raised by the protests have included immediate economic relief, political reform and expanded social freedoms and political rights. While the movement initially unified many layers of society hostile to the status quo, the merchant elements of Tehran’s bazaar—a key social base for the regime—reportedly withdrew following a series of concessions from the government. As Yassamine Mather writes in the Weekly Worker (8 January 2026):
“The bazaar’s structural dependence on imported goods, raw materials, and currency stability made it particularly vulnerable to the prolonged depreciation of the rial. The regime’s concessions temporarily restored this alliance, and protest activity by the bazaar has largely subsided.
“However, this partial stabilisation clearly highlights the limits of the government’s strategy. Popular anger extends far beyond the parameters of the bazaar. The deepest sources of unrest lie among working class households, precarious labourers, unemployed youth, students and the urban poor. For these groups, inflation, wage erosion and housing costs are not episodic shocks, but permanent conditions.”
The mass movement is politically heterogeneous and lacks a clear program for what would replace the existing regime, though it is difficult to assess the situation in any detail from the outside. Elements of the imperialist establishment in the West are attempting to push Reza Pahlavi, son of the US-backed shah overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, to the forefront. Yet Pahlavi, long exiled in the United States, has no significant social base inside Iran.
It would be naive to think that semi-spontaneous demonstrations lacking revolutionary leadership will lead to the creation of a government that protects Iran’s sovereignty and initiates progressive social, economic and political change. The Israelis, at least, have made it perfectly clear that they are actively attempting to fan the flames of the movement. Following the outbreak of protests in December, Mossad posted a message in Farsi on X urging Iranians to the streets, and ominously declared: “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”
Describing the protests as “violent,” the Iranian regime opted for concessions and then repression. The extent of the crackdown is disputed, but large numbers have been killed or arrested, while a communications blackout has been imposed to stifle organizing and suppress images of the repression. At present, the core institutions of the Iranian state—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij militia and the Artesh (regular army)—remain intact and loyal to the regime and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Although hatred for the theocrats in Tehran runs deep, it is unlikely that many of the participants wish their country to become a vassal of the United States or Israel. A decisive task within Iran is the development of independent working-class leadership capable of intervening in the protest movement and polarizing it along class lines. This means isolating bourgeois, monarchist and pro-imperialist forces (as well as exposing any Mossad, CIA or MI6 infiltrators) while advancing proletarian self-defense against state repression. It also requires principled, intransigent opposition to all imperialist intervention falsely presented as aid to the Iranian masses.
Above all, revolutionaries must advance a political program that addresses the real grievances of the oppressed while pointing towards the necessity of workers’ power in Tehran and across the region—a Workers’ Republic of Iran as part of the struggle for socialist revolution throughout West Asia.
For workers in the Western imperialist powers, the crucial task is to defend Iran against imperialist attack, including class-struggle action to block arms and troops and countering the propaganda that claims the only solution for the Iranian workers and oppressed lies in “assistance” from US imperialism and its allies. As we noted last June:
“Working-class militants have to start the fight now: build united-front actions with other workers in the face of bureaucratic pushback; bring class-struggle politics back into union meetings to challenge the bureaucrats; spread talk of pickets and hot cargos against war materiel. Block the bombs—shut down the ports! If it doesn’t yet seem realistic, then ask what must be done to make it so.”
—“Block the Bombs, Shut Down the Ports!” 1917 No.49
Strike against the US–Israeli war machine!
Hands off Iran!
Down with the mullahs, no to the shah!
Build a revolutionary workers’ party in Iran!
Related articles
Block the Bombs, Shut Down the Ports! (1917 No.49)
The Empire Lashes Out (1917 No.49)
Inching towards World War III (1917 No.47)