On 13 June, Israel launched an unprovoked missile attack on military and political targets in Iran, a long-time regional enemy. Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the goal was to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and that a desirable result was ‘regime change’ – a phrase which sanitises imperialist plans for the total destruction of the Iranian state. Such an outcome would leave Israel, and by extension the Western imperialist powers, with unchallenged supremacy in the Middle East.
Israel’s initial strikes targeted nuclear scientists and leading Iranian military commanders as they slept. It had hoped to decapitate Iran’s military leadership and so paralyse any subsequent response. This it failed to do. Instead Iran rapidly reorganised and unleashed a series of missile and drone strikes that penetrated Israel’s much-vaunted Iron Dome missile defence system, hitting at least five military bases and the centre of Tel Aviv – narrowly missing the Zionist ‘Ministry of Defence’ headquarters. It was clear that there would be no quick military victory for the Zionists.
US imperialism pulls the strings
Immediately after the Israeli attack, President Trump insisted the US had played no role in it. He subsequently told the Wall Street Journal that he had discussed it with Netanyahu on 9 June. On 22 June, in support of the faltering Zionist attack, the US launched cruise missiles and dropped bunker-busting bombs on three of Iran’s main nuclear sites. Trump then posted on social media: ‘if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???’
Iran responded the next day with a missile attack on a US military base in Qatar. There are over 40,000 US troops stationed across the region with at least eight permanent military bases situated across the Persian Gulf from Iran, all potential targets. However it was clear that Iran informed the US of its target before launching its missiles, with Trump declaring, ‘I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured’. On 24 June Trump announced a ceasefire. Over 900 people had been killed in Iran during this unprovoked onslaught. However Iran’s response clearly shook the Zionists. 29 Israelis died, over 9,000 lost their homes and multiple buildings were reduced to rubble at a cost to the Israeli government of almost $1.5bn in compensation claims.
Doing the ‘dirty work’ for imperialism
For Israel, the attack on Iran helped divert attention away from its continuing genocide in Gaza, and what had been growing international pressure from its imperialist backers. Domestically, it bolstered Netanyahu’s political position. For the US, and Western imperialism in general, an independent Iran is viewed as an obstacle to their ability to control and exploit the region and its natural resources. Iran has a population of over 90 million and has 10% and 15% of known world oil and gas reserves respectively. It is also able to control passage through the Straits of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf, through which 20% of the world’s shipping carrying oil and natural gas passes. Israel’s open attack on Iran confirms once again its role as an attack dog of Western imperialism, as the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz blurted out on 17 June at the G7 summit: ‘This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us.’
British and US imperialism’s reactionary role in Iran
Up until the Second World War Iran was dominated by British imperialism. Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (renamed BP in 1951) Britain controlled virtually all of Iran’s oil output. But in May 1951 the new Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, leader of the liberal bourgeois nationalist National Front, nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In response Britain’s Labour government organised a Royal Navy blockade of the Persian Gulf in an attempt to impose an international boycott of Iranian oil. Iran’s Abadan refinery was at that time the largest in the world and the main supplier of oil to the US forces engaged in a bloody counter-revolutionary war on the Korean liberation forces. Iran accounted for over a third of Middle East oil supplies. Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the British and US secret services on 19 August 1953. The Shah, who had fled to Rome, was restored to the Peacock Throne – behind which now stood US rather than British imperialism.
The Iranian revolution of 1979, which saw the toppling of the Shah in a popular revolution before the coming to power of the theocratic Islamic Republic, ended direct US control over Iran – a control it has sought to reassert ever since with British and European support through economic sanctions and military actions.
The development of the BRICS economic/political grouping, created initially by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa as an alternative to the Western imperialist-dominated IMF/World Bank has given member countries such as Iran a breathing space from US-imposed sanctions. At the end of May 2025 Iran and China officially opened a direct rail route between the two countries. The China-Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan- Iran rail corridor allows for the rapid delivery of goods all the way from the eastern coast of China to the Persian Gulf.
Labour government backs attack on Iran
Following the first Zionist airstrike, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Netanyahu that he was ‘clear that Israel has a right to self-defence’, expressing ‘the UK’s grave concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme’. As a further clear expression of support he then ordered the transfer of more RAF aircraft to forward bases in the Middle East region.
The British corporate media played its usual role in manufacturing consent for participation in the war. On 14 June BBC News ran the loaded headline ‘Was Iran months away from producing a nuclear bomb?’ The Guardian falsely described the Israeli aggression as a ‘war over Tehran’s nuclear programme’. No mention that Israel, the state that launched the unprovoked military attack, is the only nuclear power in the region.
Communists and anti-imperialists in Britain must stand against the imperialist aggression against Iran and oppose all British imperialist operations in the Middle East.
Bob Shepherd
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 307, August/September 2025
