I was recently asked to serve on a webinar panel attacking the U.S.-Israeli unjustifiable war on Iran and Lebanon. It was organized by the Scholars for Social Justice, a relatively new organization that includes many diverse young faculty members who want to organize against this vicious war launched by the U.S. ruling class on February 28. The webinar was organized on a “rapid response” basis —no useless academic bickering about anything! Let’s just get on with the struggle! Over 300 people attended the webinar out of the 400 who had registered, a powerful indicator of the growing revolutionary anger against the U.S. and Israeli bosses.

The panelists varied in their assessments, but all sharply opposed U.S.-Israeli attacks. I was happy to encourage people to get active in the fight against the war, while understanding the underlying role of inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S.-Israeli capitalist bloc and the growing Chinese-led opposing imperialists. I argued that such rivalries had been central to World War I and II and dozens of subsequent wars, and that today we are in a pre-world-war period because the relative decline of U.S. imperialism and the rise of Chinese imperialism can only be resolved by war -- unless we succeed in revolutionary struggle. Iran is a close ally of China, and so the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran and its allies, while certainly over oil and trade routes in West Asia, is also an attack indirectly on Chinese. That emerging confrontation is driving the globe to world war. The choice before us? Fight for world communism, or face the barbarity of yet another world war.

I would encourage readers of CHALLENGE to help organize teach-ins, rallies, sit-in, and strikes against the war, and join PLP study groups to get a better understanding of the dire world situation we face — and how a revolutionary communist party can make all the difference in the world!

Intro

Grateful for this opportunity to share some thoughts and a call to action in response to the U.S.-Israeli imperialist wars against Iran and Lebanon. I hope that our words here will inspire you to organize teach-ins and actions against the U.S. and Israeli governments and the corporations and institutions that support their devastating aggression. Where possible, bring working class people into this movement both on our campuses and at work sites, especially key industries that have potential power to “close it down”. We also need to reach out to soldiers and sailors who come from the working class as well. Let’s build towards a strong, national action on May Day that honors the revolutionary spirit of the communists who launched May Day as an international opportunity for workers to review their troops in preparation for the coming battles!

I plan to make two broad points this evening. First I want to place this war within the framework of inter-imperialist conflict between rivals seeking to dominate the world economy for their respective enrichment. Second, I want to talk about providing solidarity to the working class of Iran, which has an impressive history of class struggle often under communist leadership, battling to overthrow the Shah and then to unseat and defeat the Islamic republic. Our focus politically, I think, should always be on advancing the interests of workers throughout the world, which can be met ultimately by a communist world of equality and collectivity.

Inter-imperialist rivalry

Let me begin by saying we are living in a pre-World War III period. Pretty scary, but that’s what it is.

For over two decades and perhaps even more, the U.S. capitalist-imperialist system has seen its position as the dominant imperialist power in the world decline relative to the rise of the Chinese capitalist-imperialist system.

U.S. imperialism became the global powerhouse after Bretton Woods and World War II. When the Soviet Union imploded, in the early 1990s, for a time the U.S. had no serious imperialist rivals. But imperialism is characterized by uneven development. China had set off on the capitalist road in earnest in 1979 with Deng Tsai Ping’s Four Modernizations, and over the next decades established a powerful state capitalist-imperialist system. Today, China is the relatively rising imperialist in the world, challenging U.S. imperialism across the globe.

How does this play out in the Middle East?

After World War II, the U.S. succeeded in thoroughly dominating the region, securing Israel as a loyal ally and, through a military coup in 1953, placing its puppet in power in Iran. Two cops for U.S. imperialism. And then came the Ayatollah in 1979, and the U.S. lost a cop. Things are different today.

In 2016, Iran and China established a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and reached a 25-year cooperation agreement that included China making a $400Bn infrastructure investment in Iran in exchange for oil exports. China and Iran also agreed to strengthen military and security cooperation, including exchanging military experience and conducting military exercises and jointly developing weapons and sharing intelligence.

Economic ties between China and Iran are deepening. China already purchases 1.3-1.6 million barrels per day (b/d) of oil at discounted prices (between 8% and 10% below Brent crude prices) from Iran, about 80% of Iran’s international sales (Reuters, 1/13/26). China dodges U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil by working with the IRGC and its extensive undercover trade network.

Politically, China leads both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS group as capitalist blocs which it hopes, with Iran’s help, will strengthen global organized opposition to U.S. imperialism and its allies and favor that of China.

The attack on Iran by U.S. imperialism is not only about immediate economic gains and domination of the Middle East. It is another U.S. move to prepare for world war against a Chinese-led rival bloc. For imperialists in general, there is no space in the world for competitive rivals to co-exist. The world and its markets have been fully divided among the major imperialists since the early 20th century. Now any advance by one imperialist bloc comes at the expense of another. Such inter-imperialist rivalries were at the heart of both 20th century World Wars and dozens of smaller wars over the past 60 years, and will be at the heart of the next one.

The Working Class

Our hope for a better future relies on the global working class. The working class in Iran has fought the shah’s regime and the ayatollah’s regime. Battles since the 1979 revolution include the student rebellion of 1999, strong worker engagement in the Green Revolution of 2009, and the ever- intensifying rebellions of workers through strikes, often initially for immediate demands but then turning into calls for an end to the Islamic Republic. Two powerful rebellions happened in 2017 and 2019. The Woman Life Freedom battle in 2022 raised the ante further, (say her name, Jina Amini) and the recent December-January rebellion struck fear into the heart of the exploitative repressive leadership.

However, rebellions require communist leadership and organization to be successful in overthrowing the government and creating a communist workers society. Communists have tried. The Persian Communist Party was formed in 1920 and joined the Communist International, organized labor unions, and led a country-wide strike centered on oil workers in 1929. As a result, the British puppet Reza Shah banned the party and arrested many members, and the party was dispersed. Communists reconstituted themselves as the Tudeh Party in 1941 and grew substantially in numbers and influence and political positions. After the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah’s son as dictator in 1953, communists were attacked and worked underground for many years. In the 1970s they joined the national front dominated by the clergy led by Ayatollah Khomeini in overthrowing the government and functioned openly for a brief time. The alliance with the mullahs quickly ended in 1982-3 with the slaughter of the communists and increasing repression and exploitation of the working class, reminding us that uniting with nationalist, capitalist-minded clerics eager to exploit workers for themselves is a recipe for defeat.

Lesson learned, perhaps. In order to defeat imperialism, we need a mass movement that consciously fights racism, sexism, imperialism, nationalism, and other bourgeois divisive strategies and keeps our eye on the ball – fighting for a world of equality, collectivity, and the creation of a worker planned economy that abolishes the wage system and produces goods and services to meet people’s needs, not profits.
As we build a mass movement against the war, let’s keep in mind that this pre-world War III period will end either in communism, or barbarism and the devastation of world war. Let’s get busy. We have a world to win.