As Iran and the U.S. traded strikes over the Strait of Hormuz, just days after their fragile "memorandum of understanding,” it confirmed a development decades in the making: the decline of U.S. imperialism. The ongoing war has emboldened Iran, undermined U.S. credibility with allies, and left a vacuum for rival imperialist China to advance their superpower ambitions. 

For the international working class, rising global volatility exposes the bosses’ peace deals as mere pitstops on the road to wider wars. Capitalism is failing all over the world. To bury it, we must build the long road to communism with Progressive Labor Party. Communism means an end to the capitalist profit system and all forms of racism, sexism, and class exploitation. 

Workers pay the cost of bosses’ war

To date, the war between the brutal rulers of Iran and the U.S. and Israel, vicious partners in the Gaza genocide, has resulted in 7,500 workers murdered and 50,000 injured across more than 15 countries. Most of the casualties are in Lebanon and Iran, including more than 170 slaughtered by a U.S. Tomahawk missile at a girls’ elementary school. 

The war has already plundered $132 billion from workers in the U.S. and sent global prices soaring for gasoline, energy, fertilizer, and food (bloomberg.com, 6/18). The U.S. Department of War is seeking an additional $80 billion, which excludes the cost of repairs to 20 U.S. bases hit by Iran missile and drone attacks, including devastating damage to a naval base in Bahrain (Wall Street Journal, 6/25). 

The June 17 memorandum of understanding is a “framework” agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz while giving Iran relief from the U.S. blockade and sanctions and unfreezing up to $24 billion of Iranian assets now sitting mostly in China and Iraq (Afkar, 6/15). Concrete measures to slow or stop Iran’s nuclear program were deferred to later talks–a big win for Iran. Just 10 days after this latest deal, Iran hit a Panama-flagged oil carrier and exchanged strikes with U.S. forces as it leveraged its newfound power to control shipping through the Strait, which accounts for 20 percent of global oil traffic. Once again, U.S. weakness was exposed for all to see.

Epic fail for U.S. imperialism 

Operation Epic Fury has turned into an epic fail. Despite an overwhelming advantage in firepower, the U.S. has been outmaneuvered by Iran, a country in a state of economic near-collapse. Ever since the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 established the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, U.S. dominance has rested in large part on its ability to control the Middle East and guarantee the safe traffic of oil out of the Persian Gulf. Under the incompetent reign of Donald Trump, that arrangement is now in tatters. The war has “compromised the United States’ status as the Middle East’s main security guarantor” (Foreign Affairs, 6/16). 

Despite an overwhelming advantage in firepower, unprecedented attacks on another country’s nuclear program, and open coordination with the pariah state of Israel, the U.S. is losing yet again. It’s the latest in a long line of debacles, from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. 

Since the financial crisis of 2008, U.S. rulers have faced even sharper competition from Russia and most of all from China, now the world’s leading industrial power. China is exploiting the latest global crisis to portray itself as “a reliable steward of the international order”--and the U.S. as “a violent and reckless pursuer of its own interests” (Brookings, 6/8).  Calling the war in Iran Trump’s “most consequential foreign policy mistake,” the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. imperialists’ top think tank, named China as the “chief geopolitical beneficiary” of shifting alliances in the oil-rich Middle East (6/17). 

Instability for all

It’s tempting to celebrate the humiliation and decline of the U.S. imperialist bosses. After all, these are the same ghouls who murdered at least 5 million and displaced 38 million in just the 9/11 war zones in the Middle East alone (Brown University, June 2025). But failing empires create their own dangers for the working class. Like wounded animals, injured rulers are more likely to go on the attack. As the U.S. empire wanes, junior capitalist countries are looking elsewhere for  security in an increasingly contested global order. Israel is growing even more erratic. China and Russia will seek to expand their spheres of influence. That’s how trade wars can turn into shooting wars, and proxy wars into world war.  None of these developments will serve the international working class–until we succeed in turning world war into the revolutionary fight for communism. 

Communism, the ultimate win

As the world becomes more unpredictable and dangerous, we cannot choose between rival sets of bosses. When it comes to their class interests, workers, soldiers, and youth in the U.S. have nothing in common with the U.S. rulers–and everything in common with our counterparts in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, China, Russia, and Venezuela.

More than ever, workers are looking for solutions. More than ever, they need communism. PLP aims to be the weapon of the international working class as we abolish this murderous system once and for all, and build a world free of exploitation, state terror, and imperialist war. Join us!