The attack on Iran by the U.S. and Israel is one of the clearest signs yet of U.S. imperialist weakness masquerading as strength. As Iran chokes off oil and gas trade through the Strait of Hormuz, and State-Terrorist-in-Chief Donald Trump barrels along with no apparent strategy or end game, the scope of the conflict widens by the day. There is no predicting the outcome. Trump could panic at rising fuel prices, declare victory, and end his chaotic campaign; or both sides could dig in for a long and blood-soaked conflict; or some unforeseen escalation could push the bosses closer to world war. In a period of deepening capitalist crisis, volatility is the order of the day.

But some things are clear. One is that workers, as always, will pay the price for the rulers’ ruthless battle to control the Persian Gulf’s oil and gas, the lifeblood of capitalist economies and militaries. More than a thousand workers and children in Iran have already been killed, including 150 schoolgirls slaughtered by a U.S. Tomahawk missile (Guardian, 3/10). Airstrikes on oil depots in Tehran, a city of ten million people, set off huge sulfurous fires and toxic black rain that will seed future epidemics of heart and lung disease and cancer (New York Times, 3/10). In Beirut and southern Lebanon, Israeli bombs have massacred at least 570 and displaced 780,000 more (newarab.com, 3/11). Iran’s equally vicious rulers have countered with cluster bombs, munitions banned by 120 countries, but used repeatedly by Israel and the U.S. to target civilians (Times of India, 3/9). 

What’s also clear is that the bosses have no solution for the contradictions of capitalism, a system built on racist and sexist inequality, exploitation, and an insatiable drive for maximum profit. As competition sharpens between a declining U.S., a rising China, and an opportunistic Russia, current or impending proxy wars will spread misery from Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to India and Pakistan. None of these clashes are happenstance. As Vladimir Lenin wrote in 1915, the grow-or-die imperative of monopoly-stage capitalism forces imperialists into war over resources and markets. 

As long as the parasitic rulers and their profit system survive, a hellscape future is in store for our class.

But two years later, Lenin and the Bolsheviks also showed that imperialist war opens the door to communist revolution. The international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party fights to smash this racist, sexist, imperialist system once and for all!

Chinese interests threatened

Iran is a nation of 90 million mostly impoverished workers whose corrupt and fascist rulers use religion to shore up their base of support (see back page). Despite losing several top leaders and absorbing the region’s most intensive bombing since the 2003 Iraq war, the Iranian bosses are leveraging their geopolitical advantage to disrupt much of the world’s commerce, travel, and energy supply lines. They’re also having some military success; they destroyed the U.S.-made missile defense radar system in Jordan, damaged the one in Qatar, and may have hit the radars in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (twz.com, 3/7). They also killed six U.S. soldiers in a drone strike in Kuwait and have injured dozens and forced mass evacuations in Israel.

While China’s ruling class may not be wedded to the current regime in Iran, it’s committed to keeping its foothold in the region—and to keep cheap oil flowing for its industry and transport, not to mention its fighter jets. Around half of China’s oil imports come from the Persian Gulf, and 14 percent of its seaborne oil from Iran (moderndiplomacy.eu, 1/13). The Chinese imperialists cannot allow the U.S., their main rival, to disrupt this crucial traffic indefinitely, or to wreck Iranian ports that China needs to skirt U.S.-controlled maritime routes for its Belt and Road Initiative (specialeurasia.com, 3/1). Nor can China sit passively by as the U.S. blusters about Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and hints of a ground invasion. After the initial U.S. attack, two Iranian ships left a Chinese chemical-storage port known for loading sodium perchlorate, a rocket fuel precursor that Iran needs to rebuild its missile stockpiles (Washington Post, 3/7).

With the global oil market on tilt, Russia’s bosses are cashing in. The price of Russian oil shot up close to 50 percent, and the U.S. was forced to grant India a 30-day sanctions waiver to buy it. Russia is now sharing satellite intelligence with Iran to target U.S. aircraft and warships (Washington Post, 3/6). It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where even indirect military aid might precipitate a more pointed superpower confrontation.

U.S. imperialism backfires

Control of the Middle East, which sits on half the world’s oil reserves, has been a bedrock necessity of U.S. ruling class policy since the CIA coup to restore the Shah of Iran in 1953. But after the Iranian Revolution brought the ayatollahs to power in 1979, the U.S. bosses have squandered lives and treasure in one humiliating setback after the next: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Though Iran’s capitalist bosses were economically hamstrung by U.S. sanctions, they bolstered their regional influence with proxy militias and workers’ hard-earned hatred of U.S. imperialism. From the first Obama administration, U.S. power projection grew dependent on Israel’s genocidal Zionist regime. As the U.S. became isolated from its Western allies, Obama and later Biden knew the country wasn’t ready for all-out war with Iran, much less its backers in Moscow or Beijing—hence the 2015 nuclear deal.

The U.S. killing machine remains fearsome, as we’re seeing in Tehran today. But as Mao Zedong pointed out, the bosses are tactically strong but strategically weak. Enter Donald Trump, the diseased creature of a rotting and divided empire.

Trump reminds us that accidental factors can shape history alongside historically inevitable ones. We know that sooner or later, material conditions will compel the U.S. to move toward full-blown fascism and world war. While the U.S. bosses still aren’t ready for that war today, Trump’s ego and ignorance and twitchy trigger finger could jump the gun to deploy the deadliest force in human history. The dysregulation of Trump’s reign is spiraling the danger and decay he inherited in wildly new and unpredictable directions.

Fight for communist internationalism: MARCH ON MAY DAY!

If the erratic Trump is the bosses’ biggest variable, the ultimate wild card in the class war is the power of a united, conscious working class. The outbreak of global demonstrations to protest the U.S. and Israeli slaughter in Gaza showed proof that an internationalist heartbeat persists in masses around the world. As Progressive Labor Party has found in Minneapolis, the working class is open to revolutionary communist politics, even in the belly of U.S. imperialism. 

What the working class is won to fight for sets limits on what the ruling class can do. Our task is to push our limits and win the working class to communism. When workers worldwide defend the lives of children from Haiti to Iran as heroically as workers in Minneapolis defend their Black and immigrant neighbors, we will be on the road to communist revolution. It’s the only road that can turn us away from the bosses’ death march and transform imperialist war into a global class war for communism. Let’s make May 1 a massive day of disruption and general strikes, and join PLP on May 2 for marches and more. FIGHT BACK!

ICE is attempting to expand its gutter racist deportation plans in Prince George’s County, MD. It’s trying to expand offices on Belcrest Road in Hyattsville in the same building that houses the SNAP program, community college classes, and other services that are often used by immigrants. But 75 workers and students fought back with an angry protest outside the planned site, with more to come. 

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members shared CHALLENGE, especially the stories from Minneapolis and Chicago – two cities that have felt the ICE surge which may be coming to Maryland soon. We also made contacts with protesters from Howard University and Northwestern High School, who live nearby and are outraged by ICE’s presence. 

No ICE in our towns!

Congressman Glenn Ivey, who is heavily funded by lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), made a photo op appearance but was confronted by signs calling for justice for Palestine along with ICE OUT signs. So far, the building inspectors have deemed the building unsafe for further development which is rumored to include detention facilities as well as offices. 

Many workers in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. are involved opposing ICE kidnappings and detentions with training sessions and patrols to mitigate the damage to our community.  PLP friends and members are deeply involved in these activities, especially in Hyattsville and Greenbelt, but more action is developing in Washington County where ICE is seeking to build a large detention center with hiring notices already posted. So far, no Maryland detention centers are open.

Organizing in Howard County closed one in Jessup a few years ago. And there are weekly protests and charges of inhumane treatment at a medieval detention holding area in Baltimore. 

In Greenbelt, we are regularly protesting the Park Police’s use of their facilities in Greenbelt National Park to house detainees who ICE has grabbed off construction vehicles on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. As we build our forces in this area, we are aiming to confront the police station.

Antiracist, multiracial unity key

To build multiracial unity, the Greenbelt Resistance Network that we are part of is reaching out to the de facto racially segregated Franklin Park community. As one of our friends explained, this area has been largely ignored by the city leadership. Despite its large population of immigrant and Black workers, it did not have a representative on the city council until a couple of years ago. 

More and more, workers and students are responding with anger and determination to ICE and are also coming to realize that the entire system of capitalism that requires such racist repression must be overthrown. We are happy to help develop that outlook and share the vision of a communist society that will abolish all borders between workers.

Following World War II, the U.S. supported the rise of Israel and the fascist Shah of Iran as two cops for a rising U.S. empire of oil, gas, and trade in the Middle East. Both the Tudeh communist party with its trade unions and Islamic fundamentalists led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini fought against the Shah. In 1979, Islamists, socialists, communists, guerilla groups, and liberals formed a national front that overthrew the Shah to the delight of the masses of workers throughout the world. Khomeini came to power with the mistaken support of the Tudeh party and declared that Iran would be an Islamic Republic that opposed U.S. imperialism, the “Great Satan.” Once Khomeini’s mullahs (islamic religious leaders or clerics) had consolidated power, they slaughtered thousands of communists and others who resisted their theocracy. Tudeh had made the tragic revisionist error of allying with class enemies.

The Islamic state under Khomeini seized most business firms and natural resources. The mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) became the core of the capitalist class. Today, they own and directly control at least 60 percent of the economy. The Supreme Leader and his Bonyads (Islamic foundations) today directly dominate Iran’s agriculture, manufacturing, and finance. The IRGC holds billions of dollars of contracts in the oil, gas, and infrastructure sectors and dominates Iran’s international oil trade. Traditional private sector capitalists are small in scale. The working class remains intensely exploited.

The communist movement in Iran: nationalism leads to defeat

The Communist Party of Persia (CPP) was formed in 1920 and joined the Comintern. It created and led early trade union organizations. British puppet Reza Shah banned the CPP in the 1930s because it led a mass strike at the Anglo-Persian Oil Company fields in 1929. By the end of World War II, the communists had regrouped as the Tudeh Party and gained a significant base in the industrial working class. 

Its strategy for success, however, followed a multi-stage theory in the fight for communism. Tudeh supported Mohammad Mosaddegh, a social democratic/national bourgeois figure and prime minister under the Shah. The CIA and MI6 from Great Britain violently removed Mossadegh from office and shored up the power of the Shah. Workers continued to support Tudeh, but it reprised its error in the late 1970s by backing Khomeini as the leader of the “first stage”, the national independence stage. Such nationalist decisions are the death knell of revolution. By 1983, Khomeini had consolidated power and attacked the Tudeh party, executing thousands, including its leadership, using lists prepared by the CIA. 

The historic destruction of the communist movement in Iran is a cautionary tale about what happens when a party follows the wrong line of march. The world communist movement (the Comintern) in 1935 wrongly decided, as fascism was sweeping across Europe, that allying with social democratic organizations was required to defeat fascism. This strategy reinforces the idea that many stages, including joining nationalist fronts, were required on the road to communist liberation. 

Progressive Labor Party concluded in evaluating these lines that, to be successful, communists must win a major share of the working class to an internationalist communist vision of the future, without wages, racism, sexism, and with an economy organized collectively by workers to meet each other’s needs. Alliances with pro-capitalist forces, or concessions to capitalist institutions like the wage system and nationalism/national liberation strategies, would allow the capitalists and their ideology to enter our movement and block the path forward.

Some communists refused to follow Tudeh’s nationalist strategy. Peykar (Farsi for “Struggle” see image on page 7) was formed in 1975 and opposed Tudeh’s nationalism and reformism, but could not escape Khomeini’s repression, which killed over 250 of its members by 1985. 

Economic background to revolts in Iran: austerity, war, allies, and drought

After the revolution of 1979, Khomeini made initial concessions to the working class, including union rights, a 40-hour work week, and lodging allowances. It was, after all, the oil workers’ leadership of a political general strike that overthrew the Shah and chased his successor Shapour Bakhtiar into exile. But the new regime steadily eroded these gains and economic progress flagged.

During Iran’s revolutionary chaos in 1980, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Iran to seize oil-rich territory and overturn the 1975 Shatt al-Arab waterway border agreement. The Iran-Iraq war, lasting through 1988, enabled the capitalist regime in the name of national unity to outlaw independent unions and undo previous gains. The war severely damaged the economic base of Iran’s society, deepening the oppression of the working class for decades to come with a 40 percent reduction in real income.

After the war ended in 1988, Iran hastened further down the capitalist path by accepting IMF reconstruction loans. These agreements required “structural adjustment,” i.e. cutting subsidies and services to the working class further.

The sanctions against Iran by the U.S. devastated the working class. Five U.S. presidents have enforced increasingly severe sanctions since the 1979 revolution. In 2018, President Donald Trump imposed “maximum pressure” sanctions seeking to eliminate Iranian oil exports altogether and isolate its banking sector from international financial relations by blocking its access to SWIFT2.

In response to reduced trade, Iran’s rulers pursued agricultural self-sufficiency by building numerous irrigation dams, yet the country still imports about 25 percent of its food. The dams have worsened a severe drought that intensified in the 2020s, while temperatures in Iran are rising more than twice as fast as the global average. Water-intensive irrigation and rice cultivation have drained aquifers, causing widespread ground collapse, and rivers have shrunk further as Afghanistan’s upstream dams reduce water flowing into Iran.

Iran has also spent billions in weapons and subsidies over the past two decades to bolster allies in the region (Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, and Syria (during Assad’s leadership), again draining money and resources from the economy and making the working class pay.

The working class of Iran – many nationalities and genders

The working class in Iran is made up of many nationalities. Persians constitute the largest ethnic group (60 percent), while ethnic minorities, including the Kurds, Arabs, and Balochs, have often been in the forefront of working class struggles against the theocratic capitalist regime due to the more intense exploitation they experience. 

Women’s lives under the Islamic Republic are harshly constricted by Islamic law, requiring head and body coverings. These laws are enforced by the Guardian Council (morality police), the IRGC, and other law enforcement bodies. Even traffic cameras are used to punish women in violation of dress requirements. 
These economic trends have led to uprisings and broad resistance while the mullahs live lives of luxury and decadence. 

Workers and class struggle: uprisings and rebellions since the 1990s

The January 2026 country-wide rebellions were built on a tradition of resistance, first against the Shah and now against the Islamic Republic’s clerical fascists. The working class and its organizations have almost always been central to these past struggles and have been central to the current rebellion.

Workers’ organizations in the 2025-26 uprising have been fighting both for their immediate survival demands and in opposition to the clerical capitalist class. Fighters include workers at multiple oil and gas companies, steel industry worker retirees in five provinces, telecommunication workers in dozens of cities, health workers including nurses, gold miners, and teachers. The uprising has terrified the regime, which has responded by killing thousands of protesters and jailing many more.

Uprisings since the 1979 revolution

In 1999, students at Tehran University revolted when the regime closed Salam, a popular reformist newspaper. The student movement spread nationwide and began to politically challenge the mullahs’ regime. The movement was violently repressed, with several students killed, a dozen more “disappeared,” and thousands arrested. 

Workers, students, and others protested in 2009 against election fraud. Workers demanded a fourfold increase in the minimum wage and a decrease in inflation, while bus drivers, sugarcane workers, teachers’ organizations, and other labor organizers joined the struggle. Over 150 labor leaders were arrested on May 1, 2009, and other labor organizers were gunned down in the streets. The 2009 uprising was crushed, but another significant working-class revolt happened eight years later. Iran’s rulers had promised workers an improved economic life after the 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. ended most sanctions. Mounting labor struggles fueled the 2017 uprising, with strikes and protests by nurses, bus drivers, truck drivers, tire and sugarcane workers, petrochemical workers, bakers, and tractor factory workers. An initial rally in Mashhad spread to 40–80 cities, with demonstrators chanting “People are begging and mullahs rule like gods!” and “Death to the Dictator,” targeting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Security forces killed 22 protesters and arrested about 2,000, while the regime shut down Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Ninety percent of those arrested were 25 or younger.

In 2019, the regime announced a 50% fuel price hike. The working class rose again, and the regime responded with bloody repression—but the rhythm of revolt was accelerating.

In 2022, The murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s “morality police,” for not veiling triggered another uprising known as the “Woman, Life, Freedom” (WLF) movement. The protests quickly evolved from demanding justice for Amini into a challenge to the Islamic Republic’s rule. The WLF movement was an extension of the rebellions of 2017 and 2019.

The resounding call from the working class during the 2026 rebellion was for the overthrow of the corrupt religious fascist dictatorship, not the return of a Shah! Workers know that replacing the clerical fascists with U.S. servants would not represent progress. Now more than ever it is urgent for communist ideas to take flight and root themselves in the struggle from Brooklyn to Pakistan to Iran. This struggle must be international, uniting workers across borders. If the working class in Iran chooses nationalism, we are likely to see clerical fascists or U.S. stooges maintain power in Iran and wreak infinite misery for the working class. But if a revolutionary communist movement aligned with the PLP is rebuilt, the working class in Iran can emerge from the rubble of war to see a new communist horizon.

Newark, NJ — Following the lead of students and teachers in Minneapolis, more than 60 students and faculty led by Progressive Labor Party members at a community college gathered together to strategize on the fight against ICE in New Jersey.  The college has a deeply international student population, and hundreds have been directly affected by the racist, deportation-heavy era of US policy for decades, and especially in recent months arresting and harassing residents and even students from the college.  PLP knows only workers protect workers so we decided we needed to do something to get students and faculty prepared in case ICE comes to our campus. Like colleges across the country that have bowed to the bosses’ crackdowns against the student-led anti-genocide movement in Palestine, the lame duck college administration has done nothing to offer support or any sense of collective action to protect students and workers from the deportations.  In this void, students and workers with PLP guidance took the lead with a teach-in. 

ICE needs to be crushed

ICE agents swept communities in Hoboken and Jersey City, Students voiced what they were experiencing in their families and neighborhoods.  The school administration has yet to offer a comprehensive plan of how they will defend students and workers if ICE should come knocking—more likely banging— on our doors.

One student explained that the ICE raids have been going on since Barack Obama’s administration, but with an increased ferocity under Donald Trump 2.0.  Another emphatically stated that the ICE pogroms of terror are blatantly racist against Black and Brown communities.  After several skits demonstrating Constitutional rights that are under attack by ICE, one student asked, “What rights do we really have?” succinctly expressing that workers have no rights under capitalism and rising fascism (see glossary on page 6).

New Jersey is currently experiencing ramped up targeted ICE arrests and raids throughout the state, from Morristown, to New Brunswick to Jersey City. ICE has arrested 3,000 immigrant workers from January -October 2025 alone (NJ Spotlight News, 10/9/2025). Newark has seen two massive ICE raids on the same job site, a fish market in the largely immigrant neighborhood of Ironbound. The last one in fall saw 60 officers, heat seeking drones hunting workers inside the building, and a telecommunications shut down that made it impossible for neighbors to alert rapid response organizers via their cell phones.

Only an Armed, United Working Class Can Defeat ICE and Fascism

At PLP members' suggestion, a group of students gathered after the meeting to pledge to organize defense of our school community. We talked more about how we could organize. We have been steadily but stealthily sharing more CHALLENGE as the fascist crackdown on our campus ramps up. 

Though CHALLENGEs newspapers were not available for distribution at this event, an effort was made to encourage students to argue for the need for militant, united action in the face of fascist attacks on our class. Many students said that we need to come together and fight as a united school to defend one another. One student warned that the situation will only get worse, so we must be prepared. Another militant student remarked, “They have guns—maybe we need guns too!”

Clearly, workers and students recognize the dangers we face with rabid fascism on the rise and with U.S. and Israeli bosses seemingly intent on pushing the world toward a third world war at the expense of workers around the globe.
Students have begun meeting to determine whether forming a student club would be an effective way to organize on campus and build networks with students at other local colleges to oppose these deportations. In doing so, we are taking inspiration and leadership from organizing efforts at other campuses, such as City University of New York (CUNY).

We also plan to attend a teach-in at a CUNY in the Bronx later this week. One valuable lesson from our own teach-in is that when we are united and grounded in communist ideas, we can build the strength needed to win.