Israel began a fresh assault on Iran on Thursday
The Middle East is hurtling towards a regional war—and Israel is to blame.
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said the Israeli terror state will be at war with Iran for “as many days as it takes”.
Israel sparked the war on Thursday of last week when it bombed the Natanz nuclear facility, where it claims Iran is developing weapons of mass destruction.
The supposedly “targeted” attack murdered civilians, including children, as well as killing key personnel in the Iranian regime. Iran has launched a series of retaliatory attacks on Israel in response to the aggression.
At the G7 meeting of powerful states on Monday, Western leaders spoke of “de-escalation” and “diplomacy”.
But they are the ones who arm and fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza—and aggression across the Middle East.
Israel claims it has to “defend itself” by destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
In reality, Netanyahu is motivated by Israel’s internal political dynamics and those of imperialism more broadly.
Since Israel began its genocidal campaign in Gaza, Netanyahu’s strategy has been to broaden the war on multiple fronts in the Middle East.
This includes the invasion of Lebanon, air strikes on Iran and grabbing more territory in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship last December.
And these assaults have undermined Iranian power in the region, particularly by weakening the Hezbollah resistance group in Lebanon.
Israel has spread the war partly to lock in support from the United States for its plan in Gaza.
Sections of the US ruling class feared that the scale of Israel’s brutality would spark resistance in Arab states.
Alongside Israel, they are a key part of the US imperialist system of alliances in the region. There was never any doubt over US backing for the genocide.
But Netanyahu wanted backing for “absolute victory” over the Palestinian resistance and a blank cheque for a never-ending war.
To silence the mildest of criticism, Netanyahu banked on spreading war to cement US support. He knows that, when push comes to shove, the US will always back the Israeli state.
Netanyahu is also motivated by the crisis within Israel.
His current coalition government rests on far right support from security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich. If he lost their support, Netanyahu’s government would fall.
This is linked to a deeper division within the Zionist project about how best to oppress the Palestinians.
More “liberal” Zionists favour apartheid, while the far right wants genocide. Important sections of the Israeli establishment fear a permanent occupation of Gaza would lead to a permanent state of counter-insurgency.
And they are worried about Israel losing legitimacy as the “one democracy” in the Middle East.
But the far right wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza—and go on the offensive across the region.
Smotrich previously said that Iran’s nuclear programme “which threatens the State of Israel and the entire Western world, must be terminated”.
To shore up far right support, the Netanyahu government fantasises about wiping out all Palestinians and gaining total supremacy across the Middle East.
But the Netanyahu government’s warmongering has deeper roots than the divisions in Zionism.
Israel is determined to smash the Iranian regime due to increasing imperialist competition in the Middle East among world and regional powers.
Israel and Iran are in competition for power and influence in the region. The terror state is heavily backed by the West—and Western military support has enabled the genocide in Gaza.
But Israel is no longer dependent on economic aid from the West as it once was.
That initial support allowed Israel to develop itself economically, partly through investment in technology and military industries.
This means that—while Israel remains the West’s watchdog in the Middle East—it is able to strain at the leash more.
Israel’s rise as a regional imperialist power takes place against the backdrop of a crisis of US imperialism.
Following disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s, the US’s power in the Middle East was depleted.
This opened up space for a host of regional powers, including Israel and Iran, to further assert their interests. Iran is backed by Russia and China—though not to the same degree.
Russia is Iran’s main supplier of arms and China buys around 90 percent of its oil, which has given it some breathing space amid Western sanctions.
Due to US sanctions, Iran’s foreign oil sales dropped from $119 billion in 2009-10 to $8.9 billion in 2019-20.
Iran sought to extend its influence by backing groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
Neither Israel nor Iran are global powers. But their rivalry in the Middle East is built on the dynamics of imperialism, a global system of competition among capitalist states.
It is significant that Israel’s attack on Natanz came before nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran.
In 2015, Iran and the US signed a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, where Iran would curtail its nuclear enrichment in return for trade agreements with the US.
But in 2018, under pressure from Netanyahu, the first Trump presidency broke that deal.
Trump was trying to restore it because he wants to focus on US imperialism’s main competitor, China.
China brokered the Saudi Arabian-Iranian peace treaty in 2023 in a sign of the US’s weakness.
Trump visited the Middle East because he is looking to bolster US relations with Gulf states and the new Syrian regime.
Netanyahu felt snubbed when Trump didn’t visit Israel on his tour, and feared being downgraded in the US president’s vision for the Middle East. Netanyahu didn’t want Trump to strengthen Israel’s competitors in the region.
Israel’s attack on Iran means that Iran has withdrawn from the talks. Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has said that continuing with them would be “unjustifiable” amid Israel’s “savagery”.
Trump previously floated the idea of joining Israel in an attack on Iran. But now he’s using the threat of war as a bargaining chip to push Iran into a deal.
The flip-flopping flows from Trump trying to deal with the crisis of US “hegemony”—it’s ability to get its way unchallenged.
US imperialism is weaker and more strained—and China has emerged as a stronger competitor.
China has strengthened relations with Arab states. It is a major importer of Gulf oil, has strategic partnerships with several regimes including Iran and is a major investor through its Belt and Road Initiative.
Trump is desperate to bolster US influence to compete with China.
The US is caught in a bind—it will back its watchdog state Israel, but wants to avoid a regional war.
US imperialism is already stretched across multiple fronts in the Middle East, Ukraine and Asia and the Pacific.
But the logic of imperialist competition means war could happen—and that would have far-reaching consequences.
First, it would mean more death and destruction for the Middle East and the Palestinian people.
Second, it would send shock-waves through the global economy.
The price of oil has already shot up, spiking by up to 13 percent. That will only be exacerbated as Israel is now targeting Iranian oil fields.
As a net energy exporter, the US wants to control oil because China relies heavily on Gulf oil.
But Trump’s tariff wars show that economic shocks are not beneficial to a declining imperialist power.
So, while Israel’s attacks on oil fields do damage Iran and China, they still undermine the US due to the effects on the global economy.
And a rise in oil prices would benefit Russia at a time when it’s refusing to do what Trump wants in negotiations with the US over the Ukraine war.
For many in the Palestine movement, Iran is part of the “axis of resistance” against Western imperialism.
But the history of the Palestinian struggle shows that relying on regional powers will not lead to liberation.
The Iranian regime came to power after the 1979 revolution that toppled the Western-backed Shah.
Iran is a capitalist state with a ruling class dominated by a conservative clergy that follows the Shia version of Islam.
And, while it is a junior imperialist power, it strives to become the major force in the region.
The Iranian regime has faced waves of popular revolt, primarily the Women, Life, Freedom movement in 2022.
But the regime crushed the movement—and has a history of opposing social movements and working class organisation.
It paints itself as a power that backs Palestine, but only does so as long as it can bolster its own influence.
During the Arab Spring in 2011, Iran backed Assad’s Syrian regime—and pulled Hezbollah to intervene on behalf of the Syrian dictator.
In Syria, Iran helped drown the revolution in blood. The fall of Assad and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon have weakened Iran’s position, but that is not why it cannot be relied on for the liberation of Palestine.
The primary reason is that Iran is vying for regional domination. It stands in solidarity with Palestine but knows if it intervenes it will face opposition that will undermine its interest in dominating the region.
Iran has every right to retaliate against Israel—and we must oppose Israel’s brutal attack on Iranian people.
But to truly win Palestinian freedom we need to take on imperialism. That requires a mass movement across the region that doesn’t just challenge Israel but also challenges the ruling classes and states there.
Iran is happy to strike deals with the US, the funder of Israeli terror, when it suits its interests.
The revolutions of the Arab Spring in 2011 showed the power of mass resistance to challenge the region’s rulers and imperialism—and isolate Israel.
And in the West, our task is to ramp up pressure to stop all arms sales to Israel.
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