The US and Israel Will Suffer for Their War on Iran

Editorial Board

Israel launched a war on Iran early Friday morning (06/13) with the full backing of the US. Hundreds of US-supplied jets flew over the country and began a bombing campaign of military and civilian sites aimed at disarming its main adversary standing in the way of its plans for expansion in the region. Since then, Iran has responded with Operation True Promise 3, delivering wave after wave of increasingly more devastating attacks that continue today.

US-Israel vs Axis of Resistance

Israel is a semi-colony subordinated mainly to the dictates of US imperialism, which utilizes the Zionist entity as its attack dog in the Greater Middle East to fulfill its aims of imperialist domination. This includes dividing the countries in the region and pitting the peoples against each other, cowing governments into subservience to US imperialism, and a staging ground for projecting domination. It has played a critical role in solidifying US domination of the region, stifling national liberation struggles, and pushing out Chinese and Russian imperialist influences, which includes the latest maneuvers against Syria as well as Iran. Economically, it provides assistance to the US in developing increasingly destructive weapons and technology. Ideologically, it has succeeded in spreading Zionism and rallying people behind the Nazi-fascist state of Israel.

Given its subservience to US imperialism, Israel’s development is aligned with the dictates of US imperialism, which has followed closely in relation to changes in the region.

Beginning in the late 70s, which marked both growing mass unrest and the sharpening of armed struggle in Iran against the Shah, as well as increased resistance to Israel in the region, US military “aid” to Israel would dramatically grow. At the same time, the US has carried out a protracted stick-and-carrot campaign aimed at forcing conciliation with Israel in the region, such as the Oslo Accords in the 1990s under President Clinton and the Abraham Accords initiated during Trump’s first administration.

The 1979 overthrow of the US-backed Pahlavi dynasty ruling Iran was a blow to US and Western imperialists, who had enjoyed domination over the country for centuries, particularly the UK and later the US. The new Islamic government changed the correlation of forces in the region; under Pahlavi, Iran had been a close ally with Israel, justifying the association with chauvinist rhetoric against Arabs. With the overthrow of Pahlavi, this changed, and Israel became increasingly isolated and therefore more necessary for US imperialism.

The US, along with Zionist terror, generated its opposite, a force that is increasingly coalescing to overcome imperialism and Zionism under the banner of the “Axis of Resistance”. This includes Palestinian resistance factions led by Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah in Yemen, Iran, and various militias in Iraq and Syria. These forces leading the opposition to US imperialism in general have ties to imperialism themselves, namely skinny-dog Russian imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism. However, in the current situation, where the Axis of Resistance forces are fighting for national defense against US-Israeli invasion and genocide, the principal feature of their war is a war of national resistance and hence they wage a just war, an anti-imperialist war, against the combined forces of US, UK, French, and German imperialism providing full support to Israel.

Owing to their popular support, groups in the Axis of Resistance have successfully weakened the US and Israel through thousands of military actions since October 2023 alone, also accomplishing the mobilization of millions in the region in support of them and against imperialism and Zionism. All of this has proven the sick formations of imperialism to be a house of cards, a fragile association of decadent and genocidal regimes that lack mass support.

The US-Israel War on Iran is Rooted in Imperialism’s Deepening Economic Crisis

Given its subservience to US imperialism, the actions of the Zionist entity must be understood in its connection to the mandates of US imperialism, which is currently facing a deepening economic crisis. The economic crisis of overproduction forces the imperialists to get rid of their overproduced commodities one way or another—either destroying them, so as not to incur the additional costs of storage, maintenance, etc., or generating markets for them, in this case promoting war in the attempt to seize more markets and resources from rival imperialist powers.

Strategically, the US follows a policy of “China containment” to improve its supply lines and access to rare earth minerals needed to secure the continuation of its technological dominance. In order to do this, it must stabilize its situation in the Middle East, which it has been attempting through bribery and war.

The illegal attacks and war on Iran has been born of the desperate needs of US imperialism to resolve its economic crisis and handle inter-imperialist contention, corresponding to an impetuous blind arrogance and chauvinism that has led it to miscalculate and blunder once again. This is not something unique to the Trump administration but is something the imperialists have been preparing for decades. Trump’s policies directly continue from Biden’s statements to Israeli media in 2022 that the US would be willing to use force to disarm Iran of its nuclear capabilities “if that was the last resort”, continue off his own direct attacks on Iranian officials in the Middle East during his first administration, as well as Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran aimed at disarming it through economic coercion, and so on.

The effort to isolate and attack Iran particularly ramped up following the successes of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The Worker has previously reported on how the imperialists have been attempting to build up popular support for their nefarious aims through their monopoly media, affixing “Iran-backed” or “Iran-linked” to every force it aims to make Americans hate.

These attempts have failed miserably, and there is little popular support for war with Iran in the US. A poll conducted by the University of Maryland in May 2025 shows that only 14% of the US adult population is in favor of carrying out military strikes against Iran, and this is despite asking skewed questions based on the premise of limiting Iran in the first place. Even within the Republican Mafia a contradiction has exploded, with a growing faction arguing that war with Iran contradicts “America First,” leading reactionaries like Tucker Carlson and Rand Paul to denounce such efforts.

The war has backfired miserably for the terrorist Trump and is yet another defeat he can add to his mafioso administration. Entire blocks in Tel Aviv are leveled one after another, Mossad agents are captured in Iran, and their supposedly invincible US-supplied jets are gloriously shot down above the skies of Tehran. While the imperialists and the Zionist regime gamble on the Iranian people mobilizing against their government to install a power subservient to US interests, the fact is that in the extremely unlikely event that such dark, sinister and reactionary dreams come true, the damage has already been done—the US has made its situation far more precarious in the Middle East than it ever has been. The Trump administration has once again overextended itself, blindly losing another war under the slogan “Peace through strength”.

Who will Win?

The Great Lenin establishes that, “In any war, victory in the end is determined by the morale of those masses who shed their blood on the field of battle…. This realization of the aims and causes of the war by the masses is of enormous significance and assures victory.” People are the determining factor in any war, while weapons and tools in general are an extension of human capability. The tools at one’s disposal do not determine the success with which they will be wielded, but rather it is the way in which all factors in a war are utilized that determines victory or defeat. The creative, human factor plays the determining role.

The increased militarization of imperialism is connected to its utter decomposition, to the period of rapid decline in which it is beset on all sides and condemned to death, hence it is not evidence of strength but evidence of weakness. This is a glorious fact of the world proletarian revolution, of which the national liberation struggles form the base.

One does not need to go far back in history to see examples of this—in May, the US capitulated to Ansar Allah, the head of the 10^th poorest country in the world, which also previously defeated a US-led coalition after a protracted war. This follows from victories seized by the Palestinian armed factions led by Hamas as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon, which have conquered ceasefires from US-Israeli forces within the past year. These forces are able to win because they have popular support and the enemy is widely hated—support for Hamas increased dramatically among Palestinians following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and Ansar Allah regularly mobilizes million-man marches in solidarity with Palestine.

For this reason, the immediate outcome of the US and Israeli war against Iran will be determined by the Iranian people and who they mobilize against. It is no secret that the Iranian government lacks significant popular support due to a combination of the ruling class’s subordination to imperialism, the crippling effects of US sanctions aimed to promote unrest, and the deepening general economic crisis that imperialist countries have foisted the brunt of upon the Third World.

Additionally, decades of US domination and alliance between the Iranian and Israeli regimes, and continuous reactionary propaganda disseminated by these forces, have left a section of the Iranian population that still sees the US and Israel as their saviors. This is not inconsequential, and US-Zionist forces aim to take advantage of internal opposition to stir further unrest with the hopes of overthrowing the Iranian government and installing someone friendlier to them like in Syria. The butcher Netanyahu has already made direct appeals to the Iranian people to do exactly that on several occasions.

However, the fascist nature of the Israeli government can only pretend to be focusing its attacks on the Iranian state for so long, and its bombs on residential buildings, its use of car bombs against civilians, and its widening scope of attacks to the energy sector and airports are more persuasive lessons on who the enemies of the Iranian people really are than the pleas of hyenas.

With both countries proclaiming that they will fight to the finish, the possibility of which government will outlast the other is posed. However, this is only a temporary question, as the final victory of the masses of the Middle East over Israel—and the US for that matter—is guaranteed regardless of the immediate outcome of the present war. The imperialists and their running dogs can only make the lives of the people worse and worse, and the people will spontaneously rise up against them.

This outcome is evidenced in the recent example of Syria. While the imperialists and Israel depicted the overthrow of Assad as a decisive blow against the Axis of Resistance, the fact is that the Palestinian resistance was able to conquer a ceasefire one month later, and since Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire, has dealt greater blows along with other forces against the Zionist entity. Within Syria itself, missiles targeted Israeli forces in the occupied Golan Heights once again, and Syrian militias successfully ambushed Zionist forces within months of the fall of Assad, proving that the resistance still continues. In the same way, regardless of the immediate outcome of the war, the Iranian people will inevitably mobilize in their millions against the Zionists and their imperialist backers, just as they did decades ago and in the years since.

Iran has already caused significant damage to Israel and has yet to utilize its full capabilities. The Iranian government claims it has so far mostly utilized old weaponry and has only just begun utilizing its latest missiles and drones, attested by the fact that its later waves of attacks have been more destructive despite using less weaponry. Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and Ansar Allah have yet to be fully involved, which on its own would be a devastating blow. Monopoly media reports that Hezbollah alone has as many as 100,000 rockets and just as many fighters, along with significant popular support. The Palestinian resistance continues to devastate Israel in the Gaza strip, with daily reports of successful operations carried out against Zionist troops, including the recent killing of high-ranking military officials. All of this has forced Israel to reorient itself amid a political, economic, military, and moral crisis, retreating more than half of its forces from Gaza for redeployment in response to pending attacks from other anti-imperialist regional forces, while its population and army have been worn down by the stiff resistance of the Palestinian armed struggle.

Israel is relying heavily on the possibility of direct US attacks on Iran in order to come out on top, and has made direct pleas to this end already. The Israeli government knows its importance to US strategic interests, and would be crushed without US intervention. Netanyahu himself needs to achieve a victory in order to maintain political power and avoid prison time for the various legal troubles he faces domestically. The US is torn between the options of direct military attacks on Iran in the hopes of quick victory or another capitulation masked as a victory that Trump has become an expert at. The former would be disastrous for the US—given that it failed to accomplish this option with Ansar Allah just last month, it is even more outlandish to believe it would work with Iran.

Operation True Promise 3 deepens the blow against the notion of Israeli and US invincibility, a shattered and chauvinist lie that relied on the faulty line that weapons decide everything. Not only has the US-funded Iron Dome been increasingly penetrated, but supposedly invincible US and Israeli technology like the modified F-35 fighter jets have been downed for the first time in history—not just once, but several times within the span of a few days of fighting. Tel Aviv, that grotesque symbol of Israeli domination, is increasingly transforming into rubble, with a growing list of areas that have begun to resemble Israel’s own decimation of Gaza. Footage of critical Israeli targets being reduced to ashes such as the Haifa power plant or military facilities in Tel Aviv have increasingly made the complete obliteration of Israel a reality. These glorious actions have mobilized more people against imperialism and Zionism and for Palestinian liberation, an earthshaking process the armed Palestinian people have set into motion with the heroic Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Photo: Aftermath of an Iranian missile attack on Israel early Monday morning, June 16, 2025. Photo retrieved from Resistance News Network.

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