Trump’s Shaky Ceasefire with Iran is Another Admission of US Imperialism’s Defeat

Editorial Board

Read our previous editorial on the US-Israel war on Iran here, and the need to oppose it here.

On Monday evening, Trump announced there would be a ceasefire between the US-Israel and Iran. The announcement came hours after an Iranian attack on the US’s largest military base in the Middle East, the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, drone attacks on US military bases in Iraq, and another large Iranian missile attack on Israel. US officials have also recently commented that Israel’s air defenses would not be able to last more than a few weeks in the face of Iran’s missile attacks.

Trump’s familiar formula of declaring victory amid defeat was seen last month in his capitulation to the Yemeni Armed Forces and Ansar Allah, and has now been repeated with Iran. The objectives of the US and Israel in initiating the war on Iran were to carry out a color revolution, replacing the current Iranian government with one subservient to US imperialism, and to obliterate Iran’s nuclear capabilities to economically and militarily weaken Iran, also in the interests of subjugation. Neither of these objectives have been achieved. Iran’s stated objective was to establish deterrence through retribution, with its achievement evident in the ceasefire.

Trump’s “12 Day War”

The US and Israel unleashed a war of aggression against Iran, with the US using Israel as its attack dog—and cannon fodder—through daily bombings of military and civilian targets in Iran.

In retaliation to Israel’s attacks on Iran, Iran launched Operation True Promise 3, which featured 22 waves of missile attacks on Israel that hit key military and settler infrastructure across Israel, devastating the country in a way it has never experienced before. Despite the combined efforts of Israel, the US, other imperialist countries, and Arab lackey governments, Iranian missiles consistently penetrated multi-layered defenses, stretching the imperialist defenses to the breaking point as admitted by the US military and monopoly media sources.

On Sunday morning local time (06/22), the US directly attacked Iran using fourteen 30,000-lb bunker busting bombs—according to monopoly media, about three-fourths of the US’s total arsenal of such bombs—for the first time in its history, and 30 cruise missiles in an attempt to destroy Iran’s three main nuclear sites.

Trump boasted immediately of the strike devastating Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but US military intelligence reports suggest the strikes only accomplished surface-level damage, corroborating Iran’s own claims of their minimal effects.

In response to the US’s direct attack, Iran targeted the US’s Air Base in Qatar with 14 missiles in response to the US’s 14 bombs it dropped on Iran. The base is the largest US base in the region, which serves as the regional headquarters for US Central Command and houses around 10,000 US troops—important as a figurehead of US imperialist aggression in the Middle East.

There are conflicting reports on the impact of the strike. According to the Trump administration and US monopoly media, Iran gave the US advanced notice of the strike to allow the US to block it. Trump wrote on social media, “NO Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done.” However, his claim that some damage was done seemingly contradicts what he wrote earlier in the same post: “There have been 14 missiles fired — 13 were knocked down, and 1 was ‘set free,’ because it was headed in a nonthreatening direction.”

According to The New York Times, Iranian officials provided advanced notice in order to deescalate, suggesting they acted similarly during Iran’s strikes on US military bases in Iraq in retaliation for Trump’s murder of Qasem Soleimani during his first term in 2020. However, Trump claimed that no Americans were hurt in the aftermath of that attack either, while it was later revealed that over 100 US troops had suffered traumatic brain injuries, suggesting that the US was the one attempting to avoid confrontation by hiding its casualties.

With the latest operation, a Qatari military officer stated that one of the missiles was not intercepted and hit the US base, contradicting Trump’s claims.

According to Iranian media, at least 6 missiles hit the air base.

Coinciding with the attack in Qatar, there were drone strikes carried out on several US military bases in Iraq, with videos showing explosions and large fires erupting. While not claimed by any forces as of writing, Iraqi resistance forces previously stated that they would target US military infrastructure in their country should the US attack Iran.

Hours later, Trump would call for a ceasefire and an end to what he dubbed the “12 Day War”.

US-Israel Accumulate More Defeats

After twelve days of open warfare, Iran still retains its nuclear capabilities and its government remains in power. Various assessments by professional US analysts suggest that though many of Iran’s centrifuges may have been destroyed, its enriched uranium—the main product of the nuclear program—likely remains intact. Iran itself has stated that it moved its uranium and has other centrifuges hidden throughout the country, indicating that it will continue its nuclear enrichment program at an accelerated pace.

The US-Israel campaign has backfired—while Iran had previously complied with UN inspectors and allowed them to monitor their nuclear program, Iranian media reports the government will continue its enrichment program in secret. On Wednesday, the Iranian parliament approved a bill to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), noting how its investigations were utilized by the US and Israel to provoke war.

Iran responded to the US-Zionist aggression with escalating and direct strikes on both Israel and the US. The ceasefire itself proves that Iran has established deterrence: despite the admittance from both US and Israeli officials that Iran retains its nuclear enrichment program, and that the Iranian government remains in power, they are unwilling to risk continued attacks on Iran militarily.

What’s Next?

There is no guarantee that the ceasefire will hold, and even from when it was supposed to go into effect both Israel and Iran continued to trade fire. From the start, the US has used Israel to attack Iran when it thought it could get the upper hand; it has failed and withdrawn, waiting to start another war again. This is the logic of the imperialists, who commit aggression against the peoples of the world, bloodthirsty, stumbling from defeat to defeat, until they are finally buried. Locked into mortal competition among themselves for domination over the masses, who in turn rebel against their decrepit order, the imperialists start wars of aggression whenever they think they can get the upper hand, and continue them until they are forced to stop. The open war between the US-Israel and Iran has temporarily stopped, but it will continue by others means with the possibility that it will open up once again.

The capitulation showcases the US’s declining military abilities amid its deepening economic and political crises, which manifests in Israel at an intensified rate. The war was proving too costly for both the US and Israel, and their combined forces were deficient in curbing Iran’s attack, especially with Israel’s pending air defense shortage. One Israeli newspaper estimated the total cost of the damages incurred by Iran’s attacks to be at least $1.3 billion. The cost of Israel’s combined offensive and defensive operations were estimated at $725 million a day early on in the war. The daily strikes shut down the Israeli economy by having large sections of occupied Palestine unable to work or conduct business, adding immeasurably to the costs incurred by damages alone.

At home, the US has experienced uprisings across the country over the past few weeks that were threatening to coalesce into a new anti-war movement that would have surpassed the opposition to the wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan. Monopoly media polls show the majority of Americans opposed Trump’s strikes on Iran, with an even greater number opposing a ground invasion. At the same time, the US armed forces is experiencing a recruitment crisis, having missed its recruitment targets for several years. US imperialism is wracked with crisis—boiling over with the rebellion of the poorest workers at home while its military adventures meet failure abroad.

On the other end, Iran carried out increasingly destructive strikes that showed no signs of faltering. Throughout the war, they insisted that they would defend themselves and would continue their nuclear program. There have been numerous rallies within Iran, across the region, and around the world in defense of Iran, with the masses celebrating its retaliatory strikes on Israel and the US and condemning the US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Anti-imperialist forces in the region will continue to wear down the US and Israel in response to their genocides. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) continue to inflict daily casualties on Israeli forces in Gaza, Ansar Allah has not stopped launching missiles at Israel, and the Iraqi resistance continues its attacks against both Israel and the US. While the imperialists and their running dogs stumble from one defeat to another, the people of the world are increasingly uniting and confronting their aggressors, embodying the trend of the strategic offensive of the world proletarian revolution.

Photo: A banner in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon shows Trump kneeling to Ayatollah Khamenei. Retrieved from Press TV.

---

The Worker is an entirely volunteer-run revolutionary newspaper free from and radically antagonistic to corporate influence. We rely on the support of our readers to sustain our editorial line in service of the working class and the reconstitution of its party, the Communist Party. Make a one-time or recurring donation to our newspaper today: