The war’s impact on Iran
“… that it is precisely the international strength of the US and her irresistible expansion arising from it, that compels her to include all the powder magazines of the whole world into the foundations of her structure, ie, all the antagonisms between the East and the West, the class struggle in Old Europe, the uprisings of the colonial masses, and all wars and revolutions. On the one hand, this transforms North American capitalism into the basic counter-revolutionary force of the modern epoch, constantly more interested in the maintenance of ‘order’ in every corner of the terrestrial globe; and on the other hand, this prepares the ground for a gigantic revolutionary explosion in this already dominant and expanding world imperial power”.
The US war on Iran is a confirmation Trotsky’s perspectives put forward as long ago as 1928 of what would follow the US’s global ascendancy. That ascendancy was consolidated as it entrenched its role as world economic and military hegemon after WW2. What is unfolding now is the decline of US imperial domination. The global political and economic convulsions result from the US ruling class’s attempt to reestablish by military means what is has been unable to maintain economically.
The media has increasingly attributed Trump’s bewildering zig-zagging between contradictory actions and statements, to his cognitive decline. Speculation over his mental state has merit. Behaviour such as depicting himself as Jesus on his Truth Social platform is understandably cited as evidence of the “Trump derangement syndrome” he repeatedly accuses critics of suffering from. But to attribute the US’ imperialist aggression to Trump’s infantile outburst and malignant narcissism, is an oversimplification. Trump did not install himself in power. He is the representative of the section of the US ruling class – the tech billionaires that funded his presidential campaign. They have gained political ascendancy in the Republican Party and over the entire ruling class. The paralysis of the US ruling class’s other political wing, the Democrats, stems from their shared ambitions to restore US imperial hegemony. Trump’s personal erraticism is a grotesque expression of the contortions of an imperial hegemon in decline. Widespread speculation that the White House Correspondence dinner shooting was staged, underlines the collapse of the Trump regime’s credibility.
Trump’s threat to “end Iran’s civilisation” and to “return the country to the stone age where it belongs” attracted worldwide revulsion compelling the White House itself to downplay the implied use of nuclear weapons. The original two-week “ceasefire” announced after the bombing of Iran, has now been extended indefinitely. Trump’s original vulgar and insulting Truth Social demand that Iran should open the Straits of Hormuz, resulted from the global economic impact of oil and gas flow restrictions through the Straits. Analysts describe it as the most significant energy supply shock in modern history. To the betrayal of his election campaign pledge to end “forever wars”, Trump has now added another – cost of living increases he had promised to reduce. Higher gas prices are rippling across the economy, aggravating the domestic consequences of his April 2025 global tariffs.
Iran’s effective closure of the Straits and then reopening it has humiliated the US. This embarrassing illustration of the limits of US military might has not only failed to bring the Iranian regime to heel. The US’ imposition of a blockade on the Straits after Trump’s profanity-laden demand for the Staits’ reopening, has thrown the US’ tactical and strategic disorientation into sharp relief. It would be comical were it not so disastrous for the working class. The blockade is inflicting the very damage on the US and global economy, Trump’s demand for Iran to open it, had sought to mitigate.
At the time of writing, no further talks have been announced. Iran has refused any further talks until the US meets its demands, including g the lifting of the blockade. This forced Trump to cancel the trip of his envoys, the corrupt real-estate dealers, Witkoff and son-in-law Kushner to the second planned meeting in Pakistan. Beneath all the bluster and renewed threats to bomb bridges and power plants, the indefinite extension of the ceasefire confirms Trump’s desperation to find an off-ramp from this disastrous miscalculation.
The Iranian people can take little comfort from the ceasefire’s indefinite extension from a US government whose conduct has been soaked in cynicism, lies and hypocrisy. They are bracing themselves for the possibility of a further round of the ‘shock and awe’, apocalyptic bombardment, more than three times the size unleashed on Iraq in 2003, they have already suffered under US/Israeli bombardment. They consciously expanded from targeting military and nuclear facilities to civilian ones. They deliberately dropped multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator “bunker buster’ bombs on hospitals, civilian infrastructure and oil installations, releasing toxic fumes into Tehran’s atmosphere.
The British right wing Telegraph newspaper withdrew and sanitised an article that initially exposed in graphic detail the truth of the horrors being visited on Iranians. “American and Israeli aircraft bombed hospitals, residential buildings and schools across Tehran in what residents described as an apocalypse. Millions of civilians are trapped under relentless bombardment as food and medical supplies dwindle and the death toll mounts.”
More than 3500 people have been killed, 20 000 injured and an estimated 3.2 million people forcibly displaced within Iran. More than 125 000 non-military civilian buildings in Iran have been damaged, including 100 000 residential units, 23 500 commercial units, 339 medical facilities and 857 schools and educational facilities including universities. As unemployment has soared past the 50% mark, 33% of companies are contemplating lay-offs and 36% shutting down entirely.
Even by the hypocritical standards of bourgeois laws of war, the slaughter of 168 girls aged ten and younger and 14 teachers at a girls primary school, was a war crime. The barbarism of this act was underlined by a “triple tap” – the dropping of a second and third bomb to ensure the killing of any survivors from the first. Confirming the adage that the first casualty of war is truth, Trump has made the outlandish suggestion that the US Tomahawk missile that carried out the atrocity was fired by Iran itself. Underlining the bloodthirsty character of the section of the US ruling class that has mandated Trump to carry out this barbarism, a Republican senator cheered this atrocity stating that the victims are better off dead than wearing burqas.
The impact of the war on Lebanon
The war on Iran has unleashed further horrors on Lebanon. The day after the ceasefire was announced, Israel carried the most barbaric attack on Lebanon so far, with over 2 500 people slaughtered. Exploiting US imperialist protection enjoyed thus far, the far right dominated Israeli coalition regime is using the opportunity to pursue its expansionist aim to create Eretz Yisrael HaShlema (Greater Israel). Far-right Religious Zionist Party leader, Bezalel Smotrich who serves both as Finance Minister of Israel and in Defence has called for the annexation of southern Lebanon.
Israel has embarked on a ground offensive aimed at securing control of 10% of Lebanon, destroying roads, bridges and entire villages. Israeli Evacuation orders in some Lebanese areas made clear that Christians could remain and that Muslims must flee. Tens of thousands of structures have been damaged or destroyed including 100 000 homes, between 40 and 60 villages razed to the ground and critical infrastructure like roads, bridges healthcare facilities and religious sites targeted. Psychological warfare has been employed to terrorise the population with evacuation orders communicated on cell phones. 1.2 million people have been displaced and over 2500 slaughtered.
The US/Israeli war is also consciously calculated to deepen the sectarian divisions that led to the Lebanese Civil War from 1975 to 1990, ruined the country and claimed 200,000 lives. Israel’s barbarism in Lebanon is neither new nor an aberration from the methods of US imperialism. Israel relishes mimicking US imperialism’s thirst for blood as its actions reach new levels of depravity.
US Imperialism’s blood soaked history
A March 8, 2022, report titled “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2022”, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a US government institution that compiles information on behalf of Congress, confirmed the US’s blood soaked history. It listed the countries the US military targeted, the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single county in Latin America, the Caribbean and most of the African continent. The US launched at least 251 military interventions between 1991 and 2022. University of Chicago’s Professor Mearsheimer points out that US interventions which have entailed not only military action but economic sanction to starve the populations in the belief it will spark an uprising against US-targeted governments has claimed 38m lives.
This war was prepared by the most brazen acts of diplomatic duplicity: luring Iran into negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme only to bomb the country first in the 12-day war of June 2025, and then, eight months later, the commencement of the war on 28th February. Trump announced that Iran’s 10-point proposals were a workable basis for negotiations, only to repudiate them. The US had originally declared that the “ceasefire” applied to Lebanon and therefore Israel. Despite Trump’s Truth Social order, written in capitals, that Israel is prohibited from bombing Lebanon, Israel has defiantly made it clear its army will remain in Lebanon. Israel has continued to raze villages to the ground as thousands of Lebanese return to their homes in the south of the country.
Trump had claimed that Iran’s nuclear capability had been completely obliterated after the attack on Isfahan with bunker busting bombs in June 2025. Yet the elimination of the very nuclear weapons production capability has been repeated as the US’s stated objective, since upgraded to the annihilation of Iran itself.
Trump’s promise of “freedom and democracy” for Iranians is as false as it has been in every US intervention in the Middle East and North Africa. It has left a trail of destruction, mayhem and death in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and cost 4.6m lives since 2001. Not a single one of the regime change operations has led to democracy. Without exception imperialism’s interventions especially, but not exclusively by the US, hypocritically proclaimed as the leader of the “free world”, have led, worldwide in Latin America, Asia and Africa to the installation of various shades of dictatorships – the majority of them military regimes. Such so-called democracies as have followed imperialist interventions have been imperialist quisling regimes.
The Global Socio-Economic Consequences
The US’s entire war strategy has fallen victim to the law of unintended consequences. Far from re-establishing the US’s global hegemony, the Trump administration’s central mission, the war has exposed the limits of its power in a more pronounced manner. It has served to accelerate its decline, compelling its European allies, acutely conscious of public outrage, to recoil from it. Politically, its impotence in relation to Russia and China has become accentuated.
Economically the war had already plunged the world into its deepest state of turmoil since the 1973 oil crisis. The International Energy Agency has warned that the world is facing the worst energy crisis in history. Executive director Fatih Birol told Le Figaro on Tuesday that the oil and gas crisis triggered by the blockade is “more serious than the ones in 1973, 1979 and 2022 put together. “
The world has never experienced a disruption to energy supply of such magnitude,” he said. He previously told the Wall Street Journal that the world lost 5 million barrels per day during the 1970s but is losing 11 million barrels per day this time, “more than two major oil shocks put together”. The impact will deepen and be long-lasting,” warns Neil Quilliam, an energy policy, geopolitics and foreign affairs specialist at Chatham House.
“The real shock has yet to be fully felt and will materialise when stocks run down. Even if the war were to end tomorrow and the Strait of Hormuz were reopened, world markets would still feel the shock in the months to come, as it will take at least six months before the Gulf states can begin to produce and export at capacity once again.”
In addition to the 500m barrels per day that normally passed through the straits, the closure also affects “6m tonnes of gas every month, according to Lloyd’s List. Much of this is exported to Asian markets, including China, India and Japan. It is the route used by super tankers carrying oil and gas from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Iran. Around 3,000 shipping vessels pass through the strait every month, including oil tankers, liquefied natural gas containers, and cargo vessels, according to Lloyd’s List.” The (The Independent 13/04/ 2026). It is not Trump that countries look to for assurances, but Lloyd’s of London which has hiked insurance costs to crippling levels.
Simultaneously gas supplies have been strangled. Qatar, the world’s fifth largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer, had to stop exports within the first few days of the war. The Financial Times of London, 23 March 2026 pointed out that countries around the world are facing a cliff-edge as the Gulf LNG flows come to an abrupt end in the next 10 days.”
The US and Israel’s barbaric war has resulted in the 32 member countries of the International Energy Agency unanimously agreeing on 11th March 2026, to make 400 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) available in the largest ever oil stock release to the market. This emergency release affects Germany, Austria, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and the joint stockpiles held in Japan by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait. It serves as a “stopgap” that could cover a supply disruption for about 17 days to a month in a worst-case scenario. This release will reduce the SPR’s total inventory, currently roughly 415m, to about 243m, the lowest since 1982.
Whilst Trump has boasted that fuel companies in the US, as the world’s largest oil producer and net exporter, the US consumer has not been shielded from increased fuel prices which are determined globally. Oil companies and fuel outlets, many of them Trump supporters, are engaged in price gouging, increasing prices of stock procured before the war. Their profit bonanza derives from passing on the price increases to the consumer. The price working class people pay is not only directly at the gas station pump, but also on transport, heating, and basic goods including food.
Worldwide, up to 106 countries have seen increased fuel prices. Vietnam has experienced the highest rise in fuel costs, nearing 50% for gasoline, while diesel prices in some countries have increased by over 30%. Developing nations, particularly in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, are hardest hit, with many in the Global South facing major economic pressure. Countries like the Maldives, Australia and Singapore have reported steep petrol price hikes. Several nations are implementing emergency measures, including fuel subsidies (Japan), price caps (South Korea, France), and tax cuts to mitigate the impact.
This time the fuel price increases are coinciding with shortages of nitrogen fertilisers, which underpin about half of global food production, made from ammonia using natural gas, which has soared in price since the war began last month. As the Financial Times of London (14/03/2026) points out: “Unlike the 2022 crisis — which initially centred on Ukrainian grain shipped through the Black Sea later compounded by energy and fertiliser costs — the current disruption is hitting several parts of the food system at once.
Fuel price hikes are now coinciding with shortages of nitrogen fertilisers—crucial for half of global food production and dependent on natural gas, which has surged in price since the war began. According to CRU, a global commodities intelligence and consulting firm, disruptions are impacting multiple parts of the food system, with the Middle East at the centre of global fertilizer and energy supply chains. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has trapped about 30–35% of nitrogen shipments and a substantial share of urea and sulphur exports.
Shortages have emerged during the northern hemisphere’s planting season, prompting India to reduce gas consumption at fertiliser plants, while Pakistan and Bangladesh have halted production. Urea prices are up over 40% since the conflict began. Experts warn that continued disruption will be worse than the 2022 crisis. Food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa could increase sharply; a 20% rise in international food prices may push over 20 million people into hunger, according to the IMF (Guardian Lagos, 07/04/2026).
Perspectives for the class struggle
Protests against the Iran war have not yet reached the heights of the worldwide protests against Israel’s Gaza genocide. Should it continue, however, protests worldwide are likely to grow. Iran does not occupy the same place in the hearts and minds of the masses worldwide as Palestine does. However, should Israel use a nuclear weapon, which previous and current Israeli leaders have indicated a willingness to do so, it would detonate explosive protests worldwide that are likely to exceed in scale and numbers the pro-Palestinians protests.
During the 1973 Yom Kippur war, Defence Minister Moshe Dayan pushed for preparation for their use. The then Prime Minister Golda Meir confirmed as much to a BBC journalist. In November 2023, after the Hamas attack, Israel’s far right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza and the expulsion of Palestinians to Ireland or the dessert. In response to the worldwide outcry that followed Netanyahu suspended him. But the levels of depravity reached in the genocide that followed was completely consistent with Eliyahu’s view and that of the Israeli ruling elite. The genocide in Gaza was inspired by Hitler’s lebensraum (living space) motives for the Nazi holocaust that Netanyahu’s regime is mimicking.
The longer the war continues, the greater the impact on the working class. This will almost certainly provoke mass protests worldwide. A repeat of the worldwide protest that occurred in 2021/22 is entirely possible. Then the BBC (17/10/2022) reported fuel protests gripped more than 90 countries in 2021/22 as result of the combined effect of the Covid pandemic supply chain chaos aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that followed. Aside from Antarctica, not a single continent has remained free of fuel protests in the last nine months of 2022. Protests numbered 660 in Indonesia, 1000 in Ecuador 200 in Italy and 335 rallies in Spain in one month in March 2022, amongst others. Recent, significant protests against fuel price increases have occurred in several countries. Though sparked by fuel price increases, these protests were against the steep increases in the cost of living as capitalists and their government loaded the cost of the crisis onto the shoulders of the working class worldwide.
For now, the working class is focussed on the domestic crises in their countries. However, an indication of what lies ahead is shown by the protests that have already broken out in Kenya, Philippines, India and Ireland. In Kenya the protests were brutally suppressed but in the Philippines on March 26 and 27, twenty groups united in a second 2-day nationwide protest against soaring fuel prices, within a week after another on 19 and 20 March. The protests brought together Defend Jobs Philippines, a labour organization, the Bus Employees Association of the Philippines representing bus drivers and operators; the Solidarity of Drivers and Operators, the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), motorcycle taxi and delivery riders; TNVS drivers using four-wheel vehicles; the Laban TNVS, a group representing Transport Network Vehicle Service drivers; Anakpawis, a peasant organization that has led protests at gasoline stations; PARA Commuters’ Network – a group advocating for commuters.
As Militant Left (CWI Ireland 10/04/2026) reports “This week’ fuel protests in southern Ireland are just the first shocks to land in the country after Trump and Netanyahu unleashed hell on Iran. Motorways across the country and O’Connell Street in Dublin city centre are under blockade as hauliers, farmers and others take militant action to demand cuts in the price of fuel. The protests enjoy considerable public sympathy as the working class, small farmers and others come to terms with the looming cost of living crisis. The second one in just four years, these protests are not organised or led by the trade union movement but small business people in the haulage and farming sectors. … [a] workers-led stoppage would be of a different character… [with] blockades organised democratically by rank-and-file workers, at local, regional and national levels, ensuring supplies to hospitals and other essential services.”
What lies ahead for Iran?
Within Iran itself, the polarisation between the classes that preceded the US war will mean that after a period, especially if the ceasefire holds, the theocratic regime’s neo-liberal capitalist policies will inevitably bring the classes into collision with each other. For now, the working class protests that preceded the war have abated as the task of defending the country against US imperialist aggression has taken precedence. The Iranian regime has taken advantage of the US attack not only to burnish its anti-imperialist credentials, but to use the emergency conditions to step up repression against any opposition smearing it as disloyal and unpatriotic.
However, neither the end of the war nor its continuation will change the conditions of capitalist crisis that had driven millions into opposition to the regime before. The Iranian working class overthrew the imperialist puppet dictatorship of the Shah in 1979 to put an end to their suffering under its capitalist economic policies enforced by a murderous dictatorship. Those aspirations could only be fulfilled by the overthrow not only of the Shah but of capitalism itself. Unfortunately, as in many colonial revolutions, the revolution was interrupted by an aspirant capitalist elite. The Mullahs hijacked the revolution and maintained capitalism to fulfil the class aspirations of the theocratic elite.
The US may be forced into a humiliating retreat from this war. This will rightly be seen as a defeat. But that defeat will enormously exacerbate the global crisis of capitalism that the US lies at the centre of. Worldwide what has been dubbed, the “Gen Z” generation,” has been to the fore especially across the neo-colonial world from Asia to Africa, where according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a monitoring group, the number of African protests has held steady since the start of the decade, at about 12,000 a year. In some instances, these revolts have toppled governments. A common feature of these protests is the rejection of the post-colonial elites who stand exposed as agents of global neo-liberal capitalism colluding in the impoverishment of their countries and pillaging of their resources. The pre-war protests in Iran reflected a similar process of political disillusionment and revolt.
Like the class brothers and sisters worldwide, the Iranian working class will be compelled to complete what was started in the 1979 revolution, overthrow capitalism and commence the socialist transformation of society. The task is to create a mass workers party in Iran, across the Middle East and world-wide to overthrow capitalism to create a socialist world.
