Articles & Statements by Member Organizations

Over the weekend of Feb. 28–March 1, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated military offensive against Iran, dramatically escalating long-standing tensions in the Middle East. The operation, described by the U.S. Pentagon as Operation Epic Fury and by Israeli officials as Lion’s Roar, involved air strikes and missile attacks on at least 14 Iranian cities and strategic sites, including Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj, and others.

The Iranian nation-state, presently under attack by both Israel and the United States, has a long history as an object of imperialist aggression. Although the degree to which western powers were able to influence and dominate Iran has varied, since approximately 1900 two major western capitalist powers have regularly intervened to either control or undermine Iran’s government and economy. This long history of imperialist intervention has shaped Iran’s political economy and society in a number of ways, including helping to bring to power the current widely hated regime while at the same time creating a hatred of imperialism and foreign intervention.

Seizing upon what they consider to be a generational opportunity, with Iran’s theocratic dictatorship shaken by the January people’s uprising, Trump and Netanyahu launched a “prolonged” attack from the air on February 28. While the attacks are aimed, they say, at eliminating Iran’s nuclear and missile capacity, it clearly involves an effort at regime change. With their nefarious surprise attack – conducted in the middle of negotiations — and the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in his residence along with other regime leaders and members of his family, they have committed at least three major war crimes: launching a war of aggression, attacks on the civilian population, and assassination of the political and military leadership of sovereign nation. This is also a precedent for other imperialist and subimperialist powers everywhere.

THE U.S.-ISRAELI WAR of “regime change” against Iran opens a fresh stage of catastrophe in the Middle East. This entirely illegal war — under both U.S. and international law — is an imperialist adventure with unknown global consequences.

The peoples of the region will pay an enormous price, and it will become clear that this war is not separable from the Trump regime’s ongoing war on the rights of the U.S. population and assaults on the nations in the Americas.

The coordinated bombardment of Iran by US imperialism and Zionism has begun. Under the nuclear pretext, the offensive expresses broader geopolitical interests. Iran announced that it is preparing responses. The Middle East marks a new leap in the escalation of war. We repudiate the aggressions of the US and Israel, without implying support for the reactionary and repressive regime of the Ayatollahs. We call for international mobilization to stop the aggressors.

The Tempest Collective stands in unconditional opposition to the war mongering of Trump, his threats against Iran, and the bipartisan project of U.S. imperial hegemony.

The Trump administration is once again playing the imperial bully with Iran. Trump has ordered a naval and aircraft build-up around the country at a scale not seen since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Trump has demanded, in his typical troglodyte style, that Iran reach a deal with the United States on uranium enrichment and ballistic missiles within 10-15 days or “bad things will happen.”