Donald Trump’s pledge that he would take the US out of ‘forever wars’ has been torn up in the first two months of 2026. The attack on Iran, coordinated with war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, has killed the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and set the Middle East in flames. It follows the bombing of Venezuela and the kidnap of its president Nicolas Maduro, the siege of Cuba, and the imperialist carve-up which is the Board of Peace in Gaza.
Trump’s brand of gangster imperialism is at its most reckless. This attack is about regime change, but regime change by bombing has never succeeded. The history of the last 25 years is strewn with examples of supposedly bringing peace and democracy at the end of an American missile, and every time it has failed: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, it has brought much greater death and destruction and created chaos and civil war – and ended in US defeat. In Syria, the new government is compliant with the US, but that took a decade and a half of civil war and bombing for the US to achieve and has left the country divided and wrecked. They will not care if Iran suffers the same fate.
The idea that the state responsible for a genocide in Gaza, aligned with one that has the overwhelming advantage in military power anywhere in the world, and has invaded far more countries than any other, is going to do anything to improve the lives of Iranians, would be an absolutely sick joke if it were not so dangerous. The assassination of Khamenei is in breach of international law, as was the Maduro kidnap. The killing of 148 children when a school was bombed demonstrates the absolute lack of concern for civilians’ safety and life that are hallmarks of both Trump and Netanyahu.
This attack happened as negotiations took place over Iran’s nuclear power. It has repeatedly said it does not want to build a nuclear bomb, and that it wants a return to the nuclear deal established under US president Obama, which Trump tore up in his first term. Yet Israel the aggressor does have nuclear weapons, and the US is the only country that has used them in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The hypocrisy here is astounding.
The British government has made it clear that it played no part in the initial assault, but it has troops in US bases in the Middle East, its aircraft have been involved in activity in the region over the weekend and Starmer has now agreed to the US military using British bases to attack Iranian missile sites. It will not condemn the US-Israeli action, and its complicity over the Gaza genocide has been a huge support to Netanyahu. It will be further drawn into support for this reckless and illegal attack. The BBC coverage already talks about Iran attacking several Middle East countries, without making it clear that these are attacks on US bases stationed there.
We know how the US and Israeli attack on Iran began on Saturday. The question however is how it ends. Trump has ramped up a much bigger war than anything he has done before. It will not end well. It is unlikely to succeed in regime change – even if it did, that would lead to further unrest and possible civil war. It will not do anything to help those who oppose the government, because change can only come from the Iranian people themselves, not from the military intervention of outside forces or their proxies within.
There will be more deaths of Iranians, US and British troops will likely be killed, and the threat of terrorist and other responses are very high. Oil prices will rise if the Straits of Hormuz are cut off or regarded as too dangerous for tankers to pass through. Already Lloyds has said they won’t insure tankers coming through the straits – so that’s Gulf oil now cut off. That will be at a cost to living standards of working-class people across the world as inflation shoots up. Meanwhile, Trump’s action is already very unpopular in the US, and that is likely to grow, along with his general unpopularity. There is no easy way back for him after this. It is in a different league from his attacks last June, because of the nature of the war aim and the death of Khamenei.
One group rejoicing about all this are the Iranian monarchists in the diaspora. They want the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty which was overthrown by the 1979 revolution. The Shah was backed by the US and widely hated and a world leader in torture, repression and execution. These people work closely with right-wing Zionists and far-right fascists against the Palestine movement. Only last week, fascists part of a monarchist demo in Manchester attacked a Stop the War meeting.
We are at a dangerous turning point and should redouble our efforts to oppose Trump’s wars, to call for an end to our government’s support for them, and to stop arming and backing Israel. They are bringing the Middle East to the brink of all-out war. And everyone who wants peace there must oppose this latest war of choice from a desperate and dangerous US imperialism.
Register for the online StW meeting on Tuesday 3 March here and join the demo in London on Saturday 7 March.
Source: Counterfire