The following leaflet was created after the immediate outbreak of war and distributed by comrades in the U.S. and Europe.

The imperialist war between states can only be stopped by class struggle until capitalism is overthrown!

The threats from the US and Israel have finally led to open war, which promises to be more extensive and longer lasting than the twelve days of fighting last June. Ten states across the Middle East are already directly involved: from the Red Sea (Yemen) to the Persian Gulf, Jordan, and Lebanon. The bourgeoisies of Germany, the United Kingdom, and France have also issued a joint statement declaring their readiness to take “defensive action” to safeguard their dirty interests in the area, and Paris has already sent a military ship to Cyprus and deployed its aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.

At the same time, two days before February 28, Pakistan declared war on Afghanistan, both bordering Iran to the east, accusing it of having become a “colony of India” and bombing the capital Kabul. With the forgotten conflict in Sudan, the war involves a territorial strip of over 5,000 kilometers, from East Africa to the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent.

The United States, no longer the world’s leading industrial power, is still the world’s leading military power. As long as it enjoys this advantage, it seeks to exploit it, with preventive wars, to gain positions of strength – military, in trade routes, and in control of resources – to the detriment of its European competitors, Russia, and, above all, Chinese imperialism, which is pressing hard, in preparation for World War III.

Above and beyond the division of spheres of influence – that is, the profits obtained from the exploitation of the working class in all countries – the various national bourgeoisies, whether allies or enemies, grind out profits through war. The Russian energy giants Gazprom Neft and Rosneft, as well as the Chinese arms manufacturers Norinco and Avic and the oil company Petrochina, have seen their share prices rise sharply thanks to the new war. More generally, China’s close financial and commercial ties with Russia and Iran, and at the same time with Israel and the United States, confirm that war is a business for all bourgeoisies.

As always, it is the defenseless civilians, first and foremost the proletariat, who pay for the disputes between the capitalist oligarchs. The real political content of imperialist war is to be against the proletariat of all countries and for the benefit of the international bourgeoisie. Even European and American workers who – for now – are not being bombed will see their living conditions worsen as prices and military spending rise.

The issue of Iran’s nuclear program or Israel’s security is only a pretext. What drives states to war and rearmament is the global economic crisis of overproduction: goods are not selling at home and are increasingly difficult to export to saturated markets contested by competitors; the mass of fictitious financial capital is multiplying until the next speculative bubble explodes; the trade war is intensifying with tariffs used to revive languishing domestic production.

The arms race is inevitable in capitalism: only the war economy, the devastating destruction that will follow, and the subsequent reconstruction can give new life to dying capitalism.

The overthrow of the Ayatollah regime, which has lasted 47 years, to the rescue of the Iranian people is also a pretext. The brutal repression of the uprising, with tens of thousands of Iranians killed, tortured, or arrested, took place almost two months ago. The US and Israel are intervening only now, after the dirty work has been done. The proclamations of support for the rebels by the US and Israel during the demonstrations in early January were only useful to the Iranian regime, which could better point to them as colluding with foreign forces and massacre them. Today’s bombings unite the opposition forces around nationalism and therefore around the regime, isolating the workers who instinctively feel that they have no homeland to defend but only their own class interests and who, in fighting for them, put into practice anti-bourgeois, anti-national, internationalist, revolutionary proletarian defeatism. The bourgeoisies that proclaim themselves irreconcilable enemies are united by their interest in seeing the Iranian proletariat crushed, bled dry, and remain oppressed.

Iranian workers should not be deceived by the bourgeois regime’s changes of appearance, as unfortunately happened in 1979 with the fall of the Shah and the rise to power of the Ayatollahs, mainly due to the responsibility of the false workers’ parties, first and foremost the Tudeh, the party of Stalinist opportunism in Iran. The words of the Tehran tram workers’ union – the Sherkat-e Vahed – in its greeting to the 53rd congress of the French CGT in 2023 are worth remembering: "When the profits of the capitalists are at stake... there is no substantial difference between the capitalist states of the world... We expect nothing from the capitalist states and powers that pursue only their own interests. We rely solely on the strength of the working class in Iran and the support of workers’ movements around the world. Long live international workers’ solidarity!" (Tehran, March 27, 2023).

Theocracy, democracy and fascism are just guises to mask the dictatorship of Capital over the wage-earning class. The conditions of workers cannot improve in an increasingly agonizing capitalism headed for war. The combative and courageous Iranian proletariat will have to confront its own bourgeoisie and its political representatives, in suits or dressing gowns, by extending and unifying strikes in defense of wages, blocking production, and setting an example for workers throughout the Middle East. Although long and difficult, this is the only path for the working class to avoid sliding into the abyss into which the anti-historical society of capital is about to plunge the whole of humanity.

“Realistic” and “concrete” nationalist and reformist perspectives only serve to hinder the class struggle and lead to disillusionment, defeat, and new repression. For over a hundred years, nationalist propaganda, both right-wing and left-wing, serving the interests of this or that bourgeoisie, Western or Eastern, has led to the same scenario of war and misery, without resolving any of the imperialist disputes and contradictions, either in the Middle East or elsewhere.

Humanity must not be liberated from the Mullahs, from Putin, from Trump, from terrorism, but from Capital!

The only force that can defeat the dying imperialisms is the international working class, organized in class-based unions and led by its revolutionary communist party.

Against war between States for war between classes!

The enemy of the proletariat is its own bourgeois regime!

Workers have no country!