By Kamran Nayeri, March 16, 2026
A neighborhood in Tehran after U.S./Israeli bombings. Photo
credit: The New York Times
“In our epoch, which is the epoch of imperialism, i.e., of
world economy and world politics under the hegemony of finance capital, not a
single communist party can establish its program by proceeding solely or mainly
from conditions and tendencies of developments in its own country.” Leon
Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin. 1928.
When I first read this passage in 1972, it resonated with me
for two reasons: I realized how deeply modern human society is interconnected
within the capitalist world economy, and because I understood why Trotsky’s
theory of Permanent Revolution is revolutionary and Stalin’s theory of
“socialism in one country” was counterrevolutionary.
Years later, I learned that the theory of finance capital
(imperialism) of Hilferding on the basis of which Bukharin and Lenin theories
of imperialism are constructed to explain the origins of World War I was a
mistaken break with Marx’s theory of the capitalist mode of production, which
has important ramifications for understanding the nature of capitalism (Nayeri
2023B, Chapter 4), hence what would be needed to transcend it to reach
socialism (Nayeri, 2025, Chapter Six). Since 2009, I have learned that human
society itself is deeply embedded in and depends on the web of life. This would
require us to develop new theories of capitalism and socialism grounded in an
integrated theory of society and nature. I have developed Ecocentric Socialism as such a theory
(Nayeri, 2023A; Chapter 19).
This essay provides a different framework for understanding
the war Israel and the U.S. have launched against Iran on February 28, 2026,
not just from the mainstream analyses but also from what is presented by much
of the Left.
The war must be opposed not just because it is unjust,
illegal, and disruptive of the capitalist world economy, and has been causing
untold number of working people in Iran and the Middle East misery or that it
is a Zionist and imperialist war against Iran, but because it is yet another
facet of the crisis of anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization of
which the U.S., Israel, and Iran are all integral parts and it that it has and
will have vast adverse implication for the future of life in in the region and
in the world.
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The essay further develops the analyses presented in two
more recent writings. In “The Dead End of U.S./Israeli War Against Iran
(Nayeri, June 22, 2025),” I analyzed the 12-day war that Israel started on June
13, 2025, to argue that the actual goal of Israel's and the U.S. 's war was to
reverse the gains of the 1979 Iranian revolution. That revolution overthrew the
U.S.-installed regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the Shah), which had become
increasingly dictatorial and despised by the millions of Iranian people. The
Shah’s regime was part of the anti-communist Central Treaty Organization
(CENTO) alliance and a supporter of the colonial settler states of South Africa
and the Israeli apartheid regimes.
I further argued that the Islamic Republic, while
independent of Western imperialism, was a counter-revolutionary force that by
the summer of 1982 consolidated itself by brutally destroying all independent
grassroots organizations that emerged from the 1979 revolution. The Islamic
Republic was the brainchild of Ayatollah Khomeini, who in the early 1970s wrote
a pamphlet advocating the creation of an Islamic government ruled by Velayat-e
Faghih (Islamic Jurisprudence) to unify Muslims (at least Shiites). This vision
requires expanding the Islamic Republic's power across the Middle East.
Thus, there has been, since 1979, an ongoing conflict
between the U.S. as the leader of Western imperialism, Israeli Zionism, and the
Islamic Republic; all three are expansionist, reactionary ideologies backed by
state power and struggling for domination in the Middle East.
In “Foreign Policy of
the Second Trump Administration” (Nayeri, February 16, 2026), I argued that the
rise of the White supremacist Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement with
Trump as its leader represent a reaction to the relative decline of U.S.
imperialism and an end to the so-called Pax Americana (American Peace; some
called the American Century) as China has been able to industrialize and
surpass the United States as the leading capitalist power. Concurrently, the
European economies have been experiencing slow growth for some time. Thus, the
world dominance of European civilization that began five hundred years ago has
come to an end, as Asian civilizations, especially China, rise up.
The shift of the center of world power in the past has been
marked by violence and wars. When Germany and the United States industrialized
and surpassed Britain as the dominant industrial capitalist power, the world
witnessed the bloody inter-imperialist World Wars I and II, which ended with
the United States' supremacy.
Thus, we live in a very dangerous time for the following
reasons.
First, the inter-imperialist rivalry is increasing and can
lead to a world war in which the main contenders are nuclear states.
Second, regional wars, such as the Ukraine and Iran wars, as
terrible as they are, can easily escalate into a world war. Three weeks into
the US/Israel war against Iran, it has already spread to the rest of the Middle
East and effectively closed the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz,
damaging the world economy. The war is threatening the Gulf states that depend
on desalination plants for their water on the non-polluted Persian Gulf, which
is open to shipping to bring in their food and export their oil.
Third, the world faces existential ecological crises such as
catastrophic climate change, the Sixth Extinction, recurrent pandemics, and
nuclear holocaust. To address these crises, a coordinated response by all
countries, especially the most powerful, is required. Instead, we face
increased rivalry and hostility among capitalist states.
Fourth, the only historical agency to act in the interest of
humanity and life on Earth is the working people. If they are not organized and
mobilized to act in the interest of all life on Earth, the existential crises
we face can lead to the collapse of civilization and possibly the end of
humanity. However, only democracy from below would allow the widest public
discussion necessary to adopt the actions needed to address the crisis of
anthropocentric, industrial capitalist civilization. However, increased rivalry
among capitalist states and certainly this war tends to limit working people's
democratic participation in deciding their own future.
Israel/US relations
Ervand Abrahamian (2026), a well-regarded historian of the
Middle East, has argued that since the Obama presidency, the U.S. political
class has relegated its foreign policy to Israel. This view has been shared by
others, including Mazzatti et.al. 2026). Secretary of State Marco Rubio has
said that the Trump administration “was pulled into this war” after Israel
began attacking Iran in the early morning of Saturday, February 28 (Stein,
March 2, 2026). Abrahamian argues that
the US's dependency on Israel is reflected in the fact that it has Middle East
specialists in its foreign policy decision-making teams.
I would argue that there are more ideological/political
reasons for the US following the Israelis' lead in the Middle East. In his first term as the President, Trump
tore up the 2015 agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and a group of
world powers: the P5+1 (the permanent members of the United Nations Security
Council—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China—plus
Germany) and the European Union. Although that agreement held up well in
opening the Islamic Republic's nuclear industry to international inspection.
Trump's action fulfilled Benjamin Netanyahu's opposition to the agreement. In
response, the Islamic Republic resumed uranium enrichment to 60 percent. They
viewed this as their bargaining chip to remove sanctions. Instead, the US and
its European allies increased the sanctions, and tensions increased.
Christian Zionism and Trump’s second term presidency
The U.S. played a central role in the creation of the State
of Israel in Palestine in 1948, at the time of colonial revolution and Arab
nationalism, to serve as a Garrison State. The concept of the Garrison State
was introduced in a seminal, highly influential 1941 article in the American
Journal of Sociology by political scientist and sociologist Harold Lasswell,
who outlined the possibility of a political-military elite composed of
"specialists in violence" in modern states.
The animosity of Israel with Palestinians and Arab neighbors
manifested in a series of wars in which weak Arab neighbors were defeated, and
Israel took ever more territory in Palestine and beyond.
Since the 1960s, the alliance between Israel and the United
States has grown in economic, strategic, and military aspects. The U.S. has
played a key role in ensuring good relations between Arab nations and Israel.
In turn, Israel provides a strategic American foothold in the region as well as
intelligence and advanced technological partnerships. Relations with Israel are
an important factor in the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
The importance of Israel in the U.S. Middle East policy was
underscored by Senator Joseph Biden, a self-described Zionist, who argued the
annual U.S. aid to Israel is a “good investment” and that if there were no
state of Israel, the U.S. would have to create one!
As Sharp (2025) writes in a report for the U.S. Congress:
“Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign
assistance since World War II. Successive Administrations, working with
Congress, have provided Israel with assistance reflective of robust domestic
U.S. support for Israel and its security; shared strategic goals in the Middle
East; and historical ties dating from U.S. support for the creation of Israel
in 1948. To date, the United States has provided Israel with $174 billion (in current,
or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense
funding.
“Over the last two decades, including during Israel's
ongoing conflict with Hamas, American public attitudes toward Israel, as
expressed in public-opinion polling, have shifted somewhat when compared to
previous eras. Though lawmakers continue to vote in favor of U.S. assistance to
Israel, there have been calls from some political and ideological groups to
reevaluate the long-standing U.S.-Israeli assistance relationship.
“In 2016, the U.S. and Israeli governments signed their
third 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid, covering
FY2019 to FY2028. Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledged to
provide—subject to congressional appropriation—$38 billion in military aid ($33
billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants plus $5 billion in missile
defense appropriations) to Israel. While negotiations over the next MOU have
yet to start, U.S. and Israeli experts and government officials have already
started to formulate proposals to shape future U.S.-Israeli military
cooperation.
“Since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and
Israel's subsequent conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, Congress has provided
emergency supplemental military assistance to Israel and appropriated funding
beyond the annual MOU terms for joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense programs. In
April 2024, Congress passed P.L. 118-50 (Making emergency supplemental
appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other
purposes). That act included, among other things, $3.5 billion in FMF for Israel.
The act also included $5.2 billion in defense appropriations for missile
defense ($4 billion) and Israel's new laser defense system, Iron Beam ($1.2
billion). (Sharp, 2025)”
There is also an overlooked religious/ideological basis for
the current U.S. unqualified support for Israel: Christian Zionism. Christian
Zionists are evangelical Christians who espouse the return of the Jewish people
to the Holy Land as a precondition for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
“During the 1980s, as the Republican Party forged alliances with the emerging
religious right, Israel would become a core cause for the GOP. (Goldman,
2025).”
“A major impetus behind the movement is the belief that the
Jews’ return will lead to the Second Coming of Jesus. Christian Zionists also
believe that by blessing and supporting Israel, considered both as the
collective Jewish people and the modern state, they themselves will be blessed
by God.” (Comstock, January 23, 2026).
With the Republican Party in power in Washington since the
2024 elections, Christian Zionism holds sway in Washington.: 83% of Republicans
view Israel favorably, compared with 33% of Democrats. Republicans in Congress
are pushing to use the biblical terms “Judea and Samaria” instead of the West
Bank. Evangelical Christian Zionists continue to call for support of the
Israeli right and of settlers in the occupied territories. 25 to 30 percent of
Trump supporters are estimated to be Christian Zionists (Stanley, February 5,
2025).
Trump's second administration includes Christian Zionists in
key posts, including the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Paula White-Cain,
Trump’s personal pastor for over two decades, is a Christian Zionist. She has a
long history of vocal support for Israel. She was influential in Trump’s
decision to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2017 and the push to sign
the Abraham Accords to get more Arab states to recognize Israel in 2020.
Trump picked two Zionists who have personal and business
ties to him, Jared Kushner (son-in-law) and Steve Witkoff, to represent the
U.S. government in negotiations with the Islamic Republic. These were not
negotiations but a series of meetings to convey an ultimatum to the Islamic
Republic that if it did not accept Trump’s demand, Iran would be attacked.
Thus, Abbas Araghchi, the Islamic Republic's foreign minister and the
negotiator, complained at every opportunity that the Iranian side would respond
only if treated as an equal and that the U.S. side was issuing demands rather
than negotiating, which requires concessions on both sides to reach a The
Netanyahu government's strategy for dominance in the Middle East
Benjamin Netanyahu, currently wanted by the International
Criminal Court for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of
intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population, and the
crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts from at
least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, has been the longest-serving
prime minister of Israel. This is not an accident: as a colonial-settler
regime, Israel has been systematically aiming to capture more land of the
historic Palestine, hence it has built an apartheid state in which Palestinians
are treated as second-class citizens.
Netanyahu has been a driving force for these Zionist
policies. He used Hamas’s rebellion against the Israeli-imposed open prison
policy on Gaza to wage a genocidal war there and, at the same time, encourage
building of settlements in the West Bank.
On April 12, 2025, Iran entered negotiations with Trump’s
administration aimed at reaching a nuclear peace agreement. Trump set a 60-day
deadline for Iran to reach an agreement. After the deadline passed without an
agreement, Israel attacked Iran on June 13. Lazar (June 13, 2025) wrote in
Times of Israel about how these negotiations were used by Israel and the U.S.
to give the Islamic Republic a sense of security before a surprise attack.
In his second term, emboldened by his return to the White
House, Trump has pursued gunboat diplomacy, using U.S. military superiority to
advance the U.S. sphere of influence and support the U.S. economy.
The US joined the Israeli war against Iran on February 28.
Netanyahu had assured Trump that, with the Axis of Resistance weakened with the
fall of the Ba'athist regime in Syria, degradation of Hamas in Gaza and
Hezbollah in Lebanon, and being deeply unpopular among a large part of the
population inside Iran, it was possible to overthrow it and install a regime
favorable to Washington and Israel. This would ensure U.S./Israeli domination
of the Middle East.
Thus, the current U.S./Israel war against Iran is the
continuation of the Israel/U.S. genocidal war in Gaza. After it became clear
that the Islamic Republic would not crumble with the onset of this war and
there would be no mass uprising against Iranians who would welcome the invading
Israeli and American militaries, the Gaza strategy to carpet bomb Iranian
cities was adopted, leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by the
Iranian forces. The success of the asymmetrical war strategy that was developed
after the eight-year-long war with Iraq has kept the Zionist and imperialist
forces at bay, creating a deadlock in the war.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has quickly pushed oil
prices above $100 a barrel and forced governments to tap their strategic
reserves to keep their economies running. If the Strait of Hormuz is mined, it
may take months before shipping through it returns to normal. These factors tie
the hands of Israel and the U.S. from their plans to massively bombard Iran.
The resistance by the Islamic Republic in this war has
further weakened the United States as a declining power.
The crisis of the anthropocentric industrial capitalist
civilization
War is a continuation of politics with violent means.
Politics is concentrated economics. For five thousand years, civilizations have
been built on the expropriation of nature by the exploitation of the working
people. In the capitalist epoch, wars are driven by the laws of motion of
capital. This undercurrent for wars is wrapped in old ideological motives. The
Crusades (1095-1291 AD), a series of military campaigns launched by the papacy
against Muslim rulers to recover and defend the Holy Land, were encouraged by
promises of spiritual reward. Trump’s war against Venezuela, dressed as a war
against drug cartels and for democratic elections, proved to be for a
subservient government in Caracas and control over Venezuela's oil. The Zionist
appeal to the bible and Moses is for taking over the land of Palestine from its
people.
Yet the ever-increasing wealth of the ruling classes and
nations is only possible by further degradation of the natural basis of life on
Mother Earth. Thus, the Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran wars are not just social crises
but also the intensification of existential ecological crises worldwide.
The fossil fuel industry, on which the Gulf states and Iran
rely, remains the largest contributor to catastrophic climate change,
accounting for 59-65% of emissions from 1990 to 2019.
Middle Eastern countries will also be among the early
victims of climate change.
“The countries of the Middle East, especially
Arabic-speaking ones, are among the world’s most exposed states to the
accelerating impacts of human-caused climate change, including soaring heat
waves, declining precipitation, extended droughts, more intense sandstorms and
floods, and rising sea levels. But the consequences will be felt unevenly
across the region. Resource-poor countries that lack adaptive capacities like
infrastructure, technology, and human and physical capital will suffer more
acutely, especially as global warming contributes to the degradation of rural
livelihoods and jeopardizes food security. The effects will magnify preexisting
inequities and decades of unsustainable government policies, particularly those
related to water and land management” (Wehrly, 2024).
Francis and Fonseca (2025) add:
“Model projections for the ‘business-as-usual’ climate
change scenario indicate that half of the population in the Middle East and
North African region (roughly 600 million people) could be exposed to recurring
super- and ultra-extreme heatwaves, which will feature air temperatures up to
56 °C and higher lasting for several weeks at a time, in the second half of
this century21. Even though the aridity in the MENA region has significantly
increased in recent decades, extreme rainfall events may be more impactful in a
warming world.”(Francis and Fonseca, 2024).
The working people, the only social force that can stop this
madness, must demand an end to the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran and
organize ourself to discuss and adopt alternative for a better world in which
humans would live in peace with each other and with the rest of life on Earth.
References:
Abrahamian, Ervand. “Can Iran Survive? An Urgent Discussion
on the US-Israel War on Iran” Verso Books, March 20, 2026.
Berman, Lazar. “How an Israeli-American Deception Campaign
Lulled Iran into a False Sense of Security.” Times of Israel. June 15, 2025.
Francis, Diana and Ricardo Fonseca. “Recent and projected
changes in climate patterns in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.”
Nature. May 4, 2024
Comstock, Frannie. “Christian Zionism.” Britanica. January
23, 2026.“
Goldman, Shalom. “Christian Zionism hasn’t always been a
conservative evangelical creed – churches’ views of Israel have evolved over
decades.” The Conversation. April 2, 2025.
Mazetti, Mark
Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, Tyler Pager, et al. “How Trump Decided to Go to
War.” The New York Times, March 2, 2026.
Nayeri, Kamran. Whose Planet? Essays on Ecocentric
Socialism. 2023A.
_____________. Toward a Theory of Uneven and Combined Late
Capitalist Development. 2023B.
_____________. Between Dreams and Reality: Essays on
Revolution and Socialism. 2025.
_____________. “The Dead End of U.S./Israeli War Against
Iran.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. June 22, 2025.
_____________. “Foreign Policy of the Second Trump
Administration.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. February 16, 2026.
Olmsted, Judith. “Let’s Just Do It: How Netanyahu Convinced
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Sharp, Jermey M. “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel: Overview and
Developments since October 7, 2023.” May 28, 2025.
Stanley, Tiffany. “Why conservative American evangelicals
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Stein, Chris. “US strikes on Iran triggered by Israel’s plan
to launch attack, Rubio says.” March 2, 2026. The Guardian.
Wehrey, Fredric.
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