By Kamran Nayeri, March 16, 2026
 |
| A neighborhood in Tehran after U.S./Isreli 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.
* *
*
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 $174 billion (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 Trump to Bomb Iran.” New Republic.
March 2, 2026.
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 are among Israel’s strongest supporters.”
Associated Press. February 5, 2025.
Stein, Chris. “US
strikes on Iran triggered by Israel’s plan to launch attack, Rubio says.” March
2, 2026. The Guardian.
Wehrey, Fredric. “Introduction” in Frederic
Wehrey, et.al. “Climate
Change and Vulnerability in the Middle East,” Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. Jul 6, 2023.
.png)
.png)
