Statement by the Executive Committee of the Independent Socialist Group
The governments of Israel and the U.S. launched military attacks on Iran early this morning. The Netanyahu and Trump regimes, including Republican and Democratic Party leaderships, have blood on their hands, killing innocent civilians in another rotten, useless war. These attacks come after the resumption of negotiations between the Trump regime and Iran’s government over Iran’s alleged nuclear enrichment efforts and also follow a previous military attack by the U.S. and Israeli governments last June. The Trump regime, with no real opposition by the Democratic Party, continues to launch wars and proxy wars for oil and imperialist dominance. Both the Republican and Democratic parties voted for a record $901 billion U.S. war budget.
Here in the U.S., the terror of ICE raids, mass arrests, violence, and murder have made Trump and the Republicans more unpopular. Millions of working people and youth are joining protests opposing their policies. Throughout U.S. history, unpopular presidential regimes have created wars to try and cut across opposition to their rule, while furthering corporate interests through war.
The Independent Socialist Group (ISG) joins the call for no war against Iran! We stand in solidarity with the Iranian people who were, until Trump intervened, engaged in mass protests against the government. We stand in solidarity with innocent working-class people in Iran being killed and terrorized in this latest, bloody war launched by billionaires and corporate politicians in the U.S. We stand in solidarity with people in the U.S. military who want no part of this war and urge them to make their voices heard.
Trump describes the current missile strikes as the beginning of “a massive and ongoing operation.” An Israeli missile strike has hit a girls’ elementary school in Minab, a city in southern Iran, killing more than sixty children and educators. The scope of these military attacks against Iran go further than the bombing raid last June or the kidnapping of Maduro in Venezuela. Trump states about the current war against Iran: “We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally, again, obliterated. We are going to annihilate their navy.” Who is “we” in this declaration? Who wants this war and its atrocities?
The U.S. government, Republican and/or Democrat, has opposed the Iranian government since the Iranian Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed Pahlavi dictatorship in 1979. The U.S. has enforced many economic sanctions against the country since the revolution, supplied weapons to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, attacked Iranian oil infrastructure during the Iran-Iraq War, carried out the 2020 assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, and in 2025 bombed Iranian government facilities during the Iran-Israel war.
The Iranian regime should not be supported, but neither should war against Iran. It’s up to the Iranian working class to remove their government. The Iranian government is a right-wing capitalist, religious fundamentalist regime that in 2022 violently crushed protests against the country’s mandatory hijab law, and killed thousands in the latest wave of anti-government protests since December. The Iranian rulers continue to brutally repress left-wing and labor organizing within the country.
The war against Iran conducted by the U.S. and Israeli regimes will not liberate the people of Iran. U.S. and Israeli imperialist interests seek another repressive government, but one more friendly to the interests of U.S. capitalism. They hope to install a puppet government that can open up the country’s vast oil resources for the exploitation of U.S. corporations, much like the government the U.S. installed in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the U.S.-backed Shah overthrown in 1979, seems to be the choice of political puppet the U.S. government wants to impose in Iran.
The Iranian people do not want a return to a pre-Revolution dictatorship. There is a need for a “second Iranian revolution,” but one on a revolutionary socialist basis. Working people in the U.S. and Israel need to organize a mass movement against the attacks on Iran. The labor movement can join opposition to this war and help organize protests, job actions, and strikes to stop the war machine. The U.S. working class needs to build a workers’ party to oppose both the Democratic and Republican political parties that back and fund U.S. imperialism.
For solidarity between U.S. and Iranian working-class people! No war against Iran!
Independent Socialist Group 