ISp statement
No to imperialist war, yes to peoples’ solidarity
Internationalist Standpoint condemns the US and Israeli military attack on Iran. This escalation is already pushing the region toward a wider war, with retaliatory strikes reported across Israel and against bases hosting US forces in multiple Middle Eastern countries.
No propaganda label can launder this violence. “Pre-emptive self-defence” and “security” are the familiar vocabulary of imperial power: a language designed to normalize the bombing of cities, the destabilization of societies and the collective punishment of ordinary people. It’s the same propaganda used by Trump to justify US imperialism’s ventures and ambitions in Venezuela, Greenland, Cuba, etc. It’s also the same propaganda used by Israel to justify its ongoing genocidal operation in Palestine.
Civilians paying the price
Reports indicate heavy civilian harm amid the strikes, including devastating incidents such as the reported hit on a primary school in southern Iran. Every bomb that falls “to prevent danger” manufactures new danger, new grief, and new cycles of revenge.
Since January 2026, Iran experienced a huge movement against the regime sparked by falling living standards and repression. US and Israeli imperialists pretended to care and now Trump calls on the people of Iran to overthrow the regime. He wants to use the demonstrators as cannon fodder instead of US soldiers.
The people of Iran are fighting for democratic rights. They have nothing to gain by the imperialist implementation of a regime led by the blood-soaked Shah’s son or the “People’s Mujahedeen” or even a “moderate” part of the regime after the gangster-style killing of Ali Khamenei.
Standing against imperialism does not mean supporting regime
We offer no political support to Iran’s authoritarian, worker-hostile regime. The Islamic Republic has workers’ blood on its hands, as it brutally represses any mobilisation that demands basic rights. But we reject with equal clarity the lie that liberation can be delivered by cruise missiles and air raids. Imperial intervention does not bring democracy. It brings militarism, sectarianism, shattered labour movements, and strengthened security states, on every side of the border.
The future of Iran must be decided by the people of Iran, through their struggles for social justice, workers’ rights, women’s liberation and democratic freedoms, not by Washington’s war planners or Netanyahu’s generals.
Our demands
- Immediate halt to all US and Israeli attacks on Iran.
- Build an international mass anti-war movement with demonstrations, strikes, blockades to put pressure for immediate de-escalation.
- Withdraw war machinery from the region: end the military build-up that keeps the Middle East on a hair-trigger.
- Solidarity with workers and oppressed people across the region: oppose racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and nationalist hysteria that states use to discipline dissent at home.
- Class solidarity to the struggle of the Iranian masses for their democratic, gender and national rights.
War is not a “geopolitical event”. War is the closure of workplaces, the collapse of livelihoods, the hardening of repression, and the burying of children under rubble. The answer is not a stronger empire or a stronger security state. The answer is internationalist, anti-war mobilisation: unions, social movements and every force that refuses to let governments set the world on fire to safeguard their geopolitical interests, profits and power.
