The latest American attack on a sovereign country, in this case Iran, is the culmination of a decades-long strategy to bring the Middle East under complete subordination, both as an essential plank of Israeli strategy and a precursor to tightening the noose on Russia and China.

It illustrates that the principal contradiction facing the world is the increasingly aggressive imperialist strategy of the USA, accompanied by their Israeli partners, as it departs from any pretence of leading a world order based on mutual exchange, liberty, or development. As the economic supremacy that both enabled and characterised western supremacy has been whittled away due to both the exigencies of financial capitalism and the rise of Chinese communist production, the resort to overt imperialist domination has grown all the more necessary.

In fact it is the attempts to forge a distinct national path to development outside the control of Washington that is the key sin committed by states as varied as China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela. These states varied in their structure and ideology; some communist and atheist, others nationalist and religious.

But it is their temerity in not bending the knee to Tel Aviv and Washington that puts them in the crosshairs for regime change by western imperialism. Of these, only China and Russia appear to have the scale capable of resisting on a technological, economic, and cultural level – and even Russia is under considerable pressure.

The latest and to date most serious aggression against Iran is the final piece in weakening all potential rivals to American-Israeli dominance of the Middle East. The 2003 invasion of Iraq signalled and, indeed, openly announced a strategy to bring down all states that did not submit. Thus, by 2026, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Syria had largely fallen to the western onslaught, often aided by local proxies such as Al Qaeda in Syria.

Iran stood as the largest remaining recalcitrant nation in the Middle East and even it, or fractions of its elite, suffered from a naiveté that Israel-America would be satisfied with a pragmatic deal. Hence their repeated offers regarding its nuclear industry. But the Empire does not want a deal; it demands submission. This is why it has no compunction about attacking and killing Iran’s or Hizbollah’s leadership at the very moment they’re meeting to discuss a compromise, a level of barbarity that is only acceptable to a heavily indoctrinated populace.

The fall of the Iranian state under the attacks of Israel-America will not lead to an environment in which the prospects for building working class power are enhanced. There would be at best an authoritarian regime subservient to Tel Aviv and quite probably prolonged chaos and civil war that in no way fosters an environment in which socialist-labour movement can advance. The primary issue, then, is not the nature of the state in Iran (or Russia or Cuba) but the destruction wrought by imperialism on any country attempting to chart an independent course of development. Ideally the resistance to this imperialism would be led by communist movements, as it was in Vietnam and Korea, but this is not a choice that can be arbitrarily taken. Each country must work with the anti-imperialist forces that have historically come to the fore.

The empire would of course welcome a subservient government in Tehran that can facilitate the systematic looting of the country, as occurred in Russia in the 1990s, but a state of fragmentation and chaos will more than suffice for their purposes. The result in either case would be a weaker pole standing outside the hegemony of Israel-America. In the medium term this narrows the room to manoeuvre for Russia and China, especially as the route into Central Asia is opened up for western interference.

The weapons of empire, now updated to include AI targeting and surveillance analysis, are not just meant for disciplining recalcitrant foreigners; they can and will be used to discipline the population within the West itself as the ruling class give no indication that they are prepared to concede significant policy changes on any issue of importance. Therefore if the imperialism waged abroad has proven to be the primary contradiction facing socialists outside of the West, it is becoming ever more apparent that the same consideration applies at home, too. Just as the great revolutionary upheavals of the past, from 1789 to Vietnam, inspire movements across borders, the success of imperialist aggression abroad will likewise signal that an era of reaction is the most viable option available everywhere.

It is in this context that we should view the approach taken by the Irish government and its usual weak platitudes about deescalation, as if the war was a sort of accident into which the parties have inadvertently stumbled. The government’s refusal to condemn the United States and Israel as the instigators stems from the objective weakness of Ireland’s position as dependent on American capital. Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s cowardly statement is expected, but the reluctance of President Catherine Connolly to clearly identify Israel and the USA as the instigators demands further explanation.

While Ireland’s dependence on American capital cannot be changed overnight, the disappointingly soft statements emanating from the Taoiseach’s and President’s offices should signal the necessity to chart a different course on a range of different fronts, most obviously by resisting the current propaganda campaign to join NATO but also to develop an alternative economic model based on developing a socialist form of production, that can provide the basis for meaningful sovereignty.