
The Netanyahu–Trump gang is expanding regional conflagration in service of the occupation and the rule of capital
Advance broad protest, refusal, and strike action with the call: No to the Israel–Iran war, an end to the war of extermination in Gaza, overthrow Israel’s ‘government of death’ — yes to a cross-border struggle for equality, welfare, and personal security, no to the rule of capital, occupation, and imperialism
A guest article by Shahar Benhorin, Socialist Struggle Movement, Israel-Palestine [Originally published on 13 June 2025]
The government of death of Netanyahu and the far-right has declared total war on Iran, opening a new phase of extreme aggravation in regional confrontation — a further destructive turning point, with decisive material and political backing by the Trump administration and with support from the establishment “opposition” in Israel’s Knesset [parliament].
The unprecedented military offensive show of force, initiated by the region’s sole nuclear power in the early hours of Friday at night, has so far focused on striking parts of Iran’s nuclear programme infrastructure and military installations — including assassinations of the senior command, among them the Chief of Staff and the Commander of the “Revolutionary Guards” — while also not hesitating to target civilian sites. Residential buildings have been bombed, and members of Iran’s scientific cadre have been executed in an act of state terrorism. While Tehran’s two limited missile barrages launched towards the State of Israel in April and October 2024 ostensibly focused on military targets, it may now attempt to ‘equalise’ costs by directing fire at the civilian population.
This is part of the catastrophic military campaign launched by this government — following the surprise attack led by Hamas on 7 October 2023 — with massive support from the Israeli ruling class, backed by western governments, to coldly exploit a historic opportunity to reshape the region in line with a horrific vision of the Israeli rule of capital and occupation in the spirit of the far-right.
The objective of the extensive offensive is not merely to disrupt Iran’s nuclear programme to strip a rival regional power of potential military capabilities. Rather, in a generalised manner, to also complete an ongoing move since 7 October to alter the regional balance of power. That, fundamentally, in pursuit of regional hegemony, the normalisation of occupation and the brutal repression of the Palestinians, improving business for Israeli capital and particularly the arms industry, and demonstrating ability to serve as a ‘forward outpost’ for western imperialist interests in the region.
While both sides in this confrontation are reactionary regimes each serving a narrow oligarchy, with neither playing any progressive role in the interests of the masses in the region — this is not a symmetrical conflict. Rather, it is aggression from the government of death of Israeli capitalism — the most dangerous force in the regional system at present — backed by the world’s strongest imperialist power, with the most reactionary global influence.
Netanyahu, accustomed to manipulative rhetoric that desecrates the memory of the Jewish Holocaust, declared that the offensive against Iran was nothing less than an act to prevent a “second Holocaust”. Meanwhile, mass atrocities, including crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide, are intensifying in Gaza under the guise of ‘security’ demagoguery in the service of occupation and colonial settlements, flagrantly also trampling the lives of hostages but also the future of the region — also in the regional context, the military campaign led by Netanyahu’s gang was never designed at any stage to, nor is it capable of, making the region ‘safer’. On the contrary.
Chain reaction danger
Regardless of the scale of retaliatory actions carried out by the Iranian regime and its allies in the ‘Axis of Resistance’, however weakened the axis may be, the event is unfolding, and its full consequences could still escalate into a series of regional and global shocks — including accelerating a crisis in the global economy. Forces of the Iranian regime and its allies may target energy facilities and other infrastructure in the region, potentially even blockading the Strait of Hormuz. The US military and various forces in the region may yet intervene directly. There could be further extensive harm to the civilian population in Iran, further horrors inflicted against Palestinians amid the regional turmoil, harm to Israeli civilians, and even worldwide associated attacks may occur against Jewish and other people.
The Israeli government has employed tactics similar to those it used in its attack on Lebanon to weaken Hezbollah militarily, however, this time, the target is a state, and on a massive scale. The Iranian regime cannot afford not to respond forcefully to such a strategic blow, especially following the setbacks suffered by the ‘Axis of Resistance’ under its leadership since September 2024. It risks appearing powerless, fueling internal divisions, and facing an escalation of assertive challenges in local and regional power struggles — potentially reaching existential threats. Pressure on the regime to ‘take revenge’ is set to be immense.
The fact that Hezbollah in Lebanon, still recovering from a significant organisational setback, has so far limited its response to condemning Israeli aggression does not necessarily mean it will not later take part in some form of retaliation — potentially, Hezbollah still has the capability to inflict a heavier infrastructural damage compared with the isolated Houthi missile strikes. Although, it is likely that its leadership currently fears the military and political costs involved.
The Israeli offensive has never been intended nor capable of fully eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme. The research centre in Isfahan was hit, but the extent of the destruction at Natanz — Iran’s largest uranium enrichment facility — remains unclear, as does the impact on the parallel enrichment facility in Fordow, which is carved into a mountain. In any case, from a technical standpoint, even severe damage may ultimately result in no more than a disruption lasting a few years in the development of the nuclear programme.
One of the pretexts used by the Israeli regime in its propaganda to justify the offensive, framed as a “preemptive strike”, is the claim regarding an acceleration of the development of Iranian weapons systems relevant to producing a nuclear bomb, despite no clear evidence being presented to support this assertion. Moreover, it is evident that planning for the offensive in various aspects, which involves forces on the ground in Iran itself, had been ongoing for a long time regardless.
To begin with, previous phases of the Israeli military campaign, particularly the assassination of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, spurred a wing of the Iranian regime that views a military nuclear programme as a strategic defence mechanism against military aggression. Netanyahu himself admitted that he had originally ordered preparations for the offensive as early as November 2024, just weeks after the assassination of Nasrallah, claiming: “It was clear to me, as well as to others, that with the breaking of the Iranian axis — which was one base for Israel’s destruction — Iran would rapidly advance its nuclear programme”. Now, this offensive is pushing the Iranian regime more forcefully to refine its efforts to restore capabilities and ultimately achieve such an objective.
Netanyahu’s appeal to the masses in Iran with the hypocritical claim that the war is only against the regime oppressing them, could just as easily have been made, also hypocritically, by the Iranian regime to those living under Israeli rule around last year’s missile barrages towards the State of Israel. However, Netanyahu’s ‘bear hug’ towards the masses in Iran reflects opposite aspirations to those expressed in the mass uprising of 2022 in Iran, or within recent labour struggles and social protests — including the truck drivers’ strike in dozens of cities in the days prior to the offensive regarding wages and the cost of living.
Symbolically, on the day preceding the offensive, Netanyahu hosted Argentine President Javier Milei, an enemy of workers and the poor. Netanyahu’s bear hug to the public in Iran represents the ambition of the Israeli ruling class for regime change in Iran, to replace the current rival dictatorship with one more friendly to its interests – akin to the dictatorial monarchy of the Shah, which was originally overthrown in a revolution before the counter-revolutionary Khomeinist takeover.
Although the offensive may undermine the political stability of the Tehran regime, in fact, as the state of emergency allows the Israeli government of death to ‘put on hold’ local protests against it, in Iran it provides the regime with a political opportunity to rally support against external aggression and even intensify incitement and crackdowns on local voices of protest.
International pressures
The extraordinary resolution passed by representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany — with a Chinese-Russian opposition — at the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), just one day before the Israeli offensive, condemned Tehran for alleged violations of nuclear oversight commitments, providing the Israeli government with additional propaganda justification to launch its offensive — although the Israeli military system had already been placed on alert awaiting orders as of Monday 9 June.
Unlike the tactical rounds of attacks carried out by the Israeli regime on Iranian territory in April and October 2024, the initiation of a broad offensive, which risks spiralling into an uncontrollable regional military escalation, while picking praise from Trump, has attracted colder responses from other ‘western’ powers. In fact, Trump himself sought to publicly downplay Washington’s responsibility for the offensive, as he is taking into account potential retaliatory actions against US military bases in the region and against other US imperialist interests, including expectations from Arab regimes. Simultaneously, the British government distanced itself from any involvement, hinting that it would not assist this time in thwarting an Iranian counter-offensive.
The Jordanian monarchy intercepted part of the drone barrage launched towards Israel, ostensibly out of concern for potential falls within its territory, yet it condemned Israeli aggression. The Egyptian regime also issued a condemnation. Although the central pro-US Arab regimes in the region are interested in weakening Tehran’s power, they are nonetheless concerned about the regional and domestic ramifications of a military spiral.
Tehran’s lack of an immediate response in the initial phase, including the absence of air defence, not only reflected the impact of the early Israeli bombing in Iran on 26 October but also revealed an element of surprise. This was despite a US intelligence report earlier in the year warning that an attack was likely within the first half of 2025, and despite Trump issuing a two-month ultimatum in an attempt to coerce a deal from Tehran — which now, more than before, would amount to a transparent capitulation agreement. The US administration may yet be dragged into direct intervention in the conflict, but, unlike Netanyahu, it is still playing with the idea that the military offensive could be used as leverage to extract concessions from Tehran.
Trump, who originally violated the previous nuclear agreement brokered under US sponsorship, also collaborated in a media deception ahead of the Israeli offensive — pretending that negotiations between Washington and Tehran would resume on Sunday. Even when the administration initially ‘vetoed’ an Israeli offensive plan in May, preferring to seek a deal with Tehran due to concerns over escalating complications, it simultaneously delivered a massive airlift of heavy weaponry, previously withheld under Biden’s administration, thus aiding the Israeli regime’s practical preparations for the military offensive scenario.
It should be noted that in any case, agreements such as the nuclear deal signed during the Obama administration in 2015 primarily represent an attempt by global imperialist powers to impose a diplomatic framework of (unequal) rules on dangerous power struggles between regional forces. From the outset, such agreements do not resolve the fundamental factors driving these conflicts, that in themselves fuel a hazardous arms race.
The backing of the Government of Death by the ‘opposition’ — and the need for struggle measures
The crisis within Netanyahu’s ruling coalition a short while before the offensive, centred around legislation for drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military to reinforce the war of extermination and occupation, was resolved through a combination of the understanding by all coalition parties that public resentment towards the government could translate into a serious electoral blow, and their understanding that the military campaign could also allow them to reap political benefits from images of ‘military successes’.
However, the offensive has only just begun, and it remains unclear how much, and for how long, they will be able to cultivate support based on such superficial impressions. The loyal alignment of the establishment Israeli “opposition” — led by Yair Golan, Yair Lapid, and Benny Gantz — in once again praising a dramatic military move by the government of death underscores that this is not merely a narrow political manoeuvre to ‘save Netanyahu’. Rather, it is a geo-strategic move aligned with broader ambitions within the Israeli ruling class. Yet, even they will eventually distance themselves from their de facto political support for the government as the offensive becomes more entangled or as time passes.
Under the cover of the offensive, the Israeli government of death has tightened the siege on the West Bank, while within the Green Line, it has initiated a new phase of bans on gatherings and the freezing of protest events. The leadership of the General Histadrut trade union federation, much like the establishment opposition parties, has once again aligned itself with the government of death, and for war at the expense of the future of working people from all communities. We are in a volatile phase, and it remains unclear how the coming days and weeks will unfold. But locally, as globally, what is needed now is the advancement of a struggle with a strong and clear voice against the deteriorating of the region deeper into the spiral of blood and the fantasies of Trump and the Israeli far right.
- Yes to building a broad protest movement, protest refusal against the war machine, and strike actions. Organise a democratic, cross-community protest movement led by ordinary working people, with no involvement of capitalists, generals, or establishment parties’ politicians.
- No to the Israel–Iran war, an end to the war of extermination in Gaza, overthrow the ‘government of death’ — and all its policies.
- Against the hubris of a murderous gang trampling the future of all of us with deceiving murderous wars, mass atrocities, and suffocating austerity, there’s a need to strengthen the cross-border struggle to stop the war machine and fight for equality, welfare, and personal security.
- No to the rule of capital, occupation, and imperialism, yes to socialist transformation in the region.