The International Socialist Organisation of Aotearoa condemns absolutely the disgusting, warmongering, imperialist aggression against Iran by the genocidal US-Israel alliance.
This latest assault, led by an increasingly overtly fascist Trump and wanted war criminal Netanyahu, is being touted by ruling classes across the West-aligned empire as “preventive” or “pre-emptive”. This farce is not only transparent, it is insulting in its laziness. Those beating the drums of invasion barely even bother to manufacture consent, while telling us plainly that mass death is the price that must be paid for US resource control and the violent policing of shipping lanes and oil supply.
Moreover, the response of much of New Zealand’s ruling class must be seen for what it is: brazen imperialist propaganda. The ruling coalition government predictably forgoes any right thinking by condemning Iran’s response to the initial assault while ignoring US-Israel’s murderous slaughter of Iranian civilians (including Israel’s common pastime of bombing schoolchildren). Meanwhile, the opposition Labour Party limply equivocates between the assault on a sovereign nation in a relentless drive to war, and the military response of Iran against US military bases and the Zionist military occupation of Palestine. Of course, we are also not spared the pained rhetorical appeals to “international law”, as if this facade was not already drowned in blood by Israel’s genocide in Palestine.
The United States of America (along with its attack dog Israel) is a global imperialist superpower, aiming to destroy Iran as a functioning regional power, in pursuit of either exploitable chaos or the installation of a US-controlled puppet regime. The role of socialists now is to stand with the working class across the world who will be slaughtered in pursuit of geopolitical control. This means opposing our own ruling political class who are allied with the United States of America. It means opposing the liberal tactic of cherry-picking pro-imperialist positions from oppressed people, and instead raising principled demands against this war. And most importantly it means supporting organised workers across the world in disrupting the war machine and its supply chains, and organising toward the overthrow of the capitalist system which will otherwise endlessly create and re-create these conflicts.
No war with Iran! The main enemy is at home!
