The war initiated by US imperialism and Israeli Zionism through airstrikes against Iran, and Iran’s response by targeting numerous US military bases in the region, makes the threat of regional war a serious possibility at this level for the first time. The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—the most significant figure of the clerical regime in Iran since Khomeini—in these US and Israeli attacks highlights two prominent scenarios for what may follow: The Trump administration will either use these attacks, carried out while negotiations were ongoing, as a tool to bring an Iranian leadership that has lost its supreme leader back to the table under new conditions; or, if these attacks continue toward the goal of regime change—as suggested in Trump’s initial statement—Iran, along with its regional proxy forces, will spread the war across the entire region.

Iran has been the most significant target of US imperialism’s policy of redesigning the region since the "Great/Extended Middle East Project." This is because, excluding the period of Mossadegh—who served as prime minister between 1951-1953 and was overthrown by a CIA coup for attempting to nationalize Iranian oil—Iran was the most important ally of the US and Israel in the region until the 1979 "Islamic Revolution." Just as Iran was previously their most vital ally, it became the most significant rival to the US and Israel in the region after 1979. Specifically, through the policy it termed the "export of revolution," it united anti-US and anti-Israel forces in the region under its own axis (the Axis of Resistance).

Much like Venezuela, the bulk of Iran's economic income relies on oil and natural gas exports, and China, with whom it signed a $400 billion investment agreement in 2021, stands as its largest customer. Furthermore, Iran significantly controls the Strait of Hormuz, which is of strategic importance not only for itself but for the oil and gas exports of other regional countries (approximately 25% of global maritime oil trade and 20% of liquefied natural gas trade passes through here).

The real reason why US imperialism today imposes the ultimatum of either kneeling or collapsing the regime is not, as propagandized, Iran’s uranium enrichment activities or the threat of acquiring nuclear weapons. The reason Iran is viewed as a threat today is that it pursues these activities as a regional power in cooperation with Russia and China. Otherwise, during the Shah’s era, Western imperialists themselves had signed nuclear cooperation agreements with Iran. Occupying a strategic position in terms of energy resources and trade transit routes (the middle corridor of China's Belt and Road Initiative) in both the Middle East and the Caucasus-Caspian region, Iran officially joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2021 and BRICS in 2024. Therefore, it would be misleading to consider the current attacks on Iran and potential future developments independently of the increasingly sharpening struggle for hegemony and redistribution among imperialist powers.

To understand the war initiated by the US and Israel and subsequent possible developments, one must look at the positions of the actors involved in this process.

When examining President Trump’s statement regarding the attacks on Iran, it is evident that a discourse aimed at convincing the US domestic public takes precedence over explaining the justification for this attack to the world. For this reason, Trump states in his speech that the Iranian regime has been shouting "Death to America!" for 47 years and recalls events such as the 52 US diplomats held hostage for 444 days at the Tehran Embassy in 1979 and the killing of 241 US soldiers in Beirut in 1983.

Trump’s framing of his speech to convince the US public is not without reason. Opinion polls reveal that the Trump administration has suffered a significant loss of power ahead of the midterm elections to be held on November 3. On one hand, the Epstein pedophilia case, and on the other, the possibility of losing the majority in the Senate, forces Trump into a quest to protect his own position through the killing of Khamenei and such a "victory."

It goes without saying that the power desiring this war the most is Israel. Beyond strengthening Netanyahu’s hand in domestic politics, this war is seen as a turning point for Zionist Israel in terms of the total occupation of Palestine and the removal of the most significant obstacle to its expansionist ambitions in the region.

Although Russia and China have no intention of entering the war directly today, they will do everything in their power to ensure the Iranian regime remains standing—not just for the Middle East, but for the struggle for hegemony against the US and Western imperialists in the Caspian and Central Asia, which they view as their "backyard." Thus, it can be said they are following a policy aimed at forcing the diplomatic table again through the capacity of Iran—which they support militarily and economically—to respond to US attacks.

In a joint statement made by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on behalf of the leaders of the three prominent European imperialist countries, although it was stated that they did not participate in these attacks, the subsequent condemnation of Iran rather than the aggressors (US and Israel) constitutes a new example of the position these powers have fallen into against US imperialism recently.

President Erdoğan’s statement, which on one hand says "We condemn the US and Israel" while on the other declaring Iran’s attacks on US bases in Gulf countries as "unacceptable," reveals both the dilemmas of his government and his surrender to US imperialism. The attacks initiated by the US and Israel against Iran concern the Erdoğan government on several fronts: from the possible autonomy scenario for the Kurds, the most organized force in Iran, to the potential for a US-Israel-aligned Iran to marginalize Turkey’s geopolitical importance in the region, and the strengthening of Israel’s position as the most significant recent rival. Erdoğan’s phone call with Trump following the first day of attacks and his attempt to assume a "mediator" role demonstrate his increasing dependency on US imperialism and his search to mitigate potential risks by negotiating with Trump on this basis.

Collaborative Arab regimes in the Gulf bowed to US imperialism’s use of their territory as bases for these attacks, despite having previously declared they would not permit it. These regimes have exposed their hypocritical policy in the Iran war, just as they did with the Palestinian issue. It was revealed that while the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain ostensibly condemned Israel during the attacks, occupation, and massacres in Gaza, behind the scenes, there was cooperation in defense and intelligence between these countries and Israel under the leadership of the US Central Command (CENTCOM). Today’s picture of cooperation is no different from yesterday’s.

Iran’s first-ever comprehensive response targeting US bases in the UAE, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia (with pro-Iranian groups in Iraq also hitting the US base in the Iraqi Kurdistan region) gains meaning as a move to squeeze these regimes. Spreading the war beyond its own borders not only causes serious concern for the Gulf regimes regarding domestic instability but also creates significant risks for their lifelines: the oil and gas trade (via Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb through the Houthis). Consequently, Iran views the attacks on these bases as a pressure element to force these countries to compel the US and Israel toward a compromise.

This political landscape points either to a "ceasefire" and a return to the table or, should the attacks continue, a destructive war threat that will affect the entire region.

Undoubtedly, one of the most debated topics regarding the war that began following the US and Israel attacks is the question of what stance progressive, revolutionary-democratic, and socialist forces should take.

The clerical regime’s policy of unrestrained terror against its own people—the most recent example being its stance against the protests that began at the end of last year—leads some circles to support the US and Israel attacks or at least remain silent in the face of them. However, if one thing is certain regarding these attacks, it is that US imperialism and Zionist aggression, far from liberating the peoples of Iran and the region, will bring nothing but destruction, years of chaos, and civil war. Their concern is never the establishment of a democratic, free Iran; on the contrary, it is the fragmentation of Iran and its descent into internal conflict to remove one of the most significant obstacles in their struggle for redistribution and hegemony.

Excluding the son of the deposed Shah Pahlavi, a puppet of the US, Israel, and Western imperialists, the progressive and revolutionary forces in Iran also recognize this truth. Therefore, by opposing imperialist intervention, they declare that the establishment of a democratic and free Iran is only possible through their own struggle. Consequently, the way to show solidarity with the peoples of Iran today is to oppose imperialist aggression and the policies of collaborative regional reactionaries like the Palace regime, and to support the progressive-democratic-revolutionary forces there.

It must also not be forgotten that the change of the established order (the müesses nizam) in the Middle East—which for a hundred years has brought nothing but war, death, and poverty to the peoples of the region via imperialists and regional reactionaries—is possible not through new imperialist wars, but only through a struggle for a democratic, secular, and peaceful future in which the peoples of Iran and the region determine their own destiny.