Whilst RedAnt’s primary struggle is to challenge U.S. imperialism from within the Australian context, the challenge of doing so necessarily brings RedAnt into fundamental alignment with the struggle for communism in the Global South. It is in this spirit that the translated statement from the Iranian communist group Tadarok is shared below, originally published in Farsi at tadarok.org

For the working class of Iran and the region, the victory of the united imperialist and fascist-Zionist bloc will bring about the most dire consequences. The first and most crucial task facing every worker, every communist, and every honorable person today is to prevent the realization of this nightmare. For us, for workers and communists, this primarily means confronting all and any efforts to whitewash Zionist fascism, to equate Iran and Israel, or to pacify society under the false banner of peace advocacy.

The war that began in the early hours of June 12 is far more than a regional or limited conflict. The start of this war marked a moment in the bloody global struggle over the future rearrangement of the world and the shaping of future societies—a struggle that has now reached a new climax. By the end of this war, it will not only be the fate of Iran and Israel that changes; the destiny of the West Asia and the world will also undergo massive transformations. Likewise, the political, ideological, and economic alignment of hostile classes in all involved countries will no longer be what it was before this war.

The Iran-Israel war is not a conflict between two nations. It is the product of intersecting trajectories that became evident during the 2008-2009 global crisis, set the West Asia ablaze during the Arab Spring, and, over the past decade—alongside the liberal-fascist coup in Ukraine—have both accelerated and surpassed the level of proxy wars between global rival powers, revealing signs of direct confrontation between these powers and the settling of the world’s fate for decades to come.

The heroic Al-Aqsa Storm uprising not only once again made the West Asia one of the primary epicenters of this historic-global struggle but also, for the first time, showcased a movement with prospects far beyond all other conflicts. While in other hotspots, disputes could be resolved through shifts in the balance of power among competing forces, Al-Aqsa Storm, from the outset, raised not the question of altering this regional balance but the existential question of annihilating one side of this battle. What remained concealed in other arenas of this historic-global conflict was laid bare in Palestine: To be or not to be—this was the question Al-Aqsa Storm posed directly. Palestine or Israel.

And thus, the world faced its fundamental question. On one side stood a force embodying the vileness, filth, blood, and rot of over five centuries of capitalist development and globalization. On the other stood a small force with nothing to lose and a world to conquer. Now, this life-and-death struggle emerged from prior conflicts. Israel was the spearhead and frontline of that global force in the West Asia—a force also engaged in Ukraine, Taiwan, the Caucasus, Latin America, and Africa, fighting to preserve its endangered position. For decades, it had set fires worldwide to defend the privileges and spoils of five centuries of plunder and oppression. A force now rapidly hurtling toward the abyss on the Ukrainian front. Now, its fate was tied to that of Zionist fascism—two forces intertwined, an inseparable alloy of cruelty, depravity, slaughter, deceit, and lies, now facing nothing short of annihilation.

This cursed alliance had to act to save itself, and to do so, it had to find the weakest point among forces outside this unholy historical union yet significant enough in global relations that a shift in their balance could alter the global balance of power. Neither Ukraine nor Taiwan was this weak point. On the Ukrainian front, Russia’s military alignment had painfully exposed the limits of NATO’s killing machine. In Taiwan, the technological and industrial superpower China faced no better fate than Ukraine. It was against Iran that this chance for victory was sought.

Iran was neither Russia, which could stand tall relying on the glorious Soviet tradition, nor China, which, under disciplined and decisive state leadership, had become the world’s greatest economic power. Here, the most suitable conditions existed for this reactionary front of decayed forces to escape their painful decline. Israel, globally despised and with no escape from its downward spiral, was the tool at hand. On the other side stood a force that had only found itself opposing the West due to a historical misunderstanding—a country derailed half a century ago, whose elites now yearned to return it to the fold, sparing no effort to collaborate sympathetically with European and American partners.

Nothing remained of the confiscated legacy of the 1979 Revolution in the ruling class—a class that produced only corrupt and cowardly politicians. Iran was not even Burkina Faso, capable of producing a sincere and defiant leader.

Four decades of unchecked wealth accumulation, limitless exploitation of local and migrant workers, legislation stripping the working masses of their most basic rights to a decent life, and the plunder of public natural resources for a vampiric minority had brought such decay to society that human values turned into anti-values, while corruption and degeneracy became virtues. The ruling class—capitalists, landowners, and financial oligarchs—shaped a society where social solidarity was mocked as backwardness.

This was now the class holding power in Iran—a class that, in reality, saw itself as part of the capitalist bloc dominating the global imperialist order. Its goal was full control over society’s destiny, sidelining the hardened core of the previous political system (now reduced to a hollow shell). A shell that shared economic foundations with the ruling class yet resisted the logical outcomes of the very approach it had championed.

This balance of weakness, since the rise of the reactionary Green Movement, had pushed society toward gradual disintegration, driving ever-larger masses of workers and toilers into destitution alongside the staggering accumulation of wealth and luxury for a tiny minority, paving the way for widespread societal decay. While the world was locked in a fateful war for realignment, Iran’s ruling class turned the country into a pendulum in the contemporary world—neither East nor West, neither part of the Global South nor the imperialist North. It hated the East, adored the West, fled the Global South, and rushed toward the golden West.

The Islamic Republic of 2025 was no longer the Islamic Republic of the Iran-Iraq War, with its wartime economy, rationing, cooperatives, and construction jihads. What remained from that era had become street anniversary displays, irrelevant to governing society, while what governed society bore no trace of that past. This was a country with strong arms but weak will.

Unlike the Ukrainian front, where NATO’s united reactionary front crashed against Russia’s unyielding wall, in the West Asia, after initial defeats in Syria, signs of weakness and fatigue appeared on the opposing front. From the Abraham Accords to Israel’s deadly strikes on Axis of Resistance forces in Syria, the devastating blows to Hezbollah’s leadership and military structure, and the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime—for the U.S., everything indicated that the prospect of victory here was far brighter than in the strategically doomed Ukrainian front. Here, there was no unbreakable Russian line—only an Iran with no will left to fight, an Iran that had already surrendered its past gains in Syria and Palestine to secure a ticket into the “global family,” content to sit at the master’s table as a house slave, begging for scraps.

Iran’s bourgeoisie saw Trump’s offer of talks as a golden ticket into that illusory Western “family of nations,” dreaming of becoming the imperialist bloc’s gatekeeper in the West Asia. Unaware that it could never win the full trust of its Western masters, it would soon either cede its place to slavish monarchist remnants and expat opposition or plunge the country into the horrors of ethnic and sectarian civil war.

The opposition’s elite, enamored with film festival awards and red carpets, spun fantasies of Iran joining the “modernity” stream, taking its “rightful place,” while preparing Iranian civil society for this “great historical turn”—demonstrating their success by stoking hatred for Palestinians and Afghan migrants while idolizing Kim Kardashian. What delusion! If Germany and Japan, after 80 years, still haven’t earned equal membership in the “global family,” let alone entry into the Anglo-Saxon “Five Eyes” security club, how could Iran even dream of such a position?

They refused to see that accepting this would first require acknowledging Iran’s regional supremacy, shattering the Abraham Accords’ dreams, and fatally weakening an Israel already in decline amid the Gaza genocide. The West Asia, as the world’s energy heart, was too important to entrust to Iran. Moreover, accepting Iran as the region’s leading power would mean accepting a diminished role for the U.S.-led West and growing Russian and Chinese influence. Syria’s events and the transfer of power to Al-Qaeda had shown the path. Now, this path had to be followed to its end. Here, victory seemed a real possibility.

For the Western imperialist bloc, this meant a strategic victory in one of the key battlegrounds of the global struggle over world division and spheres of influence. With this victory, the West could significantly weaken its rivals while reinvigorating itself with the spoils, gaining strength for other fronts. A West that defeated Iran in direct confrontation would act with far greater confidence in Ukraine, Taiwan, and Africa.

For Israel, this victory was existential. As the imperialist bloc’s forward post in the West Asia, it could never redefine itself outside this framework. Its colonial-imperialist existence, rooted in Europe, now depended on this identity—especially after Al-Aqsa Storm and the subsequent genocide shattered its legitimacy, leaving it with a bleak future.

This war is the product of these two declining forces’ intersecting needs. It is an aggressive, imperialist war with vast dimensions and profound impacts—a decisive link in the historic-global struggle over humanity’s future. On one side stands the Western imperialist bloc and its rabid Zionist-fascist dog, which now holds the world’s fate in its hands. Its material, political, and ideological power is such that it can easily set the whole world ablaze. On the other side stands a regional bourgeoisie that, at best, will be one power among others like Turkey. Economically, Iran’s bourgeoisie has limited capacity to shape or dominate global—or even regional—markets. Politically and ideologically, it lacks any ability to form a distinct global front.

Thus, this war could never have been an aggressive or expansionist one for Iran. Its bourgeoisie’s greatest interest lay not in war but in expanding peaceful relations. War is a blow to its interests, not a lever for gain. Victory, of course, would massively strengthen its global position, but defeat would mean the destruction of Iran’s political geography. Those who accuse both sides of warmongering are throwing dust in people’s eyes to whitewash the imperialist-Zionist bloc’s aggression. They are Zionism’s cosmeticians.

The truth is that Iran’s bourgeoisie can only be blamed for this war insofar as its constant signals of weakness tempted the imperialist Trans-Atlantic bloc to attack. This bourgeoisie:

• Stripped millions of workers of the most basic capitalist-world rights (like stable employment contracts), leaving them defenseless against capital.
• Exploited millions of Afghan migrants as a shapeless mass, using them to depress the entire working class’s living standards—welcoming them when needed, scapegoating them when convenient.
• Fought all notions of social solidarity to entrench class rule, flooding society with vile anti-communist propaganda, blaming poverty on workers’ “incompetence” and wealth on parasites’ “merit.” It lashed protesting workers while rolling out red carpets for disgruntled capitalists, passing laws to suit their whims.
• Slashed wages yearly while easing the plunder of social wealth by nouveau riche elites buying up properties in Europe and North America.
• Made young working-class couples run between banks for meager marriage loans while handing oligarchs trillion-rial loans, entrenching financial corruption.
• In foreign policy, it groveled before the Trans-Atlantic aggressors, sabotaged ties with global powers like Peru and Russia, embraced the JCPOA, and parroted Davos’ environmental and educational policies, signaling readiness to obey every U.S.-led “rules-based global order” dictate.

This war is also the product of the ruling class’s catastrophic internal decay—a class long divided between radical adherents of joining the U.S. “global community” and more moderate, pragmatic balancers of East and West. A process whose disastrous results were already visible in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon before June 12, now spreading to Iran.

The stupid, greedy, and shortsighted Iranian bourgeoisie never grasped that by cheapening Gaza’s heroic resistance and auctioning off Hezbollah, it was fueling, not weakening, imperialist-Zionist aggression. Negotiating with Trump—who seized every chance to humiliate Iran (not just its regime but the whole society)—was the final invitation to attack. And not a word about Gaza.

The war’s outbreak laid bare the ruling class’s catastrophic evolution. Israel’s strongest weapon against Iran’s military was not its jets or cyber units but its vast spy network and fifth column inside Iran. In a society where betrayal lost its shame, replaced by “clever” fraud, serving the world’s most anti-human elements carried no stigma. Where interviews with fascist-Zionist opposition media were badges of honor, where “human rights activists” and “leftist labor activists” nightly reported to Iran International, Manoto, and VOA—of course, spying for global vileness would raise no eyebrows.

In a society where, despite vast social wealth and immense productive power, workers’ wages fell below war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq—where countless fathers shamefully couldn’t afford notebooks for their children—what else could be expected?

Comrade workers, communists,

This war has opened a new chapter in Iran’s and the region’s class struggle. For the main belligerents, Iran and Israel, this is a war for survival. It will not end with a ceasefire, peace treaty, or UN resolution. It ends only when one side leaves the stage. For the West Asia and the world, this war redraws the lines of the future bourgeois world order, setting the stage for the next round of global conflicts. Its outcome will reshape the positions of global poles for years—if not generations—to come.

First, for Iran’s working class and the region, the imperialist-Zionist bloc’s victory would be catastrophic. Our foremost task is to prevent this nightmare. This means opposing all efforts to whitewash Zionist fascism, equate Iran and Israel, or pacify society with false peace flags.

Second, the Islamic Republic, by ignoring its duty to defend human dignity—especially its shameful passivity during Gaza’s genocide—has shown that despite its military strength and strategic depth, it has failed in its basic societal duty: protecting lives. It has become a nest of parasitic, anti-social elements who’ll wave false peace flags to aid Zionist fascism, paving the way for a humiliating pact with U.S. imperialism—a move that will unleash an era of suffering, unrest, and bloodshed, shaking all social structures. Workers must cleanse society of these parasites, who today infest the state and tomorrow could corrupt a workers’ government.

Third, it’s wrong to think this war stems only from inter-class contradictions in rival blocs. It also arises from deep social and class fissures. Without mass poverty, deep social-class-cultural divides, this war might not have happened. A state acting in solidarity with its working majority, not against it, would face a different kind of foreign enemy. Just as fifth-column saboteurs abetted Zionist-fascist aggression, so too did falling wages, worker precarity, and the remoteness of basic needs like marriage, family, and shelter. Postponing the fight against these ills until “after the war” is a grave error. Workers must fight now, just as capitalists haven’t paused their anti-worker policies (as the new ultra-free-market economy minister shows).

Fourth, class struggle doesn’t pause in war—it intensifies. Depending on the war’s nature, it can constrain or accelerate struggle. The Iran-Iraq War constrained it; WWI and Russia’s revolution accelerated it. Today, Iran has more grounds for acceleration than constraint. Bourgeois ideological alternatives are bankrupt. The degenerate current that hijacked class protests for imperialist “human rights” and “democracy” now stands exposed beside hated Zionism, its ability to mislead movements at its lowest. Now is the time to sever its hand from the workers’ and toilers’ movements.

Fifth, Iran’s ruling class has no vision. It has lost initiative. Its groveling before Western financiers only brought Israeli bombs, with no credible plan to resist imperialist order. Its official representative, the Raisi government, didn’t start this war and has no plan to end it. As the war unfolds, the bourgeoisie will seek war profits, just as workers must strengthen their organizational networks. Like all major events, this war will mark a historical juncture where our preparedness, organizational strength, and class power will determine victory or defeat. Let us march into this era, raising the flag of struggle for the future world.

Down with Zionist fascism!
Long live Palestine!
Long live a socialist Middle East!Organisation for Communist Preparation – Iran
29 Khordad 1404 (Iranian calendar)
19 June 2025