Red Ant offers steadfast solidarity to Iran as it comes under relentless attack from Western imperialism, operating through its conduit: the Zionist entity. Within the imperial core, this reality is usually invisible; it only becomes visible when the permanent siege of asymmetrical and hybrid warfare (sanctions, psyops, economic strangulation) boils over into overt kinetic violence, as we saw in the joint Trump–Netanyahu regime attacks last year, or as we are witnessing now via attempted “regime-change” operations. We stress this to make one thing clear: anti-imperialist states are under constant siege. This war does not pause when Iran drops out of our newsfeeds. It never stops.

The U.S. has openly admitted to the presence of Mossad agents on the ground, a fact enthusiastically reported by the Times of Israel, with Mike Pompeo stating, “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…”.¹ There are also genuine economic grievances that have given rise to peaceful protests. These issues have been analysed in depth here. Of course, we must not forget to place these grievances within the context of the ongoing economic violence directed at Iran. The sanctions against Iran, like those imposed by imperialist powers throughout the Global South, are acts of war that have literally killed millions of people around the world, crippled the daily lives of ordinary people.² A historical-materialist analysis recognises the well-established pattern of imperial powers cynically exploiting internal political contradictions in Iran, as they have throughout the Global South, in the service of their own bourgeoisie and local compradors.

Sanctions are meant to produce political collapse. They are sequentially blended with aggression and violence when needed. The economy is softened first; the society is fractured next; and the final blow is delivered in the name of “rescue.” The motives for intervention and regime change have nothing to do with the interests of the masses and everything to do with the interests of the genocidal empire and its colonial project in Palestine, who seek to install its puppets in weakened and destabilised states of the Global South. 

Trump has reiterated multiple times that the empire will wage a war should Iran fight back to restore order!³ This scenario is familiar. Iran’s military independence, one of its main achievements since the 1979 revolution, has to be wiped out and its army decapitated in the process of overthrowing the state. This will allow a civil war to be unleashed, which in turn would enable the partition of Iran or the manufacturing of the emerging state to be one that is fully subjugated to the will of the empire to maintain its territory; the very same scenario that was practised in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Although triggered by legitimate economic dissatisfaction of people, very soon the protests turned into another wave of hybrid war, the timing of which cannot be separated from the broader escalation of imperialist aggression against the rise of a multi-polar world order. Just since the start of 2026, we have seen the US and its various proxies kidnap and attack the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores,⁴ attempt to overthrow the government of Burkina Faso,⁵ attempt to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin,⁶ as well as seize Russian-flagged⁷ and Chinese-linked oil tankers.⁸ All of these aggressions are part of a coordinated escalation of war by the imperialist bloc, and crucially, the Australian ruling class is an enthusiastic member of said bloc.

The Australian Government is not a bystander in the hybrid war on Iran. It has placed extensive sanctions on Iran and enthusiastically gives cover to imperialist attacks on Iran through its demonisation of the Iranian Government. This has included its recent expulsion of the Iranian Ambassador, an action that has not occurred since World War 2 in response to unsubstantiated claims of Iranian involvement in property attacks against Jewish targets in Australia. 

The Red Anti-Imperialist Collective’s statement is guided by our principles of self-determination and sovereignty. We believe that it is our task and responsibility as communists within the imperial core to stand unequivocally with Iran and other states in their struggle against imperialist aggression.

1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/former-trump-official-fetes-iranian-protesters-and-every-mossad-agent-walking-beside-them/
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2. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext ↩︎
3. https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-again-threatens-iran-with-hell-if-it-kills-protesters-amid-violent-crackdown/ ↩︎
4. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/8/abduction-of-venezuelas-maduro-illegal-despite-us-charges-experts-say ↩︎
5. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2026/01/09/assassination-plot-against-president-ibrahim-traore-foiled-in-burkina-faso/ ↩︎
6. https://www.trtworld.com/article/7cee025c474b
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7. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/08/us/russia-oil-tanker-seizure-what-we-know-intl-hnk ↩︎
8. https://www.nytimes.com/article/trump-oil-tankers-venezuela.html ↩︎