Support opposition in Israel and in Iran!

The Worker-Communist Party of Iran — Hekmatist (Official Line), an Iranian socialist group, has said: “Freedom-seeking people in Iran are engaged in a daily struggle for a revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic, and to end poverty, oppression, and tyranny to secure a humane life. Israel’s attack on Iran and the start of war is a major blow to this freedom-seeking movement in its path of struggle against the Islamic Republic. Beyond the devastating consequences of this war for the people of Iran and the region, irrespective of the scale of the damage it inflicts on the Islamic Republic, in addition to enforcement of fear and danger of further misery to the people in Iran, strengthens the Islamic Republic’s hand in suppressing the freedom-seeking protests.”

In Israel, the impacts of Iranian airstrikes highlight the deep inequalities within Israeli society. A missile that struck a residential building in Tamra, in northern Israel, killed four Arab-Palestinian women, Manar Khatib, her daughters Shada and Hala, and her sister-in-law Manal. Disparities in public funding and social provision mean that Arab and Bedouin communities have no public bomb shelters. New-build housing stock includes “safe rooms”, but these are often ineffective, and only 40% of Tamra residents live in homes which contain them. Following the deaths of the Khatib family, the mayor of Tamra called on the Israeli government to invest in a programme of shelter building in Arab communities.

Alon-Lee Green, the co-director of the binational (Palestinian-Jewish) left-wing social movement Standing Together said: “The story of the killing of the Khatib family from Tamra is a story of racism. Yes, the missile that hit their house was Iranian, but the reason there isn’t even a single shelter in Tamra, a city of 35,000 residents, is plain Israeli racism; long-standing institutionalised racism that discriminates against every Arab citizen. Two million citizens, and no shelters. And the government? Racing towards a war of annihilation [in Gaza].” Several Israeli Jewish civilians have also been killed.

Some currents on the left see Iran’s bellicosity towards Israel as somehow an extension of the struggle against Israel’s colonial subjugation of the Palestinians. But it is nothing of the sort. The Iranian state is a brutally authoritarian theocracy, whose leaders talk of “wiping Israel off the map”. It is hardly unreasonable for Israelis to be concerned about the prospects of a regime ideologically committed to their destruction developing a nuclear bomb.

Left groups, even those that support a one-state solution for Israel-Palestine, generally still say they favour “equal rights” for Israelis and Palestinians. That is certainly not what the rulers of Iran envisage when they talk of destroying Israel. The conquest of Israel by Iran, in alliance with the paramilitary forces it arms such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, is a reactionary fantasy, but were Iran to gain the capacity and will to realise it, the result would not be a “free Palestine”, but an oppressive totalitarianism built on blood and ashes.

This Israeli war on Iran will, as well as taking a toll in Iranian civilian life, bring a threat to Israeli civilians from immediate Iranian retaliation, and in the medium term it may well cause the Iranian regime to accelerate its nuclear programme rather than abandon it.

Standing Together

A Standing Together statement said: “War is always bad news — and we know that this war, led by extremist leaders who have only their political survival in mind, cannot make us safer. Yes, we are afraid of the threat of a nuclear bomb, but we are more afraid of our corrupt leadership pushing us toward endless war and turning us all into ‘collateral damage.’

“Netanyahu, along with [far-right ministers] Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, are not just abandoning the hostages and distracting from their war of annihilation in Gaza, they are now dragging us into war with Iran. Netanyahu has proven time and again that he does not care to protect us, Jews and Palestinians. He only cares about himself. For him, we are just collateral damage in his mission to continue a forever war to keep his government in power and advance its messianic agenda.”

Projections approved by the Israeli cabinet factor in up to 4,000 Israeli deaths from Iranian attacks. This is the level of “collateral damage” to Israeli (let alone Iranian) civilians Netanyahu is prepared to absorb in order to pursue his agenda.

Socialists in Britain must organise public protests against the war that emphasise solidarity with working-class and democratic forces on both sides. A recent statement from the Teachers’ Union of Iran said: “What the rulers of Israel and domestic extremists inflict upon the people is a crime [...] No country builds peace with a clenched fist [and] no nation learns security from displacement. We believe that our voice as teachers must be the voice of peace. And this peace does not mean compromise with oppression, but rather standing alongside human beings, especially innocent children. We declare with a clear voice that we oppose any warmongering from any side.”

These are the perspectives that should inform our responses. Some protests in Britain against the war, called under the slogan “hands off Iran”, imply a different approach. The force whose “hands” socialists should be most concerned to get “off Iran” is the clerical-fascist regime.

We know from its wars in Gaza and Lebanon how the Israeli military conducts its campaigns, with increasingly indiscriminate tactics that flatten entire areas to eliminate a single “target”. Those are sufficient grounds to oppose the war; the left does not need to pretend Israel is about to colonise Iran, thereby casting the Iranian ruling class in the role of anti-colonial freedom fighters. Even those Israeli leaders who talk of “regime change” do not envisage Iran being conquered by Israel and ruled by a client government or Israeli occupiers.

Meanwhile, as global attention shifts to Iran, what Standing Together rightly calls Israel’s “war of annihilation” continues in Gaza. 68 people were killed between 15-16 June, with at least 182 wounded. Humanitarian and health crises remain acute, and several people have been killed when Israeli troops opened fire near aid distribution centres, as crowds of desperate people rushed to receive food and other supplies.

Standing Together said: “Gaza has once again been completely cut off from the world, as Israel bombed the last remaining internet infrastructure and collapsed the phone network. Gaza is being annihilated quietly. Isolated without internet, without phone calls, without anyone to witness what is happening. And in that silence, bombs keep falling, aid is blocked, families are erased without a trace, journalists can’t report and medics can’t coordinate. This horror must stop.”

On Tuesday 10 June, Israeli forces conducted new raids in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank. Standing Together commented: “Since this morning, the Israeli army has stormed the ancient city of Nablus, breaking into homes and shops, assaulting civilians, and shooting people in the streets. They shot and killed a man with his hands up in the old market, then fired on paramedics who tried to reach him, injuring one and blocking Red Crescent teams from providing care. In the same raid, two brothers, Nedal and Khalid Mahdi Ameera, were killed. The number of wounded is still unknown.

“None of us will be safe while Nablus remains under military occupation and while Palestinians live without freedom of movement. Real safety will only come when both peoples are equal in this land and live in peace.”

Organising whatever support and solidarity we can for forces such as Standing Together, and working-class, democratic, and feminist forces in Iran, is the best contribution we can make to building a “third camp” in the region, against the warmongering of the imperialist rulers of both Israel and Iran.