statement of the utopian tendency
Defeat United States/Israeli Aggression Against Iran!
We are completely and unequivocally against the joint U.S./Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran. This, although the Iranian government is a brutal, quasi-fascist regime that despises, oppresses, and represses its own people, up to and including slaughtering 30,000 people who dared to revolt against it this past January. The U.S./Israeli assault is an act of vile aggression and an egregious violation of the most basic of democratic rights, particularly the right to national self-determination, of the Iranian people and even of common decency.
Although U.S. president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu claim that their attack is meant, among other things, to liberate the Iranians (both the Persian majority and ethnic minorities, such as the Azeris, Kurds, and Baluchis) from their tyrannical government, this is nonsense. These would-be fascists have no interest in liberating the Iranian people but instead are concerned only in the establishment of a pliant Iranian regime, one that will meekly follow the dictates of the United States and its colleague/client Israel and defend their political and economic interests. This is demonstrated by Donald Trump’s recent intervention in Venezuela, where he kidnapped and arrested Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro but cynically left the Chavist dictatorship intact, bypassing the long-standing democratic opposition, which has loyally (but foolishly) followed U.S. leadership and obeyed its orders only to be cast aside in Trump’s maneuver to establish a direct US protectorate over the country. It was also revealed in Trump’s failure to come to the aid of the Iranians in revolt against their government in January. At the time, Trump implied that he might provide militarily support to the rebels but left them in the lurch at the crucial moment, allowing them to be gunned down in the streets.
Like all dictators, would-be dictators, and imperialist powers (think Stalin, with the Red Army outside of Warsaw in 1944, refusing to aid the valiant uprising in that German-occupied city, thus allowing Hitler to crush it; think the United States in 1956, failing to help the Hungarians who rose up against the Communists after being urged to do so for years by Radio Free Europe and other voices of the CIA). Donald Trump and Benyamin Netanyahu are terrified of all independent activity, let alone mass uprisings, of ordinary people. Trump and Netanyahu are definitely not interested in the liberation, or even the elementary rights, of the Iranian peoples.
Donald Trump’s overriding goal is to go down in history as the man who single-handedly stopped the decades-long decline of American imperialism and restored “America” to its former greatness. This explains the apparent contradiction between the two parts of his agenda: (1) the isolationist/”America First” stance of his economic and immigration policies; and (2) the aggressive/revanchist thrust of his recent foreign-policy moves, e.g., the intervention in Venezuela, the joint US/Israeli war against Iran, and the likely upcoming attack on Cuba.
For his part, Benyamin Netanyahu’s purpose in waging war on Iran is a part of his long-term strategy of establishing Israeli control, either direct or indirect, over the entire region between the Nile and the Euphrates Rivers, in effect, to fill in the space left by the ebbing hegemony of the United States. The Iranian regime constitutes the Israelis’ main competitor for control over the area.
Some observers today are looking for another mass revolt against the Islamic regime. However, any repetition of the rebellion of this past January any time soon is extremely unlikely. Mass uprisings cannot be turned on and off like water out of a tap. Their defeats incur terrible costs: thousands killed, many more thousands wounded, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, thrown out of work, evicted from their homes. Additionally, there is the loss of morale, especially after the betrayal by Donald Trump. It will likely take months for these wounds to heal before another revolt will be ventured. In the meantime, the repression on the part of the regime will be greatly intensified.
In these circumstances, the strategic goal of revolutionaries and even of democratically-minded individuals ought to be the decisive defeat of the joint military aggression of the United States and Israel against Iran. Since this seems unlikely, second-best would be the mere survival of the Iranian regime, at least past the point where Trump and Netanyahu can make a convincing claim of victory. If Trump and Netanyahu are allowed to present their action as having been successful, they will only be encouraged to repeat their aggression elsewhere and everywhere, producing an epoch of global chaos. While we hope to see a mass uprising against the Islamic regime in the future, that time is likely not now.
March 2026
