The US Empire has launched severe military attacks against Iran. For decades it has suppressed its development with war, sanctions, military encirclement, and repeated armed incursions and airstrikes. Now, as the empire attempts to adjust its global footing to retain its dominant position, it seeks to force the Iranian people to its will—as it has attempted to do for the rest of the region against steadfast resistance.
The Israeli settler state, the primary outpost of the American settler state in the region, joins the US military in the unprovoked attacks on Iran's sovereignty. Canada, another settler state, has expressed full support for these attacks which have already left many civilians dead including young children from a girls' elementary school hit during the missile strikes. The number of deaths reported by emergency response teams on the ground at the time of this writing sits at over 80.
Despite the imperialist propaganda’s hypocritical rhetoric about “democracy” and support for women’s liberation, the imperialist powers do not care at all about freedom and equality for the people of Iran. Can anyone seriously believe that the openly homophobic, transphobic, racist, and misogynistic ruling class of the imperialist world is concerned about the rights and freedoms of women and 2SLGBTQIA Iranians? The targeting systems of American bombs do not make distinctions between the identities and political ideologies of those directly in their path to destruction.
Three settler states united in purpose: the destruction of Iranian sovereignty, the absorption of Iran into the colonial empire, and the subjugation of its people to American interests. Iranian sovereignty has been a key facilitator to the steadfast Palestinian resistance. The “terrorists” Western states refer to Iran supporting are Palestinian, they are Yemeni, they are Lebanese, they are Iraqi, they are Syrian, they are Kurdish, they are the righteous resistors for the entirety of the Levant region fighting for self-determination.
This war is focused on Iran, but represents a wider attack on all peoples of the Global South. It is the responsibility of all those who live in the imperial core to steadfastly oppose imperialism. This means unions refusing to participate in any work (any service, any manufacturing, any academic writing, any work) that supports the war effort. The oppressors, who just weeks ago proudly and loudly stood side-by-side against the threatened American annexation of the European colony of Greenland—the very same oppressors and exploiters of the colonised nations and working classes under the settler-colonial Canadian state—do not care what reasons you may have for supporting attacks on Iran. They only care that you lend your support to their goals.
There is no "both-sidesing” this. There is the side of imperialism which seeks to subjugate the world in the pursuit of profit, and there is the side of anti-imperialism which demands imperialism be destroyed so the world's peoples can independently determine for themselves their own sovereign paths.
Weapons in the hands of imperialists are never tools of liberation. We who live in the imperial core must work against imperialism and colonialism from inside the belly of the beast.