By Reza Aref
Hello dear comrades,
From the moment the fascist Israeli military attacked Iran, the offensive was accompanied by a flood of disinformation and confusion, especially ideologically, spread across their social media networks.
On the right-wing side, questions have emerged concerning the future political structure of Iran. The fierce debate is particularly heated between U.S.-backed factions such as the Pahlavi (former Shah’s son) camp and the Mojahedin.
Meanwhile, the left is no less divided. Discussions range from the role communists should play in this war to whether the left should support the Islamic regime in its defensive efforts—or seize this moment as a unique opportunity to help overthrow it.
Here, we try to open up some basic views from the Marxist-Leninist standpoint.
1. Unlike the Israel war against Palestine, this conflict cannot be viewed as a
one-sided war
The current war represents the continuation of decades-long political strategies pursued by both fascist regimes—Iran and Israel. The destructive and fascist nature of Netanyahu’s regime is well known and widely criticized. However, it should also be recognized that from the very beginning of its establishment, the Islamic Regime in Iran has made the elimination of Israel and open anti-Semitism central pillars of its foreign policy.
Furthermore, the Islamic Regime’s use of proxy forces across the Middle East—particularly Hamas—has not been about defending the oppressed Palestinian people, but rather about advancing its own imperialistic power politics in the region. The October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and the devastating consequences on Gaza civilians could most clearly show the leading line behind this Islamist terrorist organization.
Therefore, this war is not a case of a fascist regime attacking another regime in a defensive or democratic position. It is a clash between two fascist new imperialist powers, both pursuing their own agendas at the expense of civilians.
2. This is a war also against the masses
In every capitalist war, it is the masses who are forced to pay the price. The first to suffer are the undefended civilians on both sides under bombs and missiles. It is an outright lie to claim, “we are targeting military facilities” by the Israeli fascist military. According to the recent estimates, 4,432 people have been wounded or killed — 974 of whom were killed —and during the same period, 705 individuals were arrested on political charges, all within Iran, as a result of direct Israeli airstrikes. In addition, many factories and petrochemical plants—where workers were present— and recently the Evin prison, where the political prisoners are being kept, have been targeted, again by Israel airstrikes. A hospital in Iran was also razed. These are clearly not military facilities, and the direct victims of these attacks are the Iranian masses.
The same scenario is unfolding for the Israeli masses under Iranian missile attacks, though to a lesser extent. Any argumentation saying this is a sort of patriotic war or comparing this war to the invasion of Hitlerite fascism to other countries, is radically wrong. Let’s not forget that up to the October 7, Iran had its own military organization and units at the Israeli borders. Iran is also supported by superpowers such as imperialist Russia and social-imperialist China.
3. The Fist of Shit Called International Law
I am sure you know every aspect of this issue better than I do. I just want to highlight the course of events to once again emphasize the imperialist rogue actions—even against the long-standing rules of their own game.
Both Iran and the USA were in the middle of negotiations when the Israeli state decided to attack. Negotiations were cut off. After some days, Donald Trump stepped in, and new rounds of negotiations were planned with the Europeans. Trump mentioned at most two week window for these new talks. Again, while the Iranian foreign minister was in the middle of negotiations, Trump declared airstrikes on the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites—despite the fact that these sites were always under the strict supervision of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and posed absolutely no threat to the USA.
These facts demonstrate—not only the repeated conversion of international law into a “fist of shit”—but also the strong independent role of the imperialist state of Israel in pushing the USA into a new war in the Middle East. We all know the USA had not planned for a new war there, and since Trump’s inauguration, it had focused efforts on ending small-scale wars in the region in order to redirect time and energy toward confronting its biggest rival: China. According to the UN Charter Iran has the full right to respond. However, Trump even clearly said that if Iran tried to retaliate, it would be suicidal for the Islamic Regime.
The concept here is not to defend the Islamic Regime, but:
First: Those who rely on (bourgeois) international law to resolve deep social and
national/international contradictions must draw the necessary lessons from this situation.
Second: What has happened to the Islamic Regime will not be limited to this regime alone.
Even a democratic revolutionary state would face the same fate under similar
circumstances. That is why the need to propagate international revolutions remains urgent and essential as a strategic aim.
4. Irreversible damages to the masses’ revolutionary and democratic achievements
Anyone with even a basic understanding of the Iranian popular movement against the Islamic regime is aware that it has developed under immense pressure over the past decades. In the regime’s first decade in power, thousands of revolutionaries and communists were executed. In the following decades, with the ideological and political assistance of anti-communist reformists, the regime systematically eradicated the remnants of scientific socialism among the masses. The consequences have been so profound that the remaining leftists, including ourselves, often speak of a generational gap — meaning that the new generations in Iran are largely unfamiliar with their own history and remain unaware of key historical developments.
However, according to the dialectical law, the masses and new generations gradually gained experience and began to analyze their own conditions and impressions. Since the 2009 Green Movement in Iran — the peak of the reformist movement, backed by Western imperialists yet marked by the strong presence of democratic demands raised by political and workers’ organizations — the masses have accumulated lived experiences, revealing that behind the prestigious literature of their ‘elected’ state lies a merciless force. Although the Green Movement was ultimately defeated by the Islamic regime, it served as a turning
point.
Just eight years later, in 2017, the first explicitly anti-regime movement emerged. Though limited in scale, it raised correct slogans and, more importantly, was independently rooted in economic grievances. It too was violently suppressed.
Two years later, in 2019, another wave of protests broke out, combining both democratic and economic demands. It was larger in scale than the 2017 movement, but faced brutal repression. Dozens of leaders were executed, and thousands were sentenced to long-term imprisonment.
Three years after that, the brilliant democratic revolutionary movement, “Woman, Life, Freedom”, rose from the ashes of its predecessors. It was a nationwide uprising and, significantly, free of illusions in reformists or Western-imposed figures such as the Pahlavi.
The defeat of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, and the executions of many of its key participants, taught the masses a profound lesson: the Islamic regime is a highly organized power — and we are not. To overthrow it, we must not rely merely on unplanned, disorganized street protests, but rather on our own initiatives, secret committees, and ultimately the discovery of new methods of organization.
This is precisely why, since then, new methods of grassroots organization under fascistic repression have been pursued among the masses — especially workers, students, and women. One key manifestation of these new efforts has been the emergence of neighborhood committees and workers’ secret committees.
One can clearly trace the timeline of political development and awareness among the Iranian masses. The Iranian people in particular — and Middle Eastern peoples in general — can only establish genuine democracies through their own struggles against their own despotic regimes. Only through this path can the people come to truly understand their enemies and their tactics and tricks, as well as discover their own potential power and capacity for organization. Only then will they be able to preserve and defend the revolutionary democracies they have created. This process—more precisely, this chain of dialectical development—is exceedingly fragile, as it unfolds under the unimaginable fascist pressure of internal reactionary governments and remains highly vulnerable to disruption by external sabotage, particularly through imperialist interventions.
Recent invasions by fascist Israel have, in fact, played into the hands of the Islamic regime by diverting the masses’ attention from domestic dissent. In the absence of a strong revolutionary party, political confusion has resurfaced, undermining previously firm and coherent ideas about the path of struggle. Today, discussions of new methods, fresh analyses, and strong strategies — even if preliminary, but rooted in elements of scientific socialism — have largely vanished. Instead, we are witnessing deep divisions — particularly among the left — over whether to support the regime in its so-called “defensive war” against Israel (a form of right opportunism), or to see the war as a unique opportunity to overthrow the regime (a form of left opportunism). It goes without saying that from now on, even the mildest protest — let alone independent workers’ strikes — in Iran will be labeled as Israeli sabotage and met with the harshest repression.
This confusion is, without question, a direct consequence — a souvenir — of U.S. and Israeli military interventions.
Once again, it will take years to reorient attention and energy back toward the revolutionary path that was being pursued before the outbreak of war.
5. Imperialism Does Not Bring Freedom — “Serve the Masses!” Must Be Our
Guiding Principle
From time to time, a few ultra-leftists — though very few — call on the people and workers to “turn the imperialist war into a civil war!” echoing Lenin’s famous slogan. We specifically chose this question for debate because it represents the most elevated “revolutionary” call— cloaked in leftist rhetoric. They view the current imperialist confrontation between Iran and Israel as an opportunity to overthrow the Islamic regime. While it is absolutely correct to characterize this war as an imperialist one, the slogan “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” becomes opportunistic when applied mechanically, without a concrete analysis of the actual conditions.
There are several critical points that must be clarified:
Israel and the US military currently dominate Iranian airspace. The only missing component in their offensive is a ground force capable of removing their long-standing regional adversary. It is well known, however, that they have no intention of launching a ground invasion, due to both their strategic vulnerabilities in the Middle East and their shifting focus toward global rivalry with China.
Under such circumstances, any attempt to overthrow the Islamic regime would, in practice, serve the geopolitical interests of Western imperialists.
Aside from their adventurist illusions about the current strength of the Iranian working class and communist forces, these ultra-leftists overlook a critical fact: Israeli intelligence has already deeply infiltrated the Islamic regime — like cancer cells — into nearly every institution of the state. Believing that the downfall of the regime would automatically usher in a worker-led or communist alternative is a dangerous illusion. This is especially misguided, given that Iran is currently encircled by anti-communist states, all eager to serve their patrons in Washington. Speaking of this encirclement, it is worth once again emphasizing the urgent need for international democratic revolutions across the Middle East—as a united
front against all imperialist blocks operating from outside the region. Despite the ultimate fate of the “Arab Spring,” the experience itself revealed just how ripe the conditions are for international revolutionary movements throughout the Middle East.
While the slogan “Turn the imperialist war into a civil war” is an absolutely true general teaching by Lenin for every imperialist war, it still needs to be concretized by the dialectical revolutionary mode of thinking, but not be implemented arbitrarily by metaphysical regime-change mode of thinking.
No one denies that imperialist wars—despite their devastating consequences—can, in general terms, create conditions that weaken the internal enemies of the working class and the masses. However, applying the classical teachings of Marxism-Leninism in a metaphysical, rather than dialectical-revolutionary, way does nothing to advance the struggle. In such a misguided approach, one can only wait for the next wave of neo-fascists—handpicked and delivered by imperialist powers to the masses—just as Khomeini was in his time.
As we have stated: any genuine overthrow by the masses must occur through a dialectical revolutionary process. This means, first and foremost, that fascist powers must be overthrown by the organized force of the workers and masses themselves, not by relying on the military might of rival imperialist powers. No imperialist force will ever hand power to the working class or invite them to establish a revolutionary state after the fall of a regime.
Second, the fascist Islamic regime must be negated dialectically from within, not
mechanically removed from without. Only the conscious, organized power of workers and the masses—those who have successfully defeated the regime through their own struggle— can replace the old order with a truly revolutionary and sustainable new one. One must bear in mind that during the ‘Arab Spring’—despite its significant implications—reactionary regimes were not negated dialectically, but rather mechanically. As a result, new lines of reactionaries, backed by imperialist forces, merely replaced the old ones.
Therefore, those who hysterically call on the people to take to the streets to overthrow the Iranian regime are not only betraying the masses—they are aligning themselves with Israeli imperialism.
The devastating consequences of this war extend far beyond the destruction of fixed capital, buildings, and homes. In addition to the nearly 1,000 people killed, over 750 individuals have reportedly been arrested—and many executed—by the regime under the pretext of being “Israeli spies.” Among them are some well-known revolutionary and democratic activists. Once again, the Israeli attacks have given the Islamic regime renewed justification to escalate its fascist repression.
However, the story does not end here. This war—with all its destructive consequences—has also opened new windows and revealed fresh capacities for the Iranian revolutionaries. Even under the draconian fascist conditions imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian revolutionaries can advance with renewed momentum. One vital task is to strengthen neighborhood committees and build ever more secret working-class circles under the guiding slogan: “Serve the masses!”
For security reasons, relevant specific tactics cannot be detailed in a public text. Yet, what lies ahead is a vast arena of mass debate, the absorption of recent experiences, and the critical analysis of revisionist and opportunist tendencies—from the ultra-right to the ultra left—that have surfaced during the war. From this, new revolutionary strategies and tactics must emerge.
Since the dawn of scientific socialism with Marx and Engels, one historical lesson remains firm in our hands: without the presence of the masses, led by the organized power of the working class, no genuine revolution can ever bloom!
Reza Aref
July 2025
Originally published as A letter to the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD)