EDITORIAL
To Stop Capitalism’s Drive to War...

Jun 29, 2025

On Sunday, June 22, Trump announced that a joint U.S.-Israeli bombing operation had been a “spectacular success.” Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “obliterated.”

No, they weren’t “obliterated;” Trump’s own foreign intelligence service gave the lie to Trump’s latest “spectacular” bit of “fake news.”

But even if they had been “obliterated,” so what? The issue is not whether Iran might someday be able to develop two or even three nuclear weapons—not when Israel already has more than enough nuclear weapons to wipe out every city in the Middle East, not when the U.S. has enough to wipe out the whole world.

The U.S. and Israel come to the table with filthy hands. The U.S. is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons, killing over two hundred thousand people, in only two days, with only two bombs. For over a year and a half, Israel has been using “conventional” weapons to wipe out Gaza’s population centers.

The joint U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign on Iran was not aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear program, it was aimed at crippling Iran’s attempt to maintain some shred of independence.

Iran is the second biggest country in the Middle East, in terms of physical size and the size of its population. It has massive oil reserves and a modern industrial superstructure and workforce. Its position on the world’s map makes it a key bridge between Europe and Asia.

The U.S. has targeted Iran ever since 1979, when a popular revolution threw out the Shah of Iran, one of capitalism’s “watch dogs.” The Shah’s regime had combined with Israel for four decades, reinforcing the hold of multinational oil companies on the region. With the Shah gone, with other countries attempting to stake out some kind of independent path, the U.S. increasingly rested on Israel, flooding it with weapons and money.

With their joint bombing campaign on Iran, Trump and Netanyahu acted like pyromaniacs, throwing lit matches into a hayfield to see how far it would burn. Well, the Middle East will burn. It is already aflame—the result of Israel’s never-ending war on the Palestinians, its wars on Lebanon, its attacks on Yemen. As for the U.S., what country hasn’t it touched? Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen have all been devastated by U.S. bombing, invasions and sanctions. The world is awash with migrants driven from their homes by U.S. bombs.

When Trump ran for office, he toyed with people’s desire to live in a world of peace, promising the U.S. would have no more “forever wars” like the one in Afghanistan. In fact, U.S. actions are turning the whole Middle East into a war that not only will go on “forever"—it will spread out far past the Middle East.

Trump pretends that the U.S. bombing campaign is concluded and that Israel, which started the latest round of bombing, has agreed to a cease fire with Iran.

But even if those things were true, that only means a brief pause in the steady drumbeat to war that is enveloping the Middle East and the whole world—including this country. Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” contains more money for the military than did any budget, other than those at the time of the 2009 financial crash.

As the saying goes, “actions speak louder than words.” And Trump’s actions—like those of every U.S. president before him—speak of war.

In this world where capitalism inevitably produces war, the only hope for peace is for the working class to wage its own war. The workers may first of all wage a defensive war, letting them protect themselves from the ravages militarism produces in their standard of living. But the working class can turn that into an offensive war to get rid of capitalism, replacing capitalism’s greedy class with a collective society that workers themselves can build. It will be an international war, bringing together the working people of the world into one fraternal whole.