EDITORIAL
No to the U.S. War in the Middle East!

Mar 30, 2026

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is now entering its second month. And there’s no let-up. The Pentagon is seeking 200 billion dollars in extra funding for the war. And, according to the Wall Street Journal, it is sending 17,000 more troops onto Iran’s doorstep, augmenting the 50,000 U.S. troops already in countries surrounding Iran.

The U.S. military has already unleashed air strikes and bombing missions against 10,000 different targets across Iran. The Israeli military, the U.S. government’s attack dog in the Middle East, dropped more than 15,000 bombs across Iran. The U.S. superpower is attacking the Iranian regime as part of its campaign against regimes that were slightly independent, including Venezuela and Cuba, in the build-up to the next great global war everyone can see is coming.

It is the Iranian population that has paid the price for this U.S. war, with thousands of dead, tens of thousands of wounded and millions of refugees forced to flee their homes. The Iranian population is also a victim of its own rulers. While the Iranian regime built up its military in anticipation of the war, it didn’t bother to put in any air raid sirens or air raid shelters to provide a minimal protection for the population. It also continued its harsh repression, recently executing four young men for demonstrating against the regime.

The Lebanese population has also paid a huge price during the latest Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with casualties as horrific—or even worse—than what the Iranians are suffering.

The Israeli population is also being forced to pay for this war, and not just by the Iranian rockets and bombs that explode in their neighborhoods. The Israeli working population has also been brutalized and exhausted by its own government that has Israeli workers fighting on every front against the Palestinians and the Lebanese in wars without end, wars that have gone on for close to a century!

This war comes out of the very workings of capitalism. Under capitalism, the working class the world over has created and produced vast amounts of wealth that could feed everyone and do away with all poverty. But because everything is controlled by a tiny minority, the billionaires, the capitalist owners, for their own profit, all you get is more inequality, more wealth on the one hand and more poverty on the other.

At the same time, the U.S. superpower imposes its control over peoples and resources through war, bribery and destruction. The rulers of this country may justify the wars in the Middle East by claiming that they go back thousands of years. That is a lie. No, these wars come out of how the U.S. and, to a much lesser extent, the smaller imperial powers impose their domination over the Middle East, while sucking the resources out and super exploiting the working class and poor.

The war against Iran immediately spread throughout the Middle East. The enormous shipments of oil and gas that power the world came to a screeching halt. And that is not all. The enormous shipments of fertilizer for agriculture and vital chemicals for manufacturing, as well as big shipments of pharmaceuticals, also stopped.

This has already hit the poorest peoples in Asia and Africa the hardest, with huge food and fuel price increases and the beginnings of fuel and food shortages.

It has also begun to hit working people here in the U.S., as well as the richer countries of Europe and Asia. We are faced with new bouts of inflation, as price increases mount on top of price increases. And, as the war and economic disruptions continue, the possibility of new financial crashes and new recessions and depressions multiply, fueling new cataclysms and new wars.

The capitalist class has even been able to profit from the catastrophes that their wars create. Just look at how the big oil and chemical companies, as well as military contractors, are increasing their profits out of the misery caused by the war. Look at how the U.S. government suddenly can find a spare 200 billion dollars to fuel their barbaric war, but it doesn’t have a cent to pay federal workers, or to fund vital health, nutrition and education programs that working peoples’ tax money pays for.

The working population in this country has no interest in supporting or fighting these wars. But none of this is going to change through an election. Replacing the Republicans by the Democrats, or the Democrats by the Republicans is used by the capitalists to create enormous illusions that working people have a say, that if we don’t like things, we can vote to change them. But for how many decades have workers been doing the same thing over and over again? And look at the horrible results!

In order to change things, working people have to get at the root cause of the problem—the control over the world by the capitalist class for its own profit. The enemy for workers in this country is not the people of Iran or the Middle East. It is the capitalist class in this country.