NEW YORK—It’s unanimous. Communists in Iran, Israel, Palestine, and the United States all strongly condemn Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attack on Iran and President Donald Trump’s backing for it.
Communist and workers’ parties elsewhere around the world have also issued statements slamming the bombing of Iran, which started last Friday, but the unified stance of the parties from the two countries currently being targeted and the parties from the two countries doing the targeting most strongly symbolize the international unity against this latest war.
In four statements, issued separately between Friday and Monday, the Tudeh Party of Iran, the Communist Party of Israel, the Palestinian People’s Party, and the Communist Party USA all warn that Netanyahu’s bombing campaign threatens to spark a much wider war while simultaneously increasing the suffering of the people of Gaza.
Calling Israel’s airstrikes and assassinations of Iranian military and scientific personnel “terrorist operations,” the Tudeh Party, whose name translates to “Party of the Iranian Masses,” declared that the attacks aim to “turn Iran into another Syria or Iraq.”
The party said, “Only imperialism, its client forces, reactionaries, and the ruling dictatorship” in Iran “benefit from tensions and war.” Tudeh declared the ongoing bombing of Iran a violation of international law and said it “has dire consequences for peace throughout the Middle East.”
Hitting the Trump administration for supporting the attack—both politically and materially—the Tudeh Party said it was another instance of the U.S. government’s “practical collaboration with a regime that has so far killed over 50,000 Palestinians…and subjected millions of residents to famine and starvation through economic blockade.”
In Tel Aviv, the Communist Party of Israel, together with the Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) coalition, said the leader of their country was guilty of starting yet another “dangerous war that could involve the entire Middle East.”
Branding Netanyahu’s cabinet a “fascist government,” the two allied organizations accused the government of “dragging the region into a broad and dangerous escalation.”
Ofer Cassif, a Communist member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, said that “Netanyahu’s decision to strike at Iran had been borne of the stress of his political position and his addiction to blood and force.”
Cassif was referring to the fact that Netanyahu’s government has been teetering on the brink of collapse for weeks and that the prime minister only kept his position by offering major concessions to his ultra-Orthodox allies—including a war on Iran.
The CPI raised the alarm that the Israeli government “may try to exploit the situation it has created to carry out even more dangerous plans toward the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.”
That is precisely what appears to be happening, as reports suggest stepped-up Israeli military activity over the past 72 hours. The imposition of a total internet and communications blackout on Gaza for the last several days, however, has prevented full details from reaching the outside world.
By Monday morning, though, the Palestinian People’s Party managed to break through Israel’s information blockade and deliver a statement to Solidnet, the online bulletin of the international communist movement.
The PPP condemned the Israeli military for the aggression against Iran, but it also immediately pointed the finger at Washington.
“This aggression cannot be carried out without American cover and support,” the party said. The latest bombings of Iran are “one episode in a series of American-Israeli military acts of arrogance and violence.”
The war on Iran, the PPP said, is directly connected to the war on Gaza, both of which are enabled by U.S. weaponry, logistical and technical support, and funds. The “immediate cessation of the war of aggression and the ongoing genocide” of the Palestinian people, it declared, is the “true gateway to achieving security and stability in the entire region.”
In the United States, where over five million people turned out for the anti-Trump “No Kings Day” protests on Saturday, the Communist Party USA issued a statement on the war that echoed points made by its comrades abroad.
“This attack exposes the criminal collaboration between the fascist Israeli government and Washington,” the CPUSA said. It characterized the war as an effort by Netanyahu to save his regime from collapse, but said “the bloodshed is not his alone.”
The CPUSA pinpointed U.S. imperialism, with Trump at its head, as the enabler and key beneficiary of Netanyahu’s actions. The problem is not just Trump, though, the U.S. Communists said.
“The bipartisan war machine…from Republican Lindsey Graham to Democrats like John Fetterman and Ritchie Torres, cheer on as Israel drags the entire region, and the world, toward war and catastrophe,” the CPUSA declared.
“This is not ‘self-defense’—it is a calculated provocation by Israel, with Washington’s approval,” the party said, “to derail diplomacy and force Iran and the entire region into submission.”
The U.S. and Iran had been due to meet on Sunday for another round of negotiations on an agreement concerning the lifting of some U.S. sanctions and the status of Iran’s nuclear development program.
Thanks to Netanyahu’s attacks, that session was canceled.
Instead of diplomacy, the U.S. is now a direct participant in the Israeli attacks. Beyond the provision of advanced armaments and technical support, U.S. military forces inside Israel are already participating in air defense operations to blunt Iranian retaliation.
Giving the lead to the international movement opposing the attacks, the Tudeh Party urged all progressive forces to unite in condemning Israel’s illegal war and to pressure their governments, along with the United Nations and the Security Council, to immediately intervene to prevent the Middle East from plunging into a large-scale war.
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