On February 28, a nuclear-armed empire led by unhinged zealots and mass murderers launched an unprovoked war in the Middle East. Anyone who’s been exposed to American and Zionist propaganda in recent decades would likely assume the culprit to be the Islamic Republic of Iran, but this description perfectly fits the US-Israeli imperialist assault on Iran.

This war is overwhelmingly unpopular with the American people. Following the bitter experience of the failed and costly invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, American workers have no appetite for more “forever wars.” As one young Trump voter recently told a Washington Post focus group “I feel betrayed … I don’t know why we are fighting [in Iran] if we have never been attacked … I just don’t understand why.”

Imperialist lies

The capitalists are highly class-conscious, and are sensitive to the anti-war stirrings among the working class. They are racing to justify their bloody adventure, bringing the supposed “threat” of an Iranian nuclear program to the fore once again.

According to Trump, the Iranians “were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.” He has repeated this claim ad nauseum, despite saying that Iran’s nuclear program had been “totally obliterated” by American strikes during the Twelve-Day War last June. So which is it?

The fact is neither the Israelis nor the US have bothered to produce (or even manufacture) a shred of evidence for this claim. Quite the contrary. According to Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, America’s spy agencies concluded that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons when the imperialists attacked in February.

The recently-assassinated former Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa against the country developing nuclear weapons in the 1990s, which was publicly reaffirmed in 2003. Iran has steadfastly argued that its nuclear program was for domestic energy purposes, though many analysts claim that it has enriched nearly 1,000 pounds of weapons-grade uranium which it could further develop into atomic arms if it so chose.

Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency, working in the country since 2011, confirmed in 2015 that there were “no credible indications” of Iranian nuclear research for military purposes after 2009.

Whether Mojtaba Khamenei, Ali Khamenei’s son and successor, will maintain his father’s stance on nuclear arms remains to be seen. Facing an existential attack by two nuclear-armed foes—an attack which opened with the aerial murder of his entire family— the new Supreme Leader likely feels no need to play by the imperialists’ rules any longer.

After all, his country was attacked in the middle of negotiations. The day before the war began, the Omani mediator told CBS’s Face the Nation that Iran had agreed to American demands to never to acquire a nuclear bomb.

In contrast, North Korea has long been on American imperialism’s hit list. But it possesses nuclear arms and has not faced such an attack. In the wake of the US-Israeli assault, Iran now has every incentive to restart and accelerate a nuclear program, while turning away from the false and deceptive diplomacy of the imperialists.

In short, the imperialist war of aggression against Iran has made it more likely that the Islamic Republic will develop nuclear arms, not less.

Nuclear hypocrisy

The US is the only country to use atomic weapons in wartime, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The aerial mass murder killed as many as 250,000 people—mostly civilians. In the following decades, hundreds of thousands more died from radiation-induced illnesses.

As of 2025, the American nuclear arsenal includes an estimated 3,700 warheads. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the US plans to spend $946 billion on its nuclear forces between 2025 and 2034.

The US imperialists have used nuclear weapons to coerce and bully countries around the world. Their “nuclear umbrella” sets the parameters for imperialist competition—and enslavement—across the entire planet.

For its part, Israel, not Iran, is the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Analysts believe Israel has as many as 400 nuclear warheads, deployable from air or submarine. During its 1973 war with Egypt and Syria, the Israeli government threatened to use nuclear weapons if its conventional forces suffered a severe setback—a ploy to get the US to provide Israel with further aid during the war’s early days when the Zionist regime was on the back foot.

Unlike Iran, the Israeli regime has spent the last eight decades attacking its unfortunate and long-suffering neighbors. At its helm stands Benjamin Netanyahu, a bloodsoaked fanatic fighting for political survival.

Faced with the prospect of a long war against Iran and its proxies in Lebanon and beyond, might Netanyahu be tempted to unleash Israel’s arsenal on an intransigent Iran that’s raining ballistic missiles on Israeli cities? Such an outcome is extremely unlikely. The imperialists make war in an attempt to defend and extend their access to markets, resources, and labor. They won’t be able to rake in profit in a world devastated by a nuclear holocaust. But the very fact that such power lies in the hands of a proven mass-murderer only reinforces our determination to bring the imperialist system crashing down.

Communists understand that the main enemy of the working class is its “own” ruling class. Our enemies are on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Capitol Hill, and in the Pentagon—not Tehran. This logic extends to Israel, which is nothing more than an outpost of US imperialism in the Middle East, armed to the teeth and led by genocidal chauvinists. So long as the imperialist ruling class holds power, the horrifying prospect of nuclear war will loom. Only an international socialist revolution can ensure the future of humanity.