Summary of the public conference held on June 13

The truce signed on June 17 between Iran and the United States—a "remote" signing at the end of negotiations that excluded Israel—like the one signed last October for Gaza, also imposed by the US on its vassal Israel, and by Qatar and Turkey on their Hamas mercenaries. It will not usher in a new era of peace, nor a more modest return to the previous level of inter-imperialist tensions, which are still contained and have not erupted into an open regional conflict. The same will be true, if there is one, for a future truce in Ukraine.

We will not see a "new Middle East" feared by US and Israeli imperialism, nor a step toward the "more just" multipolar world touted by rivals to US imperialisms, competing with it for the division of world markets, that is, the surplus value extracted from the proletariat of all countries. These are truces that—like the conflicts they are suspending—are steps toward a new war between global imperialisms, the third with which capitalism is driven to afflict humanity.

The propaganda of the opposing sides confuses the working class and makes it difficult to understand the true nature of the conflict, into which all national bourgeoisies want to lead them, above the struggle to divide the spoils, to shed their blood in the imperialist war and not in the revolution for their social and political emancipation.

The first, most blatant lie, is that the US military intervention was aimed at overthrowing the Iranian regime. As with what happened in Venezuela in early January, what matters to them is the direction of the flow of oil and its revenues. Furthermore, those capitalist regimes—of "Bolivarian socialism" for 27 years and the Ayatollahs for 47—have proven to offer the best guarantees for the repression and subjugation of their own working class, and for diverting that of surrounding countries.

In South America—from Chile to Colombia, from Ecuador to Bolivia—the proletarian revolt is simmering and periodically flares up, challenging the bourgeoisie and threatening its investments, both domestic and international. The "Arab Spring" of 2010 and 2011 demonstrated that the same process is underway from the Maghreb to the Mashreq.

If the Iranian working class were to organize and mobilize against the Ayatollahs’ regime, as it happened in Egypt under Mubarak, a social conflagration could spread throughout the region, breaking down the barrier between the Shiite and Sunni worlds, which the national bourgeoisies had propped up to divide the proletariat. The bourgeoisies would seek to replace their political personnel, as inevitably happened, in the absence of a connection between the proletariat and the international Communist Party, in Tunisia and Egypt fifteen years ago, allowing the continuation of bourgeois regimes.

But these struggles of the proletariat, in a historical phase of irreversible crisis of overproduction of the world capitalist economy, require roots in those countries and the leadership of the Communist Party.

The Israeli-American military intervention, now being clear to everyone, has strengthened the Iranian regime, but this, far from being a failure, was one of its objectives from the very beginning.

The conflict began on February 28, a month and 20 days after January 8-9, the days when the Iranian uprising was drowned in blood, with the regime itself admitting—and boasting—over three thousand victims, six thousand according to the most reliable sources. A rather belated rescue! Or, rather, self-interestedly belated: they waited for the regime to finish the job.

The war emergency aided the repression of an already dispersed movement, rallying the bourgeois opposition and the opportunist left around the regime in the name of "defense of the homeland"—the only untouchable principle of every opportunist party under which the interests of the working class can be trampled—and leaving even more alone the young proletarians, hundreds of whom were executed in recent months.

Reza Pahlavi and Maria Machado shared the same fate: useful before military interventions to make people believe the objective was the overthrow of the regimes; sidelined an hour after the operations began. Is it any wonder that the ruling class claims one thing while doing the opposite?

The monarchists—well-funded and aggressive against other opposition political forces—who seized control of most Iranian emigrant demonstrations and called for US and Israeli military intervention, disappeared on the second day of the war. After announcing Ali Khamenei’s elimination, Trump, with his usual display of bravado, demanded a say in the appointment of his successor, implicitly confessing that he was not interested in overthrowing the regime but only in a quiet change of its top officials: as in Venezuela.

Just as the colectivos (paramilitary gangs) operate in Venezuelan cities, so in Iran the Pasdaran’s repressive apparatus must remain operational to maintain capital’s order. Every bourgeois State ("special detachments of armed men", Lenin, "State and Revolution") is the machine of oppression and control of capital, both international and national, in a given country.

The repeated declarations of support for the Iranian rebels by the US and Israel already had the opposite objective: they aided the repression by accusing them of being at the service of enemy powers.

The second lie is that the war was the result of the ineptitude and folly of President Donald Trump, who threw himself into it without a strategy and incapable of extricating himself from the mess he had gotten himself into, thereby damaging the entire world economy and that of the United States itself.

This mystification is fueled by the interests of capitalist States opposed to the USA, from Iran to China, but also by European imperialisms, by political-business clans opposed to the Trump lobby within the United States itself, and by opportunist left-wing parties everywhere, incapable even of distinguishing facts from words.

The American bourgeoisie—which placed Trump there—has a strategy, beyond the internal conflicts of views and interests among business clans. The target of its wars is its main rival in the imperialist contest, China, certainly not Iran.

By knowingly engaging in the Iranian conflict, the United States set in motion a series of consequences that it knew would harm its global adversaries, while benefiting itself. This is nothing new: it’s the exact same pattern as what happened in Ukraine.

For 15 years, US capitalism has made the hydrocarbon extraction industry one of its pillars, thanks to the extraction method from oil shale. This technology has turned the United States, traditionally a major net importer of oil, into the world’s leading oil and gas producer, the fourth-largest oil exporter, and the largest gas exporter.

Shale oil extraction has increased from 0.2 million barrels per day in 2009 to 8 in 2023. Without hydrocarbons, the US industry would still be producing less than it did in 2007: in 2024, it would be 7.6% below the 2007 peak, a worsening compared to the -5.5% recorded in 2022.

Supremacy in the world hydrocarbon market is the linchpin of the strategy of decadent US imperialism and the war against Iran was an important and successful step in its pursuit, despite what the entire bourgeois international press self-interestedly says.

The blockade of gas, oil, and derivatives in the Persian Gulf has driven up prices. The US has replaced its own oil, gas, and refined products on the market. The new prices have enabled shale extraction, which requires prices above $80/b to be profitable, given the higher extraction costs. Refineries and oil terminals on the US coast have been working at full capacity since March, even tapping into strategic reserves to meet global demand. Venezuelan oil imports into the US have also increased sharply, from 100,000 barrels per day in December 2025 to 1.2 million in May and June.

So it was not US capitalism that paid the highest oil and gas prices, but European imperialisms, first and foremost Germany, and obviously China, the world’s largest importer, which reacted by reducing imports by more than 20% for three months and eating into its internal strategic reserves.

For German imperialism, this is the second blow it has received from the United States. With the war in Ukraine, its progress toward recovering to pre-2008 crisis production levels was halted, remaining below that peak. With the sanctions on Russian gas and the destruction of the North Stream 2 pipeline, global gas demand has shifted, allowing the US industry to invest in both extraction and liquefaction facilities. Thus, the alleged quagmire Trump has entered into has been a paradise of profits for the US hydrocarbon industry.

Rising inflation, to the extent it remains contained—for now, the European Central Bank has raised interest rates by 0.25%, while the Fed has not—only partially curbs consumption, the second stage of capitalist production as defined in Marx’s Capital, and, to a lesser extent, stage I, the production of the means of production, which is of greater importance to capitalism. A contained rise in inflation, by increasing the prices of all goods except wages, which require workers’ struggle to raise—and thus, in any case, a slower process—increases profits and is healthy for the capitalist economy.

During the conflict, the United States sought to keep oil prices at the "right level": no higher than $100-110 a barrel. To this end, it suspended sanctions on Russian oil and, for a brief period, on Iranian oil as well. Now, following the fragile agreement of June 17, maritime traffic has partially resumed and the price has dropped to around USD 70/b.

But the crisis zone remains heated, ready to ignite. Maritime traffic through Hormuz is now divided into two routes: one in Iranian waters, the other in Omani waters; the first is controlled by Tehran, which requires the payment of a toll, while the second is militarily protected by the US. The Iranian regime is making compliance with the truce conditional on the cessation of Israeli military operations in Lebanon. A new spigot is turning on; whenever the conflict flares up again, the oil industry and US capitalism will celebrate while European and Chinese capitalisms will suffer again.

The relationship between US and Iranian imperialism must also be demystified from opposing bourgeois propaganda: there are no absolute contradictions between capitalist States. It is a matter of armed negotiation. Venezuela has provided an example of the nature of relations between regimes of the same bourgeois class: years of bombastic declarations on both sides have resulted in the replacement of a single man and the prostration of the rest of the regime. The ideology of "Bolivarian socialism" is no less false than the democratic ideology of the United States and European imperialisms.

In armed negotiations, of course, there are often killings, as between mafia clans. Saddam Hussein was supported by the US in the Iran-Iraq war, while selling weapons to Iran (the "Irangate" scandal), only to be abandoned in 1991 with the first Gulf War and eliminated in the second in 2003, which benefited Iranian imperialism, which expanded its influence into troubled Iraq, thereby establishing the so-called "Shiite corridor" that from Iran, passing through Iraq, Assad’s Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, provided territorial continuity for the interests of the Iranian bourgeoisie all the way to the Mediterranean.

After the 2003 bombing, the United States has now granted a new favor to the Ayatollah and Pasdaran regime. Despite bombing several factories and industrial plants, they did not hit Kharg Island, which accounts for 80% to 90% of the country’s oil exports. With Israeli cooperation, they eliminated numerous regime figures, but at the same time suspended sanctions on Iranian oil for almost a month, from March 20 to April 13, and a new 60-day suspension has been announced as a consequence of the ongoing truce.

The question arises as to what currency the unsanctioned Iranian oil will be traded in: yuan, as was the case with sanctioned oil, or US dollars. The same goes for the $24 billion in Iranian financial funds blocked abroad, which would be released. According to the US administration, they will be spent on US goods, but the Iranians have denied this important detail. The two regimes have been contradicting each other for months on nearly every crucial detail of the potential agreement.

Within the Iranian State, as in the United States and every bourgeois regime, whether authoritarian or democratic, there is an ongoing conflict, with one side opposed to agreements with the US. This is not a matter of ideology, but of pure profit. All this only confirms that between the United States and Iran there is not a struggle or an absolute opposition, but rather a negotiation conducted on the basis of power relations and business. The pattern is identical to what occurred in Venezuela, only with different power relations. A more difficult negotiation, with an uncertain outcome, but one that reaffirms the nature of relations between bourgeois States. Its prolongation, its interruption, or rather, its overflowing into military friction, is not a problem for US capitalism, but rather a resource.

Rising oil prices also benefit US capitalism because over 80% of it is traded in US dollars. Higher oil prices equate to greater demand for dollars, thus strengthening the US dollar, its role as the international currency, and thus US Treasury bonds, the gigantic US government debt.

The war, by emptying the arsenals, revitalizes the national war industry, another pillar of US capitalism. "The current defense budget is the largest in US history in nominal terms (close, in real terms, to the annual peak reached when the country was at war with Adolf Hitler): $1.5 trillion" (Le Monde Diplomatique, June).

War, it’s true, has a cost, but for US imperialism, and certainly not only for it, it is a huge public investment: it strengthens the oil industry, it reinforces the financial dominance of the dollar, which supports the State debt, which fuels the war industry. It is necessary to impoverish working humanity to invest in weapons, new offensive systems, "artificial intelligence", and drones.

The blockade of Hormuz first damaged the so-called petro-monarchies of the Gulf. Iran’s action succeeded in undermining the United States’ alliance system in the region. They did not all pay the same price, which was very high for Iraq and Qatar, whose oil and gas exports are almost entirely maritime, but less so for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have pipelines that bypass the Strait of Hormuz and transport at least half of their exports.

US imperialism plays on rivalries between regional powers. Turkey is Iran’s rival in Syria: in December 2024, it helped overthrow the Assad regime, which hosted the Iranian militias that had saved it during the civil war from 2011 to 2018 and was a key component of the "Shiite Corridor".

Israel is Iran’s rival, but is now replacing it as its main adversary with Turkish imperialism, fearing its strengthening in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean. It also opposes its influence in the Horn of Africa, with Ankara supporting the central government in Mogadishu and Jerusalem recognizing separatist Somaliland.

The UAE, which signed the Abraham Accords with Israel, also supports Somaliland, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias in Sudan, opposing Saudi Arabia in both theaters.

Israel has woven an alliance with Greece, the UAE, and India: it supports Greece in its anti-Turkish efforts, for example in Cyprus, while the Indian giant opposes Pakistan, which has entered into a military cooperation pact with Saudi Arabia.

Israel meets half of its oil needs by importing it from Azerbaijan via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which runs from the Azerbaijani capital on the Caspian Sea, through Georgia, and ends on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Nearly 70% of Azerbaijan’s arms imports come from Israel.

In this latest conflict against Iran, Israel and Egypt have deployed troops, aircraft, and anti-missile systems to the UAE; Pakistan has done so in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, a geographic and oil giant (the world’s leading exporter), is Iran’s main regional rival.

Qatar, which for years was one of Hamas’s three main financiers, also hosts the largest US military base in the Middle East. It now appears that most of Hamas’s foreign leadership is no longer based in Qatar, but in Turkey, a NATO member.

In this tangle, ideology is merely a screen, a deception to ensnare the proletariat: for capital, there are no principles except that of profit.

Demolishing the mystification that the US war in Iran is the product of Trump’s will and devoid of a strategy doesn’t demonstrate the strength and vitality of this imperialism, but rather how its policies are a consequence of that capitalism’s economic interests. Nor does it conclude that the imperialist war is provoked only by one part of the capitalist States, worse than the other, but rather that it is a consequence of the entire capitalist system and inherent to it.

If the United States’ strategy is based on preventive wars, in preparation for a general confrontation, Chinese imperialism is preparing for this confrontation, pursuing interests of an identical capitalist nature and with its own specific policies. Here too, it’s important not to get lost in the chatter of regime propaganda and instead focus on economic facts.

What is new is that US capitalism, beyond its partial successes in waging preventive wars, suffers from the intrinsic weakness of its senility, a weakness shared by all so-called Western capitalisms. In 1945, with 6% of the world’s population, the US produced nearly half of the world’s industrial production. Victory in the war marked the replacement of the pound sterling with the dollar as the international currency.

For decades, worn down by overproduction, this industrial supremacy has been in decline, while its financial supremacy, defended by military force, endures: today the US share of world manufacturing production is around 17%.

China has replaced the United States as the world’s leading industrial power for years, with a share of manufacturing output now at approximately 28%. However, Chinese capitalism is no longer young, but fully mature: for several years, it has been displaying symptoms of clear-cut overproduction. This first became apparent with the bursting of the speculative bubble in the construction sector, which led to the bankruptcy of Evergrande, the world’s largest construction group, which collapsed in December 2021 under the weight of over $300 billion in debt. The crisis in the sector hit other Chinese capitalist construction giants, leaving 20 million Chinese without homes that were paid for but not completed. Overproduction then manifested itself in other sectors: from steel (in 2023, China produced 54% of world production), which has declined for two years, to petrochemicals, batteries, and semiconductors. This has led to substantial deflation in the last two years.

Overproduction is leading Chinese capitalism to flood the world market with its goods, clashing with other senile national capitalisms, which over the past 50 years have remained afloat by moving an increasing part of their production to young capitalisms, first and foremost China!

While the United States and Europe are erecting tariffs, today the Chinese regime is championing “free trade,” the same propaganda trope that was typical of Wilsonian America after the First World War, criticized by Lenin, when the USA was then in the midst of vigorous capitalist development.

So, if Athens weeps, Sparta isn’t laughing. While the United States may find an illusion of relief in the temporary successes of its war strategy to stem its decline, China has already rapidly consumed its capitalist youth and is facing the cancer of overproduction, which is bringing closer the hour of revolt of its immense proletariat.

In effect, therefore, all global capitalism is afflicted and attacked by the same disease: it is no longer able to accumulate the mass of capital that has become too great and must do everything possible to postpone, contain, and repress the class struggle. Capitalist States are increasingly throwing themselves into war and, with their reactionary ideologies, all united by nationalism, are trying to drag the wage-earning class into it.

Workers in every country must simply reject the ideological sirens that want them divided and aligned on one side or the other of the impending imperialist war. They must and can only do so in one way: by rejecting all solidarity with their own bourgeois regime, by refusing, today, any economic sacrifice in the name of their own bourgeoisie’s national affirmation, and, tomorrow, the sacrifice of their very lives in the war of their masters’ homeland. The only blood left to shed is for the international unity of the proletariat of all countries and for revolutionary emancipation from capitalism.