A Marxist Analysis of War Against Iran
By Gary Porter
The ongoing US-Israeli war against Iran—whether conducted through overt air strikes, covert assassinations, cyber warfare, or economic strangulation—is not a response to Iran’s nuclear program, not a defense of Israeli security, and not a mission to liberate the Iranian people. It is, rather, the latest expression of imperialism, a violent attempt to restructure the Middle East in the interests of global capital, to secure strategic energy corridors, and to arrest the decline of US hegemony in a world increasingly defined by inter-imperialist rivalry.
Imperialism and the Crisis of US Hegemony
Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism argued that as capitalist economies enter their financialized monopoly phase, they are driven to export capital and seize foreign territories to resolve the crisis of over-accumulation and declining rate of profit. Applying this framework to the current conflict, the war on Iran must be understood as a response to the deepening contradictions of US capitalism: stagnant wages, soaring inequality, ballooning debt, and declining manufacturing capacity. In previous eras, these contradictions might have been managed through domestic reforms. Today, with the social safety net gutted and the working class demobilized, the ruling class turns to foreign war as a mechanism of crisis management.
The timing is significant. The war on Iran intensifies precisely as US global dominance faces its most serious challenge since the Soviet Union. China’s rise, Russia’s resurgence, and the spread of de-dollarization threaten the material foundations of US power. From a Marxist standpoint, the war is not a sign of strength but of weakness—a desperate gambit by a weakening hegemon to smash an independent state that has resisted imperial domination for four decades.
The war aims are not merely to change the regime in Tehran, but to send a message to Beijing and Moscow that the United States retains the capacity and will to reshape the global order by force. Iran is the target; China is the real adversary.
Oil, Choke Points, and the Material Basis
While mainstream commentary treats oil as one factor among many, Marxists place it at the center. Approximately 20 percent of the world’s petroleum passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran partially controls. Any disruption would trigger a global economic crisis. For US imperialism, controlling Iranian oil infrastructure is not merely desirable but structurally necessary.
But the material logic runs deeper. Seventy-five percent of Middle Eastern oil now flows eastward to fuel China’s industrial machine. From Washington’s perspective, allowing Iran to remain independent means allowing Beijing to secure energy supplies without US interference. A war that cripples Iranian production or installs a compliant regime would choke Chinese access while stabilizing the petrodollar system that underpins US financial hegemony.
The economic warfare already waged against Iran—sanctions that have blocked access to global banking, frozen assets, and prevented food and medicine imports—demonstrates the logic of capitalist war in its pure form. These sanctions have killed indirectly what bombs kill directly. Marxists refuse the distinction: both are instruments of imperial domination.
Israel as Sub-Imperialism
A distinctive contribution of Marxist analysis is the concept of sub-imperialism—a regional power that, while subordinate to the global hegemon, exercises its own imperial ambitions within its sphere of influence. Israel fits this category precisely.
Israel does not act as a mere proxy. It has its own material interests: control of water resources in the Golan Heights and West Bank, access to natural gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the suppression of Palestinian resistance that Iran supports. But these interests objectively serve the broader US strategy of containing and destabilizing Tehran.
The relationship is hierarchical yet symbiotic. The United States provides diplomatic cover, logistical support, and the vast majority of weaponry. In return, Israel executes high-risk operations—assassinations of nuclear scientists, political and military leaders and sabotage of enrichment facilities, strikes on Iranian assets in Syria—that the US cannot openly claim. When Israeli bombs fall on Iranian soil, US capital benefits.
Marxists reject the liberal framing that distinguishes “aggressive Israel” from “moderate US leadership.” Both are imperialist states. Their alliance is an alliance of capitals, not of values.
The Gulf Monarchies: Comprador Complicity
No analysis of the war on Iran is complete without examining the Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar—as active accomplices rather than neutral bystanders. These rentier states are not victims of Iranian expansionism. Their ruling families are comprador bourgeoisies whose wealth depends on subordination to Western capital.
The class character of these regimes is unambiguous. They survive through brutal repression at home—no unions, no political parties, no democratic rights—and submission abroad. Their billions are parked in Western banks. Their militaries are armed by the Pentagon. Their sovereignty is conditional on US approval.
In the war on Iran, this complicity takes concrete form. US Central Command (CentCom) operates from Al Udeid in Qatar and Al Dhafra in the UAE. Saudi Arabia has provided intelligence and reportedly allowed overflight rights for strikes. The Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and several Gulf states not as a peace process but as the construction of an anti-Iran military alliance.
The betrayal is most visible on Palestine. Despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza, not a single Gulf monarchy has broken diplomatic relations with Israel. This is not pragmatism. It is class alliance—Gulf capital standing with Israeli capital against the Axis of Resistance, the only forces in the region that have ever meaningfully challenged Western domination.
Marxists name this betrayal openly. The Gulf monarchies are not “moderates” or “peacemakers.” They are the regional enforcers of imperialism, paid in petrodollars to keep their populations docile while US and Israeli bombs fall.
Ideology and Mystification
As with the Iraq War, the official justifications for war on Iran—nuclear weapons, human rights, regime change—are understood by Marxists as ideology in the precise sense: representations that obscure material realities while serving capitalist class interests.
The nuclear threat is manufactured. US intelligence agencies have repeatedly confirmed that Iran has no active weapons program. The human rights critique, while reflecting the brutality of the Iranian theocracy, is weaponized cynically—the United States supports far more brutal regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Regime change is openly discussed, with the Trump administration reportedly exploring installing the exiled Pahlavi family as a neocolonial client.
What makes the ideology effective is its partial truth. Iran’s government is repressive although recent protests in Iran were clearly part of a CIA funded and organized effort to destabilize Iran and to provide political cover for the looming US and Israeli attacks. Such propaganda is deployed to justify a war whose real purpose is control over oil, containment of China, and the maintenance of US hegemony. The working class in the imperialist countries is told to support the war for “democracy” while democracy at home is gutted by the same ruling class.
The Anti-War Imperative
The appropriate response to the war on Iran is not reformist tinkering or liberal hand-wringing. It is militant, uncompromising opposition rooted in working-class internationalism.
The tasks are clear. First, expose the material drivers of the war—oil, China, and the crisis of US capitalism—against the fog of humanitarian and security rhetoric. Second, break the popular front illusion that any faction of the US ruling class, or indeed of any western imperialist regime, represents a “lesser evil” on Iran. Both parties in the US support the war. In Canada both Carney and Poilievre support the war. Third, refuse anti-imperialist apologetics for the Iranian regime. Opposing US bombs does not require defending theocratic repression. The slogan remains: Self-determination for Iran. End the US Israeli war. End the sanctions against Iran. No more arms to Israel. US out of West Asia.
Finally, build the only force capable of stopping imperial war: the organized working class. Mass marches are important for building support independent of the ruling class. But only strikes, occupations, and the refusal to produce or transport war materiel can impose material costs on the war machine. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote a century ago: “Bourgeois peace is merely the preparation for another war. The only peace that lasts is the peace of a classless society”.
Against endless imperialist war the ultimate solution is working class internationalism and Socialist revolution.