Fascist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to lead his reckless war aggression in the Middle East with backing and support from US– and European imperialism. He aims to draw enemy states, primarily Iran, into an open and full-fledged regional war.
Since October 8 2023, there has been a regionalized war in the Middle East. Within not even ten months, Gaza has been destroyed by the Zionist war machine. The Palestinian nation is subjected to genocide. More than 40.000 Palestinians were massacred by committing all kinds of war crimes before the eyes of the world. This brutal and unjust war continues to gain new dimensions. In the last two weeks, Israel has carried out assassinations in the capitals of Iran and Lebanon. These targeted operations represent a new challenge to the states and forces involved in the so-called “axis of resistance”
The war that is being portrayed as a Palestinian-Israeli war is progressing into a regional war. The October 7 Al–Aqsa Flood operation of the Palestinian national resistance forces initiated global and regional polarization. As expected, Israel, the US, the UK and European imperialism gathered in the same bloc. In response, the regional states of Palestine, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen came together in the “axis of resistance”. The war between these two blocs is currently being waged openly in Palestine and spreading across the Middle East in form of an increasing number of individual and tactical strikes.
The genocidal war being led by Israel in Palestine, though it is not yet a regional war in terms of its current level, has a regional character. From the very beginning, Israeli Zionism has carried the war to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran. It continuously launched targeted attacks on regional states that provide political, financial, military and logistical support and solidarity with Palestine. It has created casus belli (an event upon which one state declares war on another) conditions by attacking these states. It has carried out air strikes and assassinations. It has struck economic and military infrastructure facilities. For this reason, regional states, peoples and political organizations of different dispositions that are against Zionism and Western imperialism, which have lined up in the “axis of resistance”, are the direct and indirect actors of this regional war.
The assassinations of Hamas (Palestinian political Islamist party, governing the Gaza Strip) politburo chairman Ismail Haniyeh and Lebanese Hezbollah (Lebanese political Shia–Islamist party) commanders Fuat Shukur and Ali Jamaluddin Javad by Israel in Tehran and Beirut are the most recent events that embody the regional character of the war. Zionist Israel, which has been attacking Lebanon and Syria with almost continuous targeted strikes since its colonial and genocidal beginnings against Palestine, has carried its war aggression to Yemen together with the US and England, with the Houthis (Yemeni political Shia-Islamist movement) opening a direct front to the Palestinian resistance in Yemen. It turn, Isreal has carried out heavy war reprisals against the Houthis. It has damaged their economic and military infrastructure. Yemen has lost hundreds of civilians and combatants in this war.
Since October 7, a total of 344 people have been killed in Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Hezbollah, at the forefront of the resistance against Israel, lost 32 of its fighters in Syria and the Golan Heights. On July 27, twelve people were killed in an Israeli attack on the Druze-inhabited town of Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. Israel blamed Hezbollah and began preparations for war against Lebanon. The Lebanese government also tried to pit the Druze against Hezbollah and provoke tensions to pave the way for a civil war. The hundreds of militias and soldiers Iran who were killed in Syria and Iraq are another part of this picture of war and demonstrate Israeli aggression and the regionalization of the war.
The two states neighboring Palestine —Lebanon and Syria—were open war fronts for Zionist Israel. Acting as the imperialist gendarmerie of the region, it included Iran in these two open war fronts. Iran was an indirect war front in the Israeli war on Palestine, fulfilling its role through a form of military action called proxy war. It has long backed Palestine with the means of its regional geopolitical position and capacity.
We can say that with October 7, Iran adopted the strategic defeat of Israel as its basic objective. To this end, it was dedicated to realizing its regional geopolitical capacity through Lebanon and Yemen. Israel’s strategic defeat depended primarily on the long-term existence of the Palestinian resistance. The continuation of Yemen’s and Lebanon’s open support for the Palestinian resistance, the strengthening of the axis, the stigmatization of Israel as a genocidal party in the eyes of the international community and the peoples of the world, the internal division of Israel, the dissolution of its will to war and its withdrawal from the occupation of Gaza were other basic conditions for Israel’s strategic defeat in the face of the Palestinian resistance.
Israel’s defeat meant that Iran would break through the regional and imperial siege; an Iran freed from the imperialist siege could develop as a regional imperial power and achieve its goal of integrating into the imperialist system on its own terms. Seeing all this, Israel granting this opportunity to Iran was against the nature of things and its own right to exist. It responded to Iran’s strategy of wearing down Israel and inflicting a strategic defeat with open war. Therefore, Israel attacked Iran’s embassy in Damascus and turned Iran into a direct war front. The assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran means that Israel has invited Iran to war for the second time.
Iran responded militarily to the attack on its consulate building in Damascus in accordance with its policy of strategically defeating Israel. In response to the attack, it hit Israel with 350 missiles and drones. It is clear that Iran, which has been acting according to “strategic patience for strategic victory” by enduring tactical defeats and blows for Israel’s loss, has suffered a heavy blow with the assassination of Haniyeh. The assassination of Fuad Shukur in Lebanon is a major tactical defeat with a multiplying effect for the axis and Iran. Israel humiliated Iran with these assassinations, revealed its weakness and gained tactical and psychological superiority. In addition, it prevented and postponed possible ceasefire negotiations with Palestine in the short term.
Iran, as a regional power, is the main subject that determines the regional character of the Gaza war, since it constitutes the main power of the “axis of resistance” in the region. Iran, as a regional state, derives this power from its given historical geopolitical position. It has a different and stronger geopolitical position and bandwith than Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, which have proven their existence as other regional powers in the Middle East. The phenomenon of Shia Islam is in the backdrop of this geopolitical position.
Iran, the sole hegemonic power of the Shiite crescent in the region, is continuously strengthening its hegemony in the political conjuncture due to the subservience of the Sunni Arab states of the region to Israel and the US.
Fascist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to lead his reckless war aggression in the Middle East with backing and support from US– and European imperialism. He aims to draw enemy states, primarily Iran, into an open and full-fledged regional war. He calculates that under the conditions in which he draws Iran into such a war, the US and Europe will also be dragged into the war and fight alongside Israel. He aims to disperse and defeat the axis of resistance by supporting the power of the US and EU in the Middle East, to fundamentally destroy Iran’s military, economic infrastructure and superstructure, and to re-establish Israel’s position as a regional police and gain exceptional immunity with a clear victory. In pursuit of this goal, he does not hesitate to drown the peoples of the Middle East in blood. Today, the danger of a big regional war is growing.
Before the attacks on Iran and Lebanon, Netanyahu went to the US and gave a fascist speech in the US–Congress. He was applauded 57 times. The White House patted Netanyahu, the Zionist genocidal war criminal, on the back and gave blessings to his murder. The rulers of the US have once again shown which side their on. The oppressed and people of the US sided with the oppressed and the resisting people in Palestine, in their universities, streets and squares, and became comrades in the struggle.
Against the increasing Zionist aggression and the growing threat of a regionalised war in the Middle East, our people must take the right side against the rulers and the oppressors. The side of the oppressed people is the just war and the resistance of the oppressed. It is not the side of the states, oppressors and rulers. The political Islamist movements in Turkey and North Kurdistan are aligned under the guidance of the Erdoğan regime and with the performative anti-Zionism of the fascist leader. Erdoğan is a collaborator of imperialism and Zionism. The leader of the fascist regime is blowing up his demagogy of “We will enter Israel suddenly, just as we entered Karabakh”. However, the hypocritical fascist leader offers Israel all military and economic support accompanied by fake bullying gestures and demagogic tirades. All the bravado of the political Islamist fascist Erdoğan is fake. His stance is that of genocidal Zionism and the US.
Our working left movement must draw our peoples to a correct and revolutionary political alignment in the issue of national freedom in Palestine and Kurdistan in accordance with the reality of regional war. It must make the fascist leader’s policy of supporting our peoples against imperialism and Zionism the subject of political agitation and action. It must raise the action and flag of the Palestinian cause even higher. It must never allow the fascist rulers to pollute the freedom aspirations and values of our peoples for the sake of their dirty ambitions.
Editorial article of the 179th issue of the Voice of the Working Class and the Oppressed, ATILIM newspaper, dated 09 August.