As you read this, Trump—the fascist head of the U.S.—may be massively escalating horrific war crimes against the 93 million people in Iran. Trump has vowed to demolish Iran’s power plants and essentially poison its supply of fresh water if they don’t meet his demands by Tuesday night, April 7. This thug has repeatedly threatened to send the Iranian people “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.” Sunday he posted threats on social media telling the Iranian government to “open the fuckin’ strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell.”

Trump—the head of the only government ever to use nuclear weapons and which possesses over 3,500 of them today—says this is justified because Iran might one day itself possess a nuclear bomb. Trump does this in alliance with Netanyahu, the bloodthirsty head of Israel—a country which itself has nearly 200 nuclear weapons and which carried out a genocide against Palestinian people before the eyes of the world, killing or seriously injuring over 10 percent of the population of Gaza in the past 2 ½ years.¹

But having failed so far to knock out the Iranian regime, the U.S. has now set out to destroy the Iranian people themselves. This is a massive crime. If people in America cannot locate their consciences and stand up to oppose it, it is their crime too—it is complicity. Yes, the regime in Iran is a reactionary repressive regime.  We revcoms have politically supported revolutionaries in Iran and the heroic resistance of millions through more than five decades—and we continue to do so. 

But we live here, in this belly of this beast, as do most of you reading this—and the horror already going on and far greater horror being threatened in our name in Iran is our responsibility. The silence right now is thunderous,  shameful, and must stop. 

We urgently call on everyone reading this to join the call for demonstrations beginning Tuesday afternoon against this Trump's threatened horrific escalation.

What Is the Real Reason For This War?

But let’s cut deeper, to the “why” of the war. Again, Iran has no nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. and Israel just waged war on Iran less than a year ago when on June 1, 2025, they bombed at least three of Iran’s facilities for nuclear research and developing nuclear energy. Trump claimed then that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” Now, less than a year later, they have to do it again? Bullshit.

In reality, Trump’s real reasons cannot be understood apart from the worldwide system of capitalism- imperialism, its character, and the U.S. position within it. What Iran does have is not “nuclear capability” but  huge oil and natural gas reserves,² over 90 million people, and a strategic geographic position at the crossroads between Asia, Africa, and Europe. 

All this takes place in a world dominated by the system of capitalism-imperialism. It is a system driven by the expand-or-die logic of capitalism, in which big sharks eat little sharks…or get eaten themselves. It is a system of international empire where billions of people work in global sweatshops, mines or plantations, including 138 million children in 2024³—and where “eat or be eaten” applies on an international scale. It is a system that feeds off of and reinforces savage inequalities within the U.S.—not just or even mainly economic, but oppressive inequalities of patriarchy, of white supremacy, of anti-immigrant xenophobia. It is a system now ruled by fascists, in which even the relatively minor concessions of the past 80 years to the struggles against oppression have been wiped out with the stroke of a presidential pen.

This is the system that is now threatening war crimes and potentially genocidal attacks in Iran. And this is the system that was at the root of the U.S. wars and proxy wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Panama, El Salvador, Lebanon, Vietnam and Korea—wars that have taken the lives of nearly 15 million people, just since World War II. This is the system that now threatens nuclear war between superpower imperialist rivals, as spending on nuclear weapons spirals upward in the U.S., China and Russia. 

For the past period, the Iranian regime has been hostile to the U.S. and increasingly aligned itself with America’s “up-and-coming” imperialist rivals: China, as well as Russia. To the capitalist-imperialist rulers of the U.S.—including many who may oppose Trump himself—this is intolerable, and so this war goes on. 

And let’s be very clear on what that could possibly mean, even very directly. Fawaz Gerges, professor at the London School of Economics, told the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations this past weekend, specifically in relation to this crisis, that "I could easily imagine a scenario where the United States and China find themselves at war." This is why we say this war could be even more dangerous that it already is. 

At what point do we realize that this system has, to echo the title of the recent talk from the revolutionary leader and breakthrough thinker Bob Avakian, brought humanity to the brink of the abyss...and that this war is making the gaping chasm of that abyss all the more immediate. 

The Way Out Of This Madness

We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. And it is a scientific fact that humanity does not have to live this way.—Bob Avakian

This insanity and this suffering is not necessary. We—humanity—could do so much better. The very knowledge and technology that now makes life a terror for our fellow humans in Iran, that is now being harnessed to dominate, surveil, addict, terrorize, imprison and murder people on every continent… that is now devoted to deeper exploitation and more pervasive oppression... that knowledge and technology could be transformed to meet the needs of humanity as part of a project of human emancipation.

But that will take revolution—all-the-way revolution—to bring in an entirely new system with entirely different relations between people and fundamentally different moral values.

Bob Avakian has developed a strategy for revolution and a scientific analysis that peers beneath the surface to show the real and actually heightened possibility of revolution in this time—and the way to seize that time. And BA has authored The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—a Constitution that will provide a sweeping vision, firm foundation and concrete blueprint for the new society brought into being by this revolution. 

This Constitution boldly states:

The new socialist government will not develop or use nuclear weapons and will take concrete steps and wage determined struggle to abolish nuclear weapons everywhere, with the ultimate goal of finally abolishing wars among human beings, with the abolition of the capitalist-imperialist system, and all systems and relations of exploitation and oppression, which are the basis for wars. This new socialist government will move, quickly, systematically and effectively, to address the already acute and fast accelerating environmental crisis, with the aim of bringing into being a world where humanity can truly be fit caretakers of the earth.

This future is possible. It will take hard work, hard thinking and hard fighting. But it is a future worth fighting for.  And the future it is up against, being rapidly brought into being, is a nightmare beyond our imaginations. 

[For a deeper understanding of the dynamics that compel the system of capitalism-imperialism, we recommend that readers go here, here, and here.]