The Israeli and US attacks on Iran must be vehemently condemned. Such reckless exercises of imperial power only bring death and untold suffering in their wake.
Alongside condemnation we also deplore the grotesque use of these attacks to divert attention from other crimes. Once again, Palestine looms large in the equation.
In recent weeks, we witnessed enormous and growing international pressure on Israel to end, or at least slow down the still-ongoing genocide in Gaza. Instead, Israel doubled down, seeking to deflect mounting pressure by shifting focus to its long-planned attacks on Iranian civil, state, and military targets.
For Trump, too, the assault on Iran served a diversionary purpose. Of course, the US has long planned such attacks on Iran, including Biden war-gaming the use of massive bunker buster bombs. But it is also true that an extremely image-conscious Trump has had a stalled domestic agenda, a flop of a military parade, and has floundered against a growing movement of protest and street-level resistance—in particular in Los Angeles, where his use of marines and the National Guard failed to quell protests. As if pouring salt in the wounds, the large national No Kings demonstrations were a further humiliation. It is perhaps no coincidence then that Trump picked this moment to burnish his “tough guy” image by bombing Iran and taking further innocent lives.
In this moment, the anti-war movement needs clarity and boldness. The Democratic Party is of no help in either regard. Having made a home in its own uselessness, its representatives have objected to the bombing on procedural and constitutional rather than moral or political grounds. We need an independent antiwar movement, and one that aligns our anti-imperialism with the aspirations of the oppressed working people of Iran, not their rulers.
It is in this spirit, and just after a highly precarious ceasefire, that Spectre reprints the important “Joint Statement by Independent Labor Organizations in Iran,” issued shortly after Israel launched its air attacks. This is a singularly important example of working-class anti-imperialism. Following that statement, we also link to the petition against war on Iran signed by more than 2,000 Iranian and international academics. It too is an important contribution to strengthening our forces so as to more effectively resist the next round of imperial aggression.
Joint Statement by Independent Labor Organizations in Iran
Given the current unstable and dangerous situation in Iran and the wider region, the undersigned organizations consider it their duty to adopt a collective stance.
The working people of Iran—workers, teachers, nurses, retirees, and other wage earners—have not benefited and will not benefit from war, the spread of militarism, the bombing of the country, or authoritarian and exploitative policies.
Israel’s military attacks and the bombing of hundreds of targets across different parts of Iran—including infrastructure sites, workplaces, refineries, and residential areas—are part of a warmongering agenda for which ordinary people, especially the working class, are paying the price with their lives and livelihoods.
Israel’s claim that it holds no hostility toward the Iranian people is nothing but a lie and political propaganda. Just yesterday, the Israeli Defense Minister threatened to “burn Tehran.” The repeated threats by Trump and other American officials, along with the full support of Western governments for these actions, have only intensified tensions, insecurity, and destruction in the region.
The Israeli and American governments are the main perpetrators of the current genocide in Gaza and many other crimes across the region and the world. Meanwhile, international institutions such as the United Nations—despite their hypocritical claims of promoting peace—remain silent in the face of these atrocities and are part of the same system of domination. The global capitalist system, with its profit-driven logic and imperialist powers, is one of the fundamental causes of war, human disasters, and environmental destruction.
Not only does the Iranian working class gain nothing from these wars—they are directly targeted by them. Ongoing economic sanctions, bloated military budgets, and restrictions on civil liberties lead only to greater poverty, intensified repression, hunger, death, and the displacement of millions.
We, the independent labor and popular organizations and activists of Iran, hold no illusions that the United States and Israel intend to bring us freedom, equality, or justice—just as we hold no illusions about the Islamic Republic’s repressive, interventionist, adventurist, and anti-labor policies and practices.
We, the workers and toilers of Iran, have paid a heavy price over the years to achieve our most basic rights and conditions of life. We have endured imprisonment, torture, execution, expulsion, threats, and beatings, and we are still denied the right to organize, gather, and express ourselves freely. The workers and toilers of this country are justifiably outraged and fed up with the rule of the Islamic Republic and with the capitalists who have accumulated astronomical wealth on our backs for more than four decades, while keeping us in constant insecurity and deprivation. All officials and institutions responsible for the repression and killing of workers, women, youth, and the oppressed in Iran must be prosecuted and held accountable by the oppressed themselves.
Our struggle, as workers, is a social and class struggle. It will continue through reliance on our own strength, in the footsteps of recent movements such as “Bread, Work, Freedom” and “Woman, Life, Freedom,” and with the support of the international working class and all humanitarian, freedom-seeking, and equality oriented forces.
Continuing along the current path of war will bring nothing but further destruction, irreversible environmental damage, and renewed human tragedy. The working class and the oppressed people of Iran—like the oppressed across the region—are the main victims of this situation.
The undersigned organizations call on all labor unions, human rights groups, anti-war coalitions, environmental activists, and peace movements around the world to unite in demanding an immediate end to war, bombings, the killing of innocent people, and the destruction of nature—and to support the struggles of the people of Iran and the wider region against genocide, warmongering, and oppression.
The peoples of the Middle East need an end to the destructive tensions between regional and global powers, and the establishment of lasting peace—a peace in which people can determine their own destiny through organization, mass mobilization, growing protest movements, and direct, collective participation.
No to war. No to warmongering policies.
An immediate ceasefire is our urgent demand.
Signatories:
- Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company Workers’ Union
- Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Workers’ Union
- Khuzestan Retired Workers
- Pensioners’ Union
- Coordination Committee to Help Establish Labor Organizations
- Pensioners’ Union Group
June 17, 2025
Here is the link to the petition, “Stop the war on Iran! For peace, justice and democracy”
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScw95fwoz8GzfVcoP4TK7kG9xNtDQ06SgoGovOL3hUg-E3EZQ/viewform