Tag: war

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Stop the Attack on Iran – No more War in the Middle East

UCU Left statement

We condemn the attack on Iran by the US and Israel. 

The US under Donald Trump is attacking country after country. Trump has unleashed ICE thugs on Americans. He will not bring democracy to Iran: he does not support democracy in the USA.

Bombing Iran will not support the movement for ‘Women, life, freedom.’ Trump is attacking women’s rights to healthcare, employment and equality in the USA and worldwide.

Opposing war does not mean support for the Iranian regime. The future of Iran must be decided by the Iranian people. They will not be liberated by bombs dropped from 30,000 feet. The dreadful US missile strike on a girl’s elementary school in southern Iran exposes the real consequences of Donald Trump’s war.

Bombing Iran does not make the Middle East safer. 

The excuse given by Trump for launching the attack on Iran was the failure of Iranian leaders to not agree to pursue a nuclear capacity. Whilst the threat of nuclear Armageddon is real, the main driver towards such a catastrophe is from the US, the only state to use nuclear weapons, and Israel, the only Middle East state that possesses nuclear weapons.

The Iranian state has shown it can retaliate against Israel and other US allies. 

The Islamic Republic will not fall because it has lost a leader. The government is strong, and the country is huge. Iran has over double the population of Iraq, and twice the landmass. 

Bombing Iran will not bring democracy closer in Iran or the wider Middle East. Every bomb dropped and every civilian who dies strengthens the targeted government. Every conscript killed becomes a martyr and strengthens nationalism.

UCU Left condemns these murderous and reckless acts. They are causing death and destruction in Iran and threaten wider war across the region. 

 As trade unionists in Britain, our first duty is to call for an immediate halt to this war. We condemn our government for supporting Trump’s war and for allowing Trump to use British military bases.

Donald Trump has said that American lives will be lost for his ‘noble’ cause. But as usual it will not be the children of the rich who suffer or die. Working class Americans will pay the ultimate price for Trump’s expansionism.

We call on all of our supporters to organise and build the protests against the war on Iran.

Suggested branch motion

This branch notes

  1. The attack by the US and Israel on Iran began on 27 February, while both sides were ostensibly in nuclear negotiations.
  2. Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrine explicitly prioritises US corporations’ interests above all else. Trump seeks to avoid ‘forever wars’ like Afghanistan (nearly 20 years) and Iraq (8 years, 8 months). So far this doctrine has translated into targeted strikes against leaders and military installations but not invading troops.
  3. The attack has been condemned by the UN Secretary General; Brazil, Turkey, Oman and Russia, as well as US lawmakers. But Keir Starmer has sent war planes to shoot down Iranian missiles, and offered British bases to the US, all the time approving US military actions while urging Iranian ‘restraint’.

This branch believes

  1. Bombing is not a route to democracy. The history of bombing campaigns is that they kill civilians and strengthen states’ hold over their people. 
  2. The first duty of trade unionists in the UK is to call for an immediate end to the war, and oppose the actions of our own government in enabling it. 

This branch resolves

  1. To call on members to oppose war on Iran and to join protests against it called by the Stop the War Coalition and CND. 
  2. To send messages of solidarity to Iranian trade unions, including the Iranian Teachers Trade Association (a member of Education International, to which UCU is affiliated).
  3. To call on UCU nationally to do likewise.
  4. To send a version of this motion to UCU Congress.* 

*Note re: the final resolves – “a version of” here is to deal with the 150 word limit.

See also

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Stop the Bombing of Iran: This is ‘Regime Change,’ Not Liberation

US and Israel’s decision to bomb Iran has put the world in a very dangerous place. Trump’s initial address, informing the world that military action had started, claimed that this was an attack to ‘liberate the people of Iran.’ Nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead this action could very easily spiral into a wider conflagration, not just in the Middle East but across the world.

The brave mass movement in Iran against Khamenei’s rule only two months ago left the regime vulnerable. Trump and Netanyahu saw an opportunity to rid the Middle East of a state they see as the major obstacle to their control of the oil fields — and their political domination of the region.

The excuse for the attack was the apparent failure of Iran to commit to not producing its own nuclear capability. The arms race and the fear of nuclear annihilation is a real one. But the main driver of the potential of nuclear Armageddon is not Iran but the US and Israel. The US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons, and Israel is the sole nuclear power in the Middle East. The recent actions of the Israeli government in carrying out a genocide of the Palestinian people show it would not flinch from using even more barbaric means to further Israeli state interests.

History repeats itself

Trump framed the rationale for the attacks in his speech historically. He referenced 1979, when a revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran, the US-backed dictator. But this war is not about the liberation of Iranian people today. It is much more motivated by revenge for the loss of US interests in the region nearly 50 years ago.

The real aim of this war is regime change. The US have a long history of such attempts to further US interests in the region. In 1953, backed by the UK, the democratically-elected Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. The US replaced him with the pro-US absolute monarch, the Shah of Iran, who ruled as a dictator until 1979 with the support of the US and Britain.  

In 1979, a workers revolution ousted the West’s puppet. But the main beneficiary of the revolution was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who ushered in an Islamic state.

It is this history that Trump is trying to reverse, to make Iran once again the playground of American corporations and US interests.

Does anyone seriously believe if the people of Iran took Trump’s word and rose up and took matters into their own hands and re-established the shuras (workers councils, the democratic working class organisations that sprang up out of the revolution in 1979), he would welcome them?

We only have to see how he is trying to deal with working class opposition in the US to get the answer to this question!

Liberation does not come from dropping bombs at 30,000 feet. It only can come from Iranian workers themselves. In fact, the bombing will make it far more difficult for real democratic working class forces to emerge to take control over their own lives.

Trump’s ‘forever wars’ are a sign of his weakness

Whilst Trump’s primary reason for the attack on Iran is the ‘America First’ doctrine of reshaping the global world order in US interests, his weaknesses at home are a secondary but not insignificant factor.

Last September, Trump delivered a speech to his top military stating that the United States was facing an ‘invasion from within’, and that the military must prepare to fight this enemy at home, rather than engaging in wars abroad. Instead US troops would be deployed to sort out the ongoing problems confronted by ‘ordinary’ Americans.

This speech was a recognition that that the US could not continue with the failures of the ‘forever wars’. From Vietnam to Iran, from Afghanistan to the occupation of Iraq, the US has shown it is not invincible. In fact these military adventures revealed the weakness of the US’s ability to police the globe in the way it once could.

This reflected the line that Trump has given to his MAGA base about ending ‘forever wars’ and an attempt to reassure this base that these promises were being kept, especially in light of growing criticism about the Epstein files.

Fast forward a few months from this speech, and we have seen threats to annex Greenland, the kidnapping  of the Venezuelan President and his wife, and now an attempt at regime change in Iran backed by enormous military firepower.

So why the turnaround? In part, the action in Venezuela and threats to Greenland represent an attempt to halt long term US economic decline by asserting control over resources and trade in the US’s backyard, what Trump has labelled the ‘Western hemisphere’. This strategy was outlined in the US National Security strategy in November 2025.

The action in Iran in part reflects Trump’s willingness, emboldened by his ‘success’ in Venzuela (and egged on by Netanyahu), to seize advantage of an opportunity to take back control of a country seen as key to America’s interests in the Middle East. This opportunity was created by Israel’s wiping out of the Hamas leadership, weakening of Hezbollah and Houthi rebels, and the genocide of the Palestinian people. The bloody suppression of the mass uprising in Iran then provided the excuse.

The attack on Iran is also a response to the growing unrest in the US itself to Trump. The magnificent resistance to ICE across the US has thrown Trump on the back foot. The ongoing scandal about the Epstein files has meant that a war abroad is seen by Trump as an opportunity to unite his base, providing a distraction from his growing domestic problems.

This is a dangerous gamble for Trump. In his speech informing the world of the war on Iran  he warned that American lives will be lost for this ‘noble’ cause. Even before body bags start to arrive back on US soil, many Americans are asking what is the justification for another ‘forever war’, and ‘why is it our kids and not yours that are going to die for this ‘noble’ cause?’

Working class Americans will pay for this war in an increase in petrol and food prices and cuts in their wages.

Trump’s realignment of the world order is working in one important sense. Trump gains confidence to continue his ‘forever wars’ because every time he invades another country (breaking international laws and agreements), he faces no real opposition from other Western leaders. NATO countries have increased their arms spending, enabling Trump’s New World Order. Mainstream political leaders may complain, some may utter some words of criticism, but most have gone along with him.

Keir Starmer has allowed Trump to attack Iran from British bases ‘defensively’, targeting Iranian missile sites. This will mean more atrocities like the bombing of a school in Minab in Southern Iran, because Iran will move missile launchers and bombs will go astray. It will also mean that British bases like Akrotiri become targets.

We must build a movement that demands of our government that Starmer opposes Trump’s ‘forever wars’. We must demand a stop to the bombing of Iran now.

We should organise local protests and emergency branch meetings to pass motions calling on our government to not assist with Trump’s wars and call for an end to the bombing now.

– Sean Vernell, UCU

See also