By Jim McMahan
March 27, 2026
Iranian resistance to the U.S-Israeli war is exposing the galaxy of U.S. imperialist states and installations in West Asia. This headlong and unprovoked military attack by the U.S. and Israel against a resistant Iran exposes the totality of state, oil and military interests involved in the exploitation and genocide of the peoples of West Asia.
Iranians demonstrate support for their government, March 25, 2026.
The war again shows it is a war for oil profits against the people who resist U.S. exploitive interests, from Iran to Palestine. It shows that there is a bloody 100-year history by Western imperialism to gain control of the Gulf region. Its aim is to bring home profits to the titans of U.S. corporate imperialism — the U.S. oil monopolies.
Israel is a well-armed garrison state targeting the Arab and Iranian revolutions and independence movements of the region. But the Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) are now exposed as defenders of Big Oil and U.S. military occupation states, while the workers in these countries, most of them migrants, are impoverished.
Iraq and Iran both have coasts on the Gulf, but they are excluded from the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Israel now faces bombardment
Israel, which played a leading role in last June’s 12-day war of bombing Iran and its current bombardment, now also finds itself being bombarded. Tel Aviv, Israel’s major city, is heavily damaged, and much of Israel has been on the receiving end of Iran’s missiles and drones. On March 21, two Iranian missiles were reported as having struck near Israel’s nuclear weapons site.
This near hit underlines Israel’s possession of an estimated 200 nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Iran has none and has pledged to never build one.
The Gulf states are artificial nations created long ago by the British Colonial Office. U.S. imperialism “inherited” them from the declining British Empire. These states have over one-third of the world’s oil wealth. U.S. and Western imperialism dominate the Gulf oil industry, and U.S. companies have been making super profits for generations on the backs of Arab and migrant workers.
The 15 top imperialist oil and natural gas companies made $173 billion in profits in 2023. ExxonMobil and Chevron led the pack with $36 billion and $21 billion in profits, respectively. Closely allied with Big Oil are the imperialist banks — JPMorganChase, Citigroup and others.
The role of petrodollars
On top of the giant profits directly absorbed by Big Oil, the U.S. demands a program of recycling its oil profits in payments called petrodollars through the royalist Gulf states. The oil monopolies pay the Gulf states, and the dollars are recycled through Western banks. They are then used to buy such things as armaments from military companies like Boeing and Northrop Grumman.
The Gulf states’ purchases include construction materials, technology and other resources for futuristic cities, oil infrastructure and fleets of airplanes from Boeing and Airbus. Imperialism offered the Gulf states an exalted status compared with the countries of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, which have a greater population.
Migrant labor from Asia and Africa outnumbers the local population in most of the Gulf states. The contract labor workers experience wage theft and grueling working hours. Thousands of the migrant construction workers have died in Saudi Arabia in the construction of Neom, a flagship megacity.
Aligned against Iran and occupying the Gulf states are 50,000 U.S. troops, most of whom are permanently stationed in the regional countries. More U.S. troops are on the way. A vast armada of U.S. Naval ships and warplanes bomb Iran with drones and missiles, driven by imperialist oil greed.
Iran is defending itself and has closed the Strait of Hormuz. Like workers on strike picketing in defense of their livelihoods, the Iranians have blocked imperialist oil shipments from leaving the Persian Gulf until the U.S. and Israel end their campaign of permanent warfare and sanctions against them.
In carrying out their revolution in 1978 and 1979, tens of thousands of Iranians marched every day in cities all over the country against the hated U.S.-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. They defied the Shah’s troops, who turned machine guns on them. A monarch like all the rest, the Shah had helped the U.S. overthrow the democratic Mossadegh government in 1953 and put the Iranian nationalized oil back into the hands of the U.S. and the British corporations.
The growing impoverished Iranian working class held huge strikes, including general strikes in the oil fields until the Shah was brought down in February 1979. The victorious Islamic Republic of Iran expelled the imperialist corporations from the country.
The greatest supporter of Palestine is Iran. This is the country that U.S. imperialism, which is now displaying its bankruptcy, faces. As the war that the U.S.-Israeli cabal launched takes the shape of a world war, the working class worldwide will begin to see that its interests are aligned with those of Iran.
