By Larry Holmes
May 21, 2026

The writer is Workers World Party’s First Secretary.

Workers World Party’s position on the Iran war is straightforward and premised on the theoretical tradition of Vladimir Lenin and Sam Marcy, the late chairperson of WWP. The Party unconditionally supports the Islamic Republic of Iran in this war. The political and strategic premise of our position is basic and revolutionary. It is to do what is required to aid the struggle and victory of the oppressed people, while forging solidarity between the working-class movement and the oppressed in a way that strengthens the class struggle and helps pave the road to socialist revolution.

This strategy flows from our understanding of the relationship of the working class and revolutionary vanguard forces in the workers movement to the struggle against colonial oppression and for the right to self-determination.

Without this orientation in both theory and practice, there can be no revolutionary core in the working-class movement that is genuinely fighting for that which is essential to victories for our class — that is the highest level of solidarity between the workers and the oppressed. Because of what is at stake for the class struggle, revolutionary forces are obliged to distinguish their position from others in the mass movement who hold views influenced by the imperialists and to fight for the revolutionary position within the movement.

Regarding the class and religious character of the Iranian government, we communists have vastly different politics and goals. We would prefer that the revolutionary, working-class organizations or countries and communists be in the leadership of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialism struggle worldwide. Our preference is a prospect in the making, whose development may be further along than we realize.

However, we are revolutionaries whose actions are not based on what we would prefer, but on the present realities of the struggle. To act otherwise would render us useless to the real life struggle.

Left forces that feel they must make a big public deal out of their differences with or their criticisms of the Iranian government, and use such criticisms as an excuse not to support Iran defending itself against an imperialist, colonial war, are in effect providing a “left“ cover for the war.

Our approach to the struggle against the war on Iran is political and practical. We will work most closely with forces that share our view. Our priority is building a strong, ant-imperialist front that is in solidarity with resistance forces around the world. We will work with other antiwar forces who do not have our politics, but we refuse to conceal our politics as a price for working with other forces.

It is also our critical task to continue developing and perfecting how we explain Iran to the working class, as well as our strategies for bringing workers into the anti-imperialist struggle.

This is a very short and basic interpretation of a Leninist and Marcyist view on these questions.

Still, party positions can’t be taken for granted. They must be reviewed and clarified in relation to new events even if that requires the airing of differences and some internal political struggle. Ultimately, that’s one of the only ways that the party gets politically stronger.

There is no need to comment at this moment on all the back and forth between Iran, the U.S. and other countries or the tortured machinations that the Trump regime is engaged in to achieve the impossible task of finding a way out of the war that conceals its defeat and its responsibility for the global economic catastrophe that it’s caused.

The weakening of U.S. empire

Something remarkable has happened. Something that has irreversibly altered the world situation. No matter what happens in the coming days, weeks and months, Iran has defeated and weakened the U.S. imperialist empire and Israel. The people of the world, especially the Global South, are rejoicing. Not only Iran, but all of the forces of resistance and liberation everywhere are stronger.

This impacts everything in the entire world, not only later but immediately. What is the contemporary historical context of this war that was not only against Iran, the Palestinians and resistance forces throughout West Asia but also China, Russia and any and all of those anywhere opposed to U.S. imperialist hegemony? First there is the decline of the U.S. imperialist empire, which is at its weakest point in its entire history. Add to that the decline of the rest of the crisis-ridden, western imperialist powers. Then there is the rise of China and the significance of that for the momentum of the Global South’s prevailing rebellion against U.S. imperialist hegemony.

And top it all off with the interrelated advanced descent of end stage capitalism and the onset of the devastating world economic crisis, which is undeniable and inescapable. It is a safe bet that the U.S. and its junior partner Israel’s war against Iran will be viewed by the imperialists, the workers and the oppressed and every country as a major downward turning point for U.S. imperialism.

What’s occurring right before everyone is incredible. Whether we reference the devastating defeat of U.S. imperialism with the combined significance of all previous anti-colonial struggles and victories of the former Soviet Union and socialist camp, all of that which occurred in the past did not pose an immediate and existential threat to the survival of the U.S. empire, because then, the empire was much stronger. Today’s events pose precisely such an existential threat to a far weaker and crumbling empire. Iran has proved that even the empire’s lethal war machine cannot save it.

The party’s priority should be thinking about and strategizing in preparation for the next phase of the world class struggle that the war is ushering in. An even bigger, world-defining struggle is coming. How will it impact the working class and the movement here? Is the struggle to defeat the U.S. empire the beginning of a complex and uneven, transformational period in the world struggle and here, one that revives on a wholly different level the struggle not merely to oppose but to end capitalism?

World events are provoking or forcing social and political forces everywhere on opposite sides of the class barricades to wonder what comes after the demise of the U.S. empire and the old world order. It is as if the entire conscious world is either wondering what the world order will be or planning a fight for what they want the world to be.

Will the world situation bring about new geopolitical alliances and struggles? Will class struggle become a decisive factor? When you consider ever rapid, shocking and often violent social, economic, technological and political changes in the context of an updated theory of Marx’s historical materialism, what would it reveal? Given all of this, conditions create, almost beg for, a rebirth and reformation of forces dedicated to world socialist revolution who are prepared to open a new struggle informed by the new world situation.