War Against Iran: Trump's whim or a link in the strategy of US imperialism?

Let's take a brief look at the first phase of the war, which began on February 28, lasted 40 days, and led to the mutual closure of the Strait of Hormuz. During this phase, the US and Israel "consumed" thousands of missiles of the most diverse types, causing significant destruction in Iran and Lebanon, where the people mourned several thousand dead, including hundreds of young children.

On March 10, 2026, the plenary session of the Central Committee of the KKE, in its Announcement, highlighted that this crime "has nothing to do with the ridiculous and unfounded pretexts used by the imperialists. After all, the same people who talk about "democracy in Iran" and the "destruction of its nuclear program" support authoritarian and theocratic regimes, such as in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the jihadists in Syria and the Taliban in Afghanistan, while expanding their own nuclear arsenal."

And it is a reality that the American imperialists, together with Israel, the state - murderer of the Palestinian people, have not achieved any of the above-declared goals! Neither in terms of the so-called "nuclear program", nor the overthrow of the regime. Iran is not the Iraq of 2003, nor the Libya of 2011, nor the Afghanistan of 2001. Despite the blows, it has maintained the central power structure, it still has a distributed military infrastructure, scattered over a vast area, partly buried in the mountains. It has networks of allied forces in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, which it can utilize. Furthermore, Iran managed to destroy many US bases in the Gulf region, proving that the American imperialists are not invulnerable and omnipotent, as they want to present themselves, in order to cultivate paralysis and fear among the people.

On the contrary, we have seen their impasses grow, after all, the military conflicts themselves highlight the system's inability to resolve its contradictions differently, by peaceful means. The war led to the growth of contradictions within the Euro-Atlantic imperialist bloc, as we all understand from the reluctance of a number of NATO members of the EU to contribute with military means and "cannon fodder" to the war, from which, as the official lips of the EU state, there is a "loss" of many billions for its capitalist economy.

Similar are the attitudes of some of the US allies in the Middle East, even as far away as Japan, whose bourgeoisie also feels threatened by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by an energy "thirst". Even the bourgeoisie in Taiwan, in this island-state, which is the "Mecca" of modern chips (semiconductors), is worried, according to reports, about whether the US is able to defend it due to the deterioration of a significant part of its munitions, in the event of a war escalation with China, which considers it its own territory and proposes its integration.

Seeing the above developments, there was no shortage of bourgeois analysts who spoke of a defeat for the US, while the Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, assessed that the US “ obviously entered this war without any strategy” and that it “ is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership ”. Let us recall that similar accusations, that it “has no strategy”, have been heard for 5 years about the EU leadership regarding its stance on the Russian-Ukrainian war and more generally towards Russia.

These mutual accusations between the US and the EU are characteristic of the disagreements that have arisen in the Euro-Atlantic imperialist camp , especially over who should be their primary adversary (China, as Trump believes, or Russia, as the current dominant tendency in the EU leadership believes), but they are exploited by the mechanisms of the system in our country as well, in order to create the feeling that the war is due to the incompetence of some political leaders or to the psychological problems of the American President, which have led us to a generally and vaguely "chaotic situation" . And here there is a plan , which aims for broader popular forces to initially face the developments passively and fearfully, to believe that they are powerless to influence. Through this sense of fear and passivity, an attempt is then made to "build" the need for "national unity", that is, active mobilization towards "national goals" - as the bourgeois classes call their pursuits.

The issue was also addressed in a similar way by various opportunists of the so-called "World Anti-Imperialist Platform" (WAP), who have divorced themselves from the laws of the Marxist-Leninist worldview and go so far as to consider the anti-monarchist uprising of 1979, which overthrew the Shah in Iran, to be a Revolution. Forces like the WAP, which on the one hand call for "tactical cooperation" with Trump against the forces of globalization and on the other fantasize about an alleged "anti-imperialist axis", as they describe the Eurasian imperialist axis under formation, led by capitalist China, which defeats the USA.

Such an interpretation not only fails to take into account the popular saying "It ain't over till it's over", but also underestimates the opponent (American imperialism). It accepts the pretexts that it uses in the war as its real causes, when the imperialists have other real plans and goals, which they usually do not make public, not only because they may be complex, multi-layered, but also too cynical for "public consumption".

We communists were taught by Lenin and know very well that " war is the continuation of politics by violent means", and this also applies to this imperialist war, whose real goal is none other than the control of oil, natural gas, all wealth-producing sources , as well as the energy and trade routes of a wider region, the geopolitical supports, everything that determines the market shares between the monopolies and the bourgeoisie, against the backdrop of the great conflict between the USA and China for primacy in the global capitalist system.

Specifically for the region we are talking about, we know that Iran maintains strategic relations with China, is an important supplier of fuel and is integrated into the Chinese trade "Silk Road", in competition with the planned Indian trade route, Mumbai, the Middle East, Europe. These are critical issues for American imperialism, and not "democracy", or "nuclear" in Iran. The Straits of Hormuz, which now remain largely closed, are more than a vital shipping route. It is a critical energy checkpoint on the planet, especially for Asia, since about 20% of the world's oil and about 17% of the world's liquefied natural gas pass through them. Most of this oil and gas (over 80%-85%) goes to Asia and only 10%-15% to Europe, while the US, which is a major producer, does not experience direct consequences.

On the contrary, the consequences are felt by both the EU and the capitalist economies of Asia, including China, in contrast to the fuel producers and exporters (the USA and Russia), who are gaining. It should be noted here that China, which also maintains significant economic and trade relations with the other Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and even Israel, seems to be looking forward to a relative normalization of its trade war with the USA in the context of Trump's upcoming visit to Beijing. In practice, up to this point, the US, without having been involved in land operations, without having thousands of dead, as they had in Korea, Vietnam, or more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, by "strangulating" Hormuz, has formed a "global asymmetry", from which they benefit at the expense of their main competitors, also pressuring their allies in Europe, but also approaching Russia, which also sees direct benefits from this development.

For reasons of space economy, we will not refer in this article to other consequences, such as the issue of fertilizers, the situation that this shapes for the food situation on the planet, as well as the monopolies of which countries benefit, and we will also not touch on other aspects regarding the triangle of relations "USA - Russia - Iran". We will seek to stick to highlighting the basic direction of developments.

The moment when the war against Iran broke out does not seem to have been merely accidental and unplanned .

At the beginning of the year, the passage of the crucial Panama Canal trade channel (5% of world trade) to American companies was completed. The expulsion of Chinese companies had begun almost a year earlier and in early 2026, the Panamanian Supreme Court annulled the contracts of the Chinese monopolies, paving the way for American ones.

At the same time, the blatant and condemnable imperialist intervention of the US in Venezuela took place, with the arrest of the country's President, a development that could not have happened if it had not had the support of the rest of the social democratic leadership of that country. The US took control of the rich oil fields of the country, which was a key ally of China in Latin America and its supplier of energy.

Last month, the US signed a military agreement with Indonesia, with a focus on protecting the Straits of Malacca, through which 25%-30% of global maritime trade and a large part of China's supplies pass.

Construction of the so-called "Trump Corridor" is expected to begin in 2026, the narrow land corridor that Armenia granted to the US for 99 years and will connect Central Asia with Europe, driving a "wedge" into one of the land routes of the Chinese "Silk Road", while another main route, the one through Russia, has been "frozen" due to the war in Ukraine.

The developments with the closure of Hormuz mean that China is paying the price of this instability every day through rising energy prices, through supply chain disruptions, which are affecting industrial planning. At the same time, American energy monopolies are selling their energy resources on the market at higher prices.

Of course, each case may have its own particularities, such as, for example, the attack on Cuba and the attempt to economically strangle its people also serve the ideological-political goal of overthrowing the Cuban Revolution and its conquests, while the attempt to annex Greenland is linked to access to the wealth of the Arctic and new trade routes through it.

However, all of the above is part of the same US strategy, which aims to weaken or even acquire the geopolitical supports of its competitors, to control sources of Energy and other critical raw materials , as well as important global transport and commodity channels. This line is also outlined and formulated in various ways in the US National Security Strategy, published in January 2026. The US goal is to maintain its leading position in the global imperialist system, at a time when its primacy is being shaken by China.

The fact that Trump often says one thing and does another, or that he appears threatening in every direction, that one day he says he is signing an agreement or a military operation and the next he retracts it, is not schizophrenia or inconsistency. It is a result of the difficulties that the US is experiencing as well as a negotiating tactic that has been chosen by the American leadership to create maximum uncertainty about its intentions, so that their competitors cannot accurately calculate the final outcome, creating conditions for many different possible scenarios of developments, which in any case, however, will serve the above-mentioned basic goal, namely the preservation of US primacy at all costs.

And while the contradictions we see today between the US - EU and within NATO appear on the surface to be a choice of Trump's personal policy, in reality something deeper is happening. The Resolution of the recent 22nd Congress of the KKE notes, among other things: "In every imperialist alliance, contradictions manifest themselves, caused by the anarchy of production, uneven capitalist development and unequal relations between capitalist states. The exacerbation of inter-imperialist contradictions may widen existing cracks in the "Euro-Atlantic axis" in the coming years."

Furthermore, it must be emphasized that imperialist aggression is not a privilege of American imperialism, as we see in the cases of the military conflict between the EU - NATO and Russia on the territories of Ukraine, or of China's "9-dash policy", through which it challenges the sovereign rights of countries in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia). That is why the " dilemma "Euro-Atlantic or Eurasian camp" is false, it is directed against the interests of the working class, the peoples, it undermines their independent ideological-political struggle for the overthrow of capitalism, for socialism-communism ", as noted by the 22nd Congress of the KKE.

Every bourgeoisie manifests its aggression, first of all against the working class and the popular strata of its country, as well as against other peoples, to the extent of its power. This also applies to the bourgeoisie of Greece, which today is deeply concerned about the crisis in US-EU relations, since for many decades its aggression "ridden" the specific imperialist "horses" and seeks to "slide" into new alliances, which will secure its power and aggressive interests, which have nothing to do with the interests of the Greek people.

As the Resolution of the 22nd Congress of the KKE notes: "Alliances may change, be rearranged, but the basic element that determines their class character (...) is the economic basis of the capitalist states that constitute them, that is, the dominance of monopolies and their interests."

A real victory for the working class and the popular strata is to transform the massive popular challenge to the New Democracy government into a comprehensive challenge to political participation in the imperialist plans and alliances, implemented by all governments to date, as well as by the parties that essentially support the same policies that serve the capitalist system. For workers' and popular interests, the only way forward is the KKE's proposal for the formation of conditions for the overthrow of capitalist barbarity and the construction of a new society, without exploitation of man by man and imperialist wars, a socialist-communist society.

*The article was published in Rizospastis, organ of the CC of the KKE, on the weekend edition 9-10 of May 2026