The barrage of 320 drones and missiles unleashed by Tehran April 13 is the first attack on Israel launched directly from Iranian soil. It is a deliberate and dangerous escalation of the reactionary Iranian regime’s decades of assaults on Israel and its right to exist as a refuge for Jews.
Washington and other imperialist powers, however, arrogantly told Israeli officials they should call this onslaught a “victory” and let it go. Israel — with the assistance of military forces from the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — shot down 99% of the 170 drones and 150 missiles. Tehran’s assault was joined by its so-called axis of resistance partners, who launched attacks from Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.
One Bedouin Arab girl in southern Israel was severely injured by shrapnel from an intercepted Iranian missile, the only reported casualty. The Israeli Air Force Nevatim Airbase sustained light damage.
Before the assault, President Joseph Biden told the press his response to Tehran’s threats was “don’t.” In reality his administration gave the Iranian rulers the green light. The implied “understanding” was that the attack would be carried out in a way that would allow for successful interception, and that no U.S. installations would be targeted.
The Jerusalem Post reports that U.S. officials had been “in constant contact” with Tehran prior to the attack. The White House promised that Washington would not join any Israeli counterattack.
The Iranian regime called the attack a “victorious operation” that would create “a new equation” that “taught the Zionist enemy a lesson.” They also knew that Washington would put maximum pressure on Israel not to respond.
The U.S. government and other imperialist powers accepted Tehran’s stance that the assault was “retaliation” for Israel’s April 1 targeted attack on a building adjacent to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus.
“We showed restraint for six months,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told reporters April 14, referring to Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas after its Oct. 7 pogrom. “It seems that the Israeli regime received the wrong signal from Iran’s restraint.”
The Washington Post, echoing the Biden administration, said that “the attack in Damascus was especially provocative because of its target — a diplomatic compound, traditionally exempted from hostilities — and because it killed two senior generals in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard.”
But this description turns reality on its head. The truth is that the building that Israeli forces struck was, in the words of Israeli Admiral Daniel Hagari, a “military building of the Quds Force,” the foreign operations unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It was adjacent to the embassy, which wasn’t touched. And what was going on in that building had nothing to do with diplomatic relations. To the contrary, Iranian generals and leaders of Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and other murderous opponents of Israel’s existence were meeting to plan a new round of terror attacks on Israel and Jews.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad death squads, organized and financed by Tehran, killed 1,200 people, mostly Jewish civilians, on Oct. 7, wounded more than 5,000 and took more than 240 hostage. It’s the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis during World War II.
Major Gen. Mohammad-Reza Zahedi, the highest ranking of those killed, was the Iranian commander in charge of Tehran’s operations in Lebanon and Syria. Immediately after his death the Coalition Council of Islamic Revolution Forces, one of the Iranian regime’s key political organizations, admitted that Zahedi helped lead the “planning and implementation” of the Oct. 7 assault on Israel. This exposed Tehran’s earlier denials of involvement — echoed by Washington to this day — as a lie.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron are all insisting Israel, in the words of Blinken, must “prevent escalation.” Macron said that world leaders should do “everything we can to avoid flare-ups.”
But the missile barrage wasn’t a “flare-up”! It’s not Israel that is being provocative, but Iran’s capitalist rulers — organizing pogroms and other terror attacks on Jews and Israel, which they call a “cancerous tumor” that must be “uprooted and destroyed.” And then claiming that any Israeli response targeting Iran’s murderous operatives crosses a “red line.”
It’s becoming clearer every day that the imperialist rulers in Washington are not a “friend” of Israel or the Jewish people. Like other capitalist powers, their overriding goal is to defend their own profit-driven economic, political and strategic military interests.
Growing opposition inside Iran
The Washington Post and other liberal media claim the regime in Tehran acted “under pressure” from working people demanding they retaliate against Israel for the death of Zahedi and the others.
But in fact, opposition to Tehran’s military adventures in the region and to the latest attack on Israel is widespread. Over the last several years hundreds of thousands of workers, farmers and youth have taken to the streets of Iran to challenge the repressive actions of the government, its trampling on democratic rights and its expansionary foreign adventures.
The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers Trade Union Associations issued a statement April 14 condemning the missile and drone barrage, saying war “is not in the interest of either of the two nations.”
That same day, hundreds of retirees protested across Iran. According to the Metalworkers union, one speaker at the protest of more than 200 in Kermanshah said workers should “pray that God will rid the earth of liars, warmongers, and those who cause famine and scarcity. … Human society demands peace and reconciliation.”
Rallies organized by the regime to celebrate its attack drew hundreds of loyalists, not thousands.
Worried about the growing opposition, the regime threatened that anyone who expresses support for Israel will face “swift and resolute consequences.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration keeps its fire on Israel, demanding its government agree to a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and give up on defeating and dismantling the remaining Hamas battalions hiding in Rafah.
U.S. demands on Israel boost Hamas
Emboldened by Washington’s pressure on Israel, Hamas has become more intransigent. Its leaders rejected Israel’s offer to pause the war in exchange for the release of 40 of the remaining 95 hostages still believed to be alive. Hamas countered by demanding an immediate and permanent cease-fire with no hostages released until after six more weeks. Hamas claims it needs that time to locate them. This would just give Hamas and Tehran time to rebuild and plan new pogroms.
Biden’s efforts to push Israel back are being debated among his capitalist opponents in the U.S. presidential campaign, all from the standpoint of defending Washington’s imperialist interests. “God bless the people of Israel, they’re under attack right now,” presidential candidate Donald Trump told a Pennsylvania campaign rally April 13. He said Tehran launched its attack on Israel because “we show great weakness.”
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., castigated Biden’s “failure” to talk to “the American public about the historical, moral, and national security imperatives” that has “allowed the Democratic Party to drift away from 80 years of support for Israel.” He added this has “driven the rising tide of antisemitism nationally.”
“The capitalist rulers in the United States are out to defend their own imperialist interests throughout the Middle East,” Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Rachele Fruit said in an April 15 statement. “They don’t act out of concern for Israel, for Jews living there or anywhere else, for the Palestinian people, or for anyone except the propertied families whose class interests and privilege Washington serves and protects.”