Israeli blows to Tehran, Hamas, Hezbollah open space for toilers

By Seth Galinsky
January 27, 2025
Jew-hating cartoon published by Iran’s Tasnim news agency quotes Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who said America and Zionist regime’s idea that the “resistance” is over is completely wrong. “The one who will be uprooted is Israel.”
Jew-hating cartoon published by Iran’s Tasnim news agency quotes Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who said America and Zionist regime’s idea that the “resistance” is over is completely wrong. “The one who will be uprooted is Israel.”

The overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, hastened by Israel’s blows to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, has dealt blows to the reactionary bourgeois regime in Iran and its allies throughout the region.

Israel and Hamas are reported to have reached a ceasefire and hostage release agreement Jan. 15, the formal announcement of which has yet to be made as the Militant goes to press.

Israel’s victories have helped widen the space for working people in the region to organize in defense of their own interests.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claimed in mid-December that the idea that Tehran’s “resistance” has been defeated is mistaken and “the one who will be uprooted is Israel.”

Making it crystal clear that Jew-hatred and the eradication of Israel are central to his regime, its Tasnim news agency featured a cartoon with Khamenei’s quote, showing a giant hand pulling out weeds and snakes from a map of Israel and replacing them with a Palestinian flag. The snake heads sport Stars of David.

Despite Khamenei’s pronouncement, two generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been widely quoted in the official press describing the depth of the blows inflicted on Tehran.

“We lost Syria, we suffered,” Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati, who led the Iranian forces in Syria for years, said at the end of December, calling Assad’s overthrow a “very bad defeat.”

Assad’s rule was challenged in a bloody civil war after he brutally crushed mass protests in 2011. He hung on to power with military support from Tehran and Hezbollah and Moscow’s airstrikes against his opponents.

Esbati admitted that Assad’s government was “a handful of corrupt, depraved individuals,” “alienated” from the people, though he says not a word about the tens of thousands tortured and murdered by the dictatorship.

As the Sunni-Islamist rebel forces advanced toward Damascus, the remaining Iranian and Hezbollah forces hastily withdrew. “The road from Damascus to Beirut was littered with destroyed military vehicles including tanks and mobile rocket launchers,” reports the Wall Street Journal. A large amount of military equipment was later blown up by Israel with some captured by the rebels.

General, ‘We can’t strike Israel’

The Iranian regime has repeatedly threatened to “raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground” and launched two missile barrages at Israel last year in retaliation for Israeli strikes killing leaders of Tehran’s “axis of resistance.” But today, Esbati said, the Iranian regime no longer has the ability to strike Israel. An Israeli raid destroyed the centerpieces of Iran’s air defense systems in October.

The regime’s defeats are having an impact on the morale of the Basij, a paramilitary force that has been a key part of the regime’s attempts to repress anti-government protests.

Brig. Gen. Hassan Hassanzadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran, said a Jan. 10 drill by the Basij fell far short of the expected attendance, despite the usual distribution of free food to all participants and “wedding gift packages” for those about to get married. Many “declined to participate,” Hassanzadeh said, adding that “this is a trend that we have seen increase since the events in Syria.”

The blows to Tehran’s allies in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria occur as the capitalist economic crisis hitting workers in Iran gets worse. Workers say that the minimum wage only covers 25% of monthly expenses. “We can’t afford meat or chicken,” a worker at a vegetable oil factory in Kerman province told the Iranian Labour News Agency. There are frequent protests by oil workers, nurses, retirees and others, as well as weekly protests in prisons against the death penalty.

At the weekly retiree actions in Ahvaz Jan. 12, protesters chanted “Enough warmongering, our table is empty,” “the enemy is here, not in America,” and “forget about the hijab, do something about inflation,” a reference to the regime’s attempts to enforce its reactionary dress code on women.

Shake up in Lebanon

The defeats dealt Tehran and Hezbollah are also shaking up the Lebanese government. For more than two years the parliament there has been unable to agree on electing a new president. Under a decadeslong deal, the prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim, the president a Christian and the parliament speaker a Shiite. Hezbollah, better armed than the Lebanese Army, dominated the country and was often able to impose its will.

But in the wake of its losses to Israel, Hezbollah withdrew its favored candidate, reluctantly agreeing to the election of Gen. Joseph Aoun. He is the first president to take office since 1990 without the prior approval of Tehran or the ousted Assad regime. The U.S., Saudi and Israeli governments welcomed Aoun’s selection.

Ceasefire, hostage deal

The blows to Tehran, Hamas and Hezbollah forced Hamas back to the negotiating table with Israel. According to U.S., Qatari and Israeli officials, Hamas agreed Jan. 15 to a deal that includes the start of a six-week initial ceasefire from Jan. 19.

According to news reports, in the first phase Hamas is to free 33 hostages, in batches, starting with women and children, in exchange for some 1,000 Palestinians convicted or accused of terrorist acts by Israel and a withdrawal of some Israeli soldiers from parts of Gaza. The second phase would include more talks over further IDF withdrawals while Hamas would release the remaining living captives in exchange for more prisoners.

The plan for a ceasefire highlights the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in the fight to defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews and to prevent Hamas and Tehran from carrying out more pogroms.

Working people — Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Kurdish, Azerbaijani, Persian and more — from Israel to Syria and beyond can take advantage of the blows to Hamas, Hezbollah and Tehran, as well as the fall of Assad, to find ways to come together to advance their national aspirations and their own class interests.