The unstable ceasefire between Washington and Tehran that began April 8, after 40 days of U.S. airstrikes and Iranian drone and missile attacks on Israel and its Arab rivals in the Middle East, was broken yet again when Tehran attacked three ships in the Arab-Persian Gulf July 6-7. U.S. forces retaliated, hitting more than 80 sites in Iran, and Tehran says it then counterattacked.
President Donald Trump said he would probably hit targets in Iran again, but that he didn’t anticipate a new war.
This takes place as the regime in Tehran, weakened by attacks by both Washington and Israel, tries to assert its “right” to control oil traffic and collect fees from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Washington threatens further military action if Tehran doesn’t back off and insists the Iranian government must give in to other U.S. demands.
Half or more of the ships and seafarers trapped by the war have now exited the Gulf. According to Bloomberg News, oil tanker traffic through the strait now averages more than 10 million barrels a day.
There are two different wars taking place in the Middle East:
An imperialist war by the U.S. rulers to advance their military, economic and political interests in the region and to push back rival powers worldwide, especially Beijing.
A defensive war by Israel to prevent Tehran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah from pursuing their decadeslong goal of destroying Israel and eliminating the Jews there. This war takes on even greater importance for working people amid a rise in violence and threats against Jews around the world.
It’s clearer than ever that the U.S. rulers are not defending Jews in Israel — or anywhere — or defending the demonstrations and strikes by Iranian toilers. Tehran, Hezbollah and Hamas remain a deadly threat to Jews and Israel’s existence and this is of no concern to the White House.
The U.S. rulers have made it clear they will not abide by Israel doing anything that could disrupt their plan to get some wing of the regime in Iran to aid them in imposing the stability they need to increase U.S. imperialist domination and exploitation.
President Donald Trump told Axios July 4 that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “knows who the boss is.”
But on June 24 Netanyahu, speaking to a conference of municipal governments, walked through the many times the Israeli government has refused to bow down to White House dictates under the presidencies of both Joseph Biden and Donald Trump since the watershed Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led pogrom.
Hamas — financed, trained and armed by Tehran — murdered 1,200 people in Israel and wounded thousands, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The rape, mutilation and murder of women was an integral part of the assault.
To prevent Hamas from replenishing its weapons and ammunition, Israel needed to take control of the area around Rafah, part of Gaza that borders Egypt.
Israel ‘will fight with our fingernails’
Biden threatened to cut off weapons supply to Israel. He “told me, ‘Do not enter Rafah,’” Netanyahu recalled. Netanyahu said he told Biden, “We have no choice, we will enter — and if we must, we will fight with our fingernails.”
Though delayed because of U.S. pressure, Israeli troops did take Rafah, destroying key Hamas tunnels and command posts, severely weakening the Jew-hating group.
The Trump administration, like those before it, also didn’t want Israel to go after Tehran’s nuclear operations and ballistic missile sites.
“They told us, ‘a military operation in Iran? You are forbidden from doing that,’” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu noted that before Israel’s 12-day war with Tehran in June 2025, he told Trump, “‘We are taking action.’ I didn’t ask for permission; I simply informed him of our plan.”
A year after Oct. 7, Israel also took action against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which, like Hamas, had long been accumulating weapons, building tunnels, and training bands of thugs for attacks on Jews in Israel.
U.S. pressure on Netanyahu’s capitalist government has prevented Israel from militarily defeating and completely dismantling Hamas and Hezbollah, opening the door to a respite for Palestinians in Gaza and for collaboration between working people of all nationalities. “There is still work to do in Gaza, in Lebanon, and against Iran,” Netanyahu added. Netanyahu said that as prime minister he will ensure that “Iran will not have nuclear weapons” and that Israel will make sure Hezbollah does not operate in southern Lebanon.
Trump lauds Erdogan
Netanyahu also spoke out against Trump’s announcement he wants to sell F-35 stealth fighter jets to the government of Turkey. After Oct. 7, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had lauded Hamas as a “liberation group.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told CNN July 2 that “these people,” meaning Jews and others in Israel, “have become a burden that humanity can no longer bear. There is no parameter under which these people can be sustained.”
Fidan’s remarks are a “clear call for genocide,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar warned.
As he arrived for a NATO summit in Turkey July 7, Trump heaped praise on Erdogan. “Turkey’s been, in many ways, much more loyal than other countries,” he said.
Despite the decimation of Iran’s air defenses, nuclear facilities and other military sites, supporters say the regime is still strong.
They point to the over a million who joined the three-day funeral ceremonies for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had died in an airstrike the first day of the 40-day war. The regime instructed participants to chant slogans such as “Our revenge is inevitable” and “They will pay hard” along with “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” Participants were provided free food and water.
Thousands of people took advantage of the three-day holiday to head out of town. Merchants at the Bazaar complained about the forced closure.
To get some publicity the reactionary regime in Iran relaxed its longstanding restrictions on the U.S. press. “Of course I’m not going to the funeral,” one man told BBC reporters at a rest station near Tehran. “Many people don’t have work and are so unhappy.”
Even at the funeral ceremony itself, two young women pulled the reporters aside to whisper to them that the “real voices of revolution” were the anti-regime protesters who had taken to the streets in December and January.