With the US and "Israel" threatening escalatory action against Iran, we are once again witnessing a perilous episode in the long arc of imperial intervention. Yet beneath the surface-level military posturing lies a deeper structural truth: a war against Iran is a war against the developing world. After all, persons in power who hoard their wealth in dollars and in Western financial markets share the same interests irrespective of their nationalities or skin color.

True, such war of the rich on the besieged poor is a morally indefensible war, but wealth making depends on power and power derives from imperial victory in wars. True also, that it is strategically doomed to failure, since the rise of the global South led by China is inexorable, but since making profits depends on lowering the costs of inputs from the South, the war visited upon the immiserated masses is a phenomenal condition of all times under capitalism.

More so, the damage to humans and nature such war will impart feeds nicely into 'a way of life' that grows by some form of genocide or another. To displace and starve native Indians in America is pretty much the mode of action at play in the Arab-Iranian region. By measures of austerity, the decimation of local agriculture and or outright war, people are starved or beaten into submission to relinquish their labor and resources at prices/incomes so cheap such that they fail to maintain decent living standards.

To date, the rate of unnecessary and war-related deaths since the war on terror began is in the millions. If nations are not bombed, their debt dependency and rationed resources pit variants of the same working people against one another, as always with a little help from NGOs and Western ideological apparatuses that weaponize the identities of the many cultural groups, which have long inhabited the region.

When Empire Falters, Resistance Solidifies

The resultant vector of power arising from the literal death of the masses boosts the power fabric of the international financial class, a class which understands that political power is sine qua non to profit-making. This confrontation with Iran, however, is different. At no time in recent history was the empire that weak.

Its hegemony which underlies the collateral of the dollar, is shrinking while its debts underwritten by the same dwindling hegemony are soaring. Where once the empire could borrow indefinitely because it controlled the future work and resources of the world, now it cannot. Also, Iran is different. Years of sanctions and imperialist proxy wars against it have shaped a self-reliant state whose indigenous capacity is way stronger than the rest in the region.

Contrary to Western narratives that cast Iran as an isolated state, much of the Global South understands it as a node in a broader resistance front, and alongside the resistance in Lebanon and Yemen, it has, for decades, defied the economic and military dictates of the US-led West.

The global imperial system is not merely military; it is also ideological. It is fundamentally about controlling the processes of wealth extraction through a synergy between military force and ideological domination, a synergy in which peoples are first bludgeoned into obeisance in order to be force-fed the ideological doctrine of capital, or for societies to accept the gibberish of capitalism piecemeal as a condition of adaptation to the terms of defeat. 

States like Iran, however, with their mixed economies and national capitalism, resist the sham of neoliberalism, which usurps the social product of developing nations. States like Iran that maintain resource sovereignty challenge the outflow of resources at low or negative prices to the West.

They are treated as threats simply because they do not contribute to the imperialist desired immiseration of their own masses, their exploitation, which translates into lower costs and rising profits.

In formulaic terms, to profit is to exploit, to exploit is to oppress, and to oppress is to wage war, govern by imperialist comprador and or impose austerity upon the developing world, a condition that devolves into lower quality and shorter lives in the South.

 Empire Can Win Wars, But Not the Masses

The United States and its colonial outpost, "Israel," have long depended on the projection of overwhelming force to discipline non-compliant states. Yet history has proven that wars fought against nations with revolutionary legacies, resilient infrastructures, and mass ideological mobilization rarely achieve their intended goals.

Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many regional states may lie in ruin. The US has brought several sovereign governments to their knees, but has never truly established authority over their masses despite regime change. These nations are powder kegs, brewing with anger and poised to re-emerge as staunch anti-imperialist strongholds. They will find a ray of hope in the resistance of Iran, an already hardened opponent.

On a strategic scale, no matter what the outcome of the aggression, the masses will rise, and the failure of imperialism is preordained by history. The case may be that in a worst case scenario for Iran, and in the short to intermediate terms, the power facts created by Zio-imperialism may prove difficult to deal with, but the rights of peoples, the right-based facts, will not disappear and every regional revolt will hold dear the memory of the struggle of Iran for Palestine. 

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With the irrational laws of capitalism in command of history, the war will be prolonged, and for the retreating and indebted empire, its costs will no longer be its profits, since dollar hegemony is no longer what it used to be. Whether in the short or long term, Iran will prevail, and the reason will be based on respect for humans and the environment.

Sanctifying the Abnormal

From a global perspective, recent moves by the US, including the attack by "Israel," are designed to sabotage the momentum of multipolarity driven by China. The trail of imperialist aggression, a trail of tears writ large, paved not only by bombs but also by backroom deals, aims at broadening the normalization agreements with Arab states.

In reality, such maneuvers do not pursue the legitimation of a settler colonial state concocted on the basis of ancient myth to further imperialism, but rather the legitimation of a global US empire. Normalization will sanctify the abnormal, the same political forces that have desolated the planet for profits.

On a more concrete plane, the backroom deals include debt relief packages and other geopolitical bribes to countries like Turkey and Egypt, nations that need not be invaded to surrender. All they need is for the additional loans that service their outstanding debts be delayed for a few weeks.

These bribes are also intended to boost the repressive institutions of Arab regimes to suppress peoples' commitment to Palestine, a commitment nonetheless that has more to do with the Arab masses' own plight for better living standards, since the struggle for Palestine is a struggle for bread and dignity at home as well.

It is a struggle against the same international financial class, the same dollar-based power fabric.

Crisis of Consciousness

To add insult to injury, Arab mainstream media portrays the war like a football match, while in the absence of revolutionary ideology and an efficient revolutionary force, the populace sits by the wayside, crying its own fate in life in tandem with the televised tragedies. It fails to move into the Molotov alternative at its disposal.

Such is the depth of the crisis of revolutionary consciousness. The guns of the US are pointed at them, yet they turn their guns against each other.

Supposedly revolutionary forces in the region, bamboozled by a liberal democracy, which is of the same mindset as destroying the South for profits, resort to compromising policies that re-internalize the defeatism of the masses. Such a downward spiral of 'do the wrong thing and reap the faulty consciousness' reinforces the external as well as the self-inflicted onslaughts of US imperialism.

All in all, these putative revolutionaries misdiagnose the immense historical power of the West gained by years of colonial slaughter. They miss the principal contradiction between North and South and place secondary contradictions as a guiding principle for action.

The resilience of Iran in the shadow of a rising South led by China, however, will shatter such illusions. The labor aristocrats of the South, a sleezier replica than their counterparts in the North, will lose face, and a new anti-imperialist movement, more radical, is set to emerge.

Cracks in the Castle

Yet even within this US pressure, fractures within the regional circle of capitalists are appearing. Inter-capitalist contradictions are always with us. Not many want to see Netanyahu imposing his racket upon them.

On June 15, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman phoned Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in the wake of Israeli attacks on Iran, and he condemned the aggression, expressed condolences, and declared that "the entire Islamic world is united in backing Iran."

At face value, this could be read as a remarkable shift, an olive branch across once-hostile lines – there is some disdain for Trump's unrefined style, but that is a secondary concern here. The case may be that the Saudi gesture may have been a calculated attempt to prevent the blowback from reaching US military assets housed across the Gulf.

From Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia to Al Dhafra in the UAE and the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, the region is studded with imperial infrastructure. The Gulf monarchies may also fear Iranian retaliation because they sit directly in its path.

Such epiphenomena expose the frailty of states carved by the colonial scalpel to deprive the Arab masses of their resources, whose security is offered by the rate of tribute paid to the empire. However, the bottom line for such Gulf concerns arises upon their future share of imperial rents as a result of outright American victory.

Iran Is Not Alone

Yet, the word on the regional street tells a different story. From Cairo to Sana'a, from Amman to Manama, ordinary people continue to reject the imperial project in all its forms. They rally for Gaza, they speak for the resistance, and they see Iran not as a sectarian threat but as a defiant symbol of anti-colonial struggle.

The imperial order may still govern states, but it no longer governs the spirit of the masses. And, Iran, unlike many of its neighbors, has not only survived the imperialist onslaught, but it has also emerged as a fortress against imperial control.

It has built a resilient military infrastructure, preserved national industries, and forged strategic ties with China, Russia, and the BRICS+ framework. It is not isolated; it is embedded in a rising multipolar order. And that order is now under siege as Iran is being attacked. They will not stand still, and the potentialities of their reaction to the aggression are a Pandora's box waiting to open.

One thing is clear, however: Iran survived the first strike, and it is delivering blow after blow at the enemy. The aerial bombardment will not dislodge its government, and the war augurs the precipitous demise of a sick empire.