All imperialist and expansionist forces, out of the Middle East! We are calling the workers of the world to stand with the peoples of the Middle East!

1. Trump, the president of the US imperialism, got Kasim Suleimani, the commander of the Jerusalem Force under the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) and the leader of Shiite expansionism, assassinated. As such, he poked the hornet’s nest in the Middle East. This assassination and the following promise of revenge by the Iranian administration indicate that an “irregular” war is about to begin in the region in the coming days and weeks. This process of conflict could lead to a redistribution of cards in the Middle East, which would affect Turkey closely.

2. Let’s recall how we got here: the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 resulted in an increase of Iran’s influence and role in Iraq, which has intimidated imperialism and Zionism. After the imperialist occupation in Iraq liquidated the Saddam and Ba’ath regime, which was based on the Sunni community in the country constituting about 30 percent of its population, governments formed by the alliance of Shiite parties (which make up about 65 percent of the population) and Kurdish parties have started to rule the country. It was through the Shiite parties that Iran has become one of the leading actors in the country’s administration. Throughout this process, Iraq has been governed on the basis of an implicit cooperation between the US and Iran.

3. The Mullahs’ regime, which came to power through the Islamic revolution in 1979 and strengthened itself by destroying Iran’s real revolutionary forces, had attempted to spread its counterrevolutions in the region in order to survive there under the pressure of imperialism and Zionism. Iran had the greatest opportunity to do so during the process of revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, and it increased its direct military intervention in the region by sending thousands of militias and many military advisers to support the Assad dictatorial regime in order to crush the Syrian popular revolution. The military capacity of Hezbollah in Lebanon that was under Iranian control increased its militia units as well as establishing further units, again under the control of Iran, so as to fight ISIS in Iraq. While the national army of Iraq is now organized on the basis of the Shiite sect, the Shiite militias are also officially recognized as part of the national army. Iran, the same way, supports the Houthi militias in Yemen in turn.

4. In the conjuncture created by the agreement between the US and Iran during the Obama era, the US administration approached Iran’s interventions in the region in a friendly way. The US administration, which prioritized the strangulation of the revolutions in the region and the liquidation of the ISIS, did not raise its voice in the face of Iran’s presence in Syria and Iraq. During the process of liquidation of ISIS, especially in Iraq, the US forces cooperated with Iranian militias, and the pro-Iranian militias supported by the US air strikes captured ISIS-controlled regions, the most important of all having been Mosul. However, after the marginalization of ISIS and the withdrawal of the revolutionary wave, Iran’s rising military and political power in the region has become a problem of first degree importance for the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Thus, both the imperialist and Zionist forces, and the Sunni rulers who are concerned about and fight with the Shiite expansionism have made the gradual liquidation of the military forces under the influence of Iran in the region their main agenda item. In this context, military tensions have increased between the US and Iran in Iraq, and between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Yemen.

5. The economic collapse in Iraq and Iran and the popular uprisings that erupted against the pressure of the regimes in the recent weeks strengthened these tensions. While the Mullah regime took an even more repressive stance under the threat of collapse (during the protests, the regime forces killed a large number of demonstrators, while the exact numbers are still unknown), the United States and its allies used these protests as the perfect timing to back down the Iranian regime. In particular, the months-long uprisings of the Shiite population against the government of the Shiite parties in Iraq and the fact that these Iran-backed parties had no capacity to prevent the overturning of the country have made the conflict between the US and Iran even more sensitive when it came to who has the power of control in the latter. Following the defeat of ISIS, the US demanded the liquidation of Hashdi Shabi and organized attacks on the commanders of this organization. Iran-controlled groups responded by attacking US military units in return. Following the attack in which one US soldier was killed and four US soldiers were wounded, the US hardened its attacks on Hashdi Shabi. It is then that the pro-Iranian forces attacked the US Embassy in Baghdad and partially occupied the Embassy. The US’s response was to kill Qasim Suleimani and Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis, one of the most important commanders of Hashdi Shabi. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see mutual missions rise in the coming days.

6. Other factors that should be included in this picture are the recent developments in the domestic politics of the USA and Iran. The Trump administration is trying to strengthen its prestige in the eyes of the American people during the period of presidential elections, first with the assassination of Baghdadi, and now with that of Suleimani. Iran, on the other hand, aims to divert the internal rebellion by increasing nationalist and anti-USA sentiments through raising tensions on the basis of sectarianism in the region and through increasing frictions with the USA. At the same time, pro-Iranian groups are striving to divert the rebellion against the Shiite government from its course by tightening their attitude against the USA in Iraq. Undoubtedly, this attack by imperialism will help the Mullah regime to turn the rebellion against itself on its behalf and unite it on the basis of Shiism.

7. Although all these developments will not immediately lead to a war that will begin with a direct US attack on Iran (and while we don’t neglect this possibility), we foresee that mutual reprisals, in other words a kind of “irregular war,” will continue taking place in the region. Meanwhile, it is clear that the chaotic situation in Iraq will worsen given the fact that the pro-Iranian Shiite parties cannot rule the country anymore and that there even exist anti-Iranian Shiite parties. The US will obviously try to use this situation to break Iran’s influence in the country. Will the Iraqi parliament’s decision to “withdraw all foreign powers from Iraq (although the applicability of this decision is quite doubtful at a time when a real government could not be established in the country) put an end to the cooperation between the two countries (the USA and Iran) in the administration of Iraq since the US invasion? Will it lead to a new coation agreed by both parties through a new bargaining process? We will see the answer to this question in the coming days.

8.  It is imperative that all workers as well as all progressive and revolutionary forces in the region develop an open and clear attitude in face of all these developments. The Middle East has been under attack and pressure from imperialism and Zionism from the very beginning. The sovereignty of imperialism in the region has been contributing to the survival of monarchical and dictatorial regimes in many countries of the latter. The proletarian people of the Middle East and revolutionary currents in the region hate these regimes and their struggles are their reactions against them. Hence, our place will surely be on their side in case of any military attack that the imperialist and/or Zionist forces may engage in against Iran or Iraq. The USA military forces must immediately withdraw from the Middle East. For this reason, we call on the workers of the world, especially of the USA, to mobilize against American imperialism and Zionist aggression!

9. One of the biggest dangers awaiting the proletarian people of the Middle East is the imperialist project to divide the peoples of the region on ethnic and religious lines, to put them against each other, and to split the land they share in common on these grounds so as to better and more firmly control the resulting smaller pieces. The aim of imperialism is to create division and conflict between the Sunni and Shiite religious groups, to add ethnic sensitivities, to poison the relations between people so as to play them off against each other. Some monarchical and dictatorial regimes in the region would surely support this as well. We shouldn’t let this plan run its course. There is no doubt that all the peoples should be able to have right to self-determination for their own future freely. But it should not be forgotten that the only way to wipe the region off of imperialism as well as the expansionist, oppressive and counterrevolutionary forces is to unite the resistance of all peoples together through establishing a Federation of Workers, in which they can live together and freely in the Middle East.