For months, parts of the ruling class in the United States have been pursuing a campaign to promote the Pahlavi monarchy as an alternative to the current government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The most prominent voices advocating for this imperial lobbying are located within the diaspora.

Remembering the suffering under Pahlavi rule and the revolution that resulted from it in the 1970s, but also because of the current efforts of Pahlavi monarchists, the campaign to take over the government in the Islamic Republic of Iran has encountered strong resistance and backlash.

While the United States understands the strong rejection of the Pahlavi monarchy, another strategy, one well known to us, emerges in the shadow of this obviously unsuccessful effort: arming regional militias against each other in order to generate imperial control out of internal instability.

Bombs do not liberate people — they pave the way for U.S. imperialism

Regional efforts for self-determination and for the rights of people in Iran, especially from the working class, against their own government and the ruling class are legitimate struggles. However, in the rhetoric of Western powers, these long-standing protest movements and political efforts are not viewed within their historical and contemporary political context.

The economic situation of the working class in Iran cannot be fully analysed without considering Western sanctions against Iran. These sanctions serve the function of significantly worsening the living conditions of the masses and widening the gap between them and the ruling class. The uprisings that result from this are often spontaneous and escalating, which means that political leadership capable of establishing a revolutionary working-class power is absent. Without organisation and leadership within every protest movement, there is a danger that such movements will be undermined and dissipate.

A politicised society fighting for the legitimate rights of the working class is presented as merely a reaction to a form of oppression supposedly existing only in Iran, in order to stage the false image of a just and peaceful West. Western imperialist powers must portray an absolute evil opposing them in order to appear as the absolute good in contrast.

The protest movements that have repeatedly emerged in Iran for decades are, of course, initiated by citizens who resist their own murderous government because of oppression, political persecution, and torture. Yet resistance against the ruling class is not a phenomenon exclusive to Iran.

The real phenomenon is the lack of organised struggles against the ruling class in imperialist powers such as the United States and Germany.

Our governments keep the politicisation of the majority in check through a minimal welfare system, one that does not represent equality but rather the pacification of citizens’ demands. This system of exploitation of the working class becomes crystal clear upon closer inspection: poverty in old age, housing shortages, incomplete healthcare coverage, missing civilian infrastructure, and a foreign policy designed for the profit of government-aligned lobbyists.

Despite these conditions, and despite our own exploitation, our countries in the West are not bombed, nor is the legitimacy of our governments questioned.

This is because the claim to global dominance, and its institutionalisation through the UN, NATO, and the U.S. imperial interpretation of human and international rights, is shaped by the ideology that the West is morally and naturally superior.

This claim to dominance serves the material enrichment of imperial powers.

The recent military attacks by the United States and its proxy state Israel on Iran are intended to gain acceptance in Western societies through precisely this ideological doctrine in Western media. Yet the reality of these attacks is different: they are an expansion of the imperialist agenda, not support for regional struggles.

Through the establishment of Israel and the positioning of the United States as an ally of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and now also Syria, U.S. imperialism is being consolidated in order to secure access to resources and maintain military presence. The attacks on Iran are part of this chain of actions aimed at destabilizing and gaining control over the entire region.

The introduction of controlled military groups

The elimination of the top levels of government creates leadership gaps that organised opposition groups, some of which cooperated militarily with the United States in the past, may attempt to use to overthrow the ruling class.

Thus, the Kurdish organisations PAK, PJAK, KDPI, KOMA, and KHABAT formed a new coalition and called for a coordinated takeover of the emerging governmental vacuum. In a statement, they said that the struggle is not a conflict between peoples but a fight for the rights and freedoms of the population. In the same statement, they called for careful action and restraint from military forces. People in Iran, especially employers, are urged to show solidarity with the working class.

These approaches are welcome as a way to counter the intended destabilisation and to build a revolutionary, militarised citizens’ initiative.

However, Western media are already reporting that military units under PAK and KDPI are being armed by the United States. U.S. support for PAK through weapons and military cooperation would not be a new development. Cooperation and joint military operations between PAK and the United States already took place in the 2010s.

At the same time, there are also clear efforts by Kurdish organisations to distance themselves from U.S. influence. Many influencers and social media pages repeated Western media narratives with simplistic headlines that generalise the Kurdish population and reduce it to an imperialist tool.

The Kurdish population is not homogeneous, and a closer examination of the different groups shows that the majority of them have declared neutrality toward the warring parties. In this regard, the Kurdish population is held to a higher standard than others. For example, there has been a stronger focus on criticism of the Kurdistan Region for allowing the use of U.S. military bases, bases that are also used in Arab states and in Turkey.

This form of Western media warfare is also a tool used to artificially divide the peoples of the region and must be examined with persistent differentiation by leftist media and organisations.

PJAK, one of the organisations within the KCK, focuses on local mobilisation and has expressed a distanced position toward the United States. PJAK is now calling on citizens to establish local administrative councils, and young people are encouraged to join the Kurdish freedom guerrilla.

However, the strategic direction must be the creation of a new citizens’ initiative that goes beyond the Kurdish region, one that opposes U.S. imperialism and acts as a revolutionary force against the ruling government in order to build genuine working-class power, which is currently also lacking in other parts of Iran.

How the disagreements between the different strategies of PAK, KDPI, and PJAK will affect the coalition remains unclear. However, a consistent anti-imperialist agenda for the autonomy of all peoples in the region cannot be reconciled with cooperation with U.S. imperialist or Zionist powers, since their systemic logic presupposes domination over all peoples.

The Rojava Playbook

As already seen in Syria, the United States uses regional tensions to build military power and transform the original struggle for self-determination into an instrument of its own agenda.

The U.S. thinks long-term and maintains continuous military conflicts until a group emerges that is sufficiently accepted by the population and capable of claiming governmental authority.

As in the case of Ahmed al-Sharaa and HTS in Syria, Western military support for previously backed forces such as the SDF ends once an alternative government under the control of the U.S. imperial system is established.

The responsibility of left-wing anti-imperialist organisations in Germany

For left-wing organisations in the West, a careful differentiation in mobilisation and in efforts to end the complicity of our governments is essential. The focus must lie on resisting the imperialist actions of the United States, the EU, and Germany.

While we must clearly criticise sanctions, military attacks, and the political rhetoric through which the United States claims authority over the legitimacy of governments, we must not deny the real struggles of people in Iran for that purpose.

The instrumentalisation of the struggles in Iran and the surrounding region for military influence is itself a key tool that endangers people in Iran and Kurdistan by turning them into pieces in the West’s power struggle.

Instead, we must recognise these real struggles and understand them as autonomous political efforts of the people in the region.

But in order for regional struggles for rights and freedom of all peoples to succeed, U.S. imperialism and Zionism must not win the current expanding war of Western control and influence.

Our role in this struggle is resistance against our own governments at all levels. Therefore, our current demands must clearly draw the lines for victory against Western domination.

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