Classes were in session on 6 January at Birzeit University, near Ramallah in the West Bank, when Israeli soldiers entered the campus firing tear gas, sound bombs and live rounds on students and staff. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/6/israeli-forces-injure-11-palestinian-in-university-raid-in-ramallah">Al Jazeera reported</a> that 41 people were injured, including hospitalisations for five who inhaled tear gas, three hit by shrapnel and three shot in the legs.
Ghaied Hijaz, an activist and Birzeit University graduate, told Red Flag that more than 150 soldiers stormed the university:
“This is not the first time [Israeli forces] break into the university campus. But this time was different. For the past ten years, they would break in during the night. But to come in during the day when the university is full of students, shooting live bullets and tear gas, is something that was surprising to all of us, because that didn’t happen since the Second Intifada [a period of Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation from 2000 to 2005].”
In the north, the Israeli military’s Operation Iron Wall has been a campaign of total destruction in the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps. <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/genocide-continues-gaza-west-bank-pushed-new-nakba">Middle East Eye reported</a> that 40,000 refugees were expelled in early 2025 and that entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. Israel has broken another boundary: these areas were supposed to be under Palestinian control, and now they have a permanent Israeli military presence.
Things have shifted decisively in the West Bank since October 2023. The violence and theft of Palestinian land have increased to levels that were perhaps untenable a few years ago. The support that Israel has received for its genocide in Gaza has been taken as a green light for stomping on the rest of Palestine.
Al Jazeera reports that, since October 2023, at least 1,102 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and about 11,000 injured, either by Israeli military forces or by settlers looking to steal more land; around 21,000 more are locked in Israeli prisons. More than 2,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented more than 1,800 attacks by settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank in 2025 alone.
The goal is to eradicate Palestine “between the Sea and the Jordan” river, as the original charter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party reads. For this, the West Bank is crucial, as it is where an imagined Palestinian state would be formed with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel is now taking the opportunity wipe Palestine off the map.
Armed settlers roam the hilly West Bank countryside, terrorising Palestinians trying to protect their homes. They are regularly backed by soldiers and have the full support of Netanyahu’s government. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, himself a settler, has been making it easier for settlers to obtain weapons: some 230,000 gun licences have been distributed in Israel in the two years to November 2025, as <a href="https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-organized-settler-militias-west-bank-palestinians-funding-arms">reported by Drop Site News</a>.
The settlers are at the front line of stealing Palestinian land. Since October 2023, at least 152 new settler outposts have been set up, making up more than 42 percent of all outposts established since 1996, according to monitoring by Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now. The outposts are not officially sanctioned by the Israeli government, but many eventually become recognised as settlements.
On top of the new outposts, the Israeli government approved eleven new official settlements in December of 2025, adding to dozens of others in the past two years. By exploiting an Ottoman Empire-era law, Israel “declares” land owned by Palestinians “state land” as long as it hasn’t been cultivated. The “state lands” are then often used for further development of settlements. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem <a href="https://www.btselem.org/download/201007_by_hook_and_by_crook_eng.pdf">estimated in 2010</a> that about 16 percent of the West Bank has been stolen in this way. Peace Now recorded that at least another 40 square kilometres have been taken since then, with 2024 the largest year since they began recording in 1998.
The most significant ongoing land theft is the imminent development of the E1 zone, stretching east from the outskirts of Jerusalem. It was approved by the Israeli government in August 2025, but the plan had been in limbo for twenty years because it was considered too much for Western states to stomach. Now, it’s going ahead, and developers are bidding for the right to build 3,401 housing units to connect existing Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem to others deep in the West Bank.
The settling of E1 will plug the hole in the separation barrier, a concrete wall Israel has built through the West Bank stretching as high as nine metres. It will physically separate East Jerusalem from the West Bank and cut off the northern part of the West Bank from the south. The point is to establish “facts on the ground” that kill any possibility for a Palestinian state. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, also a settler, put it bluntly as he announced the approval:
“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise. Anyone in the world who tries today to recognise a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground.”
If the two-state solution was ever anything more than a fantasy, soon it will be a geographical impossibility.
All of this is an acceleration of a process that has always been part of the Zionist project. In 1948, Israel was established on top of most of historic Palestine. In 1967, Israel defeated Jordan in the Six-Day War and began its occupation of the West Bank. Since then, Israel has progressively encroached further and further, eating away at the area Palestinians have access to or control over. B’Tselem’s 2010 <a href="https://www.btselem.org/download/201007_by_hook_and_by_crook_eng.pdf">By Hook and By Crook report</a> includes invaluable documentation of the mechanisms and policies Israel has used to this end.
Israel immediately began requisitioning land for settlements, claiming them as necessary for security and military functions. By 1981, 53 settlements had been established in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That year, the Israeli government adopted a policy known as the <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-186771/">Drobles plan</a>, named after its author Matityahu Drobles, then chairman of the World Zionist Organization settlement department. It spelled out in no uncertain terms the goal for the West Bank, which Israel calls “Judea and Samaria”. The policy pre-empted Smotrich’s above-quoted boast about the E1 zone by several decades:
“The state-owned lands and the uncultivated barren lands in Judea and Samaria ought to be seized right away, with the purpose of settling the areas between and around the centres occupied by the [Palestinians] so as to reduce to the minimum the danger of an additional Arab state being established in these territories. Being cut off by Jewish settlements, the [Palestinian] population will find it difficult to form a territorial and political continuity. There mustn’t be even the shadow of a doubt about our intention to keep the territories of Judea and Samaria for good.”
The Drobles plan makes gestures towards “the cohabitation of Jews and Arabs side by side”, but no such peaceful coexistence was meaningfully pursued. Insofar as the Jewish and Palestinian populations in the West Bank are “side by side”, it is on the two unequal sides of apartheid.
Israeli settlers are subject to civil law; Palestinians are under military law. Settlers get highways built for them and enjoy total freedom of movement; Palestinians are restricted to slower roads blocked with military checkpoints and require Israeli-issued permits to travel. Israelis have political rights; Palestinians in the West Bank have none.
After 1979, Israel slowed down (but didn’t stop) the military requisitions of West Bank land and switched to the “state land” declaration strategy. Most declarations were made between 1979 and 1992, and are where most settlements near built-up Palestinian areas were established.
The carve-up was codified in the signing of the second Oslo accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1995. This defined three areas in the West Bank: Area C, under total Israeli control, was the only geographically contiguous and the largest area, making up 60 percent of the land; Area B is jointly administered by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), and was 22 percent of the area; Area A is the smallest—18 percent—and the only area ostensibly under Palestinian control through the PA.
It was a stitch-up heavily in favour of Israel, but it did not end there. Peace Now estimates that, from 1994 to 2006, the municipal areas of 92 settlements were expanded in defiance of Oslo. And settlers have continued establishing outposts.
During the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, construction began on the separation barrier, with a route designed to claim even more land for settlements and to make movement for Palestinians even more difficult. The barrier now spans almost the entire length of the West Bank. To build it, Israel routinely requisitioned land and demolished Palestinian homes.
In 2005, when Israel removed its settlements from the Gaza Strip, it also retreated from four of them in the north of the West Bank. In March 2023, Netanyahu’s government re-authorised those four settlements.
If these decades were death by a thousand cuts, then what Israel is doing now is hacking and slashing. While all eyes have been on Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank has accelerated. Israel’s aim is total control and ownership, from the river to the sea.

Danica Rachel

The new phase of colonisation in the West Bank

Renee Good, a legal observer in Minneapolis, was <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/ice-murder-sends-shockwaves-through-the-us">murdered</a>
by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross in the first week of January. After <a href="https://people.com/renee-good-dropped-6-year-old-off-at-school-before-ice-encounter-11881867">dropping off</a> her child at school, she and a small group of others felt a moral compulsion to protect their neighbours. So they documented the military-style raid of Gestapo-like masked goons in a residential community.
ICE met them with brutal force. Multiple agents shouted contradictory commands while attempting to rip Good out of the car. She tried to drive away, but Ross shot her in the face. Bystanders pleaded for them to give her medical attention, but they refused. She was untreated for precious minutes until paramedics arrived. 
Almost immediately, US President Donald Trump falsely claimed she ran over an officer. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem smeared her as a domestic terrorist. Vice President J.D. Vance promised “absolute immunity” for the murderous ICE agent, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation kept state and local officials out of the investigation
There have been at least <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/videos-show-how-ice-vehicle-stops-can-escalate-to-shootings-caf17601">thirteen</a>
instances of federal agents firing into civilian vehicles since July, but this episode of someone being murdered in broad daylight sparked a big response. A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9CJY5p0xz4">video</a> of the shooting went viral that day and people came out to protest at the site of her killing as well as around the country. These protests have been broad and bitter, at the centre of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. There was enough pressure from below for Mayor Jacob Frey to <a href="https://www.startribune.com/mayor-jacob-freys-remarks-after-ice-agents-fatally-shoots-woman-in-minneapolis/601559829">tell ICE</a> to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis” the day the shooting happened. 
Immigration agents are still there, asking protesters if they have <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/renee-good-2674874951/">not learned</a>
what happens when they watch them, and implying that they might end up dead like Renee Good. The Justice Department has opted not to conduct a criminal investigation of the shooting but instead investigate <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/doj-attorneys-resign-minneapolis-ice-shooting">Good’s widow</a> for her activism. 
This is the new normal one year into Trump’s second administration. Paramilitary police forces descend on migrant communities, brutalising targeted minorities, protesters and bystanders.
Shock and awe
The murder in Minneapolis came during the largest raid yet, targeting Somalis and Somali Americans in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Dubbed “Operation Metro Surge”, the attack brought more than 2,000 agents into the area, and in the wake of recent protests, the Trump administration then sent <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/twin-cities-on-edge-as-ice-raids-ignite-fear-and-protests#:~:text=In%20recent%20days%2C%20hundreds%20of,St.%20Paul%20police%20departments%20combined.">hundreds more</a>. There are now more immigration agents than regular police in the Twin Cities. 
Last June, the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/11/04/us-ice-abuses-in-los-angeles-set-stage-for-other-cities">template</a>
for this onslaught was set in Los Angeles. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tactical commander Gregory Bovino led mass raids using highly confrontational tactics against migrants and protesters. It marked a switch from investigating individuals with known immigration issues to conducting rapid raids in migrant neighbourhoods to racially profile people for quick interrogation and arrest before “turning and burning” to the next target. The questionable legality of the assault did not hide a clear strategy: use overwhelming force, arrest at will, and create a political crisis for city administrators. 
Border Patrol took control over this operation, bringing its distinctive brand of violence to a major Democratic-run city. Every opportunity was used to stoke confrontation, extending to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-08-14/border-patrol-conducts-immigration-operation-outside-gov-newsom-event">shows of force</a> at the governor’s press conference. This launched Bovino’s career to new heights, and he expanded operations to more cities. 
The crescendo of “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago came when hundreds of militarised federal agents raided an apartment complex. They busted in, rappelling from helicopters and dropping stun grenades. They arrested citizens and non-citizens alike. More than just shock and awe, the operation was planned to produce an <a href="https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1973796727615598738">action-movie-style trailer</a> of the raid to promote their work. 
“Operation Patriot 2.0” ripped through Massachusetts. “Operation Charlotte’s Web” hit North Carolina. The brutal “Swamp Sweep” terrorised New Orleans. People with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/04/us/ice-arrests-criminal-records-data.html">no criminal background</a> were the biggest victims of these urban raids. This distinct mix of terror and spectacle became the hallmark of the regime. Washington, D.C., became a testing ground for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/us/trump-immigration-dc-crime.html">combining objectives</a>. They fabricated a crime crisis to allow a federal government takeover of the city and leveraged this manufactured crisis to force local police into immigration duty.
One day after the murder of Renee Good, Kristi Noem announced “Operation Salvo” targeting Dominicans in New York City, and we have yet to see its scale. 
An increasing number of raids. 
Early in Trump’s second term, <a href="https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/supreme-courts-decision-racial-profiling-immigration-raids/">racial profiling</a> became openly accepted, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/us/politics/trump-civil-rights-homeland-security-deportations.html#:~:text=Immigration%20Looks%20Like-,Trump%20Shuts%20Down%203%20Watchdog%20Agencies%20Overseeing%20Immigration%20Crackdown,Mr.">watchdog</a>
organisations were shut down. Immigration courts are now open <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/12/22/nx-s1-5583971/trump-ice-immigration-arrests-deportation-no-shows">hunting grounds</a> to arrest migrants, leaving people in a double bind of weighing up if it is more dangerous to make or miss an appointment. Small armies in full military gear descend on motorists in petrol stations, day labourers waiting in Home Depot parking lots, workers at construction sites and anywhere else migrants might be. 
These arrests are getting <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2026/01/09/us/dhs-immigration-crackdown-ice-arrests-protests-vis/index.html">shockingly violent</a>. It is common for masked agents to smash car windows and body slam people. Protesters are routinely brutalised and even targeted later. In one instance, agents caused a car crash near the site of raids and protests. They let the other driver go but later decided to label him a dangerous activist who impeded their work. A Border Patrol <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ws1r6CaSXs">SWAT team</a> used explosives to raid his house and terrorise his family while searching for him. All charges against him were dropped, but the agency used the raid as an opportunity to film a promotional <a href="https://x.com/CMDROpAtLargeCA/status/1945569571122843895?s=20">video</a>
to threaten protesters. Immigration agents even <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/new-york-democratic-politicians-arrested-ice-jail-manhattan-2025-09-19/">arrest politicians</a> who question their actions.
The administration has looked for every opportunity to expand its definition of criminality. Federal agents targeted Palestine solidarity activists for arrest and deportation, using their political solidarity as grounds to threaten legal status. One activist, Leqaa Kordia, remains detained <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-last-columbia-protester-in-ice-detention">almost a year</a> after her arrest. 
The regime stripped the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/12/23/g-s1-103001/trump-immigration-deportation-migration-legal-status">legal status</a> of more than 1.6 million people, mostly Venezuelans and Haitians, criminalising them overnight. Travel bans were implemented for a wide range of countries, followed by <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/12/03/g-s1-100218/trump-administration-halts-immigration-19-nations">pausing </a>all citizenship, residency and benefits applications for people from these countries. The only group with increased access appears to be white South Africans, in a nod to white supremacists.
Mass surveillance is playing an increasingly important role in fabricating new criminals. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/ice-facial-recognition-app-mobile-fortify-dfdd00bf">Facial recognition</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQxw9fhmBv4">licence plate</a> tracking systems are used to identify patterns immigration authorities deem suspicious, creating an ever expanding list of targets.
A domestic army
The already bloated border enforcement regime has exploded to <a href="https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/enforcement-regime/">catastrophic proportions</a>. This year, the administration fused a key pillar of the repressive state into a secret police force under opaque leadership. A slew of <a href="https://forumtogether.org/article/trumps-executive-actions-escalating-immigration-enforcement-and-mass-deportation/">executive orders</a> created a unified military force with wide parameters on who it could target. 
The scope stretches beyond the vast Department of Homeland Security. The conservative Cato Institute has documented how tens of thousands of officers from <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/ice-has-diverted-over-25000-officers-their-jobs">other agencies</a> get diverted for immigration blitzes. This is in addition to 900 local law enforcement agencies that <a href="https://maxwellcommons.substack.com/p/everythings-ice">deputised</a>
their officers to act as immigration agents this year
Soon after, they directed this force internally to terrorise major cities. The attack on Los Angeles served as a prelude to the funding expansion for the deportation machine. It is set to be one of the <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/ice-immigration-chicago-trump-broadview">biggest armies in the world.</a> The budget was tripled for ICE, bolstered with 10,000 new agents. It adds 10 percent to the already massive CBP budget for an additional 3,000 agents. 
As the Trump administration rushes to make use of these funds, successful applicants are offered US$50,000 sign-on bonuses and student loan relief. The nature of these recruits is predictably disgusting. ICE <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0iPoV81ess&amp;t=6s">uses</a> openly racist and xenophobic advertising strategies, which it plans to expand through a US$100 million “wartime recruitment” advertising <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/31/ice-wartime-recruitment-push/">blitz</a>
this year. And during the rush to hire as many as possible, vetting and training standards are <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/new-ice-recruits-showed-training-full-vetting-rcna238739">dropped</a>
to get enough warm bodies armed and ready to terrorise communities. The wartime recruitment is paired with wartime wares—ICE weapons spending increased by more than <a href="https://popular.info/p/ice-boosts-weapons-spending-700">600 percent</a> this year.
The damage
Trump set a goal of deporting 1 million immigrants in a year. DHS is claiming 600,000 victims, with another 1.9 million “self-deported”. The official figures on self-deportations are unreliable, but the government wants big deportation numbers. The architect of the immigration regime, Stephen Miller, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-trump-f5089877">cracked heads</a> at local ICE offices for missed quotas, and Border Patrol officers were put <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-plans-install-border-patrol-officials-lead-aggressive-migrant-cr-rcna240102">in charge</a> of more ICE offices to encourage more aggressive tactics. 
However, it is wrong to see this as a failure for the administration. There has been a 60 percent increase in total arrests since the June offensive in Los Angeles. ICE now arrests <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/12/28/ice-deportations-data-trump-arrests/">four times</a> as many people outside of jails as it did during Trump’s first term.
A record number of migrants are jailed in shoddy, overcrowded detention centres, creating the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/04/ice-2025-deaths-timeline">deadliest year</a> for immigrant prisons in decades. The array of detention centres has expanded to some of the least habitable sites imaginable, such as an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyrnrnxy7yo">abandoned airport</a> in the Florida Everglades. They aim to double bed capacity, but this will not improve conditions in the labyrinth of for-profit immigrant detention centres, where cutting corners is the business model. 
Beyond the border
Ending mass migration is the first priority listed in Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf">National Security Strategy</a> document, and it ties this into its broader objective to dominate the Western Hemisphere. The US aims to “enlist” regional allies and to “expand” US influence to dominate less compliant countries. 
Trump readily enlisted El Salvador by outsourcing some of his most grotesque imprisonment work to the hard-right regime. The black zones of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-conditions-inside-the-infamous-el-salvador-prison-where-deported-migrants-are-held">CECOT</a>
are even harder to see into than the worst onshore for-profit prisons within the US. Threats to turn financial aid on and off based on election results help keep other allies in the hemisphere, from Argentina to Honduras, deeply in the fold of US interests.
Every opportunity is being used to increase pressure on regional players. Even though Mexico aided Trump’s efforts by sending massive troop deployments to both of its borders, the US regime thinks Mexico could always do more. 
Demonising migrants as dangerous members of terrorist drug cartels served as a rhetorical battering ram to justify further destabilising the Venezuelan regime. Kidnapping migrants and shipping them to gulags preceded the bombing and hijacking of boats in international waters and the eventual kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro. 
Harkening to racist tropes about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/trump-un-general-assembly-speech">Europe</a>
“being ruined” by migrants, Trump demands they follow his path towards even more draconian border regimes. It seems to be <a href="https://www.afr.com/world/europe/trump-urged-europe-to-halt-migrant-decay-leaders-are-scrambling-20251211-p5nmoi">working</a>
as it aligns with insurgent right-wing forces across the continent: 27 countries signed a statement supporting suspending human rights and deporting migrants to third countries. They are looking to emulate a system long admired by Trump, Australia’s horrific <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/5566">Pacific </a>solution.
The fightback 
Protests erupted almost immediately after the killing of Renee Good and have not yet stopped. They keep <a href="https://apnews.com/video/protesters-face-off-and-chase-federal-agents-from-minnesota-neighborhood-as-tensions-flare-9d185f0f4b87426db0b03e70f1c089a7">pushing</a>
immigration agents out of the neighbourhood where she was killed. They respond to pepper spray by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/18/snow-midwest-ice-raids-trump">pelting</a>
agents with snowballs. Minnesotans continue to mobilise mass demonstrations, disrupt hotels where ICE agents sleep, organise school walkouts and build networks of rapid responders against the onslaught of the deportation machine. 
On the weekend after her death, more than a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/10/protests-ice-renee-nicole-good-philadelphia">thousand protests</a> exploded across the country. In the face of rampant brutality and escalating repression, heroic people keep fighting. Los Angeles showed what a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/the-battle-of-los-angeles">rebellion</a>
against ICE can look like. Chicago continues to provide a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/chicagos-fightback-against-trumps-deportation-machine">model</a>
for sustained resistance. 
Maybe this moment in Minneapolis is the beginning of a turn towards deeper struggle. Unions and community organisations are calling for a <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/minneapolis-renee-good-ice-shooting-labor-unions">city-wide strike</a> against ICE on 23 January. This will be an opportunity and a test of momentum.

Brendan Stanton

Secret police and murder in the streets: year one of Trump’s deportation regime

The following piece was first published by the Iranian Revolutionary Marxist Tendency.
--------------------
Iran’s nationwide uprising continues amid mounting evidence of a systematic and deadly campaign by the state to crush popular resistance. Reports emerging from hospitals, despite a near-total internet blackout, reveal the scale of violence being unleashed against unarmed protesters—overwhelmingly drawn from the working class, youth and urban poor.
Medical staff at two hospitals in Rasht, in northern Iran, and Tehran, the capital city, have confirmed that at least 110 bodies were transferred to these facilities alone. Doctors inside the country report that on 8 and 9 January, numerous patients arrived with live-ammunition gunshot wounds to the head, neck, and eyes—clear indications of intentional lethal force.
Human rights defenders had warned that the nationwide internet shutdown would be used as a cover for mass killings. Under these conditions, obtaining reliable nationwide figures is impossible. Current estimates of the death toll range from hundreds to potentially thousands, reflecting not exaggeration, but the deliberate obscuring of reality by the state.
According to multiple external sources, the Iranian regime has reportedly sought to reinforce its repressive apparatus by drawing on foreign paramilitary forces, including members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraq’s Hashed al-Shabi. While independent verification remains difficult, such reports underscore the regime’s growing dependence on militarised networks to maintain power against its own population.
Yet repression is not the only danger confronting this uprising. As blood is shed in the streets, monarchist and royalist factions, long detached from the lived realities of Iran’s working people, are attempting to politically hijack the revolt. These forces seek to redirect the grassroots, class-driven uprising into a project aligned with elite restoration and foreign patronage.
The role of the United States has been particularly revealing. While issuing statements of concern for “human rights”, Washington has simultaneously signalled implicit support for royalist currents, reproducing a familiar imperial strategy: backing compliant elites while presenting intervention as solidarity. This double game is neither new nor misunderstood by Iranians.
Iran’s modern history, from 1953, is the best justification of people’s fear and disgust of any foreign state intervention. At that time, the US and England engineered a coup d’etat to overthrow the first democratically elected prime minister, Mosaddeq, and enforced a dictatorship on the Iranian people that continued until 1979. They again orchestrated another hijacking of the revolt by the clergy-capitalist state that continues to rule the country up until now. They brought incredible economic, political and social consequences to Iran and have created a bankrupt country whose price is paid by the majority of the working class and urban poor of the society, while a small oligarchic class lives in unbelievable luxury.
The monarchists are attempting to manipulate the situation in their favour. They do not understand that what has driven millions into the streets is not nostalgia for past rulers, but decades of economic dispossession, rampant inequality, privatisation, unemployment, inflation and the militarisation of everyday life. The Islamic Republic has functioned not as an alternative to imperial domination, but as a local manager of capital accumulation and repression, enriching a narrow ruling layer while condemning vast sections of society to precarity.
Sanctions, far from weakening authoritarianism, have deepened class polarisation, allowing the regime to shift the burden of economic collapse onto workers, pensioners and the poor while expanding its security apparatus. At the same time, Western governments instrumentalise human rights discourse selectively—invoking it loudly when it serves geopolitical pressure and quietly discarding it when it threatens strategic interests. This hypocrisy has been fully internalised by Iranians who have lived through war, embargo and covert intervention.
The danger now is that the uprising’s radical potential—its capacity to articulate demands for social justice, democratic control and economic redistribution—will be neutralised by forces offering only a change of flag or figurehead.
Monarchist currents, amplified disproportionately by foreign media and exile networks, present themselves as a ready-made “alternative”, while remaining fundamentally hostile to popular participation and to working-class self-organisation. Their project is not emancipation, but restoration under new branding.
Against this backdrop, the Iranian people face a dual struggle: resisting a state that kills to survive, and rejecting external and internal actors who seek to discipline the uprising into safe, controllable outcomes. The most dangerous moment for any revolutionary movement is not only when it is attacked by power, but when it is spoken for—when its voice is replaced by intermediaries claiming legitimacy without accountability.
What endures, however, is the political consciousness forged in struggle. Strikes, neighbourhood resistance, student mobilisations and grassroots solidarity networks—often ignored by international coverage—point toward an alternative political horizon rooted in collective power rather than elite negotiation. These forms of organisation, fragile yet persistent, represent the embryo of a politics that neither kneels before clerical authority nor appeals to imperial guardians.
History does not repeat mechanically, but it does issue warnings. Iran’s past revolutions were derailed when popular movements were isolated, fragmented, or subordinated to external interests. The lesson emerging once again from the streets is uncompromising: freedom cannot be delivered by executioners, nor negotiated by exiles backed by foreign states.
As repression intensifies and narratives multiply, the central task remains clear for Iranians and for those in solidarity abroad: to defend the independence, class character and democratic substance of this uprising. Anything less risks turning yet another mass sacrifice into a footnote in the long record of betrayed revolutions.

Iran’s uprising under fire

First, they came for the migrants. Then, they murdered Renee Good.
Bit by bit, for decades, repeated hysterias about migration have brought us here. Official politics has pushed what can acceptably done to the poor and oppressed further and further. 
It has had many justifications: stopping terrorism, preventing crime, protecting jobs, putting citizens first. These days, migration is supposedly why we can’t afford housing.
For decades, both sides raced to outdo each other on persecuting migrants: Republican and Democrat, Liberal and Labor in Australia. 
Donald Trump didn’t invent racism or border controls. He took the tools built by the mainstream parties of capitalism and pushed them to the extreme.
Racism is constantly used by the ruling class to lower the bar for how everyone in society is treated. Once an injustice becomes normalised against one section of society, it’s easier to extend it to others. 
In Australia, Islamophobia was used to justify repressive anti-terror laws after the 11 September attacks in 2001. These laws laid the basis for draconian powers to be used against unionised construction workers. 
The racist Northern Territory intervention introduced welfare quarantining debit-cards for Aboriginal communities, which was later rolled out to working-class communities in Western Sydney.
American society was told the crackdown against migrants was just about criminals who are supposedly in the country “illegally”. Then all of a sudden it wasn’t just the undocumented. “Safety” suddenly required greater surveillance powers, more restrictive laws, more weapons for the cops already killing Black people with impunity, and now armed right-wing thugs are running rampage in US cities. 
Renee Good was a US citizen. She was white. But she was working class. And she stood up for those she was supposed to hate, against her own rulers and their armed thugs. To the system, that was her greatest crime. 
In some way, racism has always been about fear. But it’s not about the fear we have of each other; it’s about the fear our rulers have of us.
Ordinary people have always been the spanner in the works for our rulers and their system’s rapacious and violent drive for profit. 
Workers have fought and pushed back against the greed and exploitation of our bosses, winning better conditions and pay. The struggles for women’s and LGBTI rights have won things our rulers were determined to deny us. Mass movements and revolutions have ended wars and brought down brutal regimes. 
Six years ago, that same solidarity Renee Good embodied became a raging storm when George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police just a few blocks away. 
The city rose up. Millions of people took to the streets across the US. Solidarity demonstrations swept the world. The sheer power of the movement even forced Democratic politicians, who had spent decades building these same racist systems, to cynically take a knee so they could co-opt the movement. The authorities were forced into taking action against Derek Chauvan, Floyd’s killer, to put the genie of mass struggle back in its box.
In the last two years, the torch of global anti-racist solidarity has been taken up by the Palestine movement. Millions have defied their governments attempts to deny and excuse a genocide. The general strikes by Italian workers in solidarity with Gaza have been unprecedented, in a country run by a far-right government after decades of intense Islamophobia.
We have seen past the racist dehumanisation of Palestinians in the face of growing repression and persecution. We have taken to the streets for 2.3 million people somewhere else in the world—people we have never met, and who the media and our governments have encouraged us to ignore, hate and fear.
What’s most dangerous of all is not any individual struggle, but the fact that opposition to injustice and oppression brings us together. It shows us who the real enemy is and who our allies are. It builds our confidence. 
Working-class people don’t spend our lives fixated on increasing profits by grinding other human beings into the dirt. We don’t have wealth or power in this society. We get through our days only by working together and taking care of each other. Collectivity and solidarity are part of who we are.
But the biggest reason our rulers fear us and our capacity for solidarity and the potential power it could unleash.
Black Lives Matter in 2020 gave confidence to the activists who went on to unionise in Amazon’s warehouses. Before that, the civil rights movement gave confidence to Black workers who brought their militancy to unions in the public sector and the auto industries. Standing up to racism doesn’t just improve the lives of people of colour, it builds the fighting capacity of the working class as a whole.
If together, US workers refused to work until immigration agents were driven out of their communities, the loss of profits would be unbearable for the corporations and governments who have collaborated with them. If workers everywhere shut everything down like they did in Italy, the entire global economy would be thrown into chaos. If workers took over the economy and collectively ran everything ourselves, the power of capitalism itself could be ended. 
Jeff Bezos couldn’t pack every Amazon package, Gina Rinehart couldn’t haul all that iron ore by herself. They need us. We don’t need them.
That is why every racist attack on one section of the working class is an attack on the working class as a whole. Without unity, neither white nor black or brown workers can use our collective power. We need each other.
Racism is not natural; it is manufactured. It is cultivated by those with wealth and power to hold down those of us who are denied any say over the world whose wealth we work to create. 
But despite the billions spent on weapons, borders and propaganda campaigns to try and get us to turn on each other, even in these darkest of times, they’ve never managed to completely stamp out our humanity.
The people of Minneapolis hurling snowballs to drive immigration agents out of their neighbourhoods, and the thousands now mobilising around the US, are the latest to take up the torch of solidarity in the face of racism. 
All power to them! Their fight is crucial to pushing back against the racist brutality of Trump and rebuilding the kind of working-class power and confidence we’re going to need in the years ahead—to fight racism, war and the system built on profit that oppresses us all.

Vinil Kumar

Racism is about oppressing the working class

Jose Antonio Kast, a far-right figure, won Chile’s recent presidential elections in December. His victory in the second round with 58.2 percent of the vote against his opponent from the Communist Party, Jeanette Jara, consolidates the shift on the Chilean right from mainstream conservatism to a new brand of Trump-inspired politics.
Jara served as minister for work and social provision in the current government of Gabriel Boric of the Frente Amplio (FA, or Broad Front). In this role, she implemented mild pro-labour reforms such as the 40-hour week and wage and pension increases, which helped her become the centre-left Unity for Chile coalition’s candidate.
Boric’s presidency is the backdrop to the election. A left-wing former student leader, he came to office in 2021 in the wake of a mass social rebellion, which occurred two years earlier. That movement culminated in the then-president, a conservative billionaire, agreeing to redraft the constitution, which was a relic of the Pinochet dictatorship. 
Boric and other leaders in his coalition, which included the Communist Party, played a crucial role in demobilising the movement and channelling its aspirations into their electoral campaign. Two years later, on a platform of higher taxes on the rich and greater social spending, he won the presidency.
How Chile went from such a moment in 2019 to a victory for the far-right can only be explained by the failure of Boric and the FA to implement the demands of the rebellion. 
By the time a constitutional convention put a new document to a vote in late 2022, there was a chasm between the demands that millions had fought for in the streets and what was actually in the draft. Some of those demands included the nationalisation of key resource industries, land rights for indigenous groups, an overhaul of the loathed private pension system, increased education spending and a range of other socially progressive measures. But even the FA had voted against some of these measures being constitutionally enshrined. As such, 62 percent of the population voted to reject the draft. 
A second draft, which further rejected key demands of the movement, was again rejected by 56 percent of the population. Boric’s response was to abandon any further constitutional process and make further concessions to the right. This political trajectory was entirely predictable. As I wrote in Red Flag after his election in 2021:
“While the victory of Boric is welcome in so far as it represents a rejection of the legacy of the dictatorship and a repudiation of the attempt to elevate a Trumpian, Bolsonarist figure, it is clear that the president-elect is both unable and unwilling to fulfil the demands of the October 2019 movement ... “[W]avering and concessions on the part of Boric will likely cede more political ground to the right, which, despite losing the elections, has a newfound sense of confidence.”
This outcome was the logical conclusion of a political project that rejects mobilising the working class, instead channelling popular sentiment into an electoral campaign. Boric and the FA sought only minor reforms to capitalism and thoroughly rejected the self-activity of the working class. 
Once in government, they faced the pressures that come with running capitalism. They were now responsible for overseeing a system in which a tiny minority rules over the vast majority. This meant ensuring a stable environment for profitable investment, cordial relations with the US and attacking anyone who challenged this state of affairs. 
All of this runs totally counter to the vision that millions of Chileans fought for in 2019 and then elected Boric to implement. Is it any wonder then, that after such betrayal and demoralisation, the ground would become fertile for the far right? 
A similar story has been playing out across Latin America over recent years. Parties with the same program and politics as Boric have been tossed out by the electorate and replaced with a more radical and right-wing replacement. 
In Argentina, a self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” president, Javier Milei, is implementing one of the most vicious austerity programs in recent memory. In El Salvador, the authoritarian Nayib Bukele has turned his country into a gulag. President Daniel Noboa is following suit in Ecuador and wants to base US troops in the country. And former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is currently serving 27 years in prison for attempting his own 6 January-style “insurrection” to maintain power, which had support in the top echelons of the military.
Several governments are now some of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders, lauding the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president. Trump, for his part, is more than willing to support them, such as when he offered a US$20 billion lifeline to Milei’s government shortly before the mid-term elections to help stabilise the economy and improve his electoral prospects. Given recent events in Venezuela and El Salvador, it’s not hard to imagine a return to the strong-man military regimes that ruled the region in the 1960s and 1970s.
Over recent decades, Latin America has given rise to many Borics—left-wing reformists who ride the tide of class struggle to power. But the region is now turning to the far right in large part because of the failure of these governments to improve people’s lives. 
With Trump open about his intentions to shore up US domination over the Western hemisphere and the far right on the march, the need for an anti-capitalist political alternative to reformism has never been greater.
Tom Sullivan will present the session <a href="https://www.marxismconference.org/program/franco-and-pinochet-military-fascism">Franco and Pinochet: military fascism?</a> at the Marxism conference in Melbourne, 2-5 April.

Tom Sullivan

Another Latin American country turns to the far right

The following is a statement from the Iranian Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT). The IRMT was founded in early 1979, initially under the name Iranian Socialist Workers’ Party. Its founders began political activity in the 1960s, establishing an Iranian Commission within the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. The organisation’s theoretical foundations are rooted in Trotsky’s Transitional Programme and the first four congresses of the Communist International. Today, IRMT is part of International Standpoint and remains the only Iranian Trotskyist organisation.
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The recent protests sparked by the sharp rise in the dollar exchange rate—initially led by Tehran’s bazaar merchants—quickly evolved into a broader social uprising. What for a privileged layer meant a partial reduction in profits translated for the vast majority of people into deepening poverty, worsening living conditions and an acute cost-of-living crisis. Combined with fuel price hikes, higher taxes and soaring prices of basic goods, millions are now pushed to the edge of survival.
Since the brutal suppression of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, Iranian society has been subjected to relentless economic pressure, unemployment, insecurity, and hunger. Under these conditions, protests rapidly spread beyond the bazaars to include workers, youth, women, students and striking labour sectors across multiple cities. Increasingly, demonstrators are expressing opposition not only to specific policies but to the ruling system as a whole. The state has responded, as always, with intensified repression, mass arrests and the deployment of security forces and plainclothes enforcers.
Runaway inflation has removed essential items—bread, rice, meat, and other staples—from the reach of large sections of the population, while basic goods have become luxuries. Unemployment, homelessness, addiction and social disintegration are the direct outcomes of Iran’s capitalist order. No reshuffling of officials or factions within the regime can resolve these structural crises.
Class polarization continues to deepen. A small elite, tied to state power, the security apparatus and religious foundations, accumulates vast wealth through the exploitation of labour and the plunder of public resources. Meanwhile, millions survive through precarious and degrading work, child labour and informal street trade, while the children of the ruling class live in comfort abroad.
The Tendency of Revolutionary Marxists of Iran expresses full and unconditional support for the just struggles of the Iranian people. Past experience has shown that spontaneous protest alone, without organization, is vulnerable to repression and exhaustion. For this reason, the linkage between mass street mobilization and organized working-class struggle is decisive. Only the convergence of labour struggles and popular protest can shift the balance of forces and open the path to lasting gains.
Self-defence against state violence is a legitimate right of workers and oppressed people. Sustainable resistance requires organization, solidarity and coordination across sectors. The fight in Iran is not a single episode, but part of a longer struggle for workers’ power, social equality and democratic control over society through workers’ councils.
We salute the courage of Iranian workers, youth, women, teachers, students and retirees who continue to resist repression in streets, workplaces, schools and universities across the country. We call on trade unions, workers’ organisations, and left movements internationally to stand in active solidarity with the Iranian working class and oppressed masses.
Forward toward the overthrow of capitalist rule and the establishment of a council-based, workers’ government in Iran.

Editors

In solidarity with the popular uprising in Iran

Rage has erupted in the US after a yet-to-be-identified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good on a snowy residential street in Minneapolis on Wednesday. <a href="https://x.com/micah_erfan/status/2009028538448433562?s=20">Videos circulating online</a> show clearly that Good was shot by the agent multiple times through her car windows as she was attempting to drive past him. 
The shooting took place just six blocks from where George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police in 2020—the event that saw the Black Lives Matter movement explode into riots and protests across the US and the world.
Witnesses say Good was acting as a legal observer during an ICE operation in the area. As such, she was one of thousands of ordinary Americans who have participated in <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/chicagos-fightback-against-trumps-deportation-machine">grassroots organising against ICE</a> raids in their communities.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shamefully <a href="https://www.fox9.com/news/kristi-noem-calls-actions-leading-up-ice-shooting-terrorism-jan-2026">labelled Good a “domestic terrorist”</a> and claimed the ICE agent was acting in self-defence. Donald Trump subsequently made the administration’s line on the murder even more explicit. “The reason these incidents are happening”, he told reporters, “is because the radical left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our law enforcement officers and ICE agents”.
Evidently Trump sees things very differently when it comes to agents of the US state murdering protesters in American cities than he does when similar acts are carried out by countries he regards as enemies. In a post on the right-wing social media platform Truth Social last Friday he said “If Iran kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go”. If only his own citizens might enjoy the same kind of care! 
Shortly after the shooting, a crowd amassed and chased ICE from the scene, despite attempts by Minneapolis police to protect them. By the time the sun was setting, up to ten thousand people had gathered for a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTOoLJ_jJv3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==">vigil</a>. An activist who spoke there said “We demand full accountability and justice for Renee. Don’t believe the lies. She was murdered in cold blood today. Don’t be confused by this administration”.
On Tuesday, the day before the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security <a href="https://apnews.com/article/immigration-enforcement-ice-noem-minnesota-somali-db661df6de1131a034da2bda4bb3d817">announced</a> its “largest immigration operation ever” in the Minneapolis area, with 2,000 ICE agents set to be deployed. The operation was a political move by the Trump administration to target Minnesota’s Somali community, which has been subjected to a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/04/us/minneapolis-somali-community-fraud-allegations">racist beat-up</a> in recent weeks centring on right-wing conspiracy theories about fraud in Somali-run childcare centres.
The Trump administration has instigated a steep rise in the number of ICE arrests and detentions. As of 14 December, ICE held nearly 70,000 people in detention, a record high. Many of those were detained without trial in violent, armed sweeps of working-class and migrant communities.
Good’s murder, and the ICE-led reign of terror inflicted on migrant communities across the US since Trump took office a year ago, are symptomatic of the priorities of American capitalism in the current moment. The American ruling class, increasingly nervous about maintaining their domination over a world where China is on the rise, have lined up behind Trump and his project to aggressively reassert the strength of American imperialism through brute force. 
Abroad, this looks like enthusiastic support for the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s aggressive operations against the Iranian regime and its proxies across the Middle East. It means a foreign policy unconcerned with even the pretence of a “rules-based order” and more inclined to strategies like kidnapping foreign heads of state in the dark of night. 
At home, where the Trump administration is <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/699221/trump-approval-rating-drops-new-second-term-low.aspx">increasingly unpopular</a>, opposition must be intimidated or stamped out by force. Palestine activists have been brutalised and targeted for deportation, basic civil liberties have come under attack, and migrants have been scapegoated and locked-up in America’s rapidly expanding network of detention centres. 
Democrats have condemned the killing, with former candidate for vice president and current Minnesota governor Tim Walz promising to seek justice. But the Democrats are utterly incapable and unwilling to stand up to Trump beyond censorious words. 
At the same time as he was holding a press conference where he told ICE to “get the fuck out”, Minneapolis’ Democrat mayor Jacob Frey’s cops were protecting ICE agents from protestors at the scene of Good’s murder. Walz has put the Minnesota national guard on notice in case further demonstrations get out of hand—the same troops he mobilised to smash up Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. 
Hope for the type of movement that can put Trump and ICE back into their boxes lies squarely with ordinary Americans like Renee Nicole Good and the millions who are outraged by her murder. Tens of thousands have already mobilised in cities like Chicago and New York, with more mass protests planned for the coming days. In the words of a man who rushed to the scene of Good’s murder to <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DTOdd3hDPM1/">confront</a> ICE, “you can’t kill us all”.

Riley K

ICE murder sends shockwaves through the US

The US has launched airstrikes against Venezuela, kidnapped its president, Nicolas Maduro, and is attempting a regime change—although at this point the government still stands. The order for this naked display of gangster imperialism came from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida club for the one percent, where just days earlier he auctioned a portrait of Jesus for US$2.75 million and said his new year’s resolution was “peace on Earth”. 
There can be no peace with the Washington regime enforcing order. On every continent, military bases, CIA stations and multinational companies are engaged in a global war to continue or expand US domination. Extortion and terrorism are the norm for this rogue state. But this latest act is so brazen, so arrogant, that it beggars belief. This is the lawlessness of a criminal syndicate; the act of a mob-boss state.
Regime change in Venezuela has been a long-held goal of US foreign policy planners since the left-wing Hugo Chavez won the presidency in 1999 and initiated a program of wealth redistribution towards the poor and the working class. The country’s oil wealth underpinned the new president’s program. With the world’s largest known reserves, Chavez partially nationalised the sector. He and his successor Maduro increasingly turned to China as Washington turned the screws, including signing deals to sell oil at below world market prices.
Trump’s actions must be understood in the context of intensifying imperialist tensions between the United States and China. For Washington, the world’s largest oil reserves in a region it considers its “backyard” being sold at cut-price rates to its principal geopolitical rival was scandalous. This was part of the motivation for the US-backed coup attempt in 2002, when Chavez was detained for two days but ultimately failed. It also inspired the first Trump administration’s recognition of little-known politician Juan Guaido as the country’s “true” president. Guaido unsuccessfully called for the military to oust Maduro in a coup and publicly supported a US invasion.
While oil is important in US calculations, Maduro’s ouster is part of a broader attempt to shore up the Western hemisphere under US domination. Many governments have been overthrown in this region purely for not toeing the US line and displaying some concern for their own citizens’ wellbeing. Also, the region is home to crucial natural resources and has gradually been slipping out of US control. Such a brazen move to oust the leader of a country that has forged closer ties to China and Russia sends a clear message about what the US is prepared to do to maintain its hegemony.
Why now? Regional dynamics are important. The first decade and a half of the 21st century was dubbed the “pink tide”, as left-wing or left-leaning governments came to power across the continent. These leaders often used Chinese demand for their natural resources to lift millions of people out of poverty. But this model began to break down around 2011 when Chinese economic growth began to slow. Many of pink tide leaders turned to austerity and authoritarianism. 
Over the last decade, the political pendulum in the region has tipped back to the right. But it was not the same right as before the pink tide. Today, it is a hardened and radicalised right, inspired by Trump. Such governments are in power in Argentina, El Salvador, Bolivia and just won elections in Chile. 
Crucially, there is also a government-in-waiting in Venezuela. Since Chavez’s first election victory, Venezuela’s far right have openly supported US intervention. Now, they have finally got their wish. At the time of writing, it’s unclear how much, if any, of the US’s actions were coordinated with Venezuela’s far-right leaders and dissident military officers. 
Should they end up in power, however, the plan is clear. Their most prominent leader, Maria Corina Machado, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, recently summed it up: “We will bring rule of law. We will open markets. We will have security for foreign investment and a transparent massive privatisation program that is waiting for you.”
That’s the “peace on Earth” that Trump, and apparently the Nobel committee, desire: a fire sale of public assets to predatory US companies, and a government pliant to Western corporate and geopolitical interests.
Many questions remain unanswered. The role of the Venezuelan military looms large. Its top echelons are deeply integrated into the Venezuelan capitalist class, running important sections of the economy. Along with Venezuela’s large military budget, this has underpinned their loyalty to the government for many years. It is unclear how the leading generals will respond to Maduro’s ouster, but voluntarily handing over their control of the world’s largest oil reserves seems unlikely.
There are more questions. Will the opposition unite around a clear program and person? It’s impossible to know, but the more moderate sections are not unanimous in supporting US intervention. How much of this is driven by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose political career has been animated by an almost manic desire for regime change in Venezuela and Cuba? 
What political impact will this have domestically in the US and on Trump’s MAGA movement? The legacies of Iraq and Afghanistan left a section of Trump’s base strongly opposed to regime change operations. It is notable that the few statements by Trump and Rubio have framed the actions as a “law enforcement” operation to bring a “criminal” drug trafficker to justice. 
Most important of all, how does the Venezuelan population respond? Having turned the country into a corrupt, authoritarian state stalked by poverty weakened the strong support Chavez enjoyed, but the Venezuelan population also has a long history of opposing US imperialism. Many understand that Washington’s crippling sanctions regime has been a key source of economic misery in the country. They know that Washington will only plunder them further.
Whatever the answers to these questions may be, the ouster of Maduro marks a step towards greater, and more naked, imperialist aggression. After Israel’s genocide in Gaza, there now appears little need for even the pretence of international law. Might makes right is the guiding ethos of US imperialism. There will be no peace until the empire falls.

US gangster regime kidnaps Venezuelan president

“Don’t be afraid, we are all together”—the chant rings out inside Tehran’s grand bazaar. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DS5tciAErAZ/">A young woman, bravely unveiled</a>, leads a march of hundreds through one of the oldest markets in the world. 
The collapse of the rial, Iran’s official currency, has triggered the biggest protests since the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in 2022. On Sunday 28 December, in the Iranian capital Tehran, the grand bazaar erupted. Merchants closed their shops and took to the streets chanting “shut it down”. Within 72 hours protests had spread to more than 21 of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to a report in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/world/middleeast/iran-shutdown-protests.html">New York Times.</a> From the Mashhad metro to the tiny town of Farsan, demonstrators converged on street corners and squares with the slogan “death to the dictator” —a reference to the 46-year-old Islamic theocracy—featuring prominently. 
Rebellion on the streets soon reached the major universities. From Tehran to Tabriz, students joined rallies in their hundreds demanding an end to poverty and corruption. <a href="https://en.kolbarnews.com/expansion-of-protests-and-strikes-on-the-fifth-day/">Activists at the Khajeh Nasir University</a> warned “we will go until the overthrow and death of the dictator”. Echoes of the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom uprising were everywhere, such as women with headscarves in their hands declaring “no headscarf, no veil, freedom and equality” and “women, life, freedom”. 
Protests have grown over the past five days despite severe state repression, with reports of police using live ammunition against demonstrators, raiding people’s homes and kidnapping them off the streets. According to the human rights group <a href="https://hengaw.net/en/news/2026/01/article-7">Hengaw</a>, at least three protestors, including a child, have been killed in Iran’s Lorestan province. Meanwhile, <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/basij-forces-member-killed-during-iran-protests-in-first">Said Pourali,</a> the deputy governor of Lorestan, claimed that protestors had killed a member of the Basij, the paramilitary militia within Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Roots of the rebellion 
This is the latest in a series of uprisings that have rocked Iran over the past decade. In 2017, workers went on strike across the country to demand bread, jobs and freedom. They burned down police stations and attacked banks. The sugarcane workers in Khuzestan established workers’ councils to fight for control over production. The 2017-2018 general strike precipitated the 2019 November uprising, sparked by a 200 percent increase in the price of fuel. Students rioted under the slogan “strike and revolution”. The strike committees active in 2017 re-emerged, and new sections of workers joined the struggle. The regime drowned the rebellion in blood but could not crush the will of the people for long. 
Strikes continued to ebb and flow in the first year of the pandemic. Then in 2021, protests erupted in Khuzestan in response to severe water shortages and soon spread to other cities and towns. A few months later, oil workers went on strike to protest the sham election of Ebrahim Raisi as president. Protests and strikes continued through 2022, from the smallest province Khorasan to the capital Tehran. This cycle of revolt reached its climax in the 2022 <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/we-are-all-mahsa-riots-shake-iran">Woman, Life, Freedom uprising</a>, triggered by the police murder of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Gina Mahsa Amini. This was the largest uprising since the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of the US-backed Shah dictatorship. 
The successive rebellions in Iran have deep economic and political roots. Runaway inflation and a collapsing national currency have been compounded by decades of government corruption and Western sanctions. Despite having the world’s second largest gas reserves and third largest oil reserves, nearly 70 percent of the Iranian population live below the poverty line, according to a report by the <a href="https://iran-hrm.com/2025/10/17/poverty-and-the-collapse-of-human-dignity-in-iran/">Iran Human Rights Monitor</a>. The minimum wage for Iranian workers is the worst in the region, behind even Afghanistan and Yemen, and the labour force participation rate has fallen to 41 percent, as documented by the <a href="https://www.meforum.org/mef-observer/the-year-in-review-irans-deepening-economic-crisis">Middle East Forum Observer</a>. The collapse of the rial, <a href="https://www.euronews.com/business/2025/12/31/empty-tables-sanctions-battered-currency-why-irans-protests-are-different-this-time">down around 20 percent</a> in the last month alone, has further eroded ordinary people’s purchasing power, making it even harder to buy already hyper-inflated goods like food and medicine. 
Meanwhile, the cabal of criminals who run Iran live in luxury. Oil tycoons, steel magnates, politicians and the elite military and police make billions in profit from exploiting and oppressing the working class. According to Iranian based economist Ali Heidari, nearly one-third of the country’s wealth is now concentrated in the hands of just one percent of the population. The regime has responded to the crisis by doubling down on austerity measures: gutting healthcare and infrastructure and attacking workers’ wages and conditions. 
A regime in crisis
All this has further fuelled a longstanding crisis of legitimacy for the regime. It has no popular support, instead maintaining its rule through sheer force with over <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20141025084454/http:/en.iranwire.com/features/6081/">sixteen intelligence agencies</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/irans-coercive-apparatus-capacity-and-desire">one of the largest civil militia organisations in the world</a>. But Iran’s rulers know that despite their best efforts, they can’t completely crush dissent. The election of Reformers’ Party candidate Masoud Pezeshkian to the presidency in July 2024 signalled an attempt by the state to soften its image after crushing the Women, Life, Freedom uprising. Pezeshkian paid shallow lip service to the movement demanding an end to the mandatory hijab and criticised the morality police, who enforce the sexist policies of the state. 
But the hopes that some Iranians had in his presidency were quickly dashed as it became clear he’d continue the policies of his predecessors. Pezeshkian’s recently proposed annual budget will hold minimum wages far below the inflation rate, raise taxes by 62 percent and increase the price caps on fuel, according to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/26/irans-government-budget-reveals-tough-road-ahead-as-currency-hits-new-low">Al Jazeera</a>. The government proposes to spend the same amount of money bolstering its propaganda apparatus as it will on the entire education sector. 
The regime also suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Israel and America, which last June launched a twelve-day war that <a href="https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/comprehensive-updated-assessment-of-iranian-nuclear-sites-five-months-after-the-12-day-war">largely destroyed</a> Iran’s most important nuclear sites, destroyed or damaged crucial oil, gas and water resources and targeted civilian infrastructure, killing over 1,000 people. The fallout of the war contributed to the collapse of the rial, the value of which has declined by at least 40 percent since June, according to a report by the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7295df7f-5e4b-4fe6-a266-7390c71412f5">Financial Times</a>. Israel’s all-out assault on the region—its Gaza genocide, war on Lebanon and bombing campaigns in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, weakened Iran’s regional allies. Added to that, the overthrow of the dictatorship of Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria left the regime a sitting duck.
Some on the left argue that we should support the Iranian regime because of its hostility to Israel and America. This position denies the right of Iranian workers and the oppressed to resist after decades of suffering under the boot of a capitalist dictatorship with Islamic colouring. Socialists should stand unequivocally with the resistance in Iran, while also rejecting attempts by the Western imperialists to exploit the movement for their own gain. 
The dynamics of the current movement 
The dynamics of the current protests can’t be understood without this context. The crisis is so deep that it has started to break one of the regime’s historically loyal support bases—the bazaaris, the traditional merchant class. The alliance between the merchants and the regime has deep roots going back to before the 1979 revolution. They formed an alliance against the US-backed Shah dictatorship in 1963, establishing the Islamic Coalition Party. During the 1979 revolution the bazaaris provided important financial support to the clergy, who under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini eventually defeated the revolution and established the Islamic Republic. 
The clergy relied on the bazaaris to get them into power and for many years maintained a strong, albeit at times unstable, alliance. But the worsening economic situation and the growing financial dominance of Iran’s repressive state forces gradually weakened the influence of the bazaaris. This was particularly the case during the hardline presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013) but has continued to today. The bazaaris no longer enjoy the relative privileges they once had. 
In response they have organised increasingly frequent protests, including participating in the 2018 general strike where they raised slogans that for the first time transcended their own commercial interests. The bazaaris’ initiation of the current protests is not unprecedented but represents a significant breakdown in the relations between the traditional middle class and the Iranian regime. 
Meanwhile students and the youth have swung back into action after being the epicentre of the Women, Life, Freedom uprising. Through their Telegram channels, students circulated footage of protests on multiple university campuses in Tehran, Isfahan and Yazd. They gathered in their hundreds chanting “freedom! freedom! freedom!” and “don’t be afraid! We are all together”. At night when security forces came to kidnap students from their dormitories at Tehran University, they bravely fought back, inspiring more students to rise up. At Ferdowsi University in Mashhad, students declared “protest is our right, sit-ins are our tool, and resistance is our path. The young generation will not accept injustice and will not surrender the future at the cost of fear”. 
Many student groups, including independent student unions, that were active in the Women, Life, Freedom uprising have re-emerged. The memory of this rebellion is fresh in their minds—they turned the universities into hubs of resistance, defying gender segregation rules, burning their hijabs and occupying buildings. Students joined forces on a national scale, and compelled teachers to go on strike in solidarity with their struggle. Their participation in this moment can inspire wider layers of society into action. In the words of the students at Khajeh Nasir University, their protest “is a warning from students to the rulers who have become comfortable with corruption, we remind them that the normalisation of misery has failed, and the student is still standing”. 
Much of the mainstream media reporting focuses on the bazaaris and the students. While it’s true that they’ve been at the centre of the current protests, workers have been on the battlefield for many months. They feel the economic crisis most acutely. Teachers, nurses, truck drivers, gold miners, steel, oil and gas workers have been striking and protesting to demand wage increases, health and safety measures and the abolition of the predatory contract labour system. It’s workers who are the beating heart of Iran’s economy and who have the power to topple the regime. 
We’ve seen glimpses of this potential. In early December, videos posted on Telegram captured 5,000 contract oil and gas workers on strike in the biggest industry-wide mobilisation since the 1979 revolution. These workers are stationed in Asaluyeh, at the world’s largest natural gas field. They provide more than half of the country’s income. It’s why they were targeted by Israeli airstrikes back in June. 
In the aftermath of the Israeli attack, politician Hassan Nowruzi tried to deter workers from protesting, arguing that bosses and workers are “in the same boat”. But this attempt to cohere national unity failed miserably—the oil and gas workers continued to strike. Their independent union pushed back, replying “No sir! We workers and you plunderers are not in the same boat. You and your government have punctured the boat that carries our livelihood, and through these holes you are looting everything we have”. 
Challenges and prospects 
For the struggle on the streets to deepen, students and bazaaris must unite with the working class. In the case of oil and gas workers, they are geographically isolated from the big cities and forced to live on or near the plants in terrible camps. But recent years have shown that this barrier can be overcome. During the Women, Life, Freedom uprising workers and students consciously forged solidarity, recognising that freedom from oppression is bound up with the class struggle. The Haft Tappeh union at the time declared, “this great uprising should be linked with the strike of workers’ everywhere … to have bread and freedom, let us not leave the women of the revolution alone”. Today, the economic grievances of the working class are directly linked to the protests in the bazaars and on the university campuses. 
As for the regime, it has responded in typical fashion: with repression. But unlike previous rebellions, it has been forced to pay lip service to the grievances of the masses. This was reflected in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/30/irans-president-calls-on-govt-to-hear-legitimate-demands-of-protesters">Pezeshkian’s social media address</a> on Monday, writing that he asked the interior minister to engage with the legitimate demands of the protestors. Fatemeh Mohajerani, a spokeswoman for the government, <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2025/12/irans-government-offers-dialogue-protesters">told reporters</a> that Tehran planned to set up a dialogue that would include protest organisers. “We see, hear and recognise the protests, crises and constraints”, she said. At the same time, the government announced the closure of universities, government offices and commercial centres in 18 of Iran’s 31 provinces and security forces are crawling the streets hunting down dissidents. 
The Iranian regime is caught in a perpetual crisis with no clear solution. But one thing is for sure—the fire will continue to burn so long as the Islamic Republic still stands. The decade of crisis and class struggle has made clear that its days are numbered.

Bella Beiraghi

Iran on fire: rebellion returns to the streets

Suppose we accept the fiction that none of us expected Israel to launch a full-scale <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds">genocide</a>
in Gaza—a premeditated campaign to erase the Strip and exterminate a significant portion of its inhabitants. Let us pretend that nearly 80 years of relentless massacres were not a prelude to this moment, and that Israel had never before sought the physical destruction of the Palestinian people as outlined by the 1948 Genocide <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf">Convention</a>.
If we go so far as to accept the sterile, ahistoric claim that the <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/">Nakba</a> of 1948 was “merely” ethnic cleansing rather than genocide—ignoring the mass graves and the forced erasure of a civilisation—we are still left with a terrifying reality. Having witnessed the unmasked extermination that began on 7 October 2023, who can dare to argue that its perpetrators lack the intent to repeat it?
The question itself is an act of charity, as it assumes the genocide has actually stopped. In reality, the carnage has merely shifted tactics. Since the implementation of the fragile <a href="https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-ceasefire-agreement-10-10-25">ceasefire</a>
on 10 October, Israel has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/20/israeli-troops-kill-palestinians-sheltering-in-gaza-school-hospital-chiefs">killed</a>
over 400 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more. Others have perished in the frozen mud of their tents. They include infants like 8-month-old Fahar Abu Jazar, who, like others, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/11/world/palestinian-baby-dies-hypothermia-intl-latam">froze</a>
to death. These are not mere tragedies; they are the inevitable results of a calculated Israeli policy of destruction targeting the most vulnerable.
During this two-year campaign of extermination, more than 20,000 Palestinian children were <a href="https://www.savethechildren.net/news/gaza-20000-children-killed-23-months-war-more-one-child-killed-every-hour">murdered</a>, accounting for a staggering 30 percent of the total victims. This blood-soaked tally ignores the thousands of souls entrapped beneath the concrete wasteland of Gaza, and those currently being consumed by the silent killers of famine and engineered epidemics.
The horrifying statistics aside, we bear witness to the final agonies of a people. We have watched their extermination in real-time, broadcast to every handheld screen on earth. No one can claim ignorance; no one can claim innocence. Even now, we watch as 1.3 million Palestinians <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/spread-famine-gaza-strip-averted-palestinians-face-starvation-128549483#:~:text=Aid%20groups%20say%20nearly%201.3,shelters%20and%20relying%20on%20assistance.">endure</a>
a precarious existence in tents ravaged by winter floods. We share the screams of mothers, the hollowed-out faces of broken fathers, and the haunted stares of children, and yet, the world’s political and moral institutions remain paralysed.
If Israel resumes the full, unrestrained intensity of this genocide, will we stop it? I fear the answer is no, because the world refuses to dismantle the circumstances that permitted this slaughter in the first place. Israeli officials never bothered to hide their intent. The systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians was a primary export of Israeli media, even as Western corporate outlets worked tirelessly to sanitise this criminal discourse.
The record of intent is undeniable. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-s-ben-gvir-renews-call-to-occupy-gaza-encourage-palestinian-migration/3620645">championed</a>
the “encouragement of migration” and <a href="https://x.com/MarquardtA/status/1714349157144564112?lang=en">demanded</a>
that “not an ounce of humanitarian aid” reach Gaza. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich <a href="https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/57/NGO/107">argued</a> that the starvation of two million people could be “just and moral” in the pursuit of military aims. From the halls of the Knesset to the pop charts, the <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240314-shager-israeli-song-promises-to-erase-gaza-and-shoot-rockets-like-rain/">refrain</a>
was the same: “erase Gaza”, “leave no one there”. When military leaders refer to an entire population as “human animals”, they are not using metaphors; they are issuing a license for extermination.
This was preceded by the hermetic <a href="https://euromedmonitor.org/en/gaza">siege</a>—a decades-long experiment in human misery that began in 2006. Despite every Palestinian plea for the world to break this death grip, the blockade was allowed to persist. This was followed by successive wars targeting a besieged, impoverished population under the banner of “security”, always shielded by the Western mantra of Israel’s “right to defend itself”.
In the dominant Western narrative, the Palestinian is the eternal aggressor. They are the occupied, the besieged, the dispossessed and the stateless; yet they are expected to die quietly in the world’s “largest open-air <a href="https://www.warchild.net/stories-of-children/rami/">prison</a>”. Whether they utilised armed resistance, threw rocks at tanks, or marched unarmed toward snipers, they were branded “terrorists” and “militants” whose very existence was framed as a threat to their occupier.
Years before the first bomb of this genocide fell, the United Nations <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2015/09/507762">declared</a> Gaza “uninhabitable”. Its water was a toxin, its land a graveyard, and its people were dying of curable diseases. Yet, aside from the typical ritual of humanitarian reports, the international community did nothing to offer a political horizon, a just peace.
This criminal neglect provided the vacuum for the events of 7 October, allowing Israel to weaponise its victimhood to execute a genocide of sadistic proportions. Former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant explicitly <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-paints-palestinians-as-animals-to-legitimize-war-crimes-israeli-scholar/3030278">stripped</a>
Palestinians of their humanity, launching a collective slaughter directed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The stage is being set for the next phase of extermination. The siege is now absolute, the violence more concentrated, and the dehumanisation of Palestinians more widespread than ever. As the international media drifts toward other distractions, Israel’s image is being rehabilitated as if the genocide never happened.
Tragically, the conditions that fuelled the first wave of genocide are being meticulously reconstructed. Indeed, another Israeli genocide is not a distant threat; it is an encroaching reality that will be finalised unless it is stopped.
The 1948 <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf">Convention</a>
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was a legal <a href="https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1263&amp;context=gsp">vow</a>
to “liberate mankind from such an odious scourge”. If those words possess a shred of integrity, the world must act now to abort the next phase of extermination. This requires absolute accountability and a political process that finally severs the grip of Israeli colonialism and violence. The clock is ticking, and our collective voice—or our silence—will make the difference.
First published at <a href="https://ramzybaroud.net">RamzyBaroud.net</a>.

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