U.S. aggression starts regional war in West Asia

March 2. Two heavily and nuclear-armed rogue states — the United States and Israel — launched a terrorist attack Feb. 28 against the Islamic Republic of Iran. This aggression was launched from a U.S. death fleet of warships in the waters around Iran and from dozens of U.S. and Israeli military air bases in West Asia. Iran quickly launched a defensive counterattack, mainly at strategic targets in the region.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society said March 2 that the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli aggression had already killed over 555 Iranians, including more than 160 children murdered in a girl’s school in Minab, an Iranian city on the Persian Gulf. The unprovoked strikes also assassinated Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, who is the religious leader of Shiite Muslims around the world, along with many other state officials and members of Khamenei’s family. 

Iran defended itself with drones and rockets targeting U.S. military bases across West Asia and strategic targets in Israel. They hit targets in Bahrain, Jordan,  Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all monarchies allied with U.S. imperialism. 

By the third day of fighting it became clear that the war the U.S. and Israel started without provocation had already expanded to become a regional war that promises enormous destruction. The U.S.-Israeli aggression also has the potential of expanding to a world war with nuclear-armed states on both sides. This war has even less popular support from the people of the U.S. than the assaults against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 1991 and 2003. 

Is a long war likely?

The MAGA White House had ordered the aggression without even attempting to consult a Republican-led Congress and with little popular support. A mid-February University of Maryland poll reported less than a quarter of the U.S. population backed a U.S. attack on Iran. Yet the likelihood of a long war of attrition has grown daily, as every news report shows.

Early on March 2, three F-35 U.S. jets were shot down over Kuwait, reportedly by “friendly fire.” The U.S. president also said that three U.S. troops had been killed during a hit on a U.S. military base and said that there would be more U.S. casualties. He said he expected the war to last for weeks if not longer, as contrasted with last June’s 12-day war.

Following an Iranian declaration that the Strait of Hormuz was closed, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard reported missile strikes on three U.S. and British oil tankers, the shutdown of key U.S. naval facilities in Kuwait, heavy damage to a U.S. base in Bahrain and extensive U.S. military casualties. The U.S. acknowledged only four deaths.

Since a fifth of the world’s energy sources flow through the Strait of Hormuz, oil futures opened 9% higher on Monday morning, March 2, with natural gas futures 50% higher.

Israel resumed its periodic bombing of Lebanon, mainly in Beirut and further south. The revolutionary Hezbollah organization, whose leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated by Israeli superbombs in the fall of 2024, responded from Lebanon by sending missiles toward Israeli targets. The Israeli regime called up 100,000 reservists. (Times of Israel, March 1) National Public Radio did reports interviewing Israelis at air-raid shelters admitting war weariness.

Pentagon spokesperson Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. attack would not lead to an endless war and was not aimed at regime change. Yet he also called upon Iranians to use this opportunity to rise up against the government. (NBC, March 2) Hegseth has a history of talking nonsense, lecturing generals and admirals about doing pushups and obeying every whim of the president. He has neither authority nor credibility for predicting the course of a war.

More important is that the Pentagon had to admit on March 2 that there is no evidence that Iran planned pre-emptive strikes against U.S. bases in the region before the U.S. and Israel attacked. And an imminent Iranian attack was exactly the claim and the sole pretext the U.S. gave for its Feb. 28 aggression.

Solidarity with Iran worldwide

The U.S.-Israeli murder of Ayatollah Khamanei awakened grief, anger at imperialism and mobilization, especially of Shiite Muslims around the world, from northern Nigeria to Hyderabad, India, to Iraq and Lebanon. In Baghdad, Iraq, a mass demonstration surrounded the highly fortified U.S. Embassy and broke through some of the outer protections. Armed Iraqi units attacked the U.S. air base near Iraq’s Erbil Airport.

The latest reports on March 2 from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (published in The Cradle) are that in the eleventh wave of the Iranian response, Iran’s Armed Forces “have so far attacked 60 strategic targets and 500 U.S. and Israeli military sites” and that “Operations have been carried out using more than 700 drones and hundreds of missiles.”

In imperialist Europe, most NATO-member regimes supported the U.S. and Israeli assault, just as they supported Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. British Prime Minister Keith Starmer accepted a U.S. request to use British air bases in the region. This would include the British base in Cyprus. According to some reports, U.S. warplanes have been moved from some of the countries closer to Iran to Cyprus. However, Iranian missiles have already hit targets in Cyprus.

In Europe, popular movements began to demonstrate against the U.S.-Israeli aggression. Even before the war was launched, in Crete, an island that is part of Greece, some 1,000 demonstrated against the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, which made a stop there on the way to West Asia. A protest took place Feb. 28 in Izmir, a port city in Türkiye, against the attack. 

The current Trump administration, unlike in the buildup to U.S. aggressive wars against Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya, has made little effort to carry out a campaign of Big Lies as a pretext — like the fake weapons of mass destruction for the 2003 attack on Iraq. It relies on the ongoing demonization of the Iranian government and the delusion that the mere orders from the president will carry the day. 

The people have already learned that this White House is oppressive against its own population – even including murder – from the Minneapolis of George Floyd to the Minneapolis of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Demonstrations took place across the U.S. the weekend of Feb. 28, which Workers World reports on in more detail elsewhere. They will grow in size and determination should the war continue to expand.