Trump’s 48-hour deadline for Iran to re-open the Strait of Hormuz was scheduled to expire at 00:00 GMT on 24 March. Hours before, Trump postponed the deadline by five days citing negotiations. Minutes after that, Iranian regime spokespeople denied any talks had taken place. This analysis of events by secretary of the Committee Workers’ International, Tony Saunois, was first published 19 March 2026 at socialistworld.net
The war launched by the Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu axis has plunged the world into its deepest state of turmoil since the 1973 oil crisis. It is a war aimed at recalibrating the relations in the Middle East in Israel’s favour, and also in the broader economic and geo-strategic interests of US imperialism.
Following the genocidal war against the Palestinian people and the slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank, the renewed war on Iran has unleashed further horrors on the peoples of the Middle East, particularly in Iran and Lebanon. One million people have been displaced in Lebanon and about three million in Iran, with thousands slaughtered. The Israeli regime, when ordering evacuation notices in some Lebanese areas, made clear that Christians could remain and that Muslims must flee, reflecting its approach.
Iran has suffered a ‘shock and awe’ apocalyptic bombardment more than three times the size that was unleashed on Iraq in 2003. Israel has invaded southern Lebanon and has occupied 10% of the country – part of Netanyahu’s objective of establishing a ‘Greater Israel’. This is in line with the openly stated objective of his party, Likud, to establish “between the Sea and the Jordan” river only “Israeli sovereignty”.
The Gulf states, ruled by feudal dictators, developed as the ‘safe haven’ for the global elites in recent decades. But this has been greatly destabilised by the war. Bahrain could be threatened with a massive crisis, and other Gulf states further destabilised. This can result in protests and movements breaking out. Protests already took place in Bahrain immediately after this war started, resulting in the regime banning all protests and widespread arrests. Significantly, Saudi forces were sent into Bahrain to repress the movement of its sizable Shia population.
Global energy supplies have been thrown into ‘crisis management’, especially with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This threatens to have devastating consequences on the Asian and world economy, probably tipping it into recession should the war continue, as seems likely. It has allowed Vladimir Putin to cash in from the rising price of oil and gas, which has allowed him to bolster the Russian economy and his war machine. Putin’s position on the battlefield is also strengthened, as the US is militarily focused on the Middle East. Nor is Trump engaged in forcing Ukraine-Russia negotiations, according to Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Geopolitical relations have exploded into even more intense conflicts and clashes. The clash between European capitalist powers and the US has also been sharpened and become more polarised. China is emerging further strengthened globally. US imperialism is currently being increasingly isolated and weakened due to the war. Political crisis and polarisation has deepened, especially in the US, where the Trump regime is now in crisis.
No plan
‘Punch drunk’ following the relative ease with which US imperialism kidnapped the Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, in January this year, Trump and Netanyahu imagined that an aerial bombardment and the assassination of some of the Iranian leadership would be sufficient for the Iranian regime to simply implode within a few days. Repeating the blunders of the Iraq and Libyan interventions, neither Trump nor Netanyahu had a plan for what would follow.
Yet Iran is not Venezuela. The regime still enjoys a significant social base despite massive opposition. It has a powerful military force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which is ideologically driven and with its own huge economic interests. The regime has been preparing for such an attack on Iran for decades. It has in place a partially decentralised structure that is designed to deal with the ‘decapitation’ of some of its key national leaders.
The policy of Netanyahu and Trump of targeted assassinations of key leaders in both the Iranian political and military infrastructure arguably compounds the problem for Israel and the US. Those that replace the killing of Iranian leaders, at regional and local level, are often more determined and driven ideologically, making the conflict even more unstable. The assassination of leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah by Israel in the past has not destroyed those organisations. Israel is attempting to seize control of everything south of the Litani river and has destroyed the bridges crossing it.
Three weeks into the war have revealed the limitations of US imperialism’s power, including its military strength. Symbolically, the US aircraft carrier sent to Iran, USS General Ford, has been temporarily withdrawn to Greece following a fire and failure of the onboard sewage system!
Firepower alone is not enough to effect regime change. As the German Field Marshal, Helmuth von Moltke, put it in 1870: “No plan survives the first encounter with the enemy”, a lesson Trump and Netanyahu are learning the hard way. The price for their actions, however, is being paid for by the masses of the Middle East. Incredibly, according to the news reports, when the danger of the Strait of Hormuz being closed by Iran was raised by Trump’s advisers, he dismissed it, saying the military would have to deal with the problem. Yet, as is now crystal clear, this is not so easy. Trump’s appeal for Nato forces to escort tankers through the narrow Strait have not been taken up by any western capitalist power. The French retired three-star general, Michel Yakovleff, described joining in a military operation in the Iran war as like buying a reduced ticket to board the Titanic after it had already hit the iceberg.
Now the war has escalated further, with Israeli attacks on the Iranian South Pars gas field which it shares with Qatar. In response, Iran has hit the largest liquified natural gas facility in Qatar. According to commentators this has resulted in serious damage that will take months to repair. These events have sent global gas and oil prices soaring. It will trigger an upturn in inflation in most countries. This follows US attacks on military installations on the crucial Iranian Kharg Island. Trump has thus far avoided attacking the oil refinery itself. Yet his regime is looking at trying to take control of it and has mobilised more troops to go to the area.
Boots on the ground?
The failure of Trump’s attack to thus far bring about the desired result may drive him to put some boots on the ground in special operations to try and seize the Kharg Island oil refinery. The same goes for Iranian uranium. Such operations are fraught with massive difficulties. Yet the increasingly crazed Trump regime could attempt such interventions. Once on the ground, further clashes or interventions could not be excluded. Trump cannot simply withdraw and leave with his prestige and that of US imperialism intact.
The problems encountered by such operations are illustrated in Southern Lebanon where Israeli troops are involved in armed clashes with Hezbollah forces. Weeks of intense bombardments by Israel have not dislodged Hezbollah fighters in Al-Khiyam and elsewhere. Israel has amassed four brigades and columns of tanks ahead of an expanded ground invasion of Lebanon.
The adventure launched by Trump and Netanyahu in attacking Iran has massively deepened the polarisation in the US and driven home a crisis for Trump. The resignation of Trump’s top security adviser, Joe Kent, the Director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, over the Iran war illustrated the cracks and divisions that are opening within the Trump regime. Kent is an extreme right-winger, with an antisemitic record. Yet together with leading MAGA supporters, like Tucker Carlson, he opposes Trump’s war on Iran.
Trump won the US presidential election promising an end to US foreign wars. Unleashing the war on Iran has undermined sections of Trump’s domestic support. There is overwhelming opposition to the war. For the first time, US imperialism has embarked on a war when a majority of the population oppose it from the start. Trump is threatened with significant losses in the US mid-term elections in November.
The Trump regime has increasingly adopted Bonapartist methods. He is concentrating more and more power into the presidency. The president has signed off 225 executive orders in his first 14 months in office and Congress has passed only 49 new laws. This compares with Biden signing 162 and Obama 276 – during the full term of their presidencies. Other measures introduced by Trump and Republican-run states amount to an attack on democratic rights and gerrymandering. The ‘Varieties of Democracy Institute’, based at Gothenburg University, has concluded that the US has a “most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding”. It argues that the US is moving faster to “autocracy than Hungary or Türkiye”.
Previous checks and balances have been weakened or in some cases marginalised. Fearing the mid-terms in November, Trump even threw out the idea of “cancelling the elections”, which he later dismissed as a joke. Yet it reveals his mentality. Trump cannot cancel the elections legally but may attempt something ‘illegally’. He has already raised the idea of ‘nationalising’ the election process, meaning the federal government takes control. In some areas of the US, counting machines have already been taken for ‘examination’. The ground is being prepared by the regime to disrupt, destabilise or challenge the results. Deployment of ICE and other forces to voting stations to intimidate voters is also being discussed.
This does not mean that Trump’s regime will get away with all of this. The mass movement that erupted in Minneapolis against the deployment of ICE illustrated the conflicts that can erupt. However, it means a serious political and social battleground is opening up in the US in 2026. The Iran war has greatly intensified this.
Should the crisis from the Iran war dramatically worsen, the turmoil unfolding in the US and divisions opening up in the Republicans and MAGA mean that at a certain stage attempts to remove Trump could be made. This could involve an impeachment attempt or invoking the 25th Amendment. This requires the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare the president unable to discharge his powers and duties. This seems unlikely at present but such a development could not be excluded at some point, especially with a worsening of the global crisis flowing from the Iran war.
How the war against Iran will unfold is uncertain. However, it is certain that the Middle East will be less stable and further conflicts and upheavals will take place. This latest war reflects the new age that capitalism is now in. It is an era of increased imperialist rivalries and wars. The need for a democratic socialist alternative social system is the only road that can end the nightmare for the masses. The challenge is to build a movement that can realise this goal.
Unite against terror, racism and war
With escalating imperialist aggression comes the increased threat of terrorist attacks. The antisemitic arson attack on Jewish charity ambulances in North London is a horrific example.
The Socialist Party completely opposes all forms of individual terrorism, above all that which targets ordinary people. The North London arson attack and other similar attacks do nothing to advance the struggles against war, imperialist aggression or for national self-determination – instead they assist the ruling capitalist class fostering divisions between sections of the working class. They are also used to justify further state repression against protesters, including against the workers’ movement.
