Against the Project of Proxy War and the Organization of Imperialism’s Foot Soldiers

Against the Project of Proxy War and the Organization of Imperialism’s Foot Soldiers

The ongoing war has entered a new stage. The blitzkrieg scenario on which the United States and Israel had counted has failed to produce the expected outcome. Their calculation was clear: by assassinating the political leadership and military commanders of the Islamic Republic and destroying its missile infrastructure, the regime’s war machine would be paralyzed in the very first hours, opening the way for a rapid shift in the balance of power. But this plan has failed. Neither did the power structure of the criminal Islamic regime collapse rapidly under the impact of political assassinations, nor was its missile capability eliminated at once. The counter-attacks and the wide range of targets that have come under fire across the region show that the project of a “short and precise war” has reached a dead end.
This deadlock reveals a simple truth: regime change in a country like Iran is impossible without a ground force. Yet after the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is unable to commit its own army to a large-scale ground war. It is precisely at this point that the familiar strategy of imperialism reappears: the creation of proxy foot soldiers and bringing the war into Iran itself.
Within this framework, sections of the exiled opposition or ethnic armed groups enter the field as potential instruments. Although the relative success of the United States, Israel, and regional powers in promoting the monarchist current as a political alternative has played a significant role in the power game, the “Pahlavi alternative”—despite its usefulness in that game—has no real applicability under the present concrete conditions. For this reason, the United States and Israel are seeking to assemble a proxy ground force by mobilizing ethnic and tribal parties and other organizations that possess the reactionary and organizational capacity to act as foot soldiers and assist in transferring the regional crisis into Iran itself.
This is the same pattern we have previously witnessed in Iraq, Libya, and Syria: when direct war fails to produce a swift victory, the target country is transformed into a battlefield for rival proxies, militias, and destabilization and partition projects. It is clear that if ethnic nationalist parties and other organized opposition forces consent to becoming cannon fodder for the great powers, the situation will be driven toward civil war. For the imperialist powers, this scenario has a clear objective: to extricate themselves from the quagmire of direct war and transfer that quagmire into the country itself.
Yet this process is not merely a military tactic; it forms part of a deeper crisis engulfing the global capitalist order. The energy crisis, geopolitical rivalry, and the historic crisis in the reproduction of capital are pushing the major powers toward wars and regional conflicts. Under such conditions, countries like Iran become testing grounds for these rivalries, while their peoples pay the principal cost of this power struggle.
The working class and the toilers of Iran must not fall into this trap. Neither the Islamic regime—which has ruled society through repression and religious despotism—represents the people, nor do the imperialist projects that seek to engineer the country’s future from outside. Turning Iran into a battlefield of proxy war would mean the destruction of social infrastructure, the deepening of poverty, and the dragging of society toward the abyss of civil war.
For this reason, the task of progressive forces and the labor movement is clear: to expose the project of proxy war and to resist it. The workers and peoples of the region have no stake in this war. What stands before them is a choice between two forms of reaction: domestic reaction and imperialist reaction.
The only real answer to this situation lies in the emergence of an anti-war and internationalist movement—a movement that serves neither authoritarian states nor imperialist powers. Only through the independent organization of the working class and through transnational solidarity among the workers and toilers of the region can the projects of war, partition, and destabilization be confronted.
Imperialist war and proxy war are two sides of the same coin. Only a force that transcends national borders and the power games of states can confront them: proletarian internationalism and organized anti-war resistance.

Toward Anti-War and Anti-Capitalist Nuclei
Against Neo-Fascism and Warmongering Nationalism, Against Reactionary War
Long Live the Internationalist Solidarity of the Working Class

Internationalist Workers’ Organization
March 5, 2026