On the night of July 7, the Trump regime escalated its war of aggression against Iran, in violation of the ceasefire, renewing its assault on targets across the country as the Iranian masses end their mourning and burial of assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. U.S. Central Command struck approximately 80 targets, and an additional 90 the next night, making this the largest escalation since the June agreement. This renewed offensive marks a new phase in the war opened on February 28, when U.S. and Israeli forces initially killed Khamenei and members of his family, including an infant, in a strike at the outset of the conflict.
The ceasefire had taken effect on June 17 under a memorandum of understanding, or MoU, meant to halt the fighting while talks continued. Under the MoU, the U.S. had lifted its naval blockade on Iranian ports, Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial transit for 60 days, the U.S. waived sanctions on Iranian oil, and both sides were supposed to continue negotiations toward a final deal. The agreement also concerned the release of frozen Iranian assets, making the ceasefire not only a military pause, but a political and economic arrangement whose terms have now been shattered.
On July 7, the Trump regime revoked the sanctions waiver on Iranian oil that had been part of the agreement. Soon after, U.S. warplanes began bombing Iran again. The U.S. military struck southern port cities including Bandar Abbas, Sirik, Kuhestak, Chabahar, Jask, Abu Musa Island, and Konarak. Explosions were also reported around Bushehr, where Iran’s nuclear power plant is located. Targets included civilian infrastructure, such as two bridges on the road to Mashhad, where Khamenei was to be buried. The Aq Taqeh Khan railway bridge, linking trade routes from Tehran toward China through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, was also hit. The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks on southern coastal provinces and railway bridges as a grave war crime and accused the U.S. of breaching Articles 1 and 5 of the MoU.
Iran answered these attacks by striking U.S. linked military infrastructure in the region. Iranian armed forces launched attacks on U.S. military infrastructure in Gulf states after U.S. strikes hit Iran’s southern coastal and eastern provinces, targeting U.S. sites in Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain.
The Trump regime justified the strikes as retaliation for attacks on commercial vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, sovereign territory of Iran. U.S. Central Command said the bombing was meant to degrade Iran’s ability to affect shipping in the strait. Iran rejected this narrative, with the Revolutionary Guards stating traffic had recovered to about 50 percent of prewar levels under Iranian supervision and blaming U.S. interference for the disruptions in the reopening process.
The Strait of Hormuz is the central choke point in the present confrontation. The U.S., despite its pretense of ‘free navigation,’ instead seeks to command the flow of oil, gas, naval power, and trade routes in West Asia. Iran, battered by months of U.S. and Israeli assault, has used the strait as a lever against imperialist strangulation.
Khamenei’s burial came only after a week of mass processions through Iran and Iraq, culminating at the Shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, his birthplace. Approximately 43 million mourners rose up across the country with at least 12 million people in Tehran’s streets alone during the 10 kilometer procession to Azadi Square.
In Mashhad, black-clad mourners surrounded the convoy carrying Khamenei’s coffin and the coffins of four family members killed alongside him. The crowds were so dense that the truck carrying the coffin could not complete the final stretch, forcing the coffin to be taken by helicopter to the Imam Reza shrine. Mourners chanted “Death to America,” “Death to Trump,” and “Death to Israel,” while others demanded revenge against the U.S. regime for its role in the assassination. Among the signs and banners raised over the crowd was a large English language banner reading “WE WILL KILL TRUMP,” an unmistakable expression of the rage produced by the U.S. and Israeli strike that killed Khamenei and his family members.
At the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, Trump made the violation explicit. He declared the ceasefire “over,” saying, “To me, I think it’s over,” while still claiming that U.S. negotiators could continue talking for the time being. He threatened civilian infrastructure, including electric and desalination plants, and threatened to seize Kharg Island, the center of Iran’s oil exports. He called Iran’s leaders “scum,” “sick people,” and “evil people,” and stated, “let’s just finish the job.”
For the exploited and oppressed masses of the world, the meaning of this violation is clear. U.S. Imperialism will not tolerate any challenge to its domination of trade routes, energy supplies, client regimes, and military bases. The war on Iran is an expression of the international imperialist system, in which monopoly capital and finance capital divide the world into zones of exploitation, strategic passages, cheap labor, raw materials, and markets.
The same system that bombs Iran turns its violence inward against the masses of the U.S. The regime carrying out war abroad also attacks migrants, represses dissidents, terrorizes workers, and expands the machinery of surveillance and domestic reaction. These are not separate policies. They are joined by the same class interests: the defense of the imperialist state, the rule of monopoly capital, and the preservation of a social order built on a foundation of exploitation, national oppression, and repression.
The masses of the U.S. have no vested interest in this criminal war. Their enemy is not the Iranian people, nor any oppressed nation resisting imperialist domination. Their enemy is the U.S. state, its generals, its monopoly capitalists, its political servants, and the opportunists who call on the people to rally behind their own oppressors. The Trump regime has broken the ceasefire and reignited its war of aggression, and the masses must oppose every sanction, every blockade, every bombing, every U.S. base, and every imperialist threat against the people of Iran as part of the broader struggle against the system that produces endless war, the growing fascistization of society, and genocidal rule both at home and abroad.
