On February 10, in response to an alleged Iranian drone flight over Israeli territory, an Israeli F-16 jet was shot down while bombing a region in Syria occupied by Iran, the first time an Israeli warplane has been lost in combat since 1982. The incident sparked the largest Israeli air raid on Syria in decades, with both Syrian and Iranian military installations being targeted.  As Russian imperialism strengthens both its foothold in Syria and its alliance with Iran, this flashpoint in the Syrian war signals the possibility of broader conflict between an expansive Russia and a U.S. empire in decline.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has openly called for regime change in Iran for its human rights abuses (though he’s said nothing about the indiscriminate bombing and slaughter in Yemen by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia). Trump has vowed to bail out of the Iran nuclear deal in May and reintroduce sanctions unless the multilateral agreement is renegotiated (independent.co.uk, 1/12). In a recent Op-Ed column in the New York Times, Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, warned that unless Iran’s export of non-nuclear ballistic missiles to Yemen’s Houthi rebels is stopped, “then someday soon … the chance for peace will be lost” (2/17). At the Munich Security Conference, National Security Advisor H.R McMaster appealed to U.S. allies to halt trade with Iran to stem Iran’s funding of proxy armies and militias in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq: “So the time is now, we think, to act against Iran” (Reuters.com, 2/17).
The U.S. bosses have yet to galvanize popular support at home for another ground war in the Middle East, much less a global conflict with Russia and/or China. But their accelerating strategic weakness and the unpredictability of external events could push them to move before they are ready.
Scramble for Syria
Following the attack, the U.S. condemned Syria and affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself. Even so, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ceased the air barrage after Russian President Vladimir Putin called and warned him “to avoid a course of action that could have ‘dangerous consequences for the region’” (Daily Mail, 2/12). For now, Russia, not the U.S., is calling the shots in Syria.
Since 2011, Syria’s civil war has widened into a proxy war for the superpowers vying for control over the oil-rich Middle East. The latest Israeli attacks are part of a protracted regional conflict dating back to 1967, when Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War. Over the past five years, Israel has launched over 100 air strikes inside Syria, often attacking Iranian forces (Washington Post, 9/7/17). As Iran further entrenches itself in Syria and along the Israeli border, escalation toward global conflict is ever more likely. Russia is standing squarely behind Iran, the second most populous country and third biggest oil producer in the Middle East. The U.S. will stop at nothing to protect its interests in Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer and Iran’s main regional rival.
More than a century ago, Lenin argued that the world had entered the age of imperialism. With no new colonies to “discover” and subjugate, the imperialist powers could only re-divide territory and resources through war. In the current inter-imperialist scramble, Syria is at the epicenter of a re-division of the Middle East.
Now that ISIS is largely defeated in Syria, the conflict there has devolved into a free-for-all of imperialists competing to expand their influence in the region. With the Iran-leaning Syrian president Bashar al-Assad once again entrenched in power, and Russian and Chinese bosses positioning themselves to exploit the Syrian nightmare, the U.S. bosses seem more and more likely to find themselves on the losing side.
Insecure rulers debate Iran tactics
For the U.S. capitalist ruling class, the threats posed by a crisis with Iran are potentially catastrophic. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a ruling-class think tank, pointed out:
Iran has the ability to trigger a major war in the region, and to threaten the world’s main source of oil and gas exports—the 17 million barrels of oil a day that flow through the Strait of Hormuz. Any such Iranian action threatens the stability of the entire global economy, the global (and U.S. domestic) price of oil and of transportation fuels, and the import and export capabilities of America’s key trading partners in Asia—more than a third of U.S. manufactured imports (CSIS, 1/10).
The U.S. bosses’ main concern in Syria is the growing sway of Iranian and Russian imperialism in the region. Despite spending trillions on two wars in Iraq and an ongoing war in Afghanistan that has led thousands of U.S. workers to their deaths and killed millions in the Middle East, U.S. bosses have seen their influence in the region continue to wane. James F. Jeffrey, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, highlighted the rulers’ dilemma: “We told the Turks that the Kurds were temporary…to defeat ISIS. Now we need them to contain Iran. The whole purpose of this is to split the Russians from the Syrians by saying we’re going to stay on to force a political solution in Syria” (New York Times, 1/22).
The U.S. rulers’ concern is that a unilateral U.S. military confrontation with Iran would require a massive infusion of U.S. troops and further destabilize the region. Some main-wing ruling-class voices inside the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institute, notably author Vali Nasr, are pushing for an inclusive, U.S.-led regional order—including Iran—to counter Russia:
Rather than…contain Iran, the United States…should convince Tehran that it would be better off working with Washington and its allies than investing its hopes in a Russian-backed regional order…the United States should do what the Obama administration failed to: lead an international diplomatic effort to broker a regional deal that would end conflicts and create a framework for peace and stability (Foreign Affairs, March/April issue).
But others in the CFR, including Iran hardliner Elliot Abrams, are emphasizing the limits of diplomacy and the need for war. Abrams urged the Donald Trump administration to consider that Israel “could be a decade away from a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and has bases in Syria—and could logically therefore even place nuclear weapons in Syria, just miles from Israel’s border” (CFR blog, 10/8/17).
Given the ruthless competition created by capitalism, a future world war is inevitable. While the political divisions surrounding Trump’s election has hindered any mobilization of U.S workers for wider war, there remains significant patriotic sentiment within the U.S.—both in Trump’s base and in the liberal opposition. In any case, global events like the recent crisis between Israel and Syria may soon force the hand of the U.S. rulers to act. However these tensions play out, one thing is for sure: workers can expect more fascism as the bosses prepare for all-out war.
Iran-Russia axis
The Iran-Russia alliance is strengthening by the day. Looking to amplify its role as a regional power, Iran is rapidly expanding its infrastructure, positioning itself as a hub of trans-European trade and plugging into China’s One Belt, One Road initiative (Forbes 8/1/17). In August 2017, with both nations facing U.S. sanctions, Russia and Iran signed a $2.5 billion deal for the manufacturing of cargo and passenger wagons in Iran. In 2016, overall trade between Iran and Russia doubled, most of it in military contracts.
U.S. attempts to control Iran through sanctions have reduced opportunities for European companies like Total of France, which must obtain U.S. approval before investing. As a result, the sanctions have driven Iran even closer to Russia. Meanwhile, China has upped its military training and assistance to Syria’s army. Along with Russia and Iran, it has scooped up the lion’s share of Syria reconstruction contracts. China and Russia are leading members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which focuses on economic and counter-terrorism issues; Iran is an SCO partner. “Michael Maloof, a former Pentagon official, noted that China has actually been in Syria ‘for quite some time’…. The latest developments indicate that the U.S. is ‘being basically left out’”  (rt.com, 8/17/16).
Workers fight back
As the threat of wider war looms, the imperialist dogfight over Syria has proven a disaster for the region’s working class. After seven years of conflict, the current death toll stands at over 500,000, with nearly 13 million Syrians displaced. As the bosses fight over the spoils of Syria, our working-class brothers and sisters in the Middle East are paying the price.
In the midst of this chaos, the working class is fighting back. Last December, after going four months without pay, workers at the Haft Tapeh sugar cane plantation and mill complex in Shush, Iran, went on strike. In the Iranian city of Arak, hundreds of workers at Hepco, a private industrial complex, recently demanded months of back pay and better living conditions by forming a human chain around the city’s main square (Riyadh Daily, 2/7).
As Iran continues to develop its infrastructure with Russian investments, transit and construction workers in Iran will be essential in fighting back against the rulers’ move toward World War III.  We must follow the lead of these workers as their strikes threaten to shut down the bosses’ infrastructure. Armed with the analysis of Progressive Labor Party, they can turn these strikes into a larger class struggle against capitalism and inter-imperialist war.

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History of U.S.-Iran-Israel alliance

In the years following World War II, at the height of U.S. imperialist dominance, the U.S. could exert its influence through a combination of financial pressure, military might, and CIA espionage and assassinations. In 1953, the U.S. backed a coup in Iran that brought the murderous Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi into power, a move made possible in part by a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil instigated by Britain. At the time, Iranian oil could easily be replaced by oil from other places.
Through much of the Cold War, Iran and Israel were the two pillars of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. But in the 1970s, with the growing power of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), once a reliable U.S. ally, Iran began exercising greater independence of U.S. dictates. Now Iranian oil was no longer so easily replaceable, and the 1973 oil crisis revealed that the old equation for U.S. imperialist dominance in the Middle East was no longer reliable. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979 replaced the Shah with an Islamic Republic, Iran switched from U.S. ally to adversary—and eventually opened the door to Russia and China. Meanwhile, as the US continues to lose ground in the region, Israel has increasingly been left to fend for itself.

Los Angeles, February 15—The latest fascist raid triggered an emergency rally where 100 antiracists blocked a Homeland security van from accessing the Metropolitan Detention Center. Protesters called for an end to deportations and for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to get out of Los Angeles; Progressive Labor Party called for a borderless world.
The rally turned into a picket around the building, from the entrance to the side where detainees are locked up. The chants of “hey hey ho ho deportations have got to go” and “ICE must go” got louder and more militant as the crowd grew stronger.
As a Homeland Security van pulled up, protesters immediately surrounded the van, waving signs and chanting. Two Homeland Security officers came out briefly and approached the van but quickly returned to the detention center. Protestors surrounded the van for two hours until police in riot gear responded and dispersed the crowd.
This protest was in response to the ICE raids in Southern California. ICE kkkops arrested 212 workers over a five-day period and issued 122 notices of inspection to businesses in the area.
No sanctuary in the Democrats camp
This week brought a significant uptick in terror for immigrant communities here after another round of raids. While ICE agents claimed to only target specific individuals with criminal records, we know that is just a cover for terrorizing entire communities of workers.
California is listed as one of only six sanctuary states in the country. There are statewide regulations to obstruct federal immigration kkkops and their ability to question and detain undocumented immigrants. Los Angeles Democratic mayor Eric Garcetti doubled down on this position last year.  Masses of students were walking out of Los Angeles high schools after Trump’s election to protest the attacks on immigrants. Garcetti was pressured by these mass demonstrations to “take a stand.”
Upon a closer look at the role of Democrats, they  are far from “immigrant friendly.” When we include the number of returns (when an immigrant is coerced into an informal deportation without a court hearing), the Clinton administration deported 12.3 million immigrants (Migration Policy Institute, 1/26/17). Obama earned the title Deporter-in-Chief because he shifted policy from returns to removals, thus criminalizing  (A removal is a court-mandated deportation and criminalization of any attempt to come back to the U.S. for a number of years). “The story of the Obama administration on immigration enforcement is that more people than ever are being expelled from the country in a way that prevents them from returning to the U.S. legally or illegally” than all other presidents combined (Vox, 4/11/14). In total, Obama deported 5.3 million immigrants.
While Trump deported fewer workers than Obama did in his first year (Economist, 12/4/17), immigrant communities feel no less terrorized. Deportations have become more random and aggressive.
While Garcetti and other Democratic mayors appear to be standing up to ICE, the only standard they really uphold is requiring a warrant. Once that paper is produced, protection for immigrants is quickly abandoned. The Democrats who supposedly back the Dreamers (undocumented youth) actually promote a 10-to-12 year path to immigration that can be rescinded at any time. Furthermore, the main bill also includes up to $25 billion increase in funding for ICE and more border militarization.
Rally politics
At the rally, there were some class-conscious chants. But, most of the anger was focused on ICE and the Trump administration. There were also claims that Sanctuary cities and states were being targeted for raids since law enforcement would not cooperate with ICE. Besides calling for all of us to bring out friends, coworkers, and family to the next rally, the main call of the rally leaders was to get president Trump and vice president Mike Pence out of office and pass immigration reform.
Unfortunately, the open fascism of the Trump administration has many well-meaning working-class sisters and brothers running into the arms of the Democrats. This is a dead-end for immigrant workers and youth.
While rejecting republicrats, we struggle for the understanding that we must stand up to fascism in whatever form it rears its ugly head—promptly and militantly.
The 100 workers who protested need the Progressive Labor Party and communism. What they are searching for, a world free from racist terror, will not be found within this rotten system of capitalism. Through long-term struggle in the mass movement for immigrant rights, we can fight for the idea that raids, police murder, mass incarceration are all forms of terror against the working class. They are propagated by both Democrats and Republicans alike. Fascism, in all its forms, will only be smashed with communist revolution.

BROOKLYN, February 20—Students at Park Slope Collegiate, an integrated school with a principled stance against racist inequalities, staged two sit-ins against the racist Department of Education, the capitalist news media, and a few DoE stooges among PSC staff members. These militant actions capped nearly a year of multiracial struggle by students, parents, and teachers against anti-communist attacks over the past year.
Students reject racism of bosses
Last August, after a five-month witch-hunt, the DoE’s Office of Special Investigations retreated and suspended its inquiry without imposing any penalties. Along the way, the OSI did its worst to intimidate the school community, sow internal distrust, and undermine PSC’s anti-racist mission. It brought charges of “communist organizing” against two administrators and three staff members, and abused eight PSC students (one as young as 13) by interrogating them without their parents’ knowledge. Even after the investigation closed, the DoE and its racist, anti-student accomplices at the United Federation of Teachers continued for months to harass the school’s anti-racist leaders.
The sit-ins were a direct response to this harassment. These students, with strong support from a multiracial group of parents, are refusing to accept their racist criminalization by the DoE, the UFT, and the media—and giving notice that they are ready and willing to fight back.
A force to be reckoned with
No less important, the PSC community has actively rejected the pseudo-science of race. Confounding the racists, a mass, multiracial group of youth and their families are choosing to fight racism in solidarity with communists. Many white parents now realize that fighting racism is in the interest of the whole working class.
Reform struggles, win or lose, can be schools for revolution. When communists in Progressive Labor Party both give and accept leadership in these fights, we gain confidence in our class’s ability to defeat the bosses and smash capitalism, the source of racism, sexism, and inequality. These small struggles can lead to profound changes in the individuals who join them. By revealing the contradictions of the profit system, exposing our class enemies, and building multiracial unity in the face of the rulers’ attempts to divide us, these struggles can be instrumental in building a revolutionary communist movement.
In this instance, at least for now, a reform struggle has been won. Here are some recent developments at PSC that remind us that the bosses are not invincible, and that a united working class is a force to be reckoned with:

• At two January meetings, more than 50 students, parents, and staff confronted DoE lackeys for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is bought and paid for by gentrifying real estate interests, and his segregationist chancellor, Carmen Farina. After more than four years in office, their administration has done nothing beyond lip service to integrate one of the most segregated big-city school systems in the country. After a New York Daily News article demonized a group of mainly Black students, giving credence to the lie that a private group chat posed a physical threat to a racist PSC teacher, angry parents forced District Superintendent Michael Prayor to come to the school to meet with them. Prayor, a Farina henchman who collaborated in the abusive student interrogation last spring, tried to mollify the group with empty reassurances that the DoE was on the school’s side. But the group wasn’t fooled, and repeatedly called Prayer out for his complicity in a racist system. People demanded an explanation for why the DoE protects racists and attacks anti-racists, and a commitment to end the DoE’s harassment. A number of white parents were particularly outspoken in defense of the Black students defamed by the Daily News—an unusual and powerful demonstration of multiracial unity.
• Fed up with disruptive investigations by the UFT after spurious complaints by a racist teacher who’d served for years as the union’s chapter chair, the school’s faculty booted the teacher out of office in a recall vote. The tally was 43 to 10 against the racist—and in favor of the school’s anti-racist mission.  
• After working with an external mediator, a representative group of multiracial PSC staff members formed a committee to rebuild ties within the staff around the school’s mission.  
• Nearly a hundred parents and staff members joined together in a multiracial celebration of the school’s victory over the DoE’s disruptive campaign. This event had been delayed because of people’s desire to wait for a more clear-cut resolution and an official end to the DoE’s attacks. Then they went ahead anyway. They have learned that reform victories may be fleeting, but the class struggle never ends—and that’s something to celebrate.

Choosing anti-racism over anti-communism
Many times it seems like this racist monster of a system is too big and difficult to take on by ourselves, but we aren’t meant to do it alone. Communist confidence in the working class is infectious; at PSC, it is carrying the day. It’s also being reciprocated. Several community members have joined weekend CHALLENGE study groups.
Through this and other struggles at PSC over many years, dozens of parents—white, Latin, Asian, and Black—have been won over to defend Black and Latin youth.  Many now see that our young people deserve true equity—not only for education resources, but also in being heard as equal partners in the fight for integration. After centuries of building segregation, an essential feature of racism and capitalist exploitation and inequality, nothing scares the U.S. ruling class more than multiracial unity. The DoE’s persistent attack on the PSC community stems from the modest progress it is making in dismantling this crucial aspect of capitalist class rule.
The multiracial unity and courage of PSC students, parents, and teachers is rare and inspiring. Students have been emboldened to take on racist staff members. After the sit-ins, some said it was their duty to fight racism and teach younger students that they need to keep the fightback going. Communists in Progressive Labor Party are proud to be part of this crucial class struggle.

CHICAGO, February 20—A Progressive Labor Party study group about sexism led to a mass anti-sexist action of supporting nursing home workers on strike. Both study and action affirmed the line that Black women leadership is key to communist revolution.
To create a fighting communist Party, theory needs to lead to practice, and that practice needs to influence future theory. Comrades and friends here have been holding a study group about the roots of sexism and the history of struggle against it. Our goal is to win more workers to the truth that capitalism has no solution for sexism and exploitation. Only mass international communist revolution can abolish the inequality that class society creates between women and men.   
Anti-sexism study group
In the first study group, we focused on former Communist Party USA member Angela Davis. This proved to be a good decision; it gave some historical background on the struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. We analyzed how anti-capitalist messages and actions from radicals have over time been completely diluted as these same “militants” made more and more compromises with capitalism.
In the case of Angela Davis, study group participants noted how her speech at the last year’s Women’s March, Davis used the term “resistance” a dozen times, versus using the term “capitalism” only once. Angela Davis years ago accepted a position at University of California, Santa Cruz and Rutgers University and denounced herself from any commitment to communist politics and class consciousness. This one-time lefty demonstrated this when she endorsed Barack Obama for president. This was expected, as Davis had sold out to the liberal Democratic bosses long time ago.
We contrasted her methods of pandering to her liberal phony-left base with our own understanding that communists need to spread revolutionary ideas among the working class. Those ideas will clearly draw the connections between sexist ideology and inequality and the capitalist system’s need to divide workers everywhere for maximum profits.
Claudia Jones, Black women key

The bourgeoisie is fearful of the militancy of the [Black] woman, and for good reason. The capitalists know, far better than many progressives seem to know, that once Negro women begin to take action, the militancy of the whole [Black] people, and thus of the anti-imperialist coalition, is greatly enhanced. Viewed in this light, it is not accidental that the American bourgeoisie has intensified its oppression, not only of the [Black] people in general, but of [Black] women in particular.
—Claudia Jones

We also discussed Claudia Jones’ An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women (1949). This article detailed the super-exploitation of Black women, and called for more attention to be spent organizing them. Through the discussion we added Black and Latin immigrant women workers to the group of the most exploited in the U.S.
In this article Claudia Jones criticized the Communist Party USA for failing to understand and organize among Black women. She stated that in order for any revolution in the to occur, Black women must play a significant leadership role.
We discussed how our Party upholds this commitment and carries forward Jones’ analysis to this day in our emphasis in recruiting and taking leadership from Black and immigrant workers. Given their historical and current status as the most oppressed and exploited section of the international working class, their insights and hatred of capitalism is key to revolution. A movement without Black workers is a failed movement.
Theory leads to struggle
At the study group about Claudia Jones, comrades and friends were inspired to put the theory of organizing into practice. The very next day nursing home workers, 70 percent of whom were Black women, were going on a one-day strike against horrible work conditions (including stripping long-time workers of their seniority) and a fair contract. We chatted with workers and distributed CHALLENGE to strikers on the picket line. Our PLP contingent was made of almost entirely of people who had attended the anti-sexism study group. It was a freezing Chicago day, but we knew that staying home was not an option.
The workers may strike again soon if owner Israel Davis fails to cease his illegal labor practices and to bargain a fair contract.
Our second opportunity to put theory into practice came during this year’s Women’s March. This contingent too was primarily from the study group. We called out the Democratic Party for using sexism as a platform to build their ranks, and promoting the elections—not fightback—as a solution to sexist oppression. We were well received. Many workers, most of whom were women, took flyers and CHALLENGE. Our call to destroy capitalism with communist revolution was meet with applause.
Communists belong in the mass struggle
Sexism is a notorious tool used to divide and oppress working-class people. It is used by the bosses to exploit workers on all fronts—men, women, straight, gay, and transgender. And so, it must be fought on all fronts. Through practice we learn how to better fight it, and through theory we learn how to better understand it. Theory and practice are linked, and should never be separated. Understanding this helps us fight for the world workers deserve—a communist one. Join us in this fight.