If the war ended today, who has won, and who has lost?

Abbas Goya - March 23, 2026

Let us state the conclusion from the outset: this war is not over until its real objective is achieved.

Not as the United States claims - where “victory” is defined as preventing the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons, nor the destruction of long-range missiles, nor the dismantling of drone factories.

And not as the Islamic Republic claims - where “victory” is merely surviving the war.

The truth must be stated plainly: for both sides, the real measure of victory is the containment and crushing of the uprising of the working masses.*

The question is: have they succeeded?

The answer will not be written on the battlefield, but in the streets and workplaces the day after. If the working masses - who have risen with the aim of seizing political power - are driven back into their homes, or if their struggle is diverted into alternatives aligned with U.S.-Israel interests, then it is the US-Israel-IRI who have won this war.

But why is such a scenario possible?

Because socialism, at this decisive historical moment, is absent from the stage - not merely due to repression, but due to passivity, confusion, and a refusal to assume responsibility.

Three parties claiming the banner of “Worker-communism” have, for years, raised the flag of retreat in different forms: “people run away from socialism.” This is not analysis, it is a declaration of bankruptcy.

One tendency, speaking from behind platforms and podiums, repeats the cliché that “the revolution is like a mole; it finds its own way,” effectively raising its hands in surrender and abandoning any role in shaping events.

Another, in shameful alignment with the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic, discredits protesters anew each day: one day as “misled by the Greens,” the next as “tools of the Purples,” then as “right-wing monarchists,” and finally as “victims of a dark scenario.”

This is not critique, this is evasion.

In all these positions, no responsibility is assumed, no horizon for change is drawn. Protesters are not recognized as conscious agents of transformation, but reduced to a passive mass: deceived, manipulated, or victimized.

But reality is otherwise.

Without conscious agency, without organized intervention, without a clear socialist horizon, the field will be entirely ceded to forces that will shape the future against the interests of the working masses.

Either this vacuum is filled, or others will fill it.

And then defeat will no longer be a possibility, but an inevitability.

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* Despite all this, should wage-earners today rise for political power in the midst of a war that has erupted beyond their will? Since the very rationale of this war is to determine political power—its concrete aim being regime change in order to cut off the uprising of the working masses—our chances of advancing such a struggle during the war, if not zero, are close to it.

This war, while appearing as an inter-state conflict, is not fundamentally a struggle over hegemony or resource division. The U.S. war, at its core, is not even against the Islamic Republic alone.

This is a class war: a war waged by two forces—the U.S.–Israel bloc together with the Islamic Republic—against wage-earners who had resolved to seize political power by their own will and their own hands.

No to the war of the U.S.-Israel-Islamic Republic against the workers