Based on all the information we have so far, the current movement in Iran combines a massive strength with an even greater weakness. Its massive strength is the enormous popular rage and its breadth—perhaps even greater than previous uprisings—as political oppression has now merged with the regime’s deep economic crisis and the material impoverishment of the masses. This crisis has dragged large sections of the Iranian middle-class commercial and industrial bourgeoisie toward the uprising.

However, the great weakness of the current movement lies in the fact that its strongest political force this time is the most right-wing of the trends of previous uprisings: the chauvinist monarchist trend of the Shah. This faction, besides showing a desire to hegemonize all others while simultaneously sidelining the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom," has put forward the politically suicidal slogan that American imperialism, under the leadership of Trump, will help the uprising by dealing a significant military blow to the mullahs.

We can well understand how and why a revolutionary people like the Iranians might momentarily and mistakenly believe—as the Venezuelans did before them—that after failing so many times to rid themselves of the agony of an endless dictatorship, it is worth trying to achieve it now with the help of a superpower. Precisely because we understand these sentiments, we continue to stand decisively by the Iranian people and this latest great uprising. However, we are obliged to warn our democratic friends in Iran about the mortal political danger their movement faces from any military intervention to overthrow the mullahs by the "Putinist provocateur" President of the USA, especially following the call of a candidate monarch.

Generally, we believe that an external power cannot truly overthrow an internal one, except by replacing one anti-popular rule with another. Therefore, we are opposed on principle to any national and social liberation based on external military intervention, particularly when carried out by an imperialist country. Such an intervention can only play a positive role under specific conditions: if the internal fascist forces have resorted to external military forces to stay in power.

In the case of Syria, the forces of the democratic armed resistance could have used military aid from Western bourgeois democracies only when the regime of Assad’s Russian-lackey torturers used the external military and occupational intervention of Russia to bomb the cities the resistance had liberated. But even then—quite correctly—most resistance forces asked the West for air-defense weapons, not a direct military intervention. And the West did not even do that basic thing; they found it better to unite with Assad rather than the resistance to fight ISIS—which, to facilitate the Kremlin and Assad, was killing civilians in European cities.

In Iran today, there are no foreign military forces inside the country for its protection. Thus, any American military intervention would have one main result: portraying the regime as a patriotic anti-imperialist force and the uprising as a tool of American imperialism. This dynamic was already clearly visible during the provocatory bombings by Israel and the US this past year. Instead of sparking a massive anti-regime uprising, those bombings revived Iranian nationalism—so much so that it partially subordinated the Islamic rhetoric of the mullahs to the needs of "anti-Western, national, and anti-imperialist" resistance, which was above all anti-Semitic. That is, the Islamists moved even further to the right. And further right than the mullahs, only one thing exists: Putin’s Russia and the neo-Hitlerite Axis it leads.

We have written that previous bombings brought the mullahs closer to Russia (https://www.oakke.gr/afises/2013-02-16-20-47-58/item/1763-). We estimate that if Trump bombs Iran again, or even symbolic centers of regime power, ostensibly to help the real popular uprising, the only thing he will achieve is what he achieved with the "abduction" of Maduro. He will strengthen the Islamo-fascist dictatorship like never before, especially its worst, Russia-servile faction, while the uprising itself will be attacked by an even more rabid horde of killers.

The situation in Iran could become even worse because, as we have analyzed in many of our texts so far, the central struggle within Tehran’s fascist power bloc—more so than in the one in Caracas—is between the proponents of a relatively independent, regionally hegemonic Iran and an Iran servilely integrated into the global neo-Hitlerite Axis under the Kremlin. If a purely pro-Russian gang replaces the ethno-fascist Mullah Khamenei, the Middle East will move much more aggressively toward the Axis, and democratic Europe will be suffocated from the South as well.

Trump—from whom some Iranian democrats expect help—is not only unable to "export democracy" while promoting fascism and neo-Nazism* in his own country, but the primary function of all his foreign interventions has been to exclusively promote the positions of Putin’s Russia and its local friends. Beyond Venezuela, in Israel, Trump gave new life to the pro-Russian expansionist Netanyahu clique; in Gaza and Palestine as a whole, he made the Russian-lackey Hamas dominant; in Syria, he helped the crypto-Putinist Nazi-Sunni al-Sharaa to strengthen his dictatorship while posing as a democrat; and he pushed India deeper into Russia’s arms with his exorbitant tariffs. The worst and most significant act of this provocateur is the colonial, Hitler-style announcement of the annexation of Greenland, through which he attempts to split and dissolve Europe and push its pieces toward Moscow, utilizing for this purpose the latter's European brown-“red” lackeys.

Within this global backdrop of the ongoing Iranian uprising, the Trump presidency may use the Shah’s leadership—much like Machado’s leadership in the corresponding Venezuelan uprising—as a pretext for a failed and internationally condemned intervention. This would open the way for a so-called "intermediate solution": removing some mullahs from power only to replace them with "more patriotic" ones.

For all these reasons, we believe that the true way out for the global anti-fascist movement regarding heroic Iran is the formation of a consistent, organized democratic pole.This pole must:

1. Work within the spirit of the greatest unity of the grassroots and democratic persuasion.

2. Prevent the imposition of any leadership that does not respect all factions in the common struggle.

3. Spread the position that foreign military intervention, especially from the Trump presidency, with or without the endorsement of a monarch, will only expose and destroy the uprising.

4. Prevent any compromise with parts of the fascist mullah regime that foreign or local "saviors" might seek.

The great democratic anti-fascist movement of Iran will, in any case, gain new and valuable lessons from this uprising, as it did from previous ones, steadily increasing its momentum and political maturity. These uprisings are slowly building an anti-fascist vanguard through their twists and turns. For this reason, every democrat must respect and support them in every way, even within their weaknesses. Indeed, especially in their weaknesses—because the more vulnerable such a movement becomes, the more it pays in blood and pain. Eventually, all the peoples of the earth will pass through this painful apprenticeship until their final liberation from increasingly brutal class dictatorships.

*It has now become clear that the most fundamental and rising Trumpist current is the neo-Nazi anti-Semitic one, featuring figures like Carlson, N. Fuentes, Owens, and the "cannibals" of the Republican party, the Groypers. This current is officially protected as a necessary component of the MAGA movement by Trump’s political successor, Vice President Vance.