In the aftermath of a tumultuous year in West Asia, Iran finds itself at the center of a geopolitical storm that has not only tested its resilience but also exposed deep rifts within global leftist solidarity. On December 2, 2025, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described Iran’s defense against the all-out attack by the United States and Israel as a “turning point in our country’s history,” underscoring the gravity of the conflict and the stakes involved for both Iran and the broader region, according to official statements covered by Iranian state media.
Araghchi’s remarks came on the heels of Iran’s successful repulsion of a coordinated military onslaught, which was publicly framed by Israeli and American officials as a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Yet, as detailed in a sweeping analysis published by Taylor and Francis Online, this justification concealed a far more ambitious objective: regime change and the collapse of the Iranian state, which is seen by its adversaries as the backbone of Palestinian resistance and a pivotal anti-imperialist force in West Asia.
“The determination of the Iranian people in defending the country and thwarting the enemies in imposing their illegitimate and excessive demands” was, in Araghchi’s words, crucial to this historic victory. He credited “the intelligence, wisdom, courage, and strong will of the Leader of the Revolution, the sacrifice of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the national cohesion and solidarity of Iranians” as key elements shaping the outcome. This sense of unity, he argued, was not merely rhetorical—it was the bulwark that prevented the internal collapse that US and Israeli planners had anticipated.
For many observers, the June 2025 US–Israeli assault was not an isolated episode, but the latest in a series of imperial interventions stretching back over seventy years. Since the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, Washington has employed coups, sanctions, proxy wars, and direct military threats to keep Iran under its thumb. The recent aggression, as argued by Professor Marandi in the Taylor and Francis Online piece, was an attempt “to remove Iran from the regional equation, [and] to break the backbone of the Palestinian resistance.” The nuclear issue, he contended, was little more than a pretext.
Iran’s response to the attack was as much about strategy as it was about symbolism. Within hours of losing top military leaders to the initial blitz, Tehran announced their replacements and launched ‘Operation True Promise 3,’ deploying older drones and missiles to overwhelm Western air defenses while holding back its most advanced systems. According to Marandi, “nine out of ten Iranian missiles got through.” The United States, meanwhile, expended nearly a quarter of its Tomahawk missile stockpile—an unsustainable rate for what was intended to be a short, decisive campaign. Despite the intensity of the assault, Iran’s command-and-control structures remained intact, its military unbroken, and its government standing.
Iran’s ability to withstand such pressure is not coincidental. The country has spent decades building self-reliance, particularly in its military-industrial sector, in anticipation of precisely this kind of confrontation. The government’s round-the-clock efforts to resolve economic problems, as emphasized by Araghchi, are part of a broader strategy to strengthen national power and authority, promote social capital, and fortify national cohesion.
Yet the implications of the war go far beyond Iran’s borders. As the Taylor and Francis Online analysis explains, Iran has positioned itself as a linchpin of resistance, anchoring the Axis of Resistance and forging deep alliances with China, Russia, and the Global South. Its integration into organizations like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as well as its leadership in de-dollarization efforts, directly challenge the US petrodollar system and threaten to upend the financial architecture of global power.
The US has also sought to undermine Iran’s regional influence through involvement in disputes such as the Zangezur Corridor, aiming to sever Iran’s land access to Armenia—a crucial conduit for trade with the Eurasian Economic Union. These maneuvers, the article notes, are part of a broader strategy to marginalize Iran’s strategic presence and obstruct infrastructure links connecting Iran, China, and Russia.
What makes this episode particularly instructive, however, is not just the military outcome but the political and ideological fallout—especially within the Western Left. The Taylor and Francis Online piece offers a searing critique of what it calls the “coloniality of solidarity,” a tendency among Western Marxists and progressives to offer selective support for anti-imperialist struggles. This “purity politics,” as described by scholar Garrido, fetishizes an abstract ‘people’ while rejecting the actual institutions—states, armies, and infrastructures—that make resistance possible. In the case of Iran, this has meant condemning US and Israeli aggression in the abstract while refusing to defend the Iranian state itself, thereby unwittingly echoing the narratives of imperial powers.
This pattern, the article argues, has deep historical roots, tracing back to the Second International’s collapse into European nationalism during World War I and the subsequent failure of many socialist movements to support anti-colonial struggles. The French Communist Party’s refusal to back the Algerian National Liberation Front, for example, is cited as a classic case of Eurocentric bias and complicity in colonial domination. In contemporary times, similar dynamics play out in the reluctance to support Palestinian resistance factions or to acknowledge the working-class nature of movements like Hamas.
Ajl, another scholar cited in the article, warns: “By separating ‘the regime’ from ‘the people,’ the US–Israeli propaganda justifies state collapse in the name of the people. You cannot defend a people by adopting the rhetoric used to justify their destruction.” The lesson, according to the article, is that in the Global South, and especially in countries under siege like Iran, patriotism and defense of the state can be working-class ideologies—because the state is the shield against imperialist dismemberment and de-development.
The aftermath of the 12-Day War saw Iran not only surviving but emerging more confident, reinforcing its air defenses, and deepening cooperation with Russia and China. Arab states and Gulf monarchies, once hopeful of accommodation with Israel, began to reconsider their positions in light of Iran’s resilience. The United States, meanwhile, faces mounting challenges to its military and economic supremacy, from the stalemate in Ukraine to the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansar’Allah in Yemen.
For Marxists and anti-imperialists in the West, the events of 2025 serve as a stark reminder: the struggle for socialism and human emancipation in the twenty-first century is inseparable from the struggle for sovereignty in the Global South. “The road to human emancipation today runs not only through the streets of Paris or New York, but also through the skies over Tehran, the waters of Yemen, the hills of South Lebanon, and the rubble of Gaza,” the article concludes. Anything less than genuine solidarity with those resisting imperialism, it warns, is not solidarity at all, but “at best, surrender; and at worst, collaboration.”
In the end, Iran’s defiance and the survival of its state under siege have not closed the book on the struggle against imperialism—but they have opened a new chapter, one in which the global order itself may be up for renegotiation.