June 16, 2025
Statement Condemning Israel’s Attack On Iran And Calling For Regional Unity In Confronting Zionism
The Palestinian Youth Movement condemns Israel’s wave of attacks on Iran throughout this past week, in which Israel massacred hundreds of Iranians and assassinated political leaders and scientists. Israel has committed these atrocities without provocation. It launched a war of aggression and violated Iran’s sovereignty. Under international law, Iran has the right to defend itself. Following Israel’s illegal attack, the war escalated to direct and open military confrontation between Israel, backed by the entire West, and Iran.
However, Israeli-U.S. aggression on Iran did not begin on June 13, nor did it begin last year when Israel attacked Iran’s embassy in Syria. Western imperialist violations of Iranian sovereignty date back to 1953, when the first CIA coup in U.S. history was carried out against Iran’s democratically elected government. As part of “Operation Ajax,” the CIA and MI6 orchestrated the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, following his refusal to relinquish control of Iran’s oil resources to the West. The coup replaced Mossadegh with the absolute monarch, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, whose rule lasted until the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Today, Israel, the U.S. and West, more broadly, continue this imperialist legacy. These efforts are part of the same project that has robbed the Palestinian people of their land and rights for so long. The West’s war on Iran has been waged for decades, through assassinations, plane bombings, and devastating sanctions which have suffocated the Iranian people by keeping Iran locked out of the global financial system. In this war, Iran is confronting a project of global domination: the West’s efforts to de-develop, subdue, and crush any state or actor that opposes or resists Western hegemony.
The US, Israel and Europe have waged this existential war against Iran because Iran has rejected American and Zionist interests in the region, instead safeguarding national and regional sovereignty, and building power that challenges Western imperialism’s sphere of dominance. While comprador Arab regimes are rewarded by imperialists for their loyalty to the U.S. and Zionist project, Iran faces sanctions and attacks for refusing to accept Israel and America's presence in the region, and for their unwavering support for the Palestinian people.
And while the political class and the media establishment attempt to obscure narratives and obfuscate facts, the people know who the real aggressor is. It is Israel. It is the U.S. It is Zionism and imperialism. Since its inception, Israel has been a project of the West to ensure imperialism’s firm grip on the region. The escalations of this past week are part of the same calculations that led to the genocide on Gaza: to secure complete Zionist and Western domination over the Middle East in the face of regional actors and states fighting for sovereignty and liberation from colonialism and imperialism.
Despite the Trump administration’s claims that the United States was not involved in Israel’s attack, it is clear the attack on Iran was greenlit, armed and financed by the United States, and executed with full coordination. Before this week, the US assumed a leading role in the war on Iran, through the use of US military bases in the region to aid Israel, as well as US enforcement of sanctions against Iran. Now, as Israel seeks to expand its genocidal war on all who resist Western hegemony, the spectre looms of direct U.S. and broader Western involvement.
We condemn any involvement by Western powers in support of Israel’s war of aggression. After more than 600 days of genocide on Gaza, Israel’s attack on Iran should only lead to sanctions, arms embargoes, and the complete isolation of Israel globally. In the face of an imperialist project that attempts to fragment our region and our people, we must insist on building and preserving unity in confronting Zionism. We must continue to call for sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel: for the Palestinian people, for the Iranian people, and for all people across the world who continue to resist imperialist and Zionist domination.