January 12, 2026, editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French.
After Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela to seize its oil, after reaffirming his desire to take over Greenland and its resources, now it’s Iran that the American leader is threatening with another military intervention. The pretext is to come to the rescue of the Iranian people who are defying Khamenei’s dictatorship despite a repression that, at the time of writing, has left several hundred dead and thousands arrested.
To justify the US intervention in Venezuela, Trump invoked the promotion of democracy and the so-called fight against drug trafficking. Except that it is obvious to everyone that Trump’s power grab had everything to do with defending US imperialist interests in the region.
Their “democracy” smells of oil
In Venezuela, the US came to seize oil resources they didn’t fully control. Since Maduro’s abduction, in order to put pressure on a Venezuelan regime already inclined to compromise, the United States has blocked crude oil exports and intercepted several tankers to prevent other powers—Russia and China— doing business with Caracas from using Venezuelan oil.
And Trump is not stopping there, threatening with ground strikes other Latin American countries that are not fully aligned with the United States, forcing them to declare their allegiance. He has also turned to his European allies, reiterating his ambitions on Greenland, a Danish colony that he would like to snatch (or buy) for its promising underwater deposits that global warming could free from the grip of ice… which arouses the cynical greed of the big capitalists! As for the people of Greenland, who would be passed from one colonizer to another, they would not have any say.
But the Masses Are Fighting Back!
Today, it is Iran that is in Trump’s sights. Once again, an intervention by the US military would have nothing to do with defending “democracy” or the Iranian people. If Trump is threatening to intervene in Iran, it is to cut short a social movement with unpredictable consequences, dangerous because of the example it could set for the peoples of pro-Western dictatorships in neighboring countries and for the interests of oil trusts in the region.
The popular uprising in Iran stems from an economic crisis that the country’s leaders are making the working classes pay for through austerity and freezing or even withholding wages. This crisis is due as much to the regime’s corruption as to the economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the major powers, led by the United States.
Despite police crimes, internet blackouts, and university closures, the protests are growing, and the repressive forces are being driven out of cities and neighborhoods. But the protesters are not fighting to see the current rulers replaced, through US bombing, by a return of the monarchy, via the son of the former Shah of Iran, who was overthrown in 1979 by a popular revolution!
And it is Trump who might, in turn, have some fears. Because in the United States, too, demonstrations have taken place everywhere against his own policies. First and foremost, to demand an end to the actions of his sinister immigration police, ICE, and to demand justice for Renee Good, the driver murdered during a protest denouncing police violence. Trump and his fellow leaders are attacking the whole world: let’s not give them any respite!
