Dr Saulat Nagi
After threatening to annihilate Iranian civilisation, promising to dispose of it to the Stone Age by bombing its civilian infrastructure, President Trump, the mouthpiece of imperialism, is now preparing to declare the Strait of Hormuz as part of American territory. Welcome to the world of old colonialism, when the “white, civilised” West slaughtered humanity by occupying its territories through direct force, promoted the slave trade, and expropriated the resources of those highly lucrative virgin lands at gunpoint. History is yet again repeating itself as tragedy and farce. The scenes of Western gung-ho movies are being replayed in the real world. The gaudy myth of the American dream is exhibiting itself in its savagery and striptease.
Despite the layers of sugar-coating provided by democracy and freedom, the post-colonial era could not have been any different. Behind every jargon, when the sole motive is the expansion of capital and its realisation, the sophistry of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” has to be replaced with infantry, cavalry, and artillery.
From Vietnam to Palestine, the madness of the method is the same. However, a few voices of sanity, speaking for sublimity and moral superiority to masquerade Western savagery, have ceased to emerge from the home of “civilization.” Europe does not philosophise anymore; it whimpers before it offers its air bases to the Empire.
The UN seems to have been euthanised, and the stinking cadaver of Western morality is lying in rigor mortis in the centre of its capitals. The drought of Western conscience is far greater than the official drought it is suffering. Israel, their common tail, has normalised genocide. Not to forget that the fish-no matter how big-rots from its tail, if it hasn’t already rotted, and the process gets faster in drought.
Iran, suffering US aggression, is holding out its fort against imperialism with dignity. However, there is a rub. Despite listening to the warnings of the bells tolling around them, the Iranian bourgeoisie is distinctly divided into two clearly antagonistic camps. Theocracy is a label, and not an economic system-the product wrapped in the label is the capitalist mode of production, led by the bourgeoisie with a beard. Like any other capitalist country, each camp of the bourgeoisie has its interests, and it competes with the other to fulfil them. In Iran, the camp controlling the political function is dominated by the comprador bourgeoisie, eager to collaborate with Western imperialism. The other camp, representing the productive national bourgeoisie, believes in autocentric growth, with control over accumulation and the application of the law of value to the benefit of its people and not to the countries of the centre. This camp is dominated by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which controls the means of warfare.
The nature of the critical antagonistic tussle between the two different camps of the Iranian bourgeoisie has been explained by Ali Alizadeh, a prominent commentator on West Asian affairs. The apparent power structure, or the political class led by Pezeshkian, Araghchi, and Qalibaf, represents the dominant interests of the economic class emerging out of the privatisation of industry and state enterprises. Besides the state, the latter holds ownership of the means of production. True to its class nature, it is looking for peace and cooperation with the West to accumulate capital for itself. Hence, it neither supports the expansion or prolonging of the war nor takes radical steps to defeat the enemy.
Once the June aggression of 2025 was over, the cleavage between the two camps of the Iranian bourgeoisie became vividly clear. Both wanted to see the end of the war: the IRGC, to reassess its position vis-à-vis the armed superiority of its enemy. Nevertheless, by then it knew the strength of its enemy, the depth of its firepower, and the extent to which it was prepared to go. In the case of a prolonged aggression-looked upon as inevitable-it wanted to build up the strength of its armoury. For the IRGC, the ceasefire wasn’t an end but a means to an end: to prepare for a bigger and final battle.
The comprador camp had different designs. Its eyes were fixed on attaining some short-term privileges from the US and turning the temporary ceasefire into a permanent one. Paraphrasing Alizadeh, on July 7, 2025, Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, appeared on the Tucker Carlson show and discussed the necessity of de-escalation. He did not even mention the US aggression against Iranian sovereignty or its 180,000-kilogram bombs that rained over the Iranian nuclear sites. The foreign minister, Araghchi, played the identical game on Fox News and was immediately slammed by Revolutionary Guard media (Iran International, 2025). They both tried to create a wedge between the dog-the US-and its tail-Israel-exonerating the former and laying all the blame on the latter, a shallow ploy to please and engage imperialism in negotiations.
Consequently, both had to face the wrath of the Iranian people. When they appeared at the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, portrayed as appeasers, they were heckled by the masses (Mirror Now, 2026). After the US-Israeli-orchestrated riots in December 2025, the same group entered negotiations with the US through the mediation of Oman and went on to make concessions on its missile capabilities-a tabooed realm was crossed. The Omani negotiator alluded to those sacrosanct spaces conceded to imperialism. Nevertheless, the latter, aiming to dismember Iran, was least interested in those frivolities and attacked Iran during the negotiations.
The same group was wary of the idea of closing the Strait of Hormuz. Scared, or pretending to be so, of taking a radical step, which it thought was likely to bring its Arab neighbours closer to the US-Israel nexus-as if they were not close enough-and consequently result in a manifold increase in the menace, wrath, and scourge of the US-as if it was not already unleashed on the people of Iran-the group vehemently opposed the idea. It’s hard to judge, or perhaps doubt, the sincerity of its logic, but, looking at hindsight, its apprehensions proved unfounded. Once the IRGC decided to shut the Strait, not only was the myth of US power exposed, but the hollowness of the comprador bourgeois logic was also revealed to all and sundry.
In Iran, the real fight is not between moderates and hardliners, a Hollywood-like Western construct, but between the comprador class and the national bourgeoisie. During the phase of expansion of capital, not only has the powerless bourgeoisie of the Third World “become a transmission belt for world capital,” as Samir Amin points out, but “the popular classes have themselves lost their identity to blend into an ill-defined mixture,” leading to populism. Khamenei’s funeral was one such example of engaging in populism. Nevertheless, in Iran, something different is also happening. Despite being embedded in fundamental ideology, Iranian nationalism, its revolutionary heritage, and foreign aggression have strengthened its national bourgeoisie, which has started to assert itself firmly now.
Fully aware of the class position and weakness of the comprador wing of the Iranian bourgeoisie, the US keeps hanging the baits of a ceasefire, an MOU, and the unfreezing of Iranian dollars, while it continues to bomb Iranian cities. The imperialist aggression has been effectively defeated, but the reactionary nature of this very camp is keeping America’s last shimmering hopes alive, to which the latter is clinging. To foster the festering internal contradiction in Iran is the only chance imperialism has of gaining any face-saving.
The crippling sanctions, foreign intervention, and the destruction of the countries of the Middle East-especially the genocide in Palestine-and North Africa have curbed the temptation of the Iranian people to challenge the hegemony of their ruling bourgeoisie in a decisive way. The people relish the pride of successfully guarding the integrity of their country, threatened by imperialist might and its auxiliary, the Israeli entity-by no means a mean achievement. If they get an inkling that their victory on the battleground is being compromised at the table, they are capable of doing to the rulers what they have done to imperialism. They have already attained the possible by reaching out for the impossible.
The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. His Latest Work: “God’s Republic Making & Unmaking of Israel & Pakistan” is available in Pakistan & on Amazon.com. He can be reached at saulatnagi @hotmail.com
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