1. We declare our solidarity with the mass protests that have swept Iran in recent days. These are the latest in a cycle of protests that began with the Green movement of 2009-10 and embraced, most recently, the Women, Life, Freedom demonstrations of 2022. Today economic grievances and the political rejection of the Islamic Republican regime have fused. These protests are entirely justified by the denial of basic democratic freedoms and the growing material deprivation suffered by the mass of the population. We demand an end to the savage repression the protesters are suffering. 

2. We refuse the temptation to view this movement solely through the lens of geopolitics. The Iranian regime presents itself as a steadfast opponent of US imperialism. At the same time, however, as it is shooting down thousands of demonstrators, the regime is seeking negotiations with the ...

1. The US raids on Venezuela on the night of 2-3 January and the kidnapping and imprisonment of President Nicolás Maduro are naked acts of imperialist aggression. Donald Trump’s declaration that ‘we are going to run Venezuela’ sums up the arrogance of US power. His justifications – that Maduro is the boss of a drug cartel, that his regime is undemocratic, etc – are, to use one of his favourite words, fake. This is about removing a regime that, especially under Hugo Chávez, has long been a thorn in Washington’s side and seizing the largest oil reserves in the world. Trump gloats: ‘We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in.’ He has exposed the hollowness of his denunciations of previous US administrations’ ‘forever wars’ and attempts at regime change.

2. The ...