The US-Israeli mal-designs for “Regime Change” in Iran must be condemned and resisted!
The address delivered by JAMSHID AHMADI, Assistant General Secretary of the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights (CODIR), and member of the Executive Committee of Liberation and editor of the Liberation Journal, at the ‘No More War on Iran!’ fringe meeting of the Unite the Union Policy Conference on Thursday 10 July 2025 in Brighton.
Dear comrades and friends,
Thank you for organising this important fringe meeting.
I address this meeting as the Assistant General Secretary of CODIR and member of the Executive Council of Liberation organisation, formerly the Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF).
Both CODIR and Liberation have immediately condemned the heinous Israeli attack on Iran and moved to initiate campaigning for an immediate end to the aggression.
On the early morning of Friday 13 June, Tehran and several other cities in Iran were bombarded by Israel with a squadron of modern F35 fighters, accompanied by a barrage of drones and missiles. Israel confirmed that it had launched a direct and full-scale undeclared war on Iran! It must be stressed that the attack was a both a flagrant violation of Iran’s territorial sovereignty and wholly illegal under international law!
The aggression was initiated just 48 hours before the sixth round of formal negotiations between Iran and the US were set to take place in Oman! It was aimed at sabotaging a formal negotiation process that had been underway for nine weeks. The attacks ran completely against the course of developments up until that point. Again, it was completely against international law!
In the initial days of the aggression, the whole Iranian population were utterly terrorised and terrified. They were fired upon seemingly from every direction. It felt more akin to a major coup attempt.
Indeed, what was witnessed was an attempt at “Regime Change” in Iran! Netanyahu himself repeated the message over and over again inviting the people of Iran to exploit the opportunity afforded to them by the illegal offensive! Again, completely against international law!
It has long seemed that the criminal apartheid Israeli regime’s ultimate objective is none other than the pushing back or complete overthrow of the ruling regime in Iran. And now, considering both the bombing and targeting of civilian infrastructure within Iran, as well as the arming of some Kurdish separatist elements along Iran’s western borders, there can be no doubt that an attack upon Iran is a central part of a larger plan by the US, through its proxy Israel, to redraw the map of the Middle East.
To defend Iran’s sovereignty is to defend its people, vital infrastructure, culture, history, and territorial integrity. A military attack by a racist and colonialist regime such as that in power in Israel is a criminal act against all Iranian people – regardless of the nature of the government ruling the country.
And condemning this attack does not run contrary to the righteous opposition to the criminal Islamic Republic dictatorship and its manifestly bankrupt policies.
The defending of Iran’s sovereignty and unwavering opposition to the theocratic dictatorship in power there are not mutually exclusive positions… In fact, those familiar with Iran might legitimately argue that bona fide expressions of both go very much hand in hand!
It would be a big miscalculation to explain away Israel’s animosity towards Iran, the country, as a result of the Tel Aviv regime’s animosity towards the Islamic Republic per se. This war should not be mischaracterised as a religious war between the Jewish Israeli leaders on the one hand and the Islamist regime in Tehran on the other. The underpinning logic and rationale of neo-colonialism shows that Iran, as an independent power in West Asia, whether under an Islamist dictatorship or a democratic and secular government, will always remain in the crosshairs of US imperialism and its regional attack dog.
Historical precedent also confirms this to be the case: from the era of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh until today, whenever Iran has sought independence – not necessarily anti-imperialist, but simply independent – it has faced continual pressure, threats, conspiracy and peril. Therefore, the idea that “if the Islamic Republic goes, Israel will no longer be an adversary of Iran” is naive to state the least and stems from a lack of proper understanding of geopolitical realities at least as they pertain to Iran and the Middle East region.
The Iranian Left has correctly characterised the military attack on the country as a heinous crime against all Iranian people and quickly demanded its immediate cessation.
A progressive take mandates that events be analysed through a historical and internationalist lens. Today, the Iranian Left has a national responsibility to provide a deep insight into the true nature of the Israeli regime. This is because, on the one hand, the Islamic Republic regime’s discourse entirely lacks credibility with the people, while on the other, those opposition forces on the Political Right neither countenance nor proffer any criticism of Israel. Thus, the duty to fully expose the reality of the wicked catastrophe being inflicted upon the people of Gaza to this very day falls to the Left.
In recent decades, the Middle East has entered an unprecedentedly critical phase, marked by wars and overt military aggression led by Israel and fully supported by the US aimed at reshaping the region’s geographic and political map. Now, the region is enduring another truly devastating reconfiguration, inflicted upon its peoples by the US imperialism and its allies, chiefly Israel. The recent illegal aggression waged by these two belligerents is part and parcel of the ongoing reconfiguration and attempt at reassertion of the US’ declining hegemony.
Over three decades of adventurous and reckless foreign policy on the part of the Islamic Republic, formulated to serve the absolute rule of despotic Islamists, has collapsed for all to see and has proved disastrous to Iran’s national interests. The fundamental tenet of this policy was to “export the Islamic Revolution” and extend the Islamic Republic’s regional ‘hegemony’ thereby serving to fortify the theocratic dictatorship at home. Estimated to have cost tens of billions of dollars, the approach was publicly touted by the regime as a deterrent against external aggression, particularly from Israel and the US!
This policy has not only failed but has spectacularly backfired, placing Iran in the proverbial “eye of the storm” – that is US imperialism’s mal-designs to reconfigure the Middle East, involving Israel and Imperialism’s reconfiguration of the Middle East led by the disastrous pairing of an ultra-right US president in Donald Trump and an unashamed war criminal in Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hundreds of blameless Iranian people have already paid the ultimate price for this war, with many more lives irreversibly destroyed, not to mention the destruction of the national infrastructure, at the hands of Israel’s war machine facilitated and serviced by the US – but also owing in no small part to the Islamic Republic’s reckless ‘paper tiger’ brinksmanship.
The primary objective of Israel’s 12-day war on Iran was to create the conditions for “Regime Change”, driven by the delusion that the Iranian people would somehow heed Netanyahu’s call for an uprising and rally behind the very aggressors upon their homeland. Yet, the opposite occurred… Despite widespread revulsion towards the ruling theocracy, Iranians instead rallied behind the defence of the homeland in a spirit of national solidarity and rejection of foreign intervention.
The Iranian people desire enduring peace and stability as essential foundations for their achieving freedom and social justice. Across the country, calls for “No War” resonate loudly and powerfully.
This sentiment is strongly supported by the majority of Iran’s progressive forces and civil society currents.
To prevent the current crisis from escalating into a catastrophic broader regional conflict with massive and lasting consequences, anti-war and progressive forces internationally must stand in solidarity with the Iranian people and amplify their demand for proper diplomacy and a peaceful resolution.
Thank you.
ENDS
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