The developments in the US war against Iran over the past 48 hours have once again exposed all references to negotiations and peace deals as a cover behind which American imperialism is pursuing aggressive war across the Middle East in response to the deepening crisis of the world capitalist order.
Speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara this week, President Donald Trump bluntly declared that the ceasefire with Iran is finished, while simultaneously signaling a temporary pause in military action. This was promptly followed by more US strikes on Iran.
Trump told reporters he considered the ceasefire “over” after a new round of back and forth strikes around the Strait of Hormuz and across Iran. “To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them. They’re scum,” he said, denouncing Iran’s leadership as “sick,” “vicious,” “violent” and “cuckoo.”
Yet Trump also coupled this declaration with a tactical delay, saying negotiators “can continue” talks and adding that he wanted to “wait and see” before unleashing what he called the “highest level” of attacks, including strikes on electrical and desalination plants—actions that would constitute war crimes.
While insisting, “I don’t think it’s going to start again. … I think it’s going to go very quickly,” Trump in the same breath threatened additional rounds of bombing and hinted at a renewed naval blockade and broader economic strangulation. The combination of provocative rhetoric, episodic pauses and fresh strikes is a hallmark of the administration’s attempt to dictate the terms of surrender to Iran while keeping maximum freedom of its own military action.
The past two days have seen one of the most intense sequences of strikes since the signing of the short-lived ceasefire agreement last month. According to U.S. Central Command and Pentagon briefings, American forces have hit roughly 170 targets across multiple Iranian provinces, focusing on air defense sites, command-and-control nodes and transport infrastructure.
One US strike reportedly targeted a railway line between Tehran and Mashhad, the eastern city where Khamenei’s burial was held. Iranian officials say at least 17 people were killed and dozens were wounded in attacks that spanned five provinces.
Iran has carried out missile and drone launches against US installations and allied bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and other Gulf states, as well as renewed harassment of shipping in and near the Strait of Hormuz. These retaliatory strikes have largely been blunted by US air defenses, with no confirmed American casualties in the latest round. Despite the asymmetry in firepower and the disproportionate toll on the Iranian population, even limited Iranian actions have jolted energy markets and deepened regional instability.
On Friday, the week-long funeral rites for slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—who was killed along with other family members in a joint US–Israeli strike on the first day of the war—were concluded on Friday. Khamenei was buried in his home city of Mashhad after days of processions in Tehran, Qom and the Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. The regime presented the participation of tens of millions of Iranians in the funeral as a referendum on its rule and a popular rebuke to the US–Israeli attempt to decapitate the Iranian leadership.
Khamenei’s coffin was carried through tumultuous crowds into the Imam Reza shrine complex, with millions of mourners having participated in ceremonies that authorities predicted would draw up to 20 million people nationwide. It was an unprecedented mobilization in modern Iranian history.
Despite US strikes even on the day of burial and threats of intensified bombing, the massive turnout, red martyrdom flags and open calls for “revenge” against Washington and Tel Aviv testify to the defiance of broad layers of the Iranian population to imperialist attacks.
The Israeli government has actively stoked the war atmosphere by amplifying claims that Iran is planning to assassinate Donald Trump which appear to be a bid to justify more aggression. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described Trump as Iran’s “enemy number one,” asserting in interviews that Tehran “wants to kill him” and has already attempted to do so through proxies and intelligence operations.
This week, Israeli intelligence reportedly shared with US officials a new warning about a specific Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, adding to a stream of unverified claims about threats to the president. US agencies have not independently confirmed the latest report. Trump himself has seized on the narrative, telling reporters, “They want to eliminate the US leader—me. … I’m on every single one of their lists.”
In Congress, the war has generated a mixture of handwringing and complicity. Lawmakers from both parties now refer to the conflict as a “debacle” and a “failure” but not a war crime against Iran that must be stopped immediately. “Pathetic. Failure. Inevitable conclusion of a combination of never making the case to the American people, flawed strategic vision, lack of grasp of the regional dynamics,” said Democratic Senator Chris Coons.
The House passed a War Powers resolution demanding an end to hostilities, but the Senate failed nine times to muster a majority to enforce a fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution. Meanwhile, both parties have backed tens of billions in supplemental Pentagon spending, including an $88 billion emergency request with $67 billion in defense outlays tied to the war and replenishment of missile stockpiles.
Trump’s Ankara declaration that the ceasefire is “over” is only the latest in a long string of contradictory statements about the duration and purpose of the war. Since the assault began in late February, he has alternated between proclaiming “total victory,” insisting that core strategic objectives are “nearing completion,” declaring the war “quite complete,” and threatening to bomb Iran “back into the Stone Ages” and strike “every one of their generating plants hard, and probably simultaneously.”
At various points Trump claimed the war would last “four weeks or less,” then “four to five weeks,” then “longer,” telling one interviewer that the war would end “when I feel it in my bones.” He has veered from saying the conflict is “not about oil” to boasting on social media that the US could “take the oil and make a fortune,” and from floating a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz by other powers to demanding that Washington “easily” control it itself.
Trump’s succession of improvisations, lies and reversals are not just the product of a criminal mind. They are, more fundamentally, the expression of the catastrophic decline of American imperialism driven by multiple political, financial, social and military-police crises at home and abroad.
From Friday through Monday, the renewed cycle of strikes and Trump’s ceasefire pronouncements have both disrupted global logistics markets and created lucrative opportunities for speculative capital. The war’s closure and partial reopening of the Strait of Hormuz—through which roughly one-fifth of global crude and gas flows—have produced extreme volatility in benchmark prices, with the IMF now projecting oil up nearly 32 percent this year.
Financial press reports and regulatory data point to large intraday swings, as traders positioned around Trump’s remarks and rumors of new negotiations, enabling hedge funds and other large players to reap enormous gains by shorting spikes and betting against peace announcements that repeatedly failed to materialize.
There is more than a whiff of criminality within the financial oligarchy cashing in on inside information about the alternation between “war almost over” and “ceasefire over” headlines. These have become, in effect, a mechanism for redistributing wealth upward, as speculators exploit each lurch in policy to harvest profits while workers worldwide confront rising fuel, transport and food costs.
Global economic institutions now openly acknowledge that the continuation of the war is dragging down growth and intensifying the structural crisis of world capitalism. The OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) has cut its global growth outlook, warning that ongoing disruption of Middle Eastern energy and shipping could push multiple economies toward recession or “near recession,” particularly if shipping and energy bottlenecks persist into 2027.
The IMF similarly has downgraded world growth to a “sluggish” 3 percent in 2026 and forecasts a renewed rise in global inflation to 4.7 percent, noting that energy prices have “soared” since Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz in response to the initial US–Israeli attacks.
The war against Iran is laying bare the impossibility of securing peace, democratic rights or economic stability based on the capitalist nation-state system. The global scramble for oil revenues, shipping routes and strategic advantage—now expressed in the bombardment of an entire country and the manipulation of financial markets—is leading to a third world war and can only be stopped through the independent mobilization of workers, in Iran, the US and internationally, against the profit system that breeds it.