The United States bombed Iran for a second consecutive day Wednesday, with the US military announcing that it had begun striking “multiple targets” in Iran at 5:15 p.m. Eastern time. CBS News reported Wednesday that two US officials said the targets included ammunition depots, command-and-control nodes and warehouses. Iranian outlets reported explosions in Bandar Abbas, Minab and Sirik and on the islands of Qeshm and Kish, across the country’s southern coast.
The renewed attack, fraudulently portrayed in the media as “self defense,” is an act of naked aggression against a country whose head of state Washington and Israel assassinated, whose ports the US Navy has blockaded and whose drinking water American bombs have now destroyed. Having failed over more than 100 days to force Iran’s capitulation, the administration of US President Donald Trump is attempting to bomb it into signing what Trump calls a “fully negotiated” surrender.
The pretext for the new assault was the loss of a US Army Apache helicopter, which went down off the coast of Oman Monday night while patrolling the Strait of Hormuz; both crew members were rescued. Trump declared Tuesday that “the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters” and that the United States “must, of necessity, respond to this attack.” The New York Times reported Tuesday that a US official said an Iranian Shahed drone struck the helicopter, while Axios reported the same day that investigators had not determined whether the hit was deliberate.
US warplanes began striking Iran’s southern coast at 5 p.m. Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote Wednesday that the US military hit 20 air-defense targets, and the New York Times reported that Iranian officials identified them as air defenses at Bandar Abbas, missile batteries on Qeshm Island and naval bases at Sirik and Jask. The bombs destroyed two water reservoirs in Hormozgan province, the Financial Times reported Wednesday, leaving more than 20,000 people in Kuhestak and 10 nearby villages without drinking water in heat of 45 to 50 degrees Celsius. “Over 20,000 local residents, who live under the harshest climatic conditions and extreme heat, have lost access to safe drinking water,” said Abdolhamid Hamzepour, the director of the provincial water company.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard answered overnight with drones and missiles aimed at the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, the Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait and the Azraq airbase in Jordan, claiming 21 attacks on American bases. Authorities in all three countries said the projectiles were intercepted. The same night, a US warplane fired into the engine room of the tanker Settebello, which the military accused of running the blockade with Iranian oil, killing one sailor and leaving two missing. India, whose nationals crewed the ship, summoned the senior US diplomat in New Delhi Wednesday to lodge a “strong protest.”
Trump posted Wednesday morning that “The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!!” and that Iran “will have to pay the price.” By evening the United States was bombing again, and Iran’s military command announced the full closure of the Strait of Hormuz, saying any vessel attempting passage would be fired on.
Trump announced the escalation from the Oval Office Wednesday morning. “Well, we’re going to be attacking them. We’re attacking them very hard,” he said. Asked whether he was pursuing bombing, he replied: “Yeah, well, we are. Based on the helicopter, I guess we have the right to do that.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters in Tampa: “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs. And we’re very good at it. Nobody better in the world.”
The new escalation reflects the failure of Trump to achieve any of his objectives in the war. Earlier this year, Trump sought to overthrow the Iranian government by backing the protests that erupted across the country; his administration covertly smuggled some 6,000 Starlink terminals into Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported in February, and shipped weapons. “We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them,” Trump told Fox News in April. On February 13, he called regime change in Iran “the best thing that could happen.”
When this operation failed, the United States and Israel attacked. On February 28 they killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, the defense minister and other senior officials. There followed a campaign of airstrikes aimed at breaking Iran’s military, paused by the nominal ceasefire that took effect April 8, and a naval blockade of Iran’s ports that took effect April 13.
After 100 days of war, the government in Tehran, now led by Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, still stands. Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz is unbroken, and the agreement Trump insists is “fully negotiated” remains unsigned, with Iran, in his words, “tapping and tapping.” Trump confronts a military disaster, to which he sees the only solution in further escalation.
“The bad part is the stock market will go down by a lot based on predictions of experts, like 25 percent,” he said Wednesday of his decision to attack. “And it was worth it. To me, it was worth it. Not to have a nuclear weapon. And the other thing is that oil would go to $250 a barrel.”
The Wall Street Journal voiced the sentiments of dominant sections of the ruling class in an editorial published Wednesday evening under the headline “Trump Needs a New Iran Strategy.”
“It’s not too much to say the President faces a similar choice to the one George W. Bush faced in Iraq in 2006-07,” the editorial declared. “The insurgency was winning, and Mr. Bush needed to shift his strategy or accept defeat. He chose the surge and broke the insurgency, and the U.S. was able to maintain influence in Iraq and the region.”
The editorial proposed that Trump “join Israel in an operation to seize or destroy Iran’s enriched uranium” and use US air power “to create a safe zone inside Iran for regime opponents.” It concluded: “The President’s choice now is to alter the facts on the ground or leave the conflict in a worse position than Mr. Bush did in Iraq.”
The Iraq war is widely seen, within the American foreign policy establishment itself, as a disastrous setback for US imperialism. That the Journal now holds up Bush’s position in 2006 as the standard Trump must fight to equal speaks to the depth of the crisis facing the Trump White House.
Under these conditions, the Democrats have attacked Trump for failing to secure US imperialism’s objectives in the Middle East. When the war began, they cheered the assassinations. “Iran is a bad actor and must be aggressively confronted,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared on February 28. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer told the Senate on March 2: “I will not shed a tear for Ali Khamenei.”
Then prominent Democrats declared that the war has left the US military worse off. “Whether it’s a conflict in the western Pacific with China or somewhere else in the world, the munitions are depleted,” Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona said on CBS’s Face the Nation on May 10, warning that replenishing the stockpiles would take years. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, complained at an April hearing that Trump had transferred “a carrier strike group, an amphibious ready group, various missile defense capabilities and other munitions” out of the Pacific theaters facing China and Korea.
Workers, meanwhile, are paying for the war. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday that consumer prices rose 4.2 percent over the year through May, the highest rate since 2023, up from 3.8 percent in April. Energy prices have risen 23.5 percent in 12 months and gasoline 40.5 percent. Asked about the figures at the White House, Trump answered: “You know what I really love? I love the inflation.”
Soaring prices are fueling an expansion of the class struggle. About 1,000 workers at the American Axle plant in Three Rivers, Michigan have been on strike since June 1, the plant’s first walkout since 2008. Workers at Nexteer in Saginaw have voted down three successive contracts, and 40,000 New York City transit workers are working under an expired contract. They follow the Long Island Rail Road’s first walkout since 1994 and a strike by 3,800 workers at the JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, which was the first at an American slaughterhouse since the 1980s.
In its statement marking 100 days of the war, published Monday, the World Socialist Web Site wrote: “Opposition to imperialism requires developing struggles of workers in the United States, Europe and across the world—against war, austerity and dictatorship—into a conscious political movement armed with a socialist program. To put an end to war and barbarism, the capitalist system must be abolished.”