Below is the republished translated statement of the Bolshevik Group from South Korea on June 13th

In the early hours of June 13, Israel, the enforcer of US imperialism in the Middle East, launched an airstrike on Iran under the name “Rising Lion.” The attack destroyed part of Iranian nuclear facilities and killed high-ranking military officials, including Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami.

The US claims it was only notified and that Israel planned and carried out the attack alone. But as Iran insists, it’s almost certain that the US was behind it. This airstrike came amid a deadlock in nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran. In the five rounds of talks since April, the US demanded a complete halt to uranium enrichment, but Iran firmly refused.

Since the start of this year, the Trump administration has pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign to thwart Iranian nuclear weapons development. In March, it deployed B-2 bombers to the Diego Garcia airbase in the Indian Ocean, targeting Iran. In April, it relocated Patriot missiles from South Korea to the Middle East. In May, it openly supported the puppet regime in Syria, which succeeded in a US-backed regime change late last year. Like this, US imperialism has steadily intensified military pressure on Iran over the past few months. A day before the airstrike, on the 11th, the US evacuated staff from its embassy in Iraq. Shortly after this signal of attack, Israeli airstrike began.

Since the 1979 anti-imperialist revolution, Iran has endured continuous aggression from US imperialism. To bring Iran back under its control, American imperialism has relentlessly employed every available means―instigating Iraq’s war of aggression against Iran, imposing economic sanctions, encircling Iran with US bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, Israeli assassinations and terror attacks against Iranians, attempts of color revolutions, and the assassination of IRGC Quds Force commander Soleimani during his visit to Iraq. The US empire’s criminal record is extensive.

Recent developments in the Middle East have turned against Iran. Beginning with the October 2023 Gaza massacre, the US and Israel have been systematically crushing regional resistance forces. Palestinian Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, Yemeni Houthis and others have been weakened one by one.

Syria under Assad, along with Gaddafi’s Libya and post-1979 Iran, formed a community of shared destiny in the Middle East that resisted US imperialist domination. Since the 2011 regime-change civil war, Iran provided unstinting military and economic support to prevent Assad’s collapse. But Syria finally fell last December, replaced by a brutal US-puppet regime. Iran has become increasingly isolated in the region, left completely exposed to the claws of Israel and America.

Iran learned crucial lessons from the 2011 fall of Gaddafi’s Libya and North Korea’s survival. Nuclear weapons became essential for self-defense―like a hedgehog’s spines necessary to resist imperialist predators. This is exactly why the US and Israel are attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities “right now.”

Iranian Bonapartist regime is trapped between two irreconcilable forces: imperialism and comprador capital on one side, and Iranian/Middle Eastern workers yearning for liberation from imperialist and capitalist exploitation on the other. Born from anti-imperialist struggle, the Islamic Republic defends its achievements and supports regional liberation movements. Yet as a capitalist regime, it simultaneously blocks workers’ revolutionary advance and compromises with imperialism.

The working class in Iran and Middle East has only one path to survival at this conflict: to stand with the Bonapartist regime of Iran and repel the imperialist assault. As the cases of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon show, wherever imperialism triumphs, the lives of the working masses plummet. For the sake of their survival and the future socialist revolution, the Iranian working class must hold the anti-imperialist front.

An imperialist victory in Iran and the Middle East would shift the global balance of forces against the international working class. If Iran collapses, imperialist aggression against China and Russia will only intensify. To fight for peace and liberation, the world working class must take the side of the defeat of US imperialism and Israel.

―Down with the US and Israel!

―Military victory for Iran!

―Supporting and participating in the anti-imperialist struggle is the first duty of the international working class!

―Never forget the so-called “Marxist” traitors who abstained in the face of imperialist aggression and welcomed the collapse of Syria!