Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
Codenamed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” the assault involved more than 125 aircraft, including at least eight B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, backed by fighter jets, refueling tankers and surveillance aircraft, in what was the largest B-2 strike operation in US history.
The centerpiece of the attack was the deployment of the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a 13.6-ton bunker-busting bomb—the most powerful non-nuclear weapon of its kind ever used. Twelve MOPs were dropped on the heavily fortified Fordow uranium enrichment site, and two more on Natanz. These were accompanied by numerous 2,900-pound Tomahawk missiles, which rained down on both facilities as well as the Isfahan research complex.
US President Donald Trump justified his attack in a four-minute homicidal, lying rant, delivered Saturday night. Announcing that US forces had struck three nuclear facilities, he claimed they were part of a “horribly destructive enterprise” which was supposedly necessary to “stop the nuclear threat” posed by Iran.
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Trump boasted of the “spectacular military success” of the attack, which he intended to serve as a message to the entire region, declaring that “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.”
The reference to Iran as the “bully of the Middle East” turns reality on its head. For over a third of a century, US imperialism has been at war and carried out regime change operations throughout the region, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Over the past two years, the Israeli government has waged a genocidal war in Gaza with continuous US support, slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians. This has been merely a dress rehearsal for a broader campaign of mass murder.
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The strikes were directly coordinated with the fascist Israeli government, which is continuing to launch missile attacks on Iran. As Trump stated, “We worked as a team as perhaps no team has worked before.” Just prior to Trump’s remarks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement hailing the US airstrikes and thanking Trump, declaring that the two were pursuing a policy of “Peace through strength: First comes strength, then comes peace.” In other words, slaughter and terror must precede submission.
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Saturday’s attack makes clear that there are no red lines for American imperialism, which will stop at nothing. Its criminality knows no limits. No government has so openly and flagrantly violated international law since the Nazi regime.
The bombing of Iran is a central component of an escalating global war. It is not a question of warning of the danger of a new world war—it has already begun. American imperialism is seeking to resolve its deepening internal social and political crisis through military aggression. Having targeted Iran, the logic of imperialist war is leading inevitably to confrontation with China. Regime change in Iran is aimed at securing unchallenged control over the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the broader Eurasian landmass—regions rich in oil, gas and critical trade routes.
Trump hailed the strikes as a “spectacular military success,” but in reality, he has embarked on a catastrophic and utterly reckless course of action. Whatever short-term calculations were made by the White House and Pentagon, they have now launched a war whose consequences they cannot control. They have sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind. As with the war against Iraq launched in 2003, American imperialism has a rendezvous with disaster, but on a far larger scale.
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The war will pour gasoline on the already raging social and political crises in the United States, across Europe and around the world. It is the action of a regime ruled by and for the financial oligarchy. As it bombs and murders abroad, the Trump administration is dismantling democratic rights at home and erecting a political dictatorship. The Democratic Party, the so-called opposition, is paralyzed and complicit—paralyzed by its fear of the working class and complicit in the aims of imperialism.
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The working class is the social force that must be mobilized to stop imperialist barbarism. The criminal war being waged against Iran is not an aberration, but the product of the entire capitalist system. It must be halted through the unified global struggle of the working class, organized across all national boundaries.
The International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties call for an immediate end to the US-Israeli war against Iran and the dismantling of the entire imperialist war machine. We urge workers and youth to organize protests, walkouts and strikes in every country.
2. A Different Kind of Power whitewashes Jacinda Ardern’s right-wing, pro-imperialist government
Photo source: Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0
The much-publicized memoir by New Zealand’s former prime minister uses empty platitudes about the importance of “kindness” and “empathy” to cover up the right-wing record of her Labour Party government from 2017 to 2023.
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What is behind this phenomenon? Ardern is being elevated amid an historic crisis of the capitalist system, centered in the United States. The ruling class has brought the fascist Donald Trump back into power in order to escalate imperialist wars throughout the world while shredding democratic rights and eviscerating workers’ living standards at home.
The Democrats, and similar bourgeois parties internationally, are terrified that these developments are fueling the leftward movement of workers and layers of the middle class, especially young people, who are increasingly opposed to capitalism and all of its political representatives.
In this context, the embrace of Ardern is part of increasingly desperate efforts to reassure people that all is not lost, that the capitalist system can be saved if only it is given a kinder, more sympathetic face. As one of Ardern’s interviewers, Katie Couric, said, “In a time of extreme disillusionment, she reminds us that optimism isn’t naïve, in fact it’s necessary.”
3. Israeli troops engage in continuous indiscriminate killing of Palestinian aid seekers in Gaza
Over the weekend, Israeli troops once again unleashed a wave of military violence upon Palestinian civilians in Gaza, killing at least 44 people in a series of attacks. According to local officials, many of those killed were simply trying to obtain desperately needed food for their families.
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One of the most barbaric developments in the ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza has been the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a privately-owned US-Israeli program that is taking over aid delivery in the territory.
The GHF is run by military contractors and not humanitarian professionals. It operates under strict Israeli government oversight, lacking any transparency, independence or accountability. This arrangement has effectively militarized aid distribution, turning it into a tool of the war of extermination.
Since the GHF began operating, Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on Palestinians gathered at its aid distribution points. Witnesses have described scenes of horror, with Israeli troops, tanks and drones targeting crowds of desperate people seeking food.
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The Israeli military has offered a litany of justifications for its repeated shootings of civilians at aid distribution points. In almost every case, the IDF claims that “suspects” or “militants” were approaching their forces, necessitating warning shots and, ultimately, lethal force.
The military insists that its actions are intended to control crowds and prevent security threats, but eyewitnesses and humanitarian organizations have consistently reported that the shootings are unprovoked and indiscriminate.
“For the company it’s just, ‘Make the numbers, get it done.’ That’s all they care about. ‘Don’t cause any problems. Just put your head down and do what I said,’ that’s their motto. The ones who say something about safety get blacklisted. They’ll keep you from becoming a team leader, getting overtime or transferring from night shift, even though you have seniority,” the worker said.
5. US Supreme Court upholds state bans on gender-affirming care for adolescents
Last Wednesday, the US Supreme Court upheld a reactionary Tennessee law banning medically based hormonal therapies to treat transgender adolescents. The 6-3 ruling, along familiar ideological lines, further dismantles judicial recognition of equal protection under the law and opens the door to continuing attacks on groups disfavored by the fascists in control of the Republican Party.
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Challenges faced by transgender youth, their families and doctors have been seized upon by the fascists demagogically to mobilize zealots and others in the purported defense of traditional gender distinctions, while undercutting support for the Democratic Party. In his second week after becoming president, Donald Trump signed an executive order to restrict medical treatment for transgender youth under 19. Such treatment for adults is no doubt next up on the chopping block.
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Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law School, called the ruling “a tragic abdication of the judiciary’s responsibility to protect minorities,” citing Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1937 that protect “discrete and insular minorities” from discrimination.
6. Notes on the socioeconomic crisis in Russia
Recent events around the world confirm the general trend of capitalism toward dictatorship and war. Unable to cope with the crisis in any other way, imperialist and bourgeois-nationalist regimes are betting on weapons as the only “almighty” means of resolving their contradictions, threatening the world with nuclear war.
The Putin regime is no exception and has long been trying to resolve its own crisis through dictatorship, weapons and diplomatic maneuvers with imperialism, attempting to strike a deal that would save the Russian oligarchy from the blows of imperialism while at the same time preventing the development of a working class revolution in its own country.
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The Putin regime has no progressive strategy or rational response to the general escalation of war worldwide and the imperialist war strategy against Russia in particular. Relying on the legacy of Stalinism and capitalist restoration, it is desperately seeking to defend the interests of a narrow oligarchy which has no independence from imperialism and is itself deeply divided. As a result, Putin’s regime is inevitably drawn into open conflict with its own working class, which is increasingly bearing the brunt of the Russian economic crisis.
The Russian working class is again confronted with the fundamental historical and social problems that gave rise to the 1917 October Revolution: Imperialist war and immense social inequality. In order to resolve these problems, it must again take up the perspective of world socialist revolution, which informed the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky when they led the working class in the seizure of power in 1917.
7. 45,000 Southern California grocery workers vote to strike, as UFCW bureaucracy moves to block it
Tens of thousands of Southern California grocery workers employed by Kroger-owned Ralphs and Albertsons and Albertsons-owned chains Vons and Pavilions voted by 90 percent to authorize a strike, in a massive show of militancy between June 8 and June 11. These 45,000 workers, organized under the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, have been laboring without a contract since March 2, 2025.
Yet despite this powerful show of strength, the UFCW bureaucracy is doing everything in its power to smother and derail this movement, reduce it to toothless theatrics, and ultimately betray it in the service of the grocery conglomerates and the capitalist system they defend. This underscores the need for a fight by workers to assert control over their struggle, countermanding any violation of the democratic will of the workers themselves through rank-and-file committees
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There is enormous potential for a united movement of Kroger and Albertsons workers across the country. But activating this potential requires workers take the initiative into their own hands. They must connect their struggles with the broader mass movement against dictatorship, war and oligarchy shown by last week’s mass protests against the Trump administration, which has now launched a catastrophic new war with Iran which will be paid for by working people.
Trump is escalating his fascistic attacks on immigrant workers—many of whom stock the shelves, bag groceries, and clean the floors in these stores. While grocery locations have not yet been targeted, raids have already struck Home Depot and Lowe’s.
8. Australia: Queensland teachers to protest against derisory government pay offer
Public school teachers in Queensland will join a rally outside state parliament in Brisbane on Tuesday against the Liberal National Party state government’s “offer” of a three-year agreement that will continue years of real pay-cutting, under-funding, severe staff shortages and heavy workloads.
9. Workers in Germany express solidarity with the fight against the Trump dictatorship
The World Socialist Web Site has received statements and a video from workers in Germany who stand in solidarity with the resistance to Donald Trump’s attempts to erect a military dictatorship in the US.
10. High Court of Australia rejects challenge to Labor’s attack on the CFMEU
As the World Socialist Web Site explained in September, the case was “a political diversion, designed to demobilise workers by placing their struggle in the hands of the courts.” It was never likely to succeed. In any case, the Albanese government had made clear that, in the improbable event of a High Court loss, it would simply amend the legislation.
The case was never about defending the interests of construction workers. The sole preoccupation of the ousted officials was, and remains, the restoration of their privileged positions within the union apparatus.
Now that the United States has bombed Iran using B-2 stealth bombers and Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting bombs—among the most aggressive escalations imaginable—the toothless character of the Kaine, Sanders and Massie resolutions stands fully exposed. Far from restraining US militarism, these measures serve as post-hoc political cover for war. Their built-in “self-defense” loophole provides a pretext for strikes that are in violation of international law and thoroughly criminal.
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Sanders’ empty calls to oppose the war are an effort to stay ahead of public opinion and channel mass anti-war sentiment back into the Democratic Party. Like the Republicans, the Democrats have long used Israel as a beachhead for launching US military campaigns across the Middle East.
By framing the war as solely the product of Trump and Netanyahu, Sanders is attempting to whitewash the fact that this war enjoys bipartisan support and has been planned in advance by US imperialism for decades.
Sanders seeks to shield the capitalist system and the US government as a whole, all while burnishing his “anti-war credentials”—badly tarnished after 20 months of unwavering support for “Genocide Joe” Biden and Kamala “Holocaust” Harris, and his refusal to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza as such.
12. Brian Wilson (1942-2025) expressed both joy and tragedy through his harmonies
The subjects of the Beach Boys tunes did not include the explosive developments of the 1960s, assassinations, civil rights and antiwar protests and ghetto rebellions, but as Wilson’s internal suffering melded with those social convulsions, he became more removed from life around him and more concentrated on the harmonies he heard in his head.
13. Canada Post worker speaks out following government order imposing vote on rotten company offer
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers surrendered our right to strike last year, then proceeded to fully participate in the Liberal government’s rigged Industrial Inquiry Commission. Now, we’re on a totally useless “work to rule” strike, while other courier companies, including Canada Post-owned Purolator, soak up all our parcel volume.
The union has dug our grave, and now they’re trying to throw us in the hole!
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Every worker has a stake in our struggle! The issues we are fighting over—defense of public services and the right to strike; against Amazon-style low-paid, precarious employment; and for workers’ control over the use of AI and other labor-saving technologies—are of vital importance to all workers.
14. Mass protest in London against genocide in Gaza, war on Iran offered nothing but pressuring Starmer
Hundreds of thousands protested in London on Saturday to oppose the genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran. Organisers put the attendance at over 350,000 people, despite stifling hot weather.
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The Socialist Equality Party attended the London demonstration to distribute and discuss its June 17 statement, “Oppose Starmer’s plans for war against Iran!”, which calls for the “broadest industrial and political mobilisation of the working class to stop Keir Starmer’s Labour government dragging Britain into war”.
It warns that “For almost two years, mass demonstrations have been told that the Gaza genocide can be ended by placing pressure on Labour and other imperialist governments to end support for Israel.”
Now, “Starmer and Trump are dragging humanity towards a potentially catastrophic war, yet Corbyn still offers nothing but moral appeals to war criminals…
“Genocide and war can only be defeated through the independent political mobilisation of the working class in a global anti-war movement on socialist foundations. It is the international working class, the most powerful social force on earth, and not Tehran, Moscow or Beijing, that must defeat the drive of the imperialist powers to redivide the world between them.”
All the ILO report could offer as an answer was to encourage governments to ensure that “the gains of economic progress are fairly shared” by working to strengthen “labor market institutions that uphold fundamental principles and rights at work, promote social dialogue, and reinforce collective bargaining.” The latter refers to the trade union bureaucracy, whose real role is to police the class struggle on the corporations’ behalf.
Nevertheless, the ILO’s findings illustrate why, when the world’s handful of multibillionaires deprive billions of people of their rights, including the right to a decent standard of living, they must turn ever more forcefully to repression and dictatorship.
25 years ago:
US Supreme Court upholds Miranda rights in Dickerson v. United States
50 years ago:
Indira Gandhi imposes state of emergency
75 years ago:
Korean War commences with Operation Pokpung
100 years ago:
French and British troops massacre protesters in Guangzhou
17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
