San Diego, California is yet another flashpoint in the escalating crisis
of public education in the United States. The San Diego Unified School
District (SDUSD) announced a $47 million budget deficit for the upcoming
school year, triggering threats of sweeping layoffs and program cuts.
Last week, despite widespread public outcry, the district voted to move
forward with the elimination of 221 classified positions, including bus
drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and special education
aides—workers essential to the daily functioning of schools.
*****
The anger and backlash against the cuts were on full display at a
recent San Diego Unified school board meeting, attended by educators and
community members, many workers spoke out against the harm the cuts and
layoffs will have. One school worker said, “I read braille at my
school, who’s going to cover my job when it gets cut?” Another pleaded,
“You are creating an unsafe environment with these cuts,” while one
worker told the board, “If anything, you should be hiring more
classified staff.”
One speaker pointed out how the cuts were not
announced until the previous Friday with panic setting in as workers did
not have a full list of names until the following week. Another worker
told the board, “We are not items on a spreadsheet, but faces at your
school. These 221 positions are being eliminated but the work is still
there.”
*****
District officials have sought to frame the deficit as an unfortunate
but unavoidable financial problem. Superintendent Fabi Bagula cited the
underfunding of special education, stating that the district spends
more than $400 million annually on services while receiving only $125
million in state, federal and local funding, leaving the remainder to be
drawn from general funds.
But the timing of these layoffs is
highly suspect, as just last month educators in San Diego were preparing
for what would have been the district’s first strike in nearly 30
years. The planned action centered on chronic understaffing in special
education and deteriorating working conditions.
Teachers were
prepared to walk out, but then, at the eleventh hour, the strike was
called off by the San Diego Education Association (SDEA). The
cancellation was announced by SDEA without a finalized, ratified
contract and without resolving the structural funding crisis. Union
officials declared that they had secured commitments to “address”
special education staffing and educators were told to stand down.
A
little over two weeks later, the district announced layoffs of more
than 200 classified staff—cuts projected to save roughly $19 million
toward the $47 million shortfall. Preliminary layoff notices are being
sent to roughly 200 workers, with dozens expected to lose their jobs
outright.
*****
San Diego’s education crisis reflects a nationwide pattern. Across
the country, school districts are invoking expired federal relief funds,
declining enrollment and “structural deficits” to justify cuts. Yet at
the same time, trillions continue to flow toward military expansion,
corporate subsidies and tax breaks for the wealthy.
The attack on
public education has intensified under the second administration of
Donald Trump. Federal education funding has been frozen or slashed,
grants eliminated and teacher preparation programs undermined. Policies
favoring charter expansion and privatization continue to funnel public
funds into private hands.
The political establishment insists
there is “no money” for bus drivers, aides, counselors and teachers. Yet
there is unlimited money to start a war with Iran and massacre school
children there, while funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to kill
Americans and deport immigrant families continues to flow uninterrupted
here at home.
In fact, the cost of a single F-35 fighter jet at
$80 million could cover SDUSD’s $47 million deficit and still have over
$30 million left over. According to the Center for American Progress the
opening days of the recent US war on Iran has cost at least $5 billion,
and if it lasts for several more months as President Trump has publicly
predicted, the economic costs will escalate into the hundreds of
billions and trillions. As for DHS and ICE, the deportation machine has
received about $75 billion since 2025 to build concentration camps, up
from roughly $10 billion every year.
California itself is home to immense wealth, with more billionaires
and multimillionaires residing in the state than anywhere else in the
US. Yet districts are told to tighten their belts while housing costs
soar and working class families are pushed out of cities like San Diego.
Budget shortfalls are politically produced. Decades of tax cuts for the
wealthy, charter profiteering and military expansion have hollowed out
public coffers.
The decisive issue, however, is not merely the
district’s fiscal maneuvering. It is the role played by the trade union
apparatus in disarming educators.
Rather than broadening the
struggle—linking teachers, classified workers, parents and other
districts facing similar cuts—the union leadership narrowed the fight to
limited demands and then shut it down. Now, classified workers—many of
whom earn far less than credentialed teachers—face job loss, increased
workloads and destabilization. The union leadership has confined
opposition to board meetings, appeals and lobbying efforts.
This
pattern is not unique to San Diego. In district after district, the
union bureaucracies—tied to the Democratic Party—isolate struggles,
prevent coordinated statewide action and negotiate concessions under the
banner of “fiscal responsibility,” and fundamentally accepting
austerity.
The lesson of the past weeks is clear: the defense of
public education cannot be entrusted to the trade union bureaucracy or
to appeals to Democratic politicians. Educators and classified workers
must take matters into their own hands and form independent
rank-and-file committees in every school and district.
On February 27, Paramount Skydance finalized a $111 billion merger to
acquire 100 percent of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) for $31 per share
in cash. The deal unites two of Hollywood’s historic studios and their
global news and streaming divisions under a single corporate structure
dominated by finance capital.
This marks a new stage in the
restructuring of the US and international media landscape, concentrating
enormous cultural (or anti-cultural) and informational power in the
hands of a narrow layer of billionaires tied to Silicon Valley and the
American state.
The transaction concludes a bitter, multi-year bidding war. In late
2025, Netflix appeared poised to take over WBD with an offer estimated
to be worth between $72 and $83 billion. But Netflix sought only the
most profitable components (Warner Bros. studios, the Burbank lot and
HBO/Max), while excluding cable networks and CNN, which it regarded as
declining assets burdened by debt.
Paramount Skydance, by
contrast, insisted on a full buyout. Its leadership argued that only
massive scale could compete with tech behemoths such as Amazon and
Apple. Treating the acquisition as existential, Paramount raised its bid
to $31 per share, above Netflix’s $27.75 offer. Netflix ultimately
withdrew, citing the needs of financial self-discipline and Warner’s
$33.5 billion debt burden. Paramount then secured shareholder approval
with aggressive incentives, including reimbursement of Netflix’s $2.8
billion breakup fee and a record $7 billion regulatory termination fee
should antitrust approval fail.
The merger relies heavily on debt and the financial backing of
billionaire Larry Ellison and his family. Paramount secured between $54
and $57.5 billion in bridge loans from major banks, while Ellison
reportedly guaranteed up to $45.7 billion in equity, leveraging his
holdings in Oracle. The combined entity will carry approximately $90
billion in debt.
Such staggering leverage has immediate
consequences. Chief executive David Ellison (son of Larry Ellison) has
pledged to extract $6 billion annually in “cost synergies.” In plain
language, this means mass layoffs, intensified workloads and the
slashing of production budgets. Thousands—and potentially tens of
thousands—of jobs across film, television, news and streaming are at
risk.
*****
Central to the new corporation’s strategy is the transformation of
the studio into what executives call an “AI-native” enterprise. Backed
by Oracle’s data and cloud infrastructure, David Ellison is advancing
so-called “Agentic AI” systems designed to automate complex
decision-making across development, preproduction and post-production.
New executives are being hired to oversee end-to-end AI workflows aimed
at accelerating output and cutting costs.
For writers and other
creative workers, this signals structural displacement. Repeatable tasks
like script coverage, story drafting, editing and visual effects
processing are prime targets for automation. While the recent contracts
negotiated by the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA were promoted as
establishing “guardrails” on the use of artificial intelligence, in
reality they failed to provide any meaningful protection.
*****
The merger also underscores the growing fusion of media, technology
and state power, in what might be described as a modern
Military-Industrial-Media Complex. Ellison’s Oracle, founded on an early
CIA contract, now provides cloud computing and artificial intelligence
infrastructure to major corporations and national security agencies.
This
infrastructure now forms the backbone of global defense through massive
initiatives like the $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability
(JWCC) contract, which integrates Oracle’s “air-gapped” National
Security Regions across the Department of Defense and all 17 US
government intelligence agencies. “Air-gapped” refers to computers or
networks physically isolated from unsecured, public networks to ensure
maximum secrecy.
By deploying ruggedized [equipment engineered to
withstand harsh conditions], portable cloud nodes to the “tactical edge”
[remote, austere or disconnected environments] and partnering with
firms like Palantir, Oracle enables real-time, AI-driven battlefield
analytics and autonomous decision-making. This role extends to the “Five
Eyes” alliance and NATO, where the company’s sovereign cloud
environments and “agentic AI” workflows have transitioned Oracle from a
mere software provider to an essential, high-stakes architect of
21st-century warfare and global surveillance.
The political implications are profound. Larry Ellison is a longtime
ally and donor to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked CNN as
hostile to his administration. It is a common contention that the White
House favored Paramount’s bid precisely because Ellison would be
amenable to reshaping CNN’s editorial direction. The deal also involves
investment from sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the
United Arab Emirates, all accomplices in the conflicts taking place in
the Middle East, from the Gaza genocide to the criminal assault on Iran.
With
Oracle already managing sensitive data infrastructure, including
TikTok’s US operations, Ellison’s expanding media footprint consolidates
control over both information distribution and AI development. Content
is increasingly treated not as journalism or art but as data: raw
material within broader geopolitical and economic competition.
*****
The broader implications for cultural life are immense. The
consolidation of two of the largest studios, now essentially part of a
military-CIA complex, significantly reduces diversity of production and
narrows the range of perspectives available to audiences. Independent
filmmakers, smaller production companies and dissenting artists will
face even greater barriers to distribution. The concentration of news
divisions under a single technology-driven hierarchy threatens further
homogenization of political coverage.
As geopolitical tensions
escalate and the war in Iran expands into a regional conflagration, the
American public will confront a largely unified narrative shaped by
corporate and state interests. Oppositional or even critical voices will
be marginalized, investigative journalism constrained and programming
aligned more closely with official policy.
The unions representing entertainment workers express anxiety about job
losses and AI displacement. But they are centrally responsible for
facilitating the current situation. Their strategy remains confined to
appeals to regulators and corporate management. None calls into question
the dominance of finance capital or the subordination of culture to
shareholder value. Certainly, none calls for the independent
mobilization of workers against capitalism.
*****
The defense of democratic rights, artistic freedom and truthful
reporting cannot be entrusted to billionaires, regulators or union
bureaucracies tied to corporate management. It requires the independent
mobilization of workers across industries against capitalism and the
subordination of society to profit.
In his speech opening the current session of Argentina’s legislature
on March 1, President Javier Milei gloated over the passage of his
reactionary labor counter-reform and declared his desire to take the
country back 100 hundred years; paraphrasing US President Donald Trump’s
phrase, to Make Argentina Great Again.
Milei glorifies a period
characterized by extreme social inequality, and major strike struggles
by the working class, led by anarchists and socialists, combined with
extreme repression, and attacks on immigrants and indigenous people,
culminating in the Patagonian Massacre of 1921, when over 1,500 striking
workers in the Patagonian region were killed by the Argentine Army. It
was a period in which Argentina was great only for the oligarchy, in
cahoots with British imperialism.
Now, Milei proposes to return to
those times, this time, in alliance with U.S. President Trump and US
imperialism, and the collaboration of the trade union bureaucracy.
The
reactionary anti-labor bill came out of the May Council (Consejo de
Mayo), formed in June 2025. This committee included federal government
officials, provincial delegates, a representative of the trade union
bureaucracy (CGT-General Workers Confederation), and one from the
Argentine Industrial Union (UIA).
The resulting “labor
modernization” legislation, which was recently approved by both houses
of the federal legislature, rolls back labor rights won over decades of
workers’ struggles. The new legislation allows employers to impose a
12-hour workday (in a 48-hour week) without overtime pay. It also wipes
out contractual rights for rural workers (the 1074 law had, for the
first time, granted rural workers the same rights as all other workers).
At a time of massive layoffs across the country, the legislation
reduces the cost for employers to fire even more workers; it reduces
sick pay; eliminates industry-wide contracts; allows employers to
manipulate vacation time; ends retroactive payments in case of layoffs,
eliminates the 13th month paycheck (aguinaldo); it does not allow for
the extension of expired contracts, while new ones are negotiated
opening the door to massive abuses.
The Milei administration
argues that as industrial jobs are cut, new jobs will eventually be
created in mining and fossil fuel extraction.
The labor
legislation is only one of eight reactionary legislative proposals that
takes Argentina back in time. They also include the law of “penal
responsibility” that lowers the age for children to be tried and sent to
jail as adults, from 16 to 14. Milei had voiced his support for
lowering it to 10.
*****
The struggles of the Argentine working class beginning in the
late-1800s were linked with and inspired by the struggles of the
European and US proletariat. At that time, a significant percentage of
worker immigrants, from Spain, Italy and other European countries,
introduced anarchist and socialist ideas into Argentina. Following the
May 4, 1886 Haymarket massacre, of Chicago workers fighting for the
8-hour day, Argentine workers were among the first to heed the call for
the establishment of May 1 as International Workers Day. The first May
Day demonstration took place in Buenos Aires in 1890.
In 1904,
following railroad and port strikes, Buenos Aires workers helped elect
the first socialist legislator, Alfredo Palacios, for the port district,
who led the campaign for pro-labor legislation, beginning with the
establishment of Sundays as a day of rest for workers in 1905.
On Saturday, a dozen of the most reactionary and corrupt political
leaders of Latin America gathered with US President Donald Trump for an
infamous regional summit dubbed the “Shield of the Americas.” Held
against the backdrop of Washington’s criminal war of annihilation
against Iran, the event reaffirmed US imperialism’s aim of establishing
its direct neocolonial domination of Latin America through the use of
unrestrained violence and promotion of dictatorial regimes aligned to
its geopolitical strategy.
The meeting, convened at Trump’s south
Florida golf club, was attended by the presidents of Bolivia, Chile,
Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras,
Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago. The leaders of Mexico, Brazil
and Colombia, which together account for more than 60 percent of both
the region’s GDP and its population, were deliberately excluded by
Washington, along with other regional governments considered as
“left-wing.”
The summit was called by Trump, in his own words, to establish a
“brand new military coalition to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing
our region.” He branded it as the “Americas Counter Cartel Coalition.”
The
fraudulent rhetoric of fighting “drug cartels” has been utilized by the
Trump administration as a cynical pretext for an escalating wave of
aggression and political intervention across the region.
“Narcoterrorism” was the enemy fabricated to justify the launching of
the ongoing campaign of missile murders of fishermen in the Caribbean
and Eastern Pacific, as well as the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping
of its president on January 3. In recent weeks, the US military has
promoted a new series of “boots on the ground” operations in Mexico,
Colombia and Ecuador on the pretext of extending a war on
“narcoterrorism” throughout the region.
The whole framework and
statements at the “Shield of the Americas” summit laid bare how these
multiple fronts of imperialist violence in Latin America, as well as the
war on Iran, are interconnected parts of the same ruthless strategy for
global domination and, more specifically, of the US build-up for war
against China.
*****
The same goals of societal annihilation that Washington is pursuing
in Iran through carpet bombing are being prosecuted against the island
of Cuba, located barely 100 miles from where Trump was speaking, through
the imposition of a blockade against all energy shipments. The
deliberate provocation of mass hunger, disease, and social collapse was
openly celebrated by the fascist US president. “Cuba’s at the end of the
line,” Trump stated. “They’re very much at the end of the line. They
have no money. They have no oil. They have a bad philosophy. They have a
bad regime that’s been bad for a long time.”
Like a mafia
gangster, Trump cynically stated, pointing to the Latin American
political stooges in his audience: “I was surprised, but four of you
said: ‘Could you do us a favor and take care of Cuba?’ I will take care
of that, alright.” While his administration’s “focus right now is on
Iran,” he said that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio could “take an
hour off” to “wrap up a deal on Cuba. That’ll be an easy one.”
Significantly, while he boasted of starving Cuba of its oil imports from
Venezuela, Trump highly praised the Venezuelan “interim” President
Delcy Rodriguez. “She’s doing an excellent job partnering with us,” the
US president said. The Chavista leader, speaking as a colonial adjunct,
returned the compliment hours after the summit. “We reaffirm our
commitment to developing enduring relations grounded in mutual respect,
equality, and adherence to international law,” Rodriguez wrote, as the
kidnapped Maduro sits in a US prison cell.
*****
Saturday’s meeting culminated in the signature of a Joint
Security Declaration ideologically based on the “Trump corollary” to the
Monroe Doctrine, which claims the right to assert US domination over
the Western Hemisphere and all its resources and to counter China’s
regional influence. The signatories declared their intent to cooperate
with Washington to “enhance security in the Western Hemisphere,” and on
“efforts regarding border security, countering narcoterrorism,” as well
as “securing critical infrastructure”–a euphemism for countering the
influence of China. The Orwellian phrase, “Advance ‘Peace through
Strength,’” was adopted as the “Shield’s” motto.
The
militarization of Latin America proclaimed at the “Shield of the
Americas” meeting has the deepest historical and political implications.
Trump’s
call for the systematic employment of the military in regional internal
repression is a blueprint for restoring the US-backed military
dictatorships that unleashed a reign of political terror and mass
torture and murder of Latin American workers and youth.
The criminal gang that posed alongside the US mafia boss for a family
photo in Miami was composed of direct political heirs of these
historical crimes. Prominent among them were Argentina’s fascist
President Javier Milei and Chile’s president-elect José Antonio Kast,
who came to be briefed in Washington four days before his inauguration.
Kast, the son of a Nazi officer who escaped to Chile, is himself a vocal
admirer of the murderous dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that ruled
his country from 1973-1990.
The event hosted by Trump Saturday is directly reminiscent of another
regional summit that took place 50 years ago, on November 25, 1975, in
the Chilean capital, under Pinochet’s rule. Dubbed the “First Inter
American Meeting on National Intelligence,” the meeting gathered
fascistic military officials from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile,
Paraguay and Uruguay to establish the infamous “Operation Condor,” an
integrated network of murderous political repression and coup plotting
across the region.
A significant difference in relation to Trump’s
summit is that Pinochet’s meeting in 1975 was held in secret, and the
formal establishment of “Operation Condor” only came to public attention
with the opening of the “Terror Archives” of Paraguay in 1992. Even
more concealed was the participation of the United States in these
crimes through the CIA’s provision of logistical backing to political
coups and training and infrastructure for the murderous agencies of
repression throughout Latin America.
The days in which US
imperialism could maintain the image of leader of the “free world” are
long gone. Washington’s unconcealed promotion of state murder and
dictatorship has, however, explosive implications which are far beyond
its control.
As the World Socialist Web Site has
insisted, the violent outburst of US imperialism is not a sign of
strength but of deep historical crisis. Its criminal interventions and
disruption of bourgeois rule throughout the world are coupled with
extreme political crisis within the United States itself. The
contradictions of the imperialist system are leading to the greatest
eruption of class struggle in history, in which the social struggles of
workers in South, Central and North America will assume the form of an
inseparable revolutionary process of a socialist character.
The Workers’ Party of Türkiye (TİP) claims to oppose the imperialist war against Iran, but is forming an
electoral alliance with the Germany's Left Party, which celebrated the illegal
killings of Iran’s leadership.
NATO member Türkiye is being drawn ever deeper into the imperialist
war waged by the US and Israel against Iran. On Monday, the Ministry of
National Defence announced: “A ballistic munition launched from Iran and
entering Turkish airspace was neutralized by NATO air and missile defense assets deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean.”
Fragments
of the missile were reported to have fallen on an empty field in
Gaziantep, a city neighboring Adana—home to NATO’s Incirlik Air Base,
which is used by the United States—with no casualties or injuries
reported.
The defense ministry’s statement further declared: “We
once again emphasize that all necessary measures will be taken
decisively and without hesitation against any threat directed at our
country’s territory and airspace. We also reiterate that it is in
everyone’s interest to heed Türkiye’s warnings in this regard.”
President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in remarks delivered that evening directed at
Iran, stated: “However, I would hereby like to underscore that despite
our warnings, extremely wrong and provocative steps, which will
undermine Türkiye’s friendship, are continued to be taken. All should
avoid calculations, which will inflict deep wounds in the hearts and
minds of our nation, and which will cast a shadow on our 1,000-year-old
neighborhood and brotherhood. Türkiye’s stance and attitude are clear.”
During
a phone conversation with Erdoğan on Monday night, Iranian President
Masoud Pezeshkian denied claims regarding Iran launching a missile
strike on Türkiye, according to the Iranian press.
About one hour
before the announcement of the missile incident—which Iran has not
confirmed—the US State Department ordered non-emergency diplomatic
personnel and their families stationed at the US Consulate in Adana to
depart Türkiye. Washington also advised American citizens to leave
southeastern Türkiye.
Iran, the target of an unlawful aggression by the US and Israel, is
retaliating against Israel and US bases across the region in exercise of
its right to self-defense. However, a strike on Incirlik—a base used
by, but not belonging to, the United States—could, by virtue of its
legal status, trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty and draw the entire
alliance into war against Iran. This is far from a desirable outcome for
Iran, which is already under massive imperialist assault with limited
capacity to sustain it.
Monday’s missile incident follows the
interception of another missile approaching Turkish airspace last
Wednesday. In that case, Iran rejected claims that Türkiye had been
targeted; Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated: “We have no
reason to attack Türkiye. Türkiye is a good neighbor of ours.”
*****
Whatever the origin of the missiles, Ankara is being drawn step by step
into the war, despite its warnings and calls for negotiation. The
Turkish government’s objective and historical position in the war
against Iran aligns with the US-Israeli axis.
As part of the escalating assault on democratic rights, President
Donald Trump told a meeting of Republican House members Monday that he
would not sign any legislation of any kind into law until Congress
passes the “Save America Act.”
The bill, initially dubbed the
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (or SAVE Act), rebaptized by
Trump as the Save America Act, combines a series of anti-democratic
ultra-right measures, mainly aimed at suppressing voter turnout in the
elections, with provisions attacking transgendered youth added to appeal
to anti-gay religious bigots and fascists.
The main provisions of
the bill, which passed the House of Representatives last month, would
mandate states to implement voter ID requirements and other restrictions
on voting. There would be twofold sets of ID requirements.
Anyone
who registers to vote would have to provide proof of citizenship,
either in the form of a passport or a birth certificate. Millions of
Americans, disproportionately poor and minority, do not have birth
certificates, and half the population has never applied for a passport
or lacks a current one. Tens of millions of married women who took their
husbands’ last names would need additional ID since their birth
certificates are in their maiden names.
Once registered, a voter would still have to present a photo ID at the polls on Election Day.
Additional
restrictions would include a virtual ban on mail-in voting, except for
the military, business travelers and those too ill or frail to go to the
polls. This would most drastically affect the states that have gone to
universal mail balloting, including California, Oregon and Washington,
but it would also disrupt voting practices in nearly every other state.
Last-minute additions to the bill, before it passed the House, were to
ban transgender athletes competing as females and to restrict
gender-affirming care for youth under 18. These have nothing to do with
voting but were added to fuel attack ads against Democrats, who vote
against the legislation.
*****
While Trump depicts a Democratic victory in the midterms in apocalyptic
terms, his real fear is not the alternate corporate-controlled party of
American imperialism but the working class. This is a fear that the
Democratic Party leaders themselves share: that a widespread repudiation
of Trump and the Republicans at the polls in November could encourage
mass opposition to the agenda of austerity, social reaction and
imperialist war which is shared by both big business parties.
*****
Neither [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer nor House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has
publicly drawn the connection between the Save America Act and Trump’s
mobilization of tens of thousands of federal agents into immigrant
neighborhoods in major cities, or to his suggestion that the mid-term
election should be conducted under the control of the US military. This
would overturn the U.S. Constitution, which assigns responsibility to
the states and the Congress, giving the executive branch no role.
The
Trump administration and the Republican Party have already encouraged
local voter suppression initiatives in closely contested states,
including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And
the federal Department of Justice is suing many states to obtain their
voter rolls, which would provide ammunition for challenging voters’
eligibility when they go to the polls.
The girls’ school in Minab is in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province
close to the Persian Gulf. The school was effectively pulverized by
multiple blasts, and many of those killed were obliterated and could
only be identified through DNA analysis. Footage showed bodies and body
parts partially trapped under collapsed floors, alongside scattered
schoolbags, notebooks and dust‑covered textbooks.
When the
US-Israeli bombardment began on the morning of Saturday, February 28,
the first working day of the week in Iran, the school was full for
morning classes. Iranian authorities and local officials report that
three missiles struck the area—“triple‑tapped,” according to some
accounts—with multiple impacts.
According to Iranian government
figures cited by international media, roughly 168–180 people were
killed, including at least 160–170 children and more than a dozen
teachers and staff, making it the single deadliest attack on civilians
in the war. Dozens more, possibly more than 100, were injured, many with
catastrophic blast and shrapnel wounds, burns and crush injuries from
the collapse of the two‑story structure’s roof and walls.
*****
Video and photographs from the aftermath show piles of rubble, desks
and schoolbags buried in concrete dust, and rows of small coffins at
mass funerals in Minab. The victims include entire classes of girls
whose names appear on hastily printed lists taped to the walls of local
mosques.
A short video, filmed from a nearby construction site and
released by Iran’s semi‑official Mehr News Agency, has been widely
circulated and independently authenticated by multiple investigative
teams. The video opens with a view across an industrial area toward the
IRGC naval facility near Minab; a low, fast‑moving projectile crosses
the frame and then detonates in a massive fireball inside the base,
sending a shockwave and debris into the air.
Munitions experts from Bellingcat, CNN, BBC Verify and other outlets
have concluded that the projectile’s size, flight profile, and terminal
behavior are consistent with a U.S. BGM/UGM‑109 Tomahawk Land Attack
Missile. As the camera pans to the right in the final seconds, a huge
plume of dark smoke can be seen rising from the direction of the
Shajareh Tayyebeh school, already burning, indicating that at least one
earlier strike had directly hit or detonated at or above the school
complex.
Later satellite imagery shows multiple impact craters and
burn marks in and around both the school and the adjacent military
base, confirming that the area was struck more than once in the opening
wave of US attacks on southern Iran.
*****
On Saturday, President Trump claimed, when asked by reporters about the
strike on the school, that Iran was responsible for the massacre and
said, “in my opinion, from what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” He
did not present any evidence to substantiate the claim.
*****
US officials have admitted that southern Iran, including IRGC facilities
near Minab, were among the first targets in a pre‑planned strike
package and that Tomahawks were used in those attacks. By any objective
standard, the destruction of a functioning, clearly marked girls’
primary school during school hours in an attack on a nearby military
target was carried out with full knowledge of the school’s existence is a
war crime under international humanitarian law, regardless of whether
it is labeled “intentional” or “accidental” by the perpetrators.
*****
The massacre in Minab is not a “tragic incident” but part of the
campaign of terror directed against the civilian population of Iran.
Iranian authorities and independent monitors report that other schools,
hospitals, residential apartment blocks and urban neighborhoods have
been repeatedly struck in the US‑Israeli bombing.
Human rights
groups estimate that at least 1,600 Iranians have been killed in the
first days of the war, overwhelmingly civilians, with large numbers of
women and children among the dead.
Strikes on clearly civilian
objects—from a pediatric wing of a hospital in Bandar Abbas to apartment
towers in working class districts—follow the same military logic:
high‑yield munitions deployed against targets embedded in or adjacent to
densely populated areas, with full knowledge that mass casualties will
result.
The Minab atrocity has taken place amid the nearly
30‑month‑long Israeli genocide in Gaza, waged with direct US military,
financial and diplomatic support. Since late 2023, Israel has
systematically destroyed homes, schools, universities, hospitals,
refugee camps and basic infrastructure in Gaza, killing tens of
thousands of Palestinians and rendering the enclave uninhabitable.
This
campaign—openly justified in genocidal language by leading Israeli
politicians—has been a deliberate policy of mass murder aimed at
breaking the resistance of the Palestinian people and clearing the
territory for strategic and demographic objectives. The same methods are
being deployed in Iran to terrorize the population and kill the
country’s leadership with the aim of imposing neocolonial subjugation of
the country under the dictates of Washington and Wall Street.
The Socialist Equality Party is campaigning in Adelaide, South
Australia, ahead of the state election on March 21, which is proceeding
under the shadow of the escalating US-led war against Iran. There is
widespread opposition across Australia to the federal Labor government’s
support and active participation in the war.
South
Australia’s Labor government, led by Premier Peter Malinauskas, is
transforming the state into a central hub for the AUKUS military
alliance with the United States, as part of US-led preparations for war
against China. While billions are being allocated to submarines, bases
and missiles, public housing, hospitals, schools and social services
remain chronically underfunded—as the ruling class seeks to make workers
pay for the militarization of society.
While Labor is expected to
be re-elected, this is not because of any popular enthusiasm for
Malinauskas’ right-wing and militarist program. Rather, it reflects the
crisis of the opposition Liberal Party, which has fallen behind the
far-right, anti-immigrant One Nation in recent polls. None of the
bourgeois parties is offering anything to address the social crisis
facing working people, including collapsing public services and
unaffordable housing.
SEP members spoke about the war and the social crisis with young
people and workers at Adelaide University and in the working class
suburbs of Elizabeth and Salisbury in Adelaide’s north.
The
northern suburbs were decimated by the closure of the car industry in
2017, presided over by the state Labor government and the trade union
bureaucracy, which enforced mass redundancies in the interests of the
corporations. In Elizabeth, the former Holden stronghold, the
unemployment rate was 17.8 percent in September 2025, according to an
analysis of official data by AreaSearch. The 2021 Census found that
nearly half of households in the suburb were living on less than $800 a
week, with median incomes in the bottom 10 percent nationally.
The
cost of living has surged dramatically in recent years. Rents in
Adelaide have climbed sharply, with median weekly rents reaching over
$600, while median dwelling prices are approaching $1 million. Secure
housing is increasingly out of reach for large sections of the working
class, particularly young people.
Sunday’s webinar stands alone as the only serious political analysis of
the war against Iran that identifies the international working class as
the social force that can and must stop it. We urge all our readers to
watch the webinar, share it as widely as possible and discuss its
lessons and the way forward with coworkers, family and friends. Above
all, make the decision today to join the Socialist Equality Party if
there is a section in your country, or to take the initiative to build
one where there is not.
As the criminal US-Israeli war on Iran entered its second week, the
Trump administration vowed to continue the bombardment and refused to
rule out sending ground troops or implementing a military draft—even as
it has failed to overthrow the Iranian government or compel surrender.
“We
have won in many ways, but not enough. We go forward more determined
than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running
danger once and for all,” US President Donald Trump declared at the
House Republican policy retreat at his Doral resort in Florida on
Monday.
Asked if the war would end this week, he said flatly:
“No.” Hours earlier, in a desperate effort to calm oil and stock
markets, Trump had told CBS News that the war “is very complete, pretty
much” and that US forces are “very far ahead of schedule.”
*****
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a “60 Minutes” interview aired
Sunday, stated the administration’s war aims with unvarnished brutality.
“This is only just the beginning,” Hegseth declared. “The only ones
that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re gonna
live.” Asked about limits on the operation, he said: “You don’t tell the
enemy, you don’t tell the press, you don’t tell anybody what your
limits would be on an operation.” On Monday, the Pentagon’s official
social media account posted an image of a launched missile with the
words “No Mercy” and the caption: “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.”
The administration is taking increasingly desperate and escalatory
actions amid its failure to achieve its stated aims. In January, the
administration sought to exploit mass protests as the vehicle for regime
change; when that failed, it turned to the targeted assassination of
Iran’s leadership, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of
the war. Iran’s Assembly of Experts appointed Mojtaba Khamenei, the son
of the slain supreme leader, on Monday in defiance of Israeli threats to
kill any successor.
The administration has adopted the Gaza
model: the genocidal destruction of Iranian society itself, reducing the
country to rubble until it physically cannot resist. Trump made this
clear when he said that his demand for “unconditional surrender” is
“where they cry uncle or when they can’t fight any longer and there’s
nobody around to cry uncle.”
*****
The war has triggered a financial crisis. The S&P 500 fell 2
percent last week, its worst week of 2026, and turned negative for the
year. Oil prices posted their largest weekly gain on record, with Brent
crude surging from roughly $70 before the war to above $92 by Friday, a
nearly 30 percent increase in a single week. Traders warned that $100
oil was imminent.
Commercial shipping through the Strait of
Hormuz—through which 20 percent of global oil flows—has nearly ceased.
The US economy shed 92,000 jobs in February. Gold surged past $5,100 an
ounce as central banks worldwide accelerated their flight from
dollar-denominated assets. Trump’s claim to CBS that the war is “very
complete” was a desperate effort to calm these markets—oil prices
briefly fell to under $90 after his remarks before surging again.
*****
The war against Iran is part of a broader strategy aimed ultimately
at China. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, appearing on Fox News
Sunday, stated the calculus openly: “Venezuela and Iran have 31 percent
of the world’s oil reserves. We’re going to have a partnership with 31
percent of the known reserves. This is China’s nightmare.” Graham
boasted: “When this regime goes down, we are going to have a new Middle
East, and we are going to make a ton of money.”
Graham declared:
“Cuba’s next, they’re gonna fall, this communist dictatorship in Cuba,
their days are numbered.” Trump himself brandished a “Free Cuba” hat and
declared, “Stay tuned. The liberation of Cuba is upon us. Iran is going
down and Cuba is next.”
*****
Asked whether Democrats would block war funding, Jeffries refused:
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it in terms of if the
administration makes a request to Congress to consider additional
funding.”
A
Quinnipiac poll released Monday found that 53 percent of registered
voters oppose the war, and 74 percent opposed sending ground troops into
Iran, which Trump is reportedly seriously considering.
*****
Ten days into the illegal US-Israeli war against Iran, opposition
continues to be widespread among workers in the United States. A
Quinnipiac poll released Monday found that 53 percent of registered
voters oppose the war, and 74 percent opposed sending ground troops into
Iran, which Trump is reportedly seriously considering. The same poll
put Trump’s approval rating at only 37 percent.
Ty, a teacher from
Alabama, told the World Socialist Web Site she considers it “an unnecessary war, an
unprovoked war and unjust war. They bomb people and boats, and there is
no Congressional approval.
Faced with widespread popular opposition to war, New Zealand’s
government has been thrown into a crisis over its support for the
criminal US-Israeli offensive against Iran.
Following the 12-day war in June 2025, which NZ endorsed,
the full-scale assault now underway is an unprovoked act of aggression
and regime change operation. In addition to murdering Ayatollah Ali
Khameini and other leaders of the Iranian government, the US and Israel
have killed over 1,000 Iranian civilians, including more than 150
children at a girls’ primary school in Minab.
On March 1, NZ Prime
Minister Chrstopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters echoed
Washington’s lies justifying the war. They condemned “Iran’s nuclear
program, its destabilizing activities in the region and elsewhere, and
its repression of its own people.”
In a widely derided “train
wreck” press conference the next day, Luxon refused to say whether the
attacks on Iran and assassination of its leadership during ongoing
negotiations were legal or not. He declared it would be “up to the US
and Israel to explain the legal basis for their attacks.” Asked whether
he supported the bombing of the school, Luxon said “I’m not in a
position to judge that from sitting in New Zealand.”
*****
The nationalist rhetoric of Labour, the Greens and sections of
academia and the media, calling for a more “independent” foreign policy,
is a smokescreen and a fraud.
New Zealand, a minor imperialist
power, is a key US ally in the Pacific region and part of the US-led
Five Eyes global surveillance network. Like Australia, Canada and
Britain, the NZ ruling class has relied since World War II on its
alliance with the US in order to secure its “seat at the table” in the
violent carve-up of the world’s resources and markets.
The only
way to halt the escalating world war is through a mass movement of the
working class, independent of all of the pro-capitalist parties. Such a
movement must be international in scope, it must mobilize the vast
social and political power of the working class, and be aimed at
abolishing the profit system that is the source of war and reorganising
society on socialist lines.
Global markets experienced major turmoil yesterday leading to an
intervention by US president Trump aimed at halting a further sharp rise
in oil prices and a slide on Wall Street.
When the trading day
began in the US the price of oil had surged from around $90 a barrel to
as high as $119 and was set to go even higher as stocks were falling
following significant further selloffs in Asia.
*****
Trump then told CBS that the Iran war was “very complete, pretty much”
and there was “nothing left to complete in a military sense.” He later
described the hike in oil prices as a small price to pay for what he
described as an “excursion.”
*****
Trump’s intervention, driven by fears of what could happen on Wall
Street, combined with a statement by the G7 powers that the group
“stands ready” to release oil reserves should that become necessary
halted the oil price escalation and induced a fall—at least for a day.
But as the Wall Street Journal reported, an oil trading
advisory firm predicted that oil could reach $130 per barrel later this
week with a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of this happening. It said
the longer the Strait of Hormuz remained closed the longer it would take
to get back to normal production with the prospect that “some permanent
oil field damage could develop.”
The Australian Labor government this morning announced that it is
dispatching air-to-air missiles, an advanced warplane and a troop
contingent to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to engage in hostilities
against Iran.
With
its announcement, Labor is openly joining a massive US-led war against a
historically oppressed country. It is doing so under conditions where
the entire war is illegal, constituting an unprovoked assault on Iran
and on peace, high crimes under international law. And it is joining the
conflict after multiple documented war crimes, from the US and Israeli
bombing of schools, to medical facilities and a desalination plant.
Labor’s
announcement formalizes and deepens a participation in the war that
began almost as soon as US President Donald Trump launched his sneak
attack on February 28. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among the
first world leaders to endorse the war, rushing out a statement
repeating all of Trump’s lies within hours.
Then it was admitted
by Albanese late last week that Australian personnel were aboard a US
attack submarine that obliterated an unarmed and defenseless Iranian
vessel off the coast of Sri Lanka, in an act of imperialist banditry and
mass murder that recalled the military operations of the Nazis.
Albanese
and other Labor leaders had absurdly claimed that the Australian
personnel were not involved in that attack or any other offensive
operations, despite being on the vessel that carried out the assault.
Even commentators with close ties to the US military-intelligence
apparatus derided that assertion and demanded that Labor acknowledge
that it is participating in the war.
*****
The war in Iran is not only aimed at regime-change in Tehran, but at
striking a blow at China which has close ties with the Iranian
government and relies upon it for substantial energy imports.
The
same methods of total destruction and annihilation inflicted on a defenseless population in Gaza is being carried out against Iran, a
country of more than 90 million people.
In addition to its
full-throated support for US-led wars, Labor has spearheaded an assault
on democratic rights. For more than three years it has supported the
US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, while slandering and
attacking the mass opposition to that historic crime as “antisemitic.”
On that basis Labor governments have passed a battery of laws aimed at criminalizing protests and even political parties.
It is clear
that this was not only an attempt to shutdown the anti-genocide
movement. It was also a preparation to repress mass anti-war sentiment
that will inevitably erupt in opposition to the war on Iran and the
preparations for an assault on China.
The
fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an
essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide,
dictatorship and fascism.
