While no real progress has been made in talks between Iran and the United States, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, energy prices stay high, and the temporary ceasefire has once again been extended, it is clearer than ever that what is being called “the end of war” is in fact the beginning of a new phase of war.
Seized vessels, continuing naval blockade, ongoing proxy conflict in Lebanon and competing state narratives show that no real peace exists. Only the form of conflict has changed. Direct bombardment has shifted into blockade, energy warfare, political pressure and military regrouping.
What this war has sharply revealed is the growing inability of global capitalism to reproduce itself through its former mechanisms of stability. Neoliberal globalisation, the dominant financial order and the post-Cold War security architecture can no longer contain accumulated contradictions.
The US and Israel attempted a rapid strike to reshape the balance of power around Iran. Its failure shows that even concentrated forms of imperialist violence can no longer impose a one-sided will.
The United States is simultaneously engaged in strategic rivalry with China, the prolonged war in Ukraine, the Middle East crisis and growing domestic tensions. Russia and China, without direct intervention, benefit from the weakening of US power and divisions within the western bloc.
The Strait of Hormuz has thus become a direct battlefield. Opening or closing it is not merely a regional matter but an intervention into the heart of global capital circulation. Energy flows, transport chains and accumulation are all placed under pressure.
The current ceasefire therefore does not mean peace. Economic blockade continues, military threats remain, nuclear bargaining proceeds and regional fronts stay active. War has simply taken more complex forms.
At the same time, this war has deepened fractures within the western bloc. The stance of European powers within NATO reflects not merely tactical disagreement but a growing political crisis. The United States can no longer impose a unified direction on its allies.
Inside Iran, the war has not automatically weakened the regime but temporarily strengthened repression. Security controls have intensified, workers and social movements are attacked, industries bombed, workplaces shut down and mass unemployment expanded.
This war is not only a joint assault by the US, Israel and the Islamic Republic on the working class in each of those countries. It is an assault on the global working class: through rising prices, attacks on living standards, austerity and intensified repression in the name of “national security.”
The working class also faces a historical obstacle: past defeats have deprived it of its independent political organisations. Yet resistance against war, poverty and capitalist barbarism will grow under the pressure of the present crisis.
The task of internationalists is not to repeat empty slogans but to intervene actively in this real resistance: linking scattered struggles, raising them from defence to offensive struggle, and helping build anti-war and anti-capitalist centres in workplaces, neighbourhoods, universities and cross-border workers’ networks.
For anti-war and anti-capitalist organising
Against neo-fascism and nationalism – against reactionary war
Long live the internationalist workers’ movement
23 April 2026
Internationalist Workers’ Organization