The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 6th March 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 6th March 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
The Middle East is ablaze as Israeli and American rockets rain down on Iran and the Islamic Republic hits back with devastating missile attacks on Tel Aviv and American bases across the Persian Gulf. American bases and early-warning systems in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been knocked out. The Iranians have closed the Straits of Hormuz, the key artery for Gulf oil exports, to all but Russian and Chinese shipping and the north Yemenis have resumed their blockade against Israeli and Anglo-American shipping in the Red Sea. Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement, has joined the fray hitting the port of Haifa and other military targets in northern Israel while a Sudanese general says volunteer brigades from his country are ready to join the Iranians on the front line should the USA and Israel launch ground operations against the Islamic Republic.
People’s China and Russia have condemned the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the first days of the fighting as a violation of Iran’s sovereignty and a cynical breach of international norms – norms further broken with the sinking of an Iranian warship on Tuesday by an American sub in the Indian ocean thousands of miles from the war zone in international waters. The frigate was part of an Iranian contingent taking part in a routine naval exercise with India and was sunk as it was returning to its home port. Another Iranian warship has now sought safe haven in Sri Lanka.
The Iranians claim to have downed a number of Israeli and American war-planes and inflicted hundreds of casualties on their enemies in drone and missile attacks. The Americans however, admit only to the loss of three war-planes, allegedly downed by “friendly fire” over Kuwait, and 26 military casualties – including six killed during a drone attack in Kuwait. The Israelis say some 20 civilians and military personnel have died and nearly 1,500 others injured in the Iranian air-raids. Iranian losses are put at 1,300, including the 165 school-kids killed during an American air-raid last week.
The Communist Party of Israel and the communist-led Democratic Front for Peace & Equality (Hadash) has condemned the imperialist onslaught, warning that it may ignite a large-scale regional or global war.
Israel, they said, is not only an instrument of global American imperialism, but also a partner of the USA in its efforts to impose American imperialist hegemony over the world and its natural and economic resources, and to subject all governments to American political and economic interests. This includes all parts of the world – especially the Middle East and Latin America.
The Israeli communists and Hadash also point to the danger of the near-consensus among the government and the main Israeli opposition parties regarding the war of aggression against Iran and warn against exploiting the preoccupation of public opinion with this attack to intensify massacres and crimes of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and to expand the fascist onslaught and the rise of racism in Israel.
They called on all true peace movements within Israeli society to raise their voices against Israeli–US aggression, and to demand the removal of US forces and all nuclear weapons from the Middle East.