The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 27th March 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 27th March 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Soaring energy prices threaten to plunge the Western world into another slump.
Trump talks of ‘peace’ while his rockets pound Iran. Thousands of American marines are heading towards Iran as the Islamic Republic tightens its grip on the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the oil-fields of Western Arabia.
“The fact that the United States intends to take control of the international energy infrastructure is obvious,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
But in Tehran, Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders say Iran now controls the skies over Israel and the occupied territories with the daily retribution of deadly drone and missile attacks on military and economic targets across the Zionist entity. Iran has mobilised more than one million personnel for potential ground combat, while also seeing a surge in volunteers seeking to join the Basij militia, the Republican Guards and the army.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops are meeting fierce resistance as they move into south Lebanon in a renewed effort to halt Hezbollah rocket attacks on Haifa and other parts of northern Israel. An Israeli armoured column has been knocked out by the Lebanese guerrillas in fighting that is now spreading through the south of the country. Since Israel expanded its military operations in the country earlier this month, more than a million people, or one in five, have been forced to flee their homes. And now continued American and Israeli escalation could eventually push the Palestinian resistance to open up a new front in the battle against US imperialism and Israeli aggression.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi slammed the USA and Israel at an emergency UN Human Rights Council session on Friday, convened to discuss the alleged US airstrike on a girls’ school in Minab that killed over 170 children. “The attack on the school in Minab was not a mere incident, nor a miscalculation,” Araghchi said, calling it “an atrocity crime and against humanity”. The USA is targeting civilians and infrastructure “with no regard for laws of war”.
On the diplomatic front, the Americans have presented a “15-point” peace plan that differs little from previous demands for Iran to scrap its nuclear energy programme, abandon its Arab allies and accept American hegemony throughout the Middle East. It’s been dismissed out of hand by Iran and seen as totally unrealistic even in other parts of the Western camp, fearful of the grave consequences for their own economies if the war goes on any further.
The Iranians have countered with their own “five conditions” to end the war that includes war reparations and a new demand for formal recognition of Iran’s “natural, legal right” to control maritime activity in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which 20 percent of global energy supplies pass, and extract a toll, if it so wishes, on any vessel that passes through it. Donald Trump says he’s talking to the Islamic Republic but at the moment the only exchanges are through intermediaries such as Pakistan and Oman. The deranged American leader tells the media that the Iranians are on their knees “begging” to end the fighting. But the only one he’s fooling is himself.
“The end of the war will occur when Iran decides it should end, not when Trump envisions its conclusion,” Iranian officials told the Tehran media. “Our first and last word has always been, is, and will be this: someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you – not now, not ever. Do not call your defeat an agreement. The era of your promises has come to an end.”