IÑAKI GIL DE SAN VICENTE
EUSKAL HERRIA February 19, 2026
37 DAYS IN IRAN
…According to the materialist conception of history, the factor that ultimately determines history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I have ever stated anything more than this. If someone distorts it by saying that the economic factor is the only determining one, that thesis becomes an empty, abstract, absurd phrase. The economic situation is the foundation, but the various factors of the superstructure that rises upon it—the political forms of the class struggle and its outcomes, the constitutions drafted by the victorious class after a battle, etc., legal forms, and even the reflections of all these real struggles in the minds of the participants, political, legal, and philosophical theories, religious ideas and their further development into a system of dogmas—also exert their influence on the course of historical struggles and, in many cases, predominantly determine their form. […] The fact that the disciples sometimes place more emphasis than is due on the economic aspect is partly the fault of Marx and myself. In the face of our adversaries, we had to stress this cardinal principle that was being denied, and we did not always have the time, space, and opportunity to give due importance to the other factors involved in the interplay of actions and reactions.
F. Engels: Letter from Joseph Bloch. London, September 21-22, 1890
1. Between December 28, 2025, and January 3, 2026, a conference organized by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was held in Tehran under the title: “Recent Developments in West Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America, their repercussions in the region and the world, and how to confront them.” Coordinators from the Association of the United States, Latin America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia also participated. Arguments were also presented on why it was necessary to promote the Global Movement in Support of the Option of Resistance. Txema Sánchez and I, both members of antiimperialistas.com, attended this meeting. We had already participated in the previous debate, the one held in December-January 2024/25, and Txema in the one held in 2023/24.
2. Between the 2024/25 and 2025/26 conferences, the global context and the situation that seeks to suffocate and destroy Iran have intensified considerably. First, imperialist decline is worsening, demanding that the US, Israel, the EU, Japan, etc., escalate their external aggression and internal repression against their own people. Second, despite this, Iran is improving militarily and politically, while simultaneously battling the effects of sanctions and tariffs imposed to curb inflation amidst terrorist attacks. Third, in its race against time, imperialism launched the criminal “12-day war” of June 2025, failing and imploring for a “peace” that is nothing more than preparation for another war. And fourth, the revenge following that defeat was another war, but now in the form of indiscriminate guerrilla terror directed from imperialist military centers in the first days of 2026, which ended in yet another failure, as we shall see.
3. Bearing this in mind, the strength of Iranian consciousness is striking: the vast majority of Iranians know, in some way, that imperialism needs to destroy their country and that it is preparing for a multifaceted attack even more devastating than the previous ones. It is also remarkable that, under these conditions, the people made progress in their daily freedoms and rights without succumbing to defeatist passivity. Although we will return to this topic later, the use of the hijab is declining, expressions of emotional freedom and open relationships are increasing; despite economic problems and the risk of further attacks, the proverbial Iranian kindness facilitates interpersonal relationships, etc. The deceitful Western propaganda, obsessed with presenting us with a country silenced by Islamic repression, sad and under psychological tension, reveals its falsehood as you live daily with the people.
4. To understand the reasons behind these and other everyday realities that Western racism is incapable of seeing, it is essential to recognize that Iran is not an Arab country, but a Persian culture with three thousand years of history and enormous resources coveted by what is called the West. Persian identity permeates everything, including Shiism, so it is necessary to speak of Iranian Shiism and not simply Shiism. We have the example of the Persian festival of Nowruz, or solar New Year, which predates the Muslim religion, and Ramadan, the lunar New Year: a syncretism has been created, supported by institutions, capable of integrating these customs so distant in time and in terms of production and reproduction. The government is developing a wise policy of adapting the Persian identity that persists in popular culture, from the traditions of struggle in defense of ancient Persian independence, to the present, in order to strengthen its defenses against the undeniable risks of imperialist attacks. Of course, this wise policy is incomprehensible to the Eurocentric folly that despises the dialectic of history.
5. Iranian Shiism, not Arab Shiism, led by Khomeini, sought just and respectful national independence with a multi-party democratic system within a constitution approved by the people through referendum. Here we again encounter Western blindness, which reduces the abstract concept of democracy to the dictatorial logic of value as it has developed in Europe since the 17th century. We know that the irreconcilable antagonist of bourgeois democracy is socialist democracy as a prelude to communism. In their permanent life-or-death struggle within this unity of opposites, other forms of democracy emerge that can either advance socialism or delay it: everything depends on this same struggle. In Iranian democracy, the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah, has the responsibility to ensure independence, the justice inherent in Persian Shiism—essentially anti-imperialist and internationalist, as is being seen in practice—and Shi’a values.
6. Like any national identity, Iranian identity is also constantly evolving due to the pressure of its internal contradictions and external threats. Especially during his exile in Iraq between 1965 and 1978, Khomeini harshly criticized capitalism for its inherent inhumanity and its disregard for the popular will. While the economic and anti-dialectical ‘Marxism’ so beloved in the West underestimates the material force of oppressed subjectivity, however utopian it may be, the history of class struggle and the liberation of peoples teaches that, when well directed, the liberating utopia becomes an almost invincible weapon: with his biblical belief, Khomeini maintained that the Iranian people should learn from Moses in his struggle against the Pharaoh during the journey through the desert to their full freedom, and that, moreover, they should help other oppressed peoples to liberate themselves.
7. The exemplary personal conduct of Khomeini and his followers stood in stark contrast to the corrupt rot of the Shah’s dictatorship and the imperialism that sustained him in power. Another fundamental strength of the Shiite political revolution was its freedom of popular election of local leaders: each leader had to earn the trust and support of their followers and live off what they provided. While Christianity is inseparable from a vertical, authoritarian bureaucracy well-supplied with wealth, Persian Shiism displayed surprising austerity, reminiscent of some of the early Christians, mendicant and millenarian orders of the Middle Ages, worker priests, and members of liberation theology. Persian Shiism is the exact opposite of the Pentecostal, Evangelical, Zionist, and other sects generously subsidized by imperialism that propagate ultra-reactionary messages.
8. Naturally, here we contrast general blocs between Persian Shiism and reactionary Christian sects. If we could analyse in detail the specific developments of successive Iranian governments, from the first Council of the Islamic Revolution on November 6, 1979, to the ninth president, the current Masoud Pezeshkian, we would discover several socioeconomic and sociopolitical trends that oscillate between a timid neoliberalism and state planning that respects private property. None are socialist in the sense of socializing the productive forces, but they always operate within the scrupulous respect for the Islamic Constitution, which was overwhelmingly approved by the people in 1979 and subsequently ratified. We should compare this progressive utopianism with the projects of other similar religious utopias, but we would exceed the available space. What is undeniable, however, is that Iranian democracy, despite all its limitations, is qualitatively more progressive and humane than the democracy of Trump, Milei, Netanyahu, and others. Authoritarianism, the neo-Nazi and fascist forces advancing across Europe under the pretext of saving “Western democracy” or simply saving bourgeois property, have in Iranian democracy one of their most implacable current enemies.
9. In 1953, the US orchestrated a coup to prevent the reformist Mosaddegh from implementing his timid program of superficial changes aimed at reducing growing social unrest, but the US preferred to strengthen the Shah’s dictatorship and his plan of “Western modernization” imposed by force. This “Westernization” was rejected by the people but accepted and supported by the bourgeoisie, to put it simply. Since then, this struggle between two opposing models of nationhood has intensified periodically: the Persian working-class nation and its Shiite democracy, and the bourgeois nation subservient to imperialism. As we shall see, imperialism has been deliberately exacerbating this conflict in recent times. The so-called Eurocentric ‘left’ avoids this crucial debate like the plague, because it questions one of the founding myths of European capital since the 17th century: that what it defines as “modernity” must be imposed on all non-Western peoples, no matter what.
10. We must never forget that imperialism and its internal collaborators have done everything possible since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 to prevent the improvement of the people’s living and working conditions, to worsen them, and to ruin the country’s economy. Imperialism could not tolerate Iran recovering its enormous natural resources and dedicating them to improving the living conditions of its people and to the anti-imperialist struggle, nor could it tolerate the army breaking with NATO and the Pentagon. The Zionist entity could not tolerate Iran severing relations with it, its embassy in Tehran being liberated and handed over to the PLO as its official headquarters; Iran ceasing to supply Tel Aviv with 90% of its oil at ridiculously low prices; or Iran recovering privileged areas of Tehran handed over to Mossad by the Shah. that declared Zionism the embodiment of Evil… Racist and reactionary South Africa, a key player in the dollar dictatorship, could not tolerate Iran abruptly severing relations in 1979 and cutting off its almost free supply of crude oil. Nor could the US tolerate its embassy in Tehran being recaptured by the Iranian people, arresting its officials and CIA agents, and simultaneously publishing chilling secret documents.
11. The “imposed war” of 1980-1988, with the aggression against Iraq, armed and sustained by imperialism, was the first desperate attempt at the savage destruction of the Iranian Republic and Persian Shiism, so dangerous to the West. In this war, Iraq used prohibited chemical weapons supplied by West Germany and NATO, weapons responsible for 10% of the hundreds of thousands of Iranian casualties among soldiers and civilians. Iraqi propaganda justified such atrocities by claiming that weapons of mass destruction were necessary to eliminate the “insect plague” that the Iranians were. Meanwhile, the MEK, a self-described “Marxist” party, switched sides, practicing the most blatant terrorism. Now the MEK is an organization under the command of the US and the EU.
12. In the midst of this war, Khomeini forbade the Iranian army from using these weapons, despite the lives they could save, since Persian Shiism, as we have emphasized, is driven by and for a human ethic based on a liberating utopia, not an inhuman one based on exploitation; for this very reason, he prohibited the manufacture of nuclear bombs. Furthermore, despite the war, the Iranian government managed to guarantee the people a sufficient quality of life, considering the extreme gravity of the situation, through adequate state planning. With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, neoliberal forces gained political power, but even so, Iran achieved social, cultural, scientific, and military gains that allowed it to emerge from underdevelopment and compete on equal footing with seemingly more powerful states.
13. It is important to understand that Persian Shiism views science as a weapon for the liberation of peoples, not as a component of constant capital to accelerate the realization of surplus value and profit. Since 2010, Mossad and other secret services have assassinated more than 18 internationally renowned Iranian scientists and many of their families, amid the complicit silence of the imperialist press, which has often attempted to justify these acts by claiming they were working on nuclear weapons. While Christianity, and especially its Catholic version, is essentially anti-scientific, as history confirms, Persian Shiism understands that the control and political direction of science emancipates peoples.
14. Since 1999, Bolivarian Venezuela and Iran have established fraternal relations on numerous issues, notably oil policy guided by a strategy aimed at weakening the petrodollar, as well as military and scientific cooperation. Anti-imperialism thus extended to several continents. In 2001, internationalist solidarity was strengthened by Fidel Castro’s visit to Iran, and a year later Tehran strongly condemned the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez. Naturally, imperialism closely monitored this advance of freedom, especially after Putin delivered his famous Munich speech in 2007, in which he warned that the West was transgressing all boundaries of international law. And immediately afterward, the day after yet another general election confirmed the strength of Iranian consciousness, the murky assassination of Neda Soltan in Tehran in the summer of 2009 unleashed an anti-Iranian campaign in which even Obama intervened: bourgeois human rights groups, social media, and the so-called “Green Movement” emerged seemingly out of nowhere, accusing the government of her death. The “Greens” falsified data and photographs, but a rigorous investigation would demonstrate that Neda Soltan’s boyfriend had close ties to the Zionist entity.
15. For the Western “left” of the late 20th century… In the 20th and early 21st centuries, everything related to “green policy,” “green movement,” etc., sounded progressive, as did the “greens” who claimed to defend human rights in Iran in 2009. But now “green” is just another tool of Euro-imperialism, especially German Euro-imperialism, just as the MEK has ended up being part of terrorism; meanwhile, the Zionist entity has mobilized 50,000 international criminals for its Palestinian genocide. The Western “modernization” that has been imposed on Iran since the 1953 coup was presented in 2009 as a “movement” and will be presented in 2022 as “freedom without hijab,” as we shall see. But by 2012, a real, objective, and undeniable problem emerged, one that could not be concealed by any manipulation: denying Iran its right/need for civilian nuclear energy as the basis for an industrialization that does not depend solely on oil.
16. As we have seen, Khomeini banned the nuclear bomb, and later his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, would do so again. By 2009, it was already known that Tehran had a civilian nuclear energy plan, which met with immediate rejection from the Zionist entity and the French state, both nuclear powers with atomic weapons. With growing nervousness in the US as it learned of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which would benefit Iran, Obama tightened sanctions and in 2015 offered the poisoned chalice of an agreement in Vienna on civilian nuclear energy. The veteran Persian diplomacy skillfully navigated this challenge, a feat confirmed when Obama began to undermine it just days later. In 2018, Trump broke the agreement and began a diplomatic war full of threats, blackmail, and lies, to which Iran will never yield. What is the problem, knowing that Persian Shiism rejects the nuclear bomb just as it rejects weapons of mass destruction? The answer is singular but takes three forms: First, justify a foreseeable massive attack under the pretext that Iran has developed nuclear weapons, much like the excuse used to destroy Iraq between 1991 and 2003. Second, impede Iran’s multifaceted economic and industrial development by denying it the right/need for the civilian use of nuclear energy. And third, threaten all nations that also wish to develop such energy.
17. The Trumpian system of “negotiation” (?) in which the threat is constant, has not been effective not only because the Iranian people love their independence above all else, but also because of the West’s inability to understand their national identity: time and again, the learned and “scientific” assertions of its “experts”—that Iran was about to collapse, about to erupt in internal strife, that pro-Western forces would win overwhelmingly in the next elections, etc.—have failed. We know that bourgeois sociology is incapable of understanding contradiction, the material force of liberating subjectivity, among other cognitive impotences. In the case of Iran, we are facing the same failure it experienced with other class-based national liberation wars, even though they ultimately ended up being defeated by oppressive brute force.
18. Iran came to the defense of Palestine and Syria, and helped Yemen and Lebanon, to focus on the Middle East. It had the support of Russia because both powers knew that imperialism was putting into practice the plans of the early 21st century to destroy the Middle East by establishing shattered and enslaved bantustans, as a prelude to a general attack against the Islamic Republic, which in turn was the first part of a general war against the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, the People’s Republic of Korea, and then the “reconquest” of Vietnam and Laos. In January 2020, a terrorist attack in Iraq killed Qasem Soleimani and several other members of the Axis of Resistance. The war escalated further because Trump himself claimed responsibility for the crime.
19. It was not—and is not—a traditional war, nor a cognitive war, nor a fourth-generation war, etc. It is all of that and much more: it is a regional battlefront in the Third World War, which should not be interpreted according to the standards of the previous two, but rather according to those of the third Great Depression, which definitively began in 2007/08. The 2020 pandemic exacerbated all imperialist contradictions: for example, inflation is now 20% higher than it was then, global debt has skyrocketed, especially that of the US and Western capitalism, the dollar is weakening and fewer and fewer countries trust the US’s ability to pay, and the contradiction between the liberating potential of people-led productive forces and the irrationality of capitalist property relations is increasing, to name just a few examples.
20. An example of how this world war includes recent forms of partial warfare, such as cognitive warfare and others, can be seen in the sustained “modernization” campaign, particularly in 2022, against the use of the hijab following the death of Mahsa Amini under suspicious circumstances. Almost out of nowhere, a driving group called “Woman, Life, Liberty” emerged, with abundant resources and international connections. The truth is that young women were gradually abandoning the hijab, especially in large cities and university settings, a liberation that accelerated with the social changes brought about by the pandemic. It should also be noted that young people joined this liberation movement by coming to the defense of women who were reprimanded or arrested by the police.
21. While the attempt to “modernize” the country from above and by force was rejected from its inception in 1953, now, after seventy years of social change, true modernization was advancing from within. The most conservative political and religious forces faced a rising social tide with a material basis in structural changes, so the institutions and those in power opted for the most sincere realism: the laws mandating the hijab were not abolished, but rather ceased to be enforced from the end of 2022. The resistance of the most traditional sectors has been weakening ever since, so that by the beginning of 2026, Iran was witnessing a significant change amidst problems of all kinds, most of them openly fuelled by imperialism. One of the changes, for example, is that of sexual, affective, and romantic relationships that are not exclusively heterosexual, with the incipient emergence of a queer movement; another is that of cultural and artistic creativity, etc., which transcends the old religious boundaries; Nor should we forget the labor movement, etc., all amidst an updating of part of the old Persian identity to combat the denationalizing and Westernizing cosmopolitanism propagated by the imperialist political-media industry, inseparable from cognitive warfare.
22. These and other internal changes are occurring while the successor to Ayatollah Khamenei, a highly cultured individual, is being debated, inflation is being combated, defensive efforts are being intensified, and international relations are being strengthened with far-reaching agreements with anti-imperialist powers such as Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and others. The richness of the debates, negotiations, and agreements among the socio-political forces makes a mockery of the corrupt intellectual desertification of imperialist politicking. It cannot be otherwise because Iran has been walking the tightrope of existence since 1979. Let us recall that in 2022 and 2023, Russia defended itself against NATO aggression, defeating it in Ukraine with Iran’s help. Let us recall that in 2023, Israeli genocidal terrorism began its extermination of the Palestinian people, and that in 2024, imperialism crushed Syria after years of total suffocation. We cannot elaborate on other wars because we have cited those that most directly impact the present and future of Persian Shiism.
23. Before continuing, and to provide theoretical context for what is happening, why, and how it affects Iran, we must present five concise ideas: First, never before has the antagonism between the development of the productive forces and the social relations of property been so acute, something we already mentioned in point 19. Second, this antagonism responds to the tendencies and contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production, and hence its objective nature within the dialectic of history. Third, one of the most explosive expressions of this antagonism is the depletion of resources; another is the increase in national oppressions; and, without going into too much detail, yet another is the socio-ecological catastrophe. Fourth, wars and revolutions arise from this irreconcilable antagonism, from the contradictions it generates, especially from the class struggle and the liberation of peoples: everything indicates that this trend will continue to intensify. And fifth, as a result, imperialism is arming itself to the teeth to be in a position to dictate the timing and scope of subsequent conflicts it has orchestrated.
24. Without this Marxist conceptualization, but with an empirical understanding of capitalism as Khomeini understood it, based on the suffering of the people and the just aspirations of a liberating utopia, Persian Shiism assumes that it is a central target for destruction by imperialism itself, not just by the US and the Zionist entity. This is because, once Iran is destroyed, the West will gain access to vast energy resources vital for the destruction of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. The destruction of Iran will allow the West direct access to the borders of West Asia, opening a vast front of unjust war across the Caspian Sea, southern Russia, the Caucasus, and China. But it will also destroy the anti-imperialist force of Persian Shiism, a political-religious and utopian mass liberation movement capable of mobilizing tens of millions of people for struggle. This second point is disregarded by the Eurocentric ‘left’ that believes in “chemically pure revolutions,” that believes revolutions are born in sterile laboratory test tubes, devoid of the complexity of historical dialectics.
25. The so-called “12-day war” between June 13 and 25, 2025, was actually another step in preparing for a subsequent war by the US and Zionism against Iran. It began on the very day that international talks were scheduled to begin regarding the Persian right/need to develop civilian nuclear energy. Imperialism sought to inflict the greatest possible damage, assassinating generals, scientists, and civilians, under the pretext that the Islamic Republic was manufacturing nuclear bombs. However, it did not anticipate the swift and decisive Iranian defensive response, which destroyed the Zionist air defenses and depleted its missile reserves. But it also sought to find Iranian weaknesses, painfully uncovering some of its strengths. Since then, Iran, for its part, has strengthened ties with the People’s Republic of China and Russia; meanwhile, imperialism has been preparing its revenge with a view to launching a decisive military coup, employing the tactics of “color revolutions” but taken to the bloodiest extreme.
26. Indeed, taking advantage of the legitimate social demands of a segment of the population, and especially of sectors of the petty bourgeoisie, as a result of economic sanctions, government errors, and the international economic crisis itself, imperialism initiated a campaign of social unrest starting in late December 2025. To get to the heart of the matter: on December 28 at 8:40 p.m., Iran suffered the largest cyberattack in its history, launched from 125,000 diverse sources in various countries. But the attack failed within minutes. That same day, the 28th, a major telecommunications company shut down—a political action magnified by the reactionary press. Some very small groups attempted demonstrations in markets that day, but without success. It was also learned that Netanyahu and Trump had met to discuss the strategy against Iran.
27. During the first days of January, the government was respectful of these peaceful actions, assuming they were understandable. But by Wednesday the 7th, reactionary violence had already appeared in some places, notably near air defense installations—perhaps by chance. The violent acts increased on the 8th and definitively on the 9th but subsided very rapidly on the 10th. Numerous witnesses, hundreds of videos, drones filming at close range, and police investigations into foreign social media, as well as an analysis of the international press and the country’s reactionary press—with its calls for the return to power of the Shah’s grandson, deposed in 1979, as king—confirmed what was already suspected. The fact that some of those arrested were foreigners, and even members of Western intelligence services, ultimately confirmed it.
28. The Iranian response was to neutralize the core of the terror: cutting off the internet on the 9th, preventing commanders inside from receiving orders from abroad. In any war, the chain of command and the rapid transmission of orders are vital. Blind, deaf, and mute, the junior commanders and, above all, the mercenary “troops” quickly disintegrated: by Saturday the 10th, and definitively by Sunday the 11th, the defeat was absolute. The Russian Federation’s assistance was crucial, as it shut down 70% of the Starlink network with its electronic warfare capabilities. This demonstrated that the supposed “popular rebellion” lacked a structural mass base rooted in the Iranian national consciousness, but was instead yet another attempt at the so-called “color revolutions” orchestrated by imperialist services with the support of internal collaborators, but taken to its most atrocious conclusion: pure terror, as in Odessa in 2014 when 42 people were burned alive by Uzbek Nazis, as in Syria, or as in the Venezuelan protests, to cite just three examples. Again, the imperialist press reacted by accusing the Shiite democracy of being dictatorial.
29. Imperialist propaganda claimed that the “regime” had murdered 30,000 people, used poison gas, etc., but none of this has been proven. Where and how do you hide 30,000 corpses? The Western press is applying Tertullian’s 1800-year-old motto, “Credo quia absurdum,” to the letter. In contrast, the government published the names of the 3,117 people killed, of whom 2,427 were civilians and police officers, and 690 were terrorists. There were moments of true fascist-style violence, reminiscent of the violent protests that repeatedly sowed terror in Venezuela: military-style urban warfare, knowledge of streets and addresses, timely and rapid deployments, beheadings of victims, and assassinations from behind. There are reports of sums of money being paid for each person killed, with the “price” increasing if the victims were children. The government quantified the damage: 305 ambulances and buses, 24 gas stations, 700 shops, 750 banks, 414 government buildings, 749 police vehicles, 200 schools, 350 mosques, and thousands of copies of the Quran were destroyed, along with dozens of libraries, 253 bus stations, 600 ATMs, and 800 vehicles. The moral, psychological, and emotional damage is incalculable.
30. The numerous mass demonstrations in favor of the Islamic Constitution demonstrate the strength of the system despite any differences and criticisms that may exist, which do exist: reliable figures indicate more than 26 million Iranians took to the streets, in addition to those who were unable to attend. Imperialism has understood this perfectly and has tasked the Shah’s heir with demanding, at the recent meeting of criminals in Munich in mid-February 2026, a Western invasion of Iran to violently reinstate the “democracy” that his grandfather futilely defended with torture and extermination. We have stated from the beginning that two opposing models of the Iranian nation are at odds, and the grandson of the deposed Shah confirmed this at the Munich Conference by saying that Iran must be invaded so that it can once again be “his” country and the country of the people who have demonstrated in international events demanding the same barbarity.
31. Having reached the zenith of the unity and struggle of opposing forces, of the incompatible projects of Iran—imperialist and monarchist versus anti-imperialist and republican—we must analyze the documents presented at the international meeting from December 28 to January 3. There are three documents: One on the failures and weaknesses of Mossad, a rigorous study demonstrating that victory is possible, that we must understand the insurmountable limitations of the exploiter, a study that can be extended to other imperialist services that are weaker than they appear. Two, on the need to resort to methods of anti-imperialist resistance that we do not usually consider, specifically the economic boycott of the Zionist entity, that is, undermining it from within its productive core and its international trade relations. And three, the so-called “Triangular Plan,” which, while aimed at eliminating the Zionist entity, is also valid on a global anti-imperialist scale once adapted to the circumstances and contexts. 32. We will synthesize the three texts following the framework of the “Triangular Plan,” whose first pillar directly opposes cognitive warfare through the strategic objective of mobilizing the consciousness of freedom in everyday, lived action, seeking to extend it to “global consciousness and international law.” The main objective is “the delegitimization of the regime before the tribunal of universal public opinion.” If we extend this delegitimization of the Zionist regime to imperialism as a whole, we see that this plan is very similar to the debate on legitimacy and hegemony that runs through the history of different currents, especially: Bolshevism, Gramscian ambiguity, and various reformisms. The plan proposes four practices: referendums on the self-determination of peoples, intelligent struggle to exploit the gaps in imperialist legality, denunciation of Western double standards, and denunciation of the imperialist danger to the Middle East, West Asia, and the entire planet.
33. The second proposal is a 21st-century update of Vegetius’s 4th-century axiom: if you want peace, prepare for war. It entails “Strengthening the Resistance Front (Hard and Semi-Hard Warfare)” by altering the balance of power, disrupting imperialism’s tranquility by rendering it insecure, and preparing peoples for “direct confrontation with a fierce enemy that only responds to the language of force.” The watchword is the centrality and arming of the people, as well as “providing absolute support to any group, movement, or nation that rises up in the struggle against Zionism,” against imperialism. All of this requires strategic coordination, theoretical and ethical-moral strengthening, and building sustained popular support to ultimately wage a war of attrition: “Maintaining incessant attacks to provoke the psychological, economic, and military exhaustion of the enemy.”
34. The third proposal runs concurrently with the previous two: seeking the internal collapse of imperialism, weakening and destroying its pillars to generate its implosion. It is necessary to exhaust their military capacity by exhausting their economy, reducing their resources until they suffocate, leaving them without air so they collapse. It is necessary to “generate permanent insecurity deep within the occupied territories, imposing a war of attrition that provokes reverse migration and the massive flight of capital (intellectual elites).” Imperialism must understand that occupying a people is “an unsustainable burden,” employers must understand that a prolonged strike is “an unsustainable burden” and that it is better to give in before losing everything. The bourgeoisie must discover that it no longer has an “invincible army” because it is dissolving in the face of the people’s “irregular warfare,” a people who are becoming increasingly organized and effective. At the same time, public awareness was revealing the atrocities of imperialism: “making visible the systematic crimes against the civilian population and children.”
35. Above all: “To obstruct the regime’s regional legitimization, to raise the political and diplomatic cost of ties with Israel for Arab governments, and to preserve the Palestinian flag as the primary axis of unity,” or, if you prefer: to destroy imperialist legitimacy and hegemony everywhere, to denounce the collaborationist bourgeoisies, to raise the revolutionary banner and unite the oppressed classes and nations of the world behind it. In every revolutionary process, power is decisive, and to conquer it, it is crucial to weaken the oppressive hegemony as much as possible. The undeniable material value of the revolutionary flag symbol appears at this moment for what it is: the power of the people in arms, power that has defeated injustice.
36. The strategic conclusion of the proposal from the debate in Tehran is this: “The simultaneous implementation of these three pillars accelerates the collapse of this artificial structure,” referring to the Zionist entity. It is up to us to ensure that, in addition to other tasks, we know how to adapt and implement these principles to the diverse and multiple anti-imperialist struggles being waged around the world. This is a necessary and urgent task that goes beyond the scope of this writing.
37. The 37 days in Iran have been an unforgettable experience. Defending the Islamic Republic is essential to defeat not only Trumpism and Zionism, as well as the European Union, but also the reactionary and militaristic tendency that is spreading throughout most capitalist states. We have the cases of India, Japan, Australia, etc., also interested in destroying the Persian country. For dialectical Marxism, such as that expressed in the long quote from Engels that heads this text, the defense of Iran offers at least two lessons: First, to constantly update the dialectic of history, that is, the role of subjectivity and liberating utopia, of Persian Shiism, etc., an objective force without which the class struggle is completely incomprehensible; And second, to update the debates on the transition to socialism in a context like that of West Asia.
IÑAKI GIL DE SAN VICENTE
EUSKAL HERRIA February 19, 2026
