In the span of just two months in early 2026, the United States, under President Donald Trump, unleashed a brazen wave of military aggression that once again exposed the savage face of contemporary imperialism. On 3 January, US forces bombed Caracas and other Venezuelan cities, and abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a midnight raid that reeked of old-school gunboat diplomacy. Barely eight weeks later, on 28 February, the United States teamed up with Israel to launch surprise airstrikes across Iran, assassinating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decimating some of the military leadership, and pounding nuclear sites, missile bases, and civilian infrastructure.

These were not isolated “preemptive strikes” or defensive necessities, as corporate media spin them. They form a single continuum: a calculated campaign by the world’s leading imperialist power to seize strategic resources, eliminate sovereign governments that resist neoliberal domination, and reassert hegemony over the Global South.

Drive for Resource Plunder: The Abduction in Venezuela

This has nothing at all to do with drug cartels or nuclear threats, as has been made out. It is about oil—the lifeblood of capitalist accumulation—and the punishment of nations that dare to chart independent paths. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves; Iran sits atop vast fields and controls critical shipping lanes. Both have historically defied US dictates—Venezuela through Bolivarian socialism, Iran through its role in the “Axis of Resistance” supporting Palestinian and Lebanese struggles. The attacks reveal Trump’s revived Monroe Doctrine for Latin America fused with Netanyahu’s expansionist Zionism in West Asia. Together, they signal a dangerous escalation: imperialism’s willingness to kidnap heads of state and assassinate supreme leaders while the world watches, blessed by Western silence.

Let us examine these assaults not as disconnected headlines but as chapters in the same imperialist playbook. The Venezuelan operation came first, a testing ground for brazen intervention in America’s “backyard.” In the early hours of 3 January, US aircraft and special forces struck official buildings and military bases in Caracas. Explosions lit the sky as Maduro was seized and spirited out of the country—Trump himself boasted on Truth Social about the “successful” capture. The pretext? Allegations of drug trafficking and threats to regional stability. The reality was simply resource theft dressed as liberation.  Trump’s administration openly spoke of “taking back the oil” and running Venezuela like a colonial protectorate. This echoed the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, modernized in the 2025 US National Security Strategy, which asserts Washington’s right to dominate the Western Hemisphere as its exclusive sphere of influence. The United States was chafing against Venezuela for years, ever since the legendary Hugo Chavez was elected President in 1999 and began the Bolivarian Revolution which, like Cuba, consistently countered imperialism.

All democratic forces in the world labeled the abduction of Maduro and his wife a flagrant violation of sovereignty and international law. This was naked imperialism, linked to several decades of US interventions—from the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile to the dirty wars in Central America. The Venezuelan economy was already hit hard by years of sanctions; now, direct military assault has threatened to plunge the country into chaos. Civilian deaths mounted quickly—dozens reported in the initial strikes—while the abduction of Maduro stripped Venezuela of its elected leadership. See the sheer, unadulerated hypocrisy: the same US that lectures on democracy kidnaps a head of state without UN approval or even Congressional oversight, treating Latin America as a neo-colonial playground.

What is Venezuela’s crime? Its oil wealth and refusal to bow to neoliberal austerity. Under Chávez and Maduro, the country nationalized its oil and other resources, funded several progressive social programmes, and allied with Cuba, China, and Russia—challenges to US corporate dominance. Sanctions had already strangled its economy; the January raid was the next step in regime change by force. These were parallels to Libya 2011 and Iraq 2003: promises of democracy masking the greed for oil. The attack also served domestic US politics—distracting from Trump’s Epstein scandals and rallying his base with macho displays of power. But for the Venezuelan working people and for Latin America as a whole, it was a wake-up call. Protests erupted across the continent, demanding “No War on Venezuela!” and exposing how imperialism fuels migration crises which it then exploits at its borders.

The Dastardly War on Iran

This Venezuelan prelude set the stage for the far larger assault on Iran. On 28 February, mere weeks after the Maduro kidnapping, US and Israeli forces unleashed Operation Epic Fury (US) and Roaring Lion (Israel). Surprise airstrikes hammered Tehran, Natanz, Isfahan, and dozens of other sites. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in a direct hit on his compound, along with IRGC commanders like Mohammad Pakpour and Defense Minister Aziz Nasir Zadeh, followed two weeks later by the killing of Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani. Israeli jets and US missiles targeted nuclear facilities, ballistic missile infrastructure, air defences, and command centres. Civilian casualties were immediate and horrific: over 1,000 dead in the first few days, including 160 schoolgirls in a single strike on Minab’s all-girls school in Hormozgan Province. Coffins carried by grieving mothers became the symbols of imperialist barbarism.

What were the stated goals? “Degrading” Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes and “creating conditions” for regime change. Trump and Netanyahu spoke openly of ending the “Ayatollah regime” and allowing Iranians to “cast off the yoke.” Yet, this was naked aggression launched during ongoing nuclear negotiations—a Trojan horse of sham diplomacy to justify the use of brute force. The operation was built on the 2025 Twelve-Day War, when US-Israeli strikes already damaged Iran’s defences. Now, the imperial duo has dropped thousands of bombs, hitting schools, hospitals, cultural sites and military targets.

But this time strong Iranian retaliation has followed—missiles toward US bases spread across several servile countries in the Middle East, and also prime Israeli targets. As expected, Iran has closed down the crucially strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which over 20 per cent of the oil produced by countries of the Middle East goes to the world. This has made world oil prices shoot up, with the resultant economic chaos. The third week of the war has begun at the time of writing this piece (18 March), and Iran has shown exemplary courage, grit, and determination in fighting back two formidable foes. Without doubt, Iran has the full support of China, Russia, and several countries of the Global South. On the other hand, the US is getting increasingly isolated, with several leading European countries refusing to send their navies to help the US to open the Strait of Hormuz by force. Donald Trump is facing massive opposition in the US Congress and also from US and European public opinion.     

The Iran strikes reveal the fusion of US global hegemony with Israeli regional ambitions. Netanyahu, facing big domestic corruption trials, needed a war to survive. Similarly, Trump, eager to distract from the Epstein files and slipping polls, obliged—wag the dog on a grand scale. But deeper motives prevail: control of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, weakening the Axis of Resistance that backs Palestine, and preventing any multipolar challenge from the China-Russia-Iran bloc. Iran’s support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and anti-imperialist forces in the region made it a prime target. Hence the US-Israel assault aims to eliminate Iran as the only remaining potent force in West Asia and break the backbone of the Palestinian resistance.

Condemnable US History of Assasinations and Regime Changes

The parallels with Venezuela are deliberate and damning. Both nations are oil giants resisting US dictates. Both faced hybrid warfare—sanctions, propaganda, then direct strikes. In Venezuela, the Monroe Doctrine justified hemispheric domination; in Iran, it is the endless “war on terror” and nuclear scare tactics masking resource grabs. Trump’s team revived colonial language: “friendly takeover” threats for Cuba, “running” Venezuela, and “finishing” Iran. And what about the civilian deaths? Mere collateral damage in the imperial calculus! What about regime change? Not for democracy—Washington installed an unending series of pliant dictators in the past (From Augusto Pinochet to Shah of Iran)—but for compliant regimes that open markets to ExxonMobil and Chevron while aligning with Tel Aviv.

History illuminates the pattern. US imperialism has long targeted resource-rich resistors: the 1953 CIA coup in Iran deposing the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh and installing the Shah of Iran in his place; the 2003 Iraq invasion and killing of Saddam Hussein; the 2011 Libya civil war and killing of Muammar Gaddafi; and the 2026 abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. All this was for nothing but oil, and for hegemony. Israel’s role added a settler-colonial dimension—its strikes on Iranian allies Hamas and Hezbollah and now the Iranian heartland itself extended Gaza’s genocide logic regionally. The demonic Israeli genocide since 7 October 2023 in Gaza has resulted in the killing of over 72,000 civilians, of whom over 60 per cent have been women and children.

American imperialism has a long and dirty history of assassinations of leaders for resource plunder, and forced regime changes across the world. They include Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran, 1953), Patrice Lumumba (Congo, 1961), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana, 1966), Amílcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau, 1973), Salvador Allende (Chile, 1973), Juan José Torres (Bolivia, 1976), Orlando Letelier (Chile, 1976), Maurice Bishop (Grenada, 1983), Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso, 1987), Saddam Hussein (2003), and Muammar Gaddafi (2011). Even ‘inconvenient’ black leaders in America itself like Malcolm X (1965) Martin Luther King Jr. (1968) were assassinated, in spite of being under FBI surveillance.

The human toll underscores the criminality. In Venezuela, the raid killed dozens, including civilians, displacing more amid existing crisis. In Iran, strikes devastated communities—grief-stricken funerals for children, hospitals overwhelmed, infrastructure in ruins. Millions face radiation risks from damaged nuclear sites, refugee waves, and economic collapse. Regionally, escalation threatens Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and beyond. Oil prices have spiked, punishing working people everywhere while enriching arms dealers and energy giants.

Media complicity enables this. Western outlets frame the armed strikes as “necessary” or “targeted,” ignoring civilian slaughter and legal violations. The UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force is shredded with impunity—echoing the Iraq lies. Some liberal “left” voices equivocate, placing anti-theocracy and anti-imperialism at the same level. True internationalism stands with the oppressed nations against imperialist great-power predation, as Lenin taught. Hands off Iran! Hands off Venezuela! Those must be our clear slogans of today.

Deafening and Shameful Silence of the Modi-led BJP-RSS Regime

The deafening silence of India’s Modi-led BJP-RSS government on all the recent US-Israeli actions has been shameful. The persecution of Palestine. The genocide in Gaza. The abduction of Maduro. The unprovoked attack on Iran. The assassination of Khamenei. The killing of 160 schoolgirls in Minab. The killed Iranian sailors on the ship IRIS Dena which had come at our invitation. There has not been a single word even of regret, let alone condemnation, from the Government of India on any of the above events! India is the current chair of the powerful BRICS bloc of countries. That forum has also been immobilised by India’s servile stance.  

On the contrary, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Israel, of all countries, just two days before the heinous attack on Iran, and heaps praise on Netanyahu and Israel, the butchers of Gaza, and gives them unconditional support. Narendar’s surrender to Trump and the US in all matters, including the anti-national US India Trade Deal, is of course universally known. All this is a travesty of the earlier independent, non-aligned, anti-imperialist foreign policy of India.

Death Throes of the Capitalist and Imperialist Order

These assaults expose imperialism’s contradictions in decline. Trump’s “America First” masks endless wars; Netanyahu’s security obsession breeds isolation. Public opposition grows—polls show abysmal US support for the Iran war; Latin American streets rage against Venezuelan aggression. We the global left must mobilize: mass demonstrations, labour strikes, solidarity campaigns amplifying Iranian and Venezuelan voices; Building anti-war coalitions; Demanding reparations, sanctions on aggressors, and an end to US-NATO-Zionist alliances.

Ultimately, these twin attacks on Venezuela and Iran are the death throes of a capitalist and imperialist order. Capitalism’s drive for resources and markets breeds endless conflict. The Venezuelan and Iranian peoples are resisting with courage. Global solidarity can turn the tide. From Caracas to Tehran, the message rings clear: imperialism will not prevail. The struggle will continue until every nation is free from the boot of Washington and Tel Aviv.