## The strategic tinderbox: imperialism and the fragmentation of the Middle East
The Middle East today is not a “regional problem” but a focal point of intensifying imperialist competition and capitalist crisis. The United States seeks to maintain domination of energy routes and block rivals from strategic influence; Israel pursues expansion and settler-colonial security; the Gulf monarchies, above all Saudi Arabia, try to secure their ruling order and economic privileges; Türkiye asserts neo‑Ottoman regional ambitions; Iran projects influence through militias and state power; Russia and China pursue their own geostrategic and commercial interests; and a host of non‑state forces—Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, Islamist militias, Kurdish forces—act as both local rulers and imperialist proxies. This complex of rival interests and proxy networks produces a political geography in which local clashes can rapidly escalate into wider conflagration. The US drive for regional domination, discussed in our analysis of Syria and the SDF’s role as a Washington proxy ([SDF–HTS agreement and US strategy](
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/19/rwge-d19.html)), is a central detonator of instability.
## How this can lead to a world war
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Multipolar competition: The erosion of a post‑war equilibrium creates conditions in which the major powers—US, Russia, China—compete for influence through military deployments, arms sales, and alliances. The US has repeatedly reinforced its military posture in the region to confront rivals and secure resources ([US troop deployments and arms sales](
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/25/midd-m25.html)).
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Proxy chains and escalation ladders: Local actors (Hezbollah, Hamas, Iranian proxy militias, Syrian jihadi formations, Türkiye’s interventions, Israeli offensives, Saudi operations, Houthi strikes) are tied into broader state strategies. A strike on one actor can trigger retaliation, drawing patrons into direct confrontation.
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Nuclear and conventional risks: Israel’s regional actions, US military presence, Iranian deterrence and the possibility of miscalculation (attacks on bases, shipping, energy infrastructure) could rapidly broaden the war. Once great‑power forces are entangled, the danger of global war—and with it the threat of nuclear catastrophe—becomes acute.
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Economic pressures and fascist outcomes: War amplifies capitalist crisis—debt, inflation, social austerity—and the ruling classes at home will press for authoritarian measures, increasing the chance that inter‑imperialist rivalry will be settled by force rather than diplomacy.
## Class forces and their material interests
The ruling classes across the region and the imperialist powers share an interest in preserving capital accumulation—access to markets, resources, cheap labour and strategic corridors. Bourgeois regimes (Gulf monarchies, Erdoğan’s Turkey, Israel’s settler‑colonial elite, Iran’s clerical‑bourgeois axis, Syria’s client elites) compete over influence while repressing the working class at home. Non‑state actors, including Islamist and sectarian militias, are vehicles for regional bourgeoisies and imperialist policies or for narrow nationalist elites; they cannot emancipate workers or end imperialist domination. The Kurdish national bourgeoisies (e.g., SDF leadership) have been shown to subordinate working‑class interests to imperialist patrons ([Kurdish nationalism’s bankruptcy](
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/19/rwge-d19.html)). Trade unions and pseudo‑left currents often act to channel working‑class discontent into nationalist or reformist dead ends.
## How the working class can stop the drive to war
The decisive force that can end imperialist war is the international working class. The only way to halt the slide to world war is the political mobilization of workers on an international program that breaks with bourgeois parties, the unions’ collaboration, and all forms of bourgeois nationalism.
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Political independence and mass councils: Workers must form rank‑and‑file committees and councils, independent of the corporatist unions and bourgeois states, to coordinate strikes, occupations and anti‑war mobilizations across borders. The SEP and the ICFI have championed the formation of such organizations, including the International Workers Alliance of Rank‑and‑File Committees (IWA‑RFC), as instruments to unify struggles internationally.
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Turn imperialist war into civil and class struggle: As Lenin and Trotsky taught, the war crisis must be converted into class struggle. Workers should refuse mobilization for imperialist armies, demand the expropriation of the arms industry and workers’ control of transport, ports and energy infrastructure to prevent their use for war. This is the transitional program that radicalizes broad layers of the working class and youth.
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Socialist federation of the Middle East: Only a socialist re‑organization—through workers’ power and the abolition of capitalist property—is capable of ending sectarian divisions, guaranteeing rights and unifying the region on a democratic and economic basis. The SEP advances a program for a United Socialist States of the Middle East, a federation founded on working‑class internationalism and socialist planning ([SEP’s program and principles](
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/09/12/bwfi-s12.html)). Such a federation would dissolve client regimes, disarm militias under democratic workers’ control, and place resources and planning in the hands of the working majority.
## International implications and the world party
The victory of workers in the Middle East requires and would trigger solidarity struggles by workers in the US, Europe, Russia, China and beyond. Global working‑class mobilization can block the imperialist classes from pursuing war and can provide the political and material support necessary for workers’ power to succeed. The development of socialist consciousness and international organization is therefore central—the launch of tools like Socialism AI is a tactical advance in educating and mobilizing workers internationally ([Socialism AI launch](
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/12/gpid-d12.html)).
## Practical call to action
Workers in the Middle East and allied workers worldwide must reject bourgeois nationalism and imperialist patronage. They must build independent rank‑and‑file organizations, link struggles across borders, and fight for workers’ power as the only viable anti‑war strategy. Join your national SEP section to build international working‑class opposition:
https://www.wsws.org/en/special/pages/sep/us/join.htmlOnly the international working class, united on a socialist program and under revolutionary leadership, can prevent the region—and the world—from being dragged into a catastrophe of imperialist war and build a democratic, socialist federation of the Middle East.