Iran Is Not Our Enemy

The Ruling Class Wants Our Class To Die To Defend Their Investments – We Must Oppose This War

When Sir Keir Starmer rose to the dispatch box to announce that British forces would be deployed to the Persian Gulf, the British working class was treated to yet another masterclass in ruling-class duplicity. In his usual strangulated, constipated and panicked delivery Starmer stumbled through an announcement that Britain was to go to war yet again to defend ruling class interests. Having merely days earlier assured the nation that Britain would not be drawn into the escalating US-Iran war, Starmer executed a reversal so abrupt it would make a gymnast wince. In his characteristic strangulated tones, he spoke of “protecting British interests”—a phrase that rolls off the tongue of every imperialist politician with practiced ease. But the question that must burn in the mind of every conscious worker is this: whose interests?

Starmer’s statement placed particular emphasis on the Gulf states—the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. These are indeed regions where certain British citizens maintain substantial interests. However, a cursory examination of the economic data reveals that these interests belong exclusively to the financial oligarchy that constitutes the British ruling class, not to the millions of workers. 

The economic bonds binding British capital to the Gulf monarchies are extensive and deeply rooted. According to British government figures, British foreign direct investment stock in Saudi Arabia alone stood at £6.5 billion by the end of 2024, having increased by £211 million from the previous year . Total trade between the British and Saudi Arabia reached £16.2 billion in 2024, with British exports accounting for £13 billion of that figure . When we expand our view to the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations —comprising Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain—the picture becomes even more stark. Total British-GCC trade exceeds £50 billion annually, with the British positioned as the largest single source country for foreign direct investment projects in the region in 2024 .

These are not abstract figures. They represent the concrete material interests of British finance capital—the fusion of banking and industrial capital that Lenin identified as the defining characteristic of imperialism. As Lenin wrote in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: “Finance capital is such a great, such a decisive, you might say, force in all economic and in all international relations, that it is capable of subjecting, and actually does subject, to itself even states enjoying the fullest political independence” . The Gulf states, despite their formal sovereignty, exist in a state of financial subordination to the great banking houses of the City of London.

The arms trade provides perhaps the most sordid illustration of these relationships. BAE Systems, the British aerospace giant, has received £27.2 billion in revenues from the Saudi Ministry of Defence and Aviation between 2015 and 2024 alone . This figure represents merely the maintenance and support contracts for aircraft sold over decades—the Al-Yamamah deal of 1985, the Al-Salam agreements, and the ongoing provision of Eurofighter Typhoons and Tornado jets. When we include the broader spectrum of British arms exports to the coalition, the total value exceeds £33 billion since the beginning of the Yemen war . These weapons have not gathered dust in hangars; they have been deployed in the devastating bombardment of Yemen, creating what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The historical continuity of British imperialism in the region is impossible to ignore. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company—ancestor of today’s BP—was incorporated in 1909 after William Knox D’Arcy struck oil in Iran . By 1914, the British government had acquired a 51% stake in the company, ensuring that Iranian oil would fuel the Royal Navy and British industry . This was not commerce; it was the systematic extraction of resources from a sovereign nation through the mechanisms of finance capital. When Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh attempted to nationalize the oil industry in 1951, British and American intelligence orchestrated his overthrow in 1953, restoring the flow of petrodollars to Anglo-American coffers .

The military infrastructure of British imperialism has been carefully maintained across the decades. HMS Juffair, established in Bahrain in 1935 as part of the port at Mina Salman, served as the primary Royal Navy base in the region for decades . Though the United States assumed control of the facility after Bahraini independence, Britain returned in 2018 with the opening of a new permanent naval base—the first “east of Suez” since the withdrawal from Aden in 1971 . This was not a nostalgic gesture but a calculated response to the growing importance of Gulf energy supplies and the need to protect British capital investments.

Lenin understood that imperialism is not merely a policy choice but the inevitable result of capitalist development. “As long as capitalism remains what it is,” he wrote, “surplus capital will never be utilised for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists; it will be used for the purpose of increasing those profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries” . The Gulf states, with their “scarce capital, low price of land, low wages, and cheap raw materials,” represent precisely the destination for this exported capital .

The contemporary relevance of Lenin’s analysis is striking. The -GCC trade negotiations, ongoing since Brexit, aim to secure even more favorable conditions for British finance capital. Gulf sovereign wealth funds—accumulated through the extraction of hydrocarbons by exploited labor—are already major investors in British infrastructure, technology, and real estate . A free trade agreement would provide “greater protections and incentives for further investment,” ensuring that the flow of capital continues unimpeded regardless of which party occupies Downing Street .

Starmer’s deployment of British forces must be understood within this context. It is not the defense of British workers—who gain nothing from the profits of BP, BAE Systems, or the banking houses of the City—that motivates this intervention. It is the defense of British finance capital, of the “financial oligarchy” that Lenin identified as the ruling stratum of imperialist society. When Starmer speaks of “British interests,” he speaks in code, knowing that the true nature of these interests would repulse the working class if stated plainly.

The working class has no stake in the profits of the oil monopolies. We do not benefit when BAE Systems sells another squadron of fighter jets to the Saudi regime. The nurses waiting for pay rises, the pensioners choosing between heating and eating, the youth facing permanent precarity—none of them will see a penny from the £50 billion annual trade with the GCC. Yet it is their sons and daughters who will crew the warships, maintain the aircraft, and potentially fight and die in the Persian Gulf.

Lenin was unsparing in his analysis of those who obscured these realities: “The most dangerous people of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism” . Starmer, who campaigned for the leadership of the Labour Party on a platform of “unity” and “respectability,” represents precisely this opportunism—the adaptation of working-class political organization to the interests of the bourgeoisie.

The British working class must reject this imperialist adventure entirely. We must recognize that our interests are fundamentally opposed to those of the finance capitalists who dictate foreign policy regardless of which party holds office. The struggle against war is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism itself. As Lenin concluded: “Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries” .

The deployment to the Gulf is not our war. It is the war of the bankers, the arms manufacturers, and the oil giants. The only “British interest” that workers should defend is the interest of our class in overthrowing this system of exploitation and building a society where the resources of the world serve human need rather than private profit.

As an immediate first step though we must get organised. We need a working class led anti war movement. Not one organised by the usual crowd of middle class pacifists. Every war the ruling class fights against other countries is one that enhances their ability to continue to rule over us. It is the workers of this country who must take control of the anti war movement. Every war is part of the ongoing class war on us. We must recognise who our true enemy is and it is not Iran but the disgusting, parasitical British capitalist class. The fight for an anti war movement worthy of the name must begin within the trade unions. The leadership of these organisations are totally compromised by their long collaboration with the British ruling class but the base of the trade unions still contain over five million workers who could cripple the ruling class’s war making ability if mobilised properly. We must fight for the following demands within the union movement.

1. Total opposition to the British ruling class’s war mongering against Iran
2. Adopt a programme of non-cooperation with the governments war drive – workers should refuse to load arms shipments destined for usage in this war
3. Campaign for an industrial policy that is based around producing commodities we need in this country not armaments designed to increase the oppression of other peoples
4. We must maximally develop all of our own nuclear, oil and gas industries on the basis of a wider economic plan in order that we can become self sufficient in these. The ruling class has no interest in this, of course, but we mist campaign for it amongst the trade unions to make workers aware of the issues here.