Oil and Empire: Who Pays for the Iran War

Analysis of: Middle East crisis live: Israel strikes major Iranian petrochemical plant after Trump’s threats over infrastructure
The Guardian | April 6, 2026

TL;DR

Israel bombs Iran's largest petrochemical plant while Trump threatens "hell" for civilian infrastructure—revealing how imperial powers weaponize energy access. Working people in Iran, Israel, and the Gulf bear the costs while oil capital dictates the terms of war and peace.

Analytical Focus:Contradictions Material Conditions Historical Context

The escalating US-Israeli war on Iran reveals the central role of energy infrastructure in modern imperialist conflict. Israel's strike on Iran's South Pars petrochemical facility—responsible for half the country's petrochemical production—and Trump's explicit threats to destroy power plants and bridges expose the material stakes underlying the conflict: control over global energy flows and the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world's oil passes. The contradiction at the heart of this crisis is instructive: the same global capitalist system that depends on stable energy flows is driven by competitive dynamics that threaten to destroy that very infrastructure. Trump's ultimatum demanding Iran reopen the strait "or face hell" demonstrates how imperial powers treat civilian populations as leverage in resource conflicts. Meanwhile, Iran's retaliatory strikes on Gulf state energy facilities show how regional powers respond within this same logic of infrastructure warfare. The civilian casualties—in Haifa, Tehran, and across the Gulf—expose who actually bears the costs of these inter-state conflicts over capital accumulation. The EU's condemnation of civilian infrastructure targeting "everywhere" while carefully avoiding naming the United States illustrates the ideological contradictions of the liberal international order. The framing of negotiations as requiring Iran to accept "deadlines" and abandon its "stranglehold" naturalizes US-Israeli military supremacy while obscuring the material interests driving the conflict. Japan's desperate diplomatic overtures, driven by 90% dependence on Middle Eastern oil, reveal how peripheral capitalist economies remain subordinated to the conflicts of the imperial core.

Class Dynamics

Actors: US military-industrial complex, Israeli state apparatus, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and state, Gulf state monarchies, Global energy capital, Working populations of Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and Gulf states, Japanese and European industrial capital

Beneficiaries: Oil and gas corporations profiting from price spikes, Arms manufacturers supplying the conflict, US financial capital maintaining dollar hegemony through energy control, Political elites consolidating power through wartime nationalism

Harmed Parties: Iranian civilians facing infrastructure destruction and economic devastation, Israeli civilians in targeted cities like Haifa, Gulf state workers injured in retaliatory attacks, Iranian political prisoners executed amid the crisis, Global working class facing energy price inflation, Japanese and European workers facing energy scarcity

The conflict demonstrates the hierarchical structure of global capitalism, with the US exercising military dominance to maintain control over strategic energy chokepoints. Israel operates as a regional enforcer of US interests while pursuing its own expansionist agenda. Iran, despite its regional power, remains in a defensive position against overwhelming military force. Gulf monarchies, despite their oil wealth, are caught between their dependence on US security guarantees and their vulnerability to Iranian retaliation. Working populations across all nations have no voice in the decisions that determine whether they live or die.

Material Conditions

Economic Factors: Control of Strait of Hormuz—20% of global oil transit, South Pars gas field—world's largest shared with Qatar, Iranian petrochemical production capacity, Global oil price volatility ($110-114/barrel), Japanese 90% dependence on Middle Eastern crude, Strategic oil reserve depletion

The conflict centers on who controls the means of energy extraction and distribution in the global economy. Iran's nationalized energy sector represents a challenge to Western capital's control over global energy flows. The targeting of petrochemical facilities directly attacks Iran's capacity to generate surplus value through commodity exports, while the Strait of Hormuz blockade disrupts the circulation of commodities essential to global production. The threat to nuclear facilities at Bushehr adds another dimension—the potential destruction of energy-generating infrastructure that supports Iran's industrial base.

Resources at Stake: Persian Gulf oil reserves, South Pars natural gas field, Iranian petrochemical production infrastructure, Power generation capacity, Transportation infrastructure (bridges), Nuclear energy facilities, Global shipping routes

Historical Context

Precedents: 1953 CIA coup overthrowing Mossadegh over oil nationalization, 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and US support for Saddam Hussein, 2003 Iraq invasion and control of oil reserves, Ongoing sanctions regimes as economic warfare, Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear program (Stuxnet, assassinations), 1991 Gulf War infrastructure bombing of Iraq

This conflict continues the century-long pattern of imperial intervention in the Middle East to control energy resources. From the carving up of Ottoman territories to secure oil access, through the CIA's 1953 coup against Iran's democratically elected government when it nationalized oil, to the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure in 1991 and 2003, Western powers have consistently used military force to maintain control over the region's energy wealth. The current phase represents the intersection of US decline as sole hegemon with the financialized capitalism's desperate need to control strategic resources. Trump's explicit threats against civilian infrastructure echo the deliberate destruction of Iraqi water treatment and power facilities in 1991—a strategy designed to make societies ungovernable without Western-approved leadership.

Contradictions

Primary: The fundamental contradiction is between capital's need for stable energy flows to enable global production and circulation, and the competitive interstate dynamics that drive imperial powers to weaponize and potentially destroy that same infrastructure. The system depends on what it threatens to annihilate.

Secondary: Iran's regime executes protesters during the war while claiming to defend the nation against imperialism, exposing the class character of the state, Gulf monarchies face retaliation for hosting US bases while depending on those same bases for regime survival, The EU condemns infrastructure targeting while remaining dependent on US security architecture, Ceasefire negotiations proceed while bombing intensifies, revealing negotiations as continuation of war by other means, Trump demands Iran reopen the strait while his threats ensure it remains closed

These contradictions are unlikely to resolve through negotiation within the current framework. The 45-day ceasefire proposal represents a tactical pause rather than resolution of underlying conflicts over regional hegemony and energy control. The most likely trajectories are either continued escalation toward direct US-Iran military confrontation, or a temporary accommodation that preserves the structural conditions for future conflict. The Iranian regime's domestic repression amid the war demonstrates that any resolution will come at the expense of working people on all sides. The only path to genuine resolution would require challenging the capitalist system's treatment of energy as a commodity to be controlled rather than a common resource—a transformation that current state actors have no interest in pursuing.

Global Interconnections

This conflict cannot be understood in isolation from the broader crisis of US hegemony and the restructuring of global capitalism. The aggressive posture toward Iran reflects US anxiety about maintaining dollar dominance, which depends partly on oil being traded in dollars and US control over energy chokepoints. China's growing relationships with Iran and Gulf states threaten this arrangement. The war also connects to the climate crisis—the very fossil fuel infrastructure being fought over is driving planetary destruction, yet all parties treat hydrocarbon control as essential to national power. The ripple effects demonstrate global capitalism's interconnected fragility. Japanese industry faces shutdown from energy scarcity. European economies already weakened by the Ukraine conflict face another supply shock. Global inflation, already punishing working-class households, will intensify. The war reveals how imperialist competition over resources creates cascading crises that ultimately discipline labor worldwide through higher costs and economic instability—a form of class warfare conducted through interstate conflict.

Conclusion

The Iran war exposes the violent core of the global capitalist order: working people are made to kill and die so that capital can maintain control over energy flows essential to accumulation. The executed Iranian protesters, the families crushed in Haifa apartment buildings, the injured workers in Abu Dhabi—all are sacrificed to a system that treats human life as subordinate to resource control. The path forward for working people cannot run through supporting "their" governments in these conflicts. International solidarity against the war—demanding an end to bombing, sanctions, and the entire architecture of imperial control over the region—represents the only politics adequate to the moment. The contradictions tearing apart the Middle East are contradictions of capitalism itself; their resolution requires not better management of the system but its transformation.

Suggested Reading

• Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of how capitalism's competitive dynamics drive imperial powers to war over control of resources and markets directly illuminates the strategic competition over Gulf energy infrastructure.
• The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's documentation of how crises are exploited to restructure economies helps explain why infrastructure destruction serves imperial interests—creating conditions for Western capital to control reconstruction.
• The New Imperialism by David Harvey (2003) Harvey's concept of 'accumulation by dispossession' and analysis of US hegemony's relationship to oil control provides essential context for understanding the current conflict's political-economic foundations.
• The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961) Fanon's analysis of colonial violence and the position of peripheral nations under imperialism illuminates both Iran's resistance and the internal class contradictions of postcolonial states facing imperial aggression.