On September 18th 2025 Israel announced that the IAF launched fresh airstrikes in Southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah’s military infrastructure to prevent them from regrouping south of the Lintani River. This is just shy of a year since the October 1st invasion which was preceded by a year of airstrikes killing and injuring thousands and displacing more than 1.2 million civilians in southern Lebanon. Also the November 2024 ceasefire which was brokered by the US as president Biden was on his way out and tens of thousands of civilian buildings and infrastructure were destroyed and thousands were already killed. The ceasefire was used to launder Isreal's image and venerate their imperialist wars. The IDF ordered villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate and the Lebanese media outlet NNA has confirmed that the airstrikes have been carried out without specifying the amount of material damage. There can be no peace in the Imperialist epoch, only wars which become the state's preferred method for handling insoluble capitalist crises.

Beginning in 2022 with the war in Ukraine, which marked a collision between two imperialist blocs, the world has seen the capitalist class and their politicians around the world riding off of the rails and opening new chapters of imperialist brutality. Lebanon's importance to the Israeli state spans close to half a century. The US wanted to pull Egypt out of the USSR’s orbit and had Israel repatriate the Sinai back to Egypt. Israel and Lebanon had political conflicts in the 1970s and for consolation the US allowed Isreal to invade in 1982 in order to dislodge pro-Palestian groups. The IDF was unable to gain any objectives in the invasion and were eventually met with demoralization and defeat, but remained in Lebanon until 2000 when Hezbollah's offenses left the IDF in disarray and the IDF failed at halting missile attacks.

US president Trump and Saudi Arabia have been putting heat on Lebanon's president Joseph Aoun to disarm Hezbollah. The US, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been proposing some sort of hellish tech zone in southern Lebanon as part of an initiative to soak up extremely precarious workers and thechronically unemployed in a real estate bonanza in southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has meekly decried the attacks as going against the peace process and that the Lebanese government is committed to enforcing the UN resolutions that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. Despite the pressure by the US, Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah's political rivals the government is too weak to disarm Hezbollah, which is emblematic of Lebanon's extremely fragmented political system and economy divided up on sectarian lines. This is despite the speeches of President Aoun whose main promise is to restore the Lebanese Armed Force’s sole monopoly on violence.

As for Hezbollah, unlike Iran it was not able to simply limp away and has been greatly deteriorated by Israel’s assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah, sabotaging communications and honeycombing the military - political organization through killing other high ranking leaders. Hezbollah’s popularity came from their role in fighting Israel, but also operating more or less the only stable state institutions in southern Lebanon and providing aid to the masses of the near permanently unemployed. But their dominating role in Lebanon alongside their Christian allies has left them exposed with blame for economic crises burying their support, and then in 2020 the Beirut harbor explosion in the midst of their poor handling of Covid-19. The sectarian political and judicial system was used to prevent any investigations into it. Hezbollah like the other elite networks in Lebanon have been able to pick workers' corpses for profits. But Hezbollah's support resurged due to the 2024 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Disarming Hezbollah lacks any real political traction and can potentially ignite another civil war when the government exposes itself as too weak to disarm them. For workers in Lebanon the answer isn't in sectarian groups. No matter which imperialist they align themselves with, they will suck workers dry for profits and have them slaughtered in future wars.

Israel is reopening its war against Lebanon as part of the state’s plan to reshape the Middle East and keep the Netanyahu - Smoltrich government ahead of its growing domestic crises. Israel targets Hezbollah or Hamas because they are appendages of Iranian imperialism, but imperialist wars in the region won't stop with them, as even if they didn't exist Israel would need wars to paper over their domestic crises. Israel has a massive housing crisis despite the unbridled settler activities in the West Bank, increased political competition over the consolidation of executive powers and Netanyahu has to keep himself and his associates out of prison on corruption charges. The working class in Israel are instead conscripted to the front lines and are made to kill their working class peers as a way to smooth over these perennial crises. This is why there can be no meaningful peace, especially in capitalism's Imperialist epoch where wars become a preferable solution to constant crises caused by stagnation. This is because wars can keep the working class activated for the nation, which is for the capitalist class.

The wars in the Middle East are far from a local affair; they are on the tectonic plates of consolidating imperialist blocs. Iran’s position in the Middle East has been shaken with the deterioration of their proxies, which has caused Iran to become more dependent on their reluctant allies, Russia and China. Iran has more narrow constraints to operate under and the drive towards a generalized war over their constantly deteriorating position becomes potentially a preferred solution by their ruling class. While the US is dependent on Israel’s technological experience in waging wars in the region and has no other options besides supporting Israel’s expanding military fronts in their wars to reshape the Middle East. A total war in the Middle East would directly involve the US as a co-belligerent alongside Israel against Iran and their alliance of convenience over an intermediary country such as Syria, or Iraq. The narrative has long been laid down for the war fever to accommodate an imperialist slaughter. Iran and the Axis of resistance have been labeled as autocrats, nuclear proliferators, terrorists or the “Islamofascist” but overall they are what the West sees as the consolidating revisionist bloc, alongside Russia and China. Western support for Israel continues no matter how bad their image may temporarily be, or regardless of how relations between America and Europe cool. NATO’s rearmament andforced austerity onto the working class in Europe is also painted as a being for the defense of democracy against autocracy, just as was the case for all imperialist wars in the past; making the world safe for democracy and anti-fascism. But all of this remains in the background, the US and the Western Imperialist’s main concern remains China in the Pacific. A confrontation in the Pacific has been setting up to be the main theater in order to determine the future composition of international imperialism’s pecking order.

The ruling class has no solution besides wars. The capitalist class’s peace falls apart; it only serves as preparation for future conflicts. Transnational institutions such as the UN only serve to smooth out capitalist contradictions for the strongest states, mainly the US, despite president Trump's canard about it. They offer no path towards ending wars. In Lebanon the UNIFIL has been experiencing close calls by Israeli drones dropping bombs near where they are operating which hasn't been a novel occurrence. The renewed attacks in Lebanon show that there is no state solution for the workers and toilers in Palestine. Lebanon being an undisputed sovereign state by bourgeoisie law, or Hezbollahas a “resistance” force that underwent an arms race amassing the largest arsenalas a non-state actor hasn't prevented multiple invasions, millions of internal refugees from last year's invasion, constant airstrikes and thousands of deaths. Both Lebanon and the Southern para-state are also just as any other in the orbit of one or another Imperialist power which is the fate of all countries in the Imperialist epoch. The proposed partial armistice for Gaza will also fall apart even after Israel has laid waste to the Gaza strip and killed 7.2% of the population, as Israel can break the armistice whenever they have a whim to under the pretense of defense. The entire purpose of imperialist peace and humanitarianism is to clean up the image of mass slaughter and genocide caused by imperialist wars. The same can be seen in Syria as well, despite the new government appealing to the 1974 disengagement agreement, Israel has an interest in Syria’s cantonment in order to set back Turkish regional Imperialist interest and to clear a path to Iran. Egypt is embarking on forming a NATO style alliance amongst other Arab states in the wake of Israel's airstrikes on Doha to assassinate Hamas’s negotiators, but also Egypt is mobilizing its armor to the Sinai in preparation to corral and kill Gazan refugees. Lastly Saudi Arabia no longer views the USA as a stable ally and has made a bilateral defense pact with their long time ally Pakistan, which Saudi Arabia de facto shares nuclear weaponry with. As Imperialist capitalism’s crisis deepens, there comes a new opening for regional military axises in the Middle East.

In decadent capitalism only communism, a stateless, classless society without borders or exploitation is the only antidote against capitalism's endless Imperialist wars. The only way to prevent future wars is the international proletariat united on a revolutionary program and mobilized around smashing the state apparatus and toppling capitalist class rule in all nations. The working class has to resist against the worsening conditions forced upon them by the capitalist class for the exigencies of rearmament and wars, through strikes and other stoppages on a political basis. Workers around the world have the power to end their fellow workers needless bloodshed through these methods. There is no need to further sacrifice for the nation which is really just the capitalist class. But only a revolutionary frontal assault against the capitalist state everywhere brings imperialist wars to an end for good. The proletarian revolution not only resists and opposes capitalism's wars, but can finally bring and end by ushering in communism.

Notes:

Image: commons.wikimedia.org