Saturday, 14 June 2025: - The South African Communist Party (SACP) condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the apartheid Israeli settler regime and its automatic imperialist sponsor for their genocidal impunity. The SACP denounces the barbaric destruction of Iranian homes, the cold-blooded killing of civilians and the deliberate escalation of instability across the Middle East by the United States-backed Israel, whose leaders believe they are above international law.

The SACP stands in full solidarity with the Iranian people and reaffirms their sovereign right to defend themselves, including through retaliatory responses, against all forms of foreign aggression. Resistance to imperialism is both legitimate and necessary. The international community must not be silent in the face of Israel’s violation of other countries’ fundamental rights to peace, self-determination, sovereignty, and human rights.

Israeli leaders responsible for the aggression, war crimes and genocide must be held accountable.

We reaffirm our unwavering solidarity with the entire Axis of Resistance in the Middle East in their struggle to confront the apartheid Israeli settler regime’s genocidal aggression and brutality, and in waging a principled struggle against all forms of colonial occupation, imperialist domination, exploitation and military subjugation.

By violating Iran’s sovereignty and trampling on multilateralism and international law, Israel’s leaders have once again revealed their true agenda, that of the enemies of international peace, justice and the human rights of others.

Israel’s latest attack on Iran comes as the leaders of the apartheid Israeli settler regime continue their genocide against the Palestinian people, having already killed at least 55,000, injured close to 27,000, and obliterated homes, hospitals, water systems, schools, roads and other critical infrastructure since 7 October 2023. The SACP condemns these actions of extermination, which exposes the Zionist colonialists as a threat not only to Palestine and Iran but to humanity.

The apartheid Israeli settler regime has launched the latest unprovoked and illegal attacks on Iran on Friday, 13 June 2025, committing acts that demand the strongest condemnation by all peace-loving people across the world. With full backing from the imperialist United States, Israel bombed Iranian cities, deliberately targeting civilians and destroying residential buildings.

The apartheid Israeli settler regime’s forces killed and injured innocent men, women and children, reducing family homes to rubble and throwing entire neighbourhoods into terror. They struck without warning, forcing people to flee into smoke-filled streets as explosions shattered their homes. Israeli leaders ordered these strikes knowing they would kill civilians, while the imperialist regime of the United States provided the Zionist aggressors with support, including weapons, intelligence and political cover to carry the attacks out.

The red skies and collapsing buildings in Tehran were not the result of error but the consequence of a co-ordinated campaign of the apartheid Israeli settler regime terror. These are war crimes, carried out by a regime that uses military power to pursue domination and annihilation.

Israeli’s attacks on Iran were carried out with the impunity, long enjoyed by the Zionist regime due to the consistent support and cover provided by the United States and its NATO allies. Such actions constitute a direct assault on the principles of state sovereignty and non-aggression enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.

The timing of this aggression is as revealing as it is cynical. It occurred amid a session of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors and on the eve of another round of talks between Iran and the United States. This is a deliberate attempt to sabotage diplomacy and escalate tensions. Once again, this exposes the hypocrisy of the United States and its allies, who claim to champion peace while enabling continuous aggression.

Iran has consistently stated, with transparency, that its nuclear programme is dedicated to peaceful purposes: generating affordable electricity, supporting medical research and advancing scientific development. The propaganda against this programme by imperialist powers and Israel – which have nuclear weapons –  is based on a political agenda designed to isolate and weaken an independent state that refuses to surrender its sovereignty.

The apartheid Israeli settler regime has long been a destabilising factor in the Middle East, sustained by a ruthless military apparatus that commits acts of genocide and massacres. Israel’s inhuman campaigns against the Palestinian people, its repeated violations of Lebanese and Syrian sovereignty, and now its escalated aggression against Iran, are all part of a broader strategy to suppress resistance and entrench imperialist domination in the Middle East.

The SACP calls on all progressive and anti-imperialist peace-loving people across the globe to raise their voices and stand up against the injustices committed by the United States-supported apartheid Israeli settler regime. The same forces that once propped up apartheid in South Africa are now backing the destruction of sovereign nations, at least in the Middle East. Our collective struggle must continue, not only in defence of Iran and the Palestinian people but in defence of all peoples resisting domination, exploitation and foreign occupation and domination.

The SACP reaffirms its commitment to the global anti-imperialist struggle and its unwavering support for the people of Iran and Palestine. Let us build international solidarity and intensify the struggle for a world rooted in peace, justice, liberation and universal emancipation.