In recent years, particularly since the war on Gaza, the notion of a “left aligned with the Axis of Resistance” has entered the debates of the Middle Eastern left and the Iranian diaspora with unusual intensity. The term is sometimes used to describe leftists who defend the struggles of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Islamic Republic against Israel and the United States, and at other times as a pejorative label accusing these currents of “campism,” “political Shiism,” or apologia for the Islamic Republic.
The underlying question, however, cannot be resolved at the level of labels. The real question is this: what position should the revolutionary left take toward the resistance of non-left forces against imperialism?
This article’s answer is clear: resistance to imperialism, regardless of the ideological character of the force carrying it out, can have a material, real effect in weakening imperialist power. Striking at the military, economic, and communications interests and infrastructure of dominant powers, raising the cost of military intervention, constraining the freedom of action of imperialist states, and opening fissures in the prevailing geopolitical order are all forms of weakening imperialist power.
But from this it does not follow that every anti-American or anti-Israeli force is necessarily an emancipatory or socialist one.
These two questions must be kept distinct.
The anti-imperialist effect of a given struggle is not the same thing as the class character and political nature of the force waging it.
If the left denies the material effect of a resistance force’s struggle against imperialism simply because that force is not of the left, it drifts away from geopolitical reality; and if it overlooks all the class, political, and social contradictions within that force simply because it is anti-imperialist, it drifts away from Marxism.
The left’s task, then, is not to choose between “imperialism” and the “Axis of Resistance” as two equivalent camps, but to preserve its own class and theoretical independence within the actual struggle against imperialism.
Imperialism and the Question of Resistance
Marxism, from its inception, has never reduced the question of imperialism to relations among a handful of states. Imperialism is a stage in the development of capitalism in which the concentration of capital, finance capital, capital export, the division of the world among great powers, and competition for control over resources and strategic routes become interlinked.
Seen this way, imperialist domination is not confined to military occupation. Financial control, sanctions, economic blockade, control of trade routes, military bases, technological dependency, political intervention, and the construction of regional security orders can all be different forms through which imperialist power is exercised.
New imperialism, in this sense, no longer necessarily takes the form of direct territorial occupation or classical colonialism. It is, rather, an interconnected network of military power, financial domination, technological dependency, and international institutions operating within the world capitalist system — one that can be organized around several centers of power, not a single superpower alone.
Within this structure, the United States has for decades been one of the principal centers of power shaping the Middle East’s security order, and Israel has held a central place in that order as Washington’s strategic ally. But imperialism itself cannot be reduced to a single state.
It is against this backdrop that the significance of the military and political resistance of forces such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and the Islamic Republic becomes clear.
These forces, despite their profound ideological and political differences, have at various junctures managed to raise the cost of American and Israeli power projection and constrain their freedom of action. The network known in political literature as the “Axis of Resistance” is composed of groups and states with differing degrees of independence and dependency, and it should not be treated as a fully unified bloc. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and armed groups in Iraq and Syria have varying relationships with Iran and with one another.
Yet this heterogeneity does not prevent these forces — despite fundamental differences in structure, ideology, interests, and degree of political autonomy — from converging, at different moments, into a shared geopolitical formation against American and Israeli power, a formation that differs from a unified, coordinated bloc. Heterogeneity is not the same as irrelevance.
Resistance as Material Reality
For the left, resistance should not be assessed solely through the intentions and slogans of the forces involved; its material effects must also be examined.
Houthi attacks in the Red Sea offer a clear illustration. By striking shipping linked to Israel, the Houthis raised the cost of military protection along this route for the United States and its allies and constrained their freedom of action along one of the key arteries of world trade.
This is not to say that every Houthi military action should be endorsed. The point is different: these actions have managed to impose costs on part of the power and freedom of action of the dominant order.
The history of Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel likewise cannot be ignored. Over past decades, Hezbollah has been one of the most significant armed forces opposing Israel’s presence and operations in Lebanon. To be sure, Hezbollah’s position has changed significantly in recent years, particularly after the 2024 war, and its military capacity has been damaged. But the weakening of a resistance force at one historical juncture does not amount to a denial of its earlier role in shifting the balance of power.
In Iran’s case too, the matter is not reducible to “proxy” relationships alone. Over past decades, the Islamic Republic has sought, through building missile and drone capacity and a network of armed regional allies, to raise the cost of American and Israeli presence and intervention. Even American sources have acknowledged the role of this network in attacks on U.S. forces and in raising the cost of Washington’s military presence in the region.
Denying the anti-imperialist effect of these policies simply on account of the Islamic Republic’s political character, or the ideology of its allied groups, is not analytics — it is wishful politics.
Hamas and the Question of Palestine
The question of Palestine occupies a distinct place. Palestinian resistance cannot be separated from the history of colonization, occupation, displacement, and the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
Hamas is an Islamist movement, and its political project cannot be equated with a socialist or left-emancipatory one. But this fact should not lead to a negation of the Palestinian question or a reduction of Palestinian resistance to “terrorism.”
The left must be able to hold several propositions simultaneously:
- First, it must recognize the right of the Palestinian people to liberation from occupation and domination.
- Second, it must criticize the policies of the Israeli state and the structures of occupation and discrimination against Palestinians.
- Third, it must condemn crimes against civilians regardless of who commits them.
- Fourth, without becoming a political advocate for Hamas, it must recognize the role of Palestinian armed resistance in breaking Israel’s monopoly on military force and returning the Palestinian question to the center of world politics.
This distinction is essential for the left. Defending the Palestinian right to resistance is not the same as politically endorsing every decision and action of Hamas.
Beyond “The Enemy of My Enemy”
Here it is necessary to distance ourselves from a common error: the logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
If this logic becomes a governing principle of left politics, it ultimately turns the left into a follower of states and movements that have no independent class project of their own.
But rejecting this logic should not lead to its opposite — the wholesale denial of any cooperation or temporary alignment with non-left forces in the struggle against imperialism.
The history of revolutionary movements shows that social forces with differing objectives can converge on a single front against a common enemy without dissolving their own contradictions.
The central issue for the left is political and class independence. No one expects Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis to be socialist or left-wing for their struggle against Israel and the United States to carry an anti-imperialist effect; that was never the question.
The left can defend the resistance of the Palestinian people while criticizing Hamas’s political project; it can regard Israel’s setbacks or retreats in the face of Lebanese resistance as an anti-imperialist event without considering Hezbollah a left organization; it can recognize the effect of Houthi attacks in raising the cost of the American presence in the Red Sea without endorsing their religious ideology; and, faced with the threat or reality of an American or Israeli attack on Iran, it can defend Iran’s right to defend itself against foreign aggression while still regarding the Islamic Republic as a repressive, non-emancipatory state.
This is precisely the point at which anti-imperialism becomes independent of statism.
The Class Question
But why does this distinction matter?
Because imperialism is not the only force of domination in the world. Within peripheral states, too, class relations and various forms of exploitation and repression persist.
A state can resist imperialist power while repressing workers at home. A movement can fight foreign occupation while pursuing a socially conservative program. A state can resist sanctions while adopting economic policies that place the burden of crisis on subordinate classes.
The left, therefore, cannot suspend class contradiction simply because an external enemy exists.
Marxist anti-imperialism must see two fronts at once: the struggle against external domination and the struggle against exploitation and class domination at home. Either one, pursued without the other, can lead to a dead end.
If anti-imperialism is severed from class struggle, it risks becoming state nationalism or state-centered geopolitics. And if class struggle is severed from the struggle against imperialism, it risks producing a left that ultimately disregards the structure of global capitalist power altogether and searches for every contradiction solely within peripheral states.
Both paths are dangerous for the left.
Iran: Defending Society, Not Sanctifying the State
This question carries particular weight in Iran’s case.
The Iranian left cannot, on one hand, overlook the Islamic Republic’s domestic repression, and on the other, fall silent in the face of external military threats.
Defending Iran against foreign intervention should not be conflated with defending the government of the Islamic Republic. Iran, as a society and a historical territory, is not identical to the state that rules over it; the left can therefore oppose foreign military intervention while simultaneously maintaining a critical, combative stance toward the Islamic Republic’s repressive and class-based policies.
For this reason, a foreign military attack on Iran cannot be justified on the grounds that “the Islamic Republic must go.” The experiences of Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan have shown that foreign intervention does not necessarily lead to people’s liberation and can further devastate the social and economic structures of peripheral countries.
At the same time, opposing foreign intervention must not mean silencing the struggles of workers, women, national minorities, and other social groups within Iran.
The Iranian left must be able to hold both positions at once: no to imperialism and foreign war; no to domestic despotism and exploitation.
These two “no’s” are not in contradiction with one another.
Sanctions and the Venezuelan Crisis
This same complexity can be observed in Latin America as well.
Venezuela has, in recent years, been subject to extensive U.S. sanctions, and these sanctions, combined with domestic economic crisis and structural problems in the oil sector, have damaged the country’s economy. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has itself identified a combination of factors — including mismanagement, international sanctions, and economic crisis — as contributing to the decline in Venezuela’s energy output.
Defending the Venezuelan people’s right against sanctions and foreign intervention is therefore part of an anti-imperialist position.
But this defense should not amount to closing one’s eyes to the country’s economic problems, the policies of the Venezuelan government, its class relations, or its domestic political constraints.
Defending a country against imperialism is not the same as defending every policy of that country’s government.
This principle should become one of the foundations of contemporary anti-imperialism.
Two Mirror-Image Errors on the Left
Faced with the question of resistance, the contemporary left is exposed to two mirror-image errors.
The first is reducing imperialism to peripheral states — turning legitimate criticism of the Islamic Republic, Hamas, or Hezbollah into a denial of the anti-imperialist struggle itself. Here, criticism of a resistance movement, which may well be entirely warranted, collapses into a denial that resistance exists at all, and the left unwittingly reproduces the very framework that dominant powers use to justify war, sanctions, and foreign intervention.
The second error is the mirror image of the first: turning the anti-imperialist struggle into political advocacy for non-left states and movements. Here, any criticism of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or the Islamic Republic is treated as “alignment with imperialism,” and the left effectively becomes the public-relations apparatus of a state or an armed movement.
The task of the left is neither unconditional defense of resistance nor denial of its effects, but rather defense of the possibility of resistance to domination, combined with the preservation of class and critical independence from those very resistance forces. Neither error should be mistaken for principle.
Anti-Imperialism and the Question of the “Axis”
The term “Axis of Resistance” has, in recent years, been used to describe a network of states and armed forces allied with or aligned toward Iran. This network includes actors with differing objectives, structures, and degrees of independence, and should not be imagined as a single coherent organization or bloc.
Yet even if this network is understood merely as a geopolitical formation, its effect on the regional balance of power cannot be ignored.
The presence of these forces has prevented Israel and the United States from concentrating the whole of their military and political capacity on a single point. Multiple fronts have raised security and military costs and, at certain junctures, constrained the freedom of action of the great powers.
This condition can be understood as a kind of pluralization of fronts of resistance against regional hegemony.
But here too a boundary must be maintained: weakening imperialist power does not, in itself, amount to building working-class power. One hegemonic order may be weakened only for another to take its place.
From a Marxist standpoint, the ultimate question is not which state prevails in geopolitical rivalry, but whether subordinate classes and dominated social forces can use the resulting fissures to build their own independent power.
A weakened empire is an opening, not a victory.
From Campism to Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism
One of the problems of the contemporary left is being trapped between two opposing camps.
On one side stands a left that has all but removed imperialism from its analysis, reducing every world problem to “the authoritarianism of states of the Global South.”
On the other stands a left that automatically regards any state or movement opposing the United States as progressive.
Both views oversimplify reality.
The revolutionary left must preserve a third path: anti-imperialism without statism; class struggle without disregarding imperialism.
This does not mean neutrality between the oppressor and the oppressed. On the contrary, it means a more precise identification of the structure of power.
If Israel occupies Palestine, the left cannot remain neutral toward that occupation on the pretext of criticizing Hamas. If the United States threatens or bombs a country, the left cannot welcome foreign aggression on the pretext of opposing that country’s government. If economic sanctions place a society under pressure, the left cannot ignore the class effects of those sanctions.
But at the same time, the left must not allow the struggle against imperialism to become a tool for justifying domestic repression.
Conclusion: Resistance for Liberation, Not Resistance in Place of Liberation
The question facing the left in the twenty-first century is not a choice among Washington, Tel Aviv, Tehran, or any other capital in geopolitical rivalry; it is the construction of an independent politics capable of simultaneously challenging imperialist domination and preserving the class independence of subordinate forces.
The Palestinian struggle against occupation, Lebanese resistance to Israeli aggression, Yemeni resistance to foreign intervention, and Iran’s response to American and Israeli military threats each have their own distinct dimensions and contexts; yet at the geopolitical level, they can raise the cost of hegemonic power projection and constrain the freedom of action of dominant powers. The left should not deny this reality — but neither should it equate resistance with liberation.
The left must be able to recognize the defeat or retreat of an imperialist power as an anti-imperialist event without, for that reason alone, declaring the force that produced that defeat to be emancipatory or socialist.
Revolutionary anti-imperialism is neither a defense of empires nor a subordination to peripheral states; it is a politics aimed at breaking the structure of global capitalist domination and opening the possibility of independent intervention by subordinate classes in history.