“REGIME CHANGE AT HOME!”

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The title paraphrases the concluding words of Jane Fonda, actress and veteran anti-war campaigner, speaking yesterday1 at a downtown Los Angeles rally against the USA’s current war against Iran, in reference to current US President Trump’s regime.2

It is slogan the oppressed and exploited around the world might well adopt for ourselves, though Fonda may have meant only the replacement of Trump with a milder representative of US Monopoly Capitalism.

Though a long-time campaigner against US Wars, it is unlikely that Fonda was advocating the overthrow of the capitalist-imperialist system currently in power in most of the states around the world. But we might well invest that meaning in the call amongst ourselves.

History shows us that capitalism exploits our labour power and the fruits of our toil, even as it evolves into monopoly capitalism, squeezing hundreds of its weaker competitors out of business before going to war with other monopoly capitalists and states that resist being dominated.

OUR REGIME DRAGGING US INTO WAR

This is the kind of system in power in Ireland, though our ruling class is, unlike the rest of the European states, a client state. Typically, client states have one master – ours has three: British colonial-imperialism; US imperialism; EU imperialism.

The dominant states of British imperialism and EU imperialism, viz. the UK, France and Germany, issued a joint statement at the outbreak of this war. Not to condemn the US and Israel assassinations and other bombing attacks on a non-aggressing country but instead, the victim of aggression!3

The same states the leaders of which justified Israel genocide against those it oppresed as Israel’s “right to self-defence”, failed to accord the right of the Iranian people to defend themselves through the action of their state against unprovoked Zionist and imperialist attack.

These are the powers to which the Irish ruling neo-colonial class wants Ireland subsumed, to join our exploiters and colonial occupiers, states with a long history of colonial occupation and genocide, including ours, against people who do not threaten us and have never done us any harm.

It is their alliance into which our neo-colonial rulers are attempting to drag us, by lies and deceit and by scaremongering about danger from other states that have never threatened us.

Cartoon by Paul Cobaugh

WHAT THIS WAR AGAINST IRAN IS ABOUT

There must be very few people on this Earth who believe that the aggression against Iran is about restricting the state from developing nuclear weapons. The religious leader of Iran, Khamenei (assassinated by the USA), has long opposed the development of weapons of mass destruction.4

In fact, according to the Omani intermediary at the US-Iran talks on nuclear energy, Iran volunteered not to amass enriched nuclear material, to convert its stock of highly-enriched uranium to fuel, putting it beyond any possible use of weaponisation and submitting to inspections.5

In addition, the intelligence services of the USA and the monitoring by the IAEA6 have never found any evidence of such development.7 But in any cases, who are the USA and Israel, both states with nuclear weapons, to dictate to anyone else what weapons they may or may not have?

The USA is actually the only state in the world that has used atomic weapons against people, not once but twice: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with an estimated death toll through initial explosion of up to 140,000,8 with more dying of subsequent radiation.

Iran signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreed to inspections by the IAEA, whereas Israel refused to sign it or agree to inspections (or indeed to even admit to the well-known fact it has nuclear weapons, the only state in West Asia to possess such).

France and the UK, endorsing the current USA and Israeli war, also have nuclear weapons and the only reason Germany does not have one of its own (though many of the US on its territory) is that its European partners can’t trust it after two wars against them within only four decades.

Israel, the most warlike and expansionist state in the region, also demanded that Iran scrap its ballistic missiles and end its support for resistance organisations. Yet Israel and the USA support subversive organisations around the world, wherever they find their wishes obstructed.

More than that, the resistance organisations are fighting for the freedom of their people and, where they have one, the sovereignty of their state, whereas the terrorist organisations supported by the US and Israel seek fragmentation,9 collapse of independence and sovereign national resistance.

There is too a longer-term purpose in the attack on Iran, as on Venezuela, also recently attacked by the USA, and on Russia, currently in a war as a result of NATO encirclement Eastern Europe. All three are suppliers of oil and gas to China, an opposite poll to the bloc dominated by the USA.

As to Iran’s ballistic missiles, the fate of Syria once the Assad regime was overthrown – and Lebanon currently — illustrates starkly what happens to West Asian states that do not possess strong weapon defences against Israel (and its backer, the USA).

SOLIDARITY AND RESISTANCE

In the face of such naked aggression against a state merely for insisting on its sovereignty, our clearest path is that of solidarity. But also against our own state enlisting us in imperialist wars, making us accomplices and our children burnt offerings to place on the pyres of those wars.

Cartoon by D.Breatnach

Initially that path involves resistance to neo-colonial propaganda and measures of the State to remove the triple-lock from State legislation. But more, we need to remove the RAF from our skies, US military from our airports, UK Navy from our seas and NATO from the Six Counties.

The US and Israel have shown us the future cost of neglecting to undertake these measures. The colonial and gombeen neo-colonial system in Ireland needs to be overthrown. It is over time for REGIME CHANGE HERE!

End.

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FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & OTHER RELEVANT MATERIAL

Jane Fonda speech: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DVUoBZzjwG_/ and https://www.facebook.com/thejamiatimes/videos/jane-fonda-joins-los-angeles-protest-against-war-on-iran/857532880656063/

https://asiatimes.com/2026/02/before-trump-bombing-oman-fm-called-us-iran-deal-within-reach/

Solidarity call from Action for Palestine Ireland: https://www.instagram.com/p/DVUOeeGjNit/?igsh=Zm8zMGV5MTQ1M21r

128 February 2026

2https://www.instagram.com/reels/DVUoBZzjwG_/ and https://www.facebook.com/thejamiatimes/videos/jane-fonda-joins-los-angeles-protest-against-war-on-iran/857532880656063/

3https://www.deutschland.de/en/news/merz-macron-and-starmer-condemn-iranian-counterattacks

4His removal may strengthen the hand of any Iranians who wish their state to develop nuclear weapons.

5https://asiatimes.com/2026/02/before-trump-bombing-oman-fm-called-us-iran-deal-within-reach/

6The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 as an autonomous organization within the United Nations system;[4][5] though governed by its own founding treaty, the organization reports to both the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations, and is headquartered at the UN Office at Vienna, Austria. (Wikipedia)

7https://www.aljazeera.com/video/talk-to-al-jazeera/2025/6/19/iaea-chief-no-evidence-iran-is-building-a-nuclear-weapon

8https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/

9As has been done to Syria and as Israel has called for in Iran.

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