Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum
April 6, 2026
The global situation is changing rapidly due to the Iran war. The imperialist camp has committed a fatal blunder, while the anti-imperialist camp is uniting even more firmly. The unity of the anti-imperialist camp and the division of the imperialist camp clearly reveal the essence of the current situation. World War 3, driven by the imperialist camp, will become their grave.
1. The Great Confrontation Between the Anti-Imperialist Camp and the Imperialist Camp Rushing Toward a “New Cold War”
Around the turn of the 20th century, capitalist society transformed from pre-monopoly capitalism into monopoly capitalism. At the center of the process through which capital becomes monopolized via accumulation and concentration lies finance capital. Imperialism is the external expression of monopoly capitalism. World War 1 was an imperialist war among imperialist states. It was through this World War 1 that the first socialist state in human history emerged. The contradictions among the imperialist powers intensified by World War 1 strengthened the two representative tendencies within monopoly capitalist society: social democracy and fascism.
These tendencies stem from differences in the way monopoly capital rules the oppressed classes. Unlike Britain and France, Germany, as a defeated power in World War 1, had to bear enormous reparations and had no colonies from which it could extract super-profits. The USA belonged to the same category as Britain and France, while Italy and Japan followed Germany’s course. World War 2 began as a war among imperialist states, but when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and the socialist Soviet Union joined hands with the imperialist USA and Britain, it was transformed into an anti-fascist war. In essence, World War 1 was an inter-imperialist war, while World War 2 was an anti-fascist war.
With the victory of the anti-fascist camp in World War 2, there began, on a global scale, a great revolutionary upsurge of anti-imperialist independence and socialist orientation, in which the socialist camp and the national liberation camp took shape. Compared to the USA, which became even wealthier and stronger through World War 2, Western European countries were devastated and weakened. Monopoly capital also reached the stage where it planted its agents in key posts of the government and determined state policy. This is called state monopoly capitalism, and it became the foundation of the domestic system of modern imperialism. Modern imperialism was then structured in a hierarchy with US imperialism at its apex, and inter-imperialist wars no longer broke out. Imperialism also shifted in its mode of ruling colonies, from the old colonialist method of placing governors to the neo-colonial method of installing proxy regimes.
At the same time, the imperialist camp declared a “Cold War” against the socialist camp, and in order to concretize this policy, it launched the Korean War in the 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. While avoiding war with the major socialist powers, the imperialist camp continuously waged war against smaller socialist states or national liberation states, thereby deepening the “Cold War.” The various contradictions experienced by the imperialist camp—including class contradictions, national contradictions, and contradictions among the imperialist states—deepened the general crisis of capitalism. Rooted in the limitless greed of monopoly capital and seeking to escape the political and economic crisis intensified by its great confrontation with the anti-imperialist camp, the imperialist camp strengthened the policies of “Cold War” and the “militarization of the economy,” while continuing to wage local wars.
At the same time, it sought to engineer divisions within the anti-imperialist camp by exploiting the Sino-Soviet dispute, and this had a certain effect. The imperialist camp was unified around US imperialism in any case, whereas the anti-imperialist camp suffered a split between its two principal axes, the Soviet Union and China, each with its own supporting forces, which placed the position of anti-imperialist independence and socialist orientation at a disadvantage. A major cause of this split was that in the Soviet Union, under the era of Khrushchev, right-opportunist tendencies grew stronger, while in China, under the era of Mao Zedong, left-opportunist tendencies grew stronger, and the two sides denounced one another and fought to seize hegemony within the camp.
The imperialist camp also encountered crisis as the “Bretton Woods system” in 1944 began to shake and the US economy ran into difficulty in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. In 1971, the Nixon administration of the USA broke the gold standard, and the crisis of capitalism deepened further. In order to escape this crisis, the USA ended the Vietnam War and established diplomatic relations with China, thereby intensifying the Sino-Soviet dispute while at the same time implementing the “petroleum standard system.” On the occasion of the Fourth West Asian War (the Middle East War), the USA guaranteed security to Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia in exchange for linking oil to the dollar, and this petroleum standard system became, since the “Jamaica system” in 1976, one of the driving forces guaranteeing dollar hegemony up to the present day.
The crisis of US imperialism deepened day by day due to the basic contradiction of capitalism—the socialization of production and the private ownership of the means of production—as well as the endless greed of finance capital, military capital, and civilian capital centered on finance capital, and the “Cold War” and local wars that emerged as a result. However, as counterrevolution temporarily triumphed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the crisis of US imperialism was for a time alleviated, a US-centered “unipolar system” was established, and the era of “neoliberalism” opened. Under imperialist NATO, Yugoslavia was broken into pieces, and more local wars such as the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the Libya War erupted in multiple and successive waves.
In the 1990s, Russia fell into the status of a colony of US and European imperialism, but this began to change in the 2000s. China, too, under the premise of maintaining the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, advanced along the line of socialism with Chinese characteristics, developing reform and opening-up policies, joining the WTO in 2001, becoming the “factory of the world,” breaking through imperialist economic blockade through the “Belt and Road Initiative,” and advancing to the stage of becoming a “G2.” This negated the “Fortaleza system” in 2014 the new globally scaled “seesaw system” strategy of Zionist capital (Zionist transnational capital), which positioned the USA and Europe as one axis and China and Russia as the other, and became an important foundation for creating a structure of confrontation between the anti-imperialist camp and the imperialist camp. Since then, the world has developed into the present confrontation structure in which the G7 and NATO of the imperialist camp face off against the BRICS and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) of the anti-imperialist camp.
The imperialist camp, after passing through the 2008 global financial crisis originating in the USA and suffering defeats in the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War, entered a new era in which US global hegemony and the “unipolar system” collapsed and a “multipolar system” opened, thereby undergoing an even more deepened general crisis of capitalism and imperialism. Under conditions in which it had become a foregone conclusion that the imperialist camp as a whole, led by US imperialism, would naturally decline if this continued, it established and promoted the strategy of a “New Cold War” under the delusion that it could slow the speed of this downward phase and win through a long war as it had in the former “Cold War era.”
In the basic strategy of the imperialist camp, the goal is to establish a “New Cold War” system, and the means and method are to mobilize the leading forces such as the United States and Western Europe, along with the auxiliary forces of their follower states, to brand the principal anti-imperialist states as a “new axis of evil,” and to push regional wars in the four main theaters of West Asia, East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central America, and through their sum, to drive to World War 3. Thereafter, imperialism envisions turning the Western Hemisphere into a fortress, expanding its colonies in the Eastern Hemisphere, and achieving final victory by taking the lead in advanced technologies including AI.
In reality, the imperialist camp succeeded in inducing and provoking the Ukraine war in February 2022 and the West Asian war centered on the Palestine war in October 2023. But its attempt in September-November and December 2024 to induce and provoke an East Asian war centered on a war in the ‘Republic of Korea (ROK, South Korea)’ failed due to the war deterrent of DPRK (North Korea), its “strategic patience,” and the heroic resistance of the people of the ‘ROK.’ Accordingly, after provoking a West Asian war centered on the Iran war in February 2026, it shifted to a method of expanding this into an East Asian war centered on Taiwan. Currently, the imperialist camp is moving from the West Asian war toward the East Asian war in accordance with its “New Cold War” strategy, and thereafter is fiercely pushing towards World War 3 with the total of four theaters as its principal war zones by expanding the Ukraine war into an Eastern European war and then expanding the battlefront further into a war in Central America.
But as history and reality show, the imperialist camp has never achieved simultaneous victory in two theaters. In recent times, it has not won a complete victory in even a single theater, whether in the Ukraine war or in the West Asian war, specifically whether in the West Asian war centered on the Palestine war or in the West Asian war centered on the Iran war. If the imperialist camp is struggling in these two theaters—the Ukraine war and the West Asian war centered on the Iran war—how can it possibly handle the East Asian war that is to follow, the Eastern European war resulting from the expansion of the Ukraine war, and even the final theater, Central America, for a total of four theaters? The imperialist camp’s four-theater plan and World War 3 plan were an overextended strategy from the outset, and they are already collapsing from the very beginning.
2. Zionist Capital’s “Greater Israel” Plan and the Deepening Contradictions Within the Imperialist Camp
One of the most important characteristics of World War 3 is that, unlike in the “Cold War era,” in the “New Cold War era” the anti-imperialist camp is united while the imperialist camp is divided. The anti-imperialist camp is steadily strengthening its unity not only within its four main leading forces—which include DPRK, China, Russia, the strongest nuclear missile powers, and Iran, a missile power—but also with the other anti-imperialist forces that serve as auxiliary forces. Underlying this is the common cause of struggling against the aggression and plunder of the imperialist camp in accordance with the irreversible trend of the times towards anti-imperialist independence. In contrast, the imperialist camp is increasingly defined by deepening contradictions between its two main axes—U.S. imperialism and Western European imperialism—and between the “chauvinists” and the “globalists.” Today, the conflict between the USA and Western Europe is heading toward a US withdrawal from NATO and the collapse of the “Atlantic alliance,” while within the USA, conflicts between chauvinists and globalists, and between the “anti-deeps state” and the “deep state,” are escalating toward civil war.
At present, Zionist capital is structured around magnate families such as JPMorgan and Rockefeller, centered on the Rothschilds, alongside giant asset-management firms such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which stand in a root-and-branch relationship—one that is carefully concealed so that the true nature of their interconnections does not become apparent. These ultra-large asset-management firms, now the byword for transnational finance capital, are the real rulers in the USA, the largest shareholders of both civilian capital and military capital, controlling about 90% of the S&P 500. This vast, organically intertwined, Zionist financial group, has directly or indirectly maintained control through mutual checks and balances by placing the Democrats and Republicans, the globalists centered on the right wing of social democracy, and the chauvinists centered on the conservative camp, on both sides of a seesaw system. The representative sponsors of both the Democratic and Republican parties—Bloomberg of Bloomberg and Schwarzman of Blackstone—are all Zionist capitalists, and the funds of AIPAC, which is involved with both the Democratic and Republican parties, come mainly from Zionist capitalists. It is by no means accidental that whoever comes to power in the US government, whether Democrat or Republican, consistently implements pro-Israel and pro-Zionist policies.
Zionist financial capital such as BlackRock has effectively merged with the Israeli government and is currently pushing, under the “Greater Israel” plan, three major projects: the Levant gas zone, the Ben Gurion Canal, and IMEC. To this end, it regards the elimination of Palestinian Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Syrian Assad regime, Yemen’s Ansar Allah, and the Iranian regime as essential, and it is carrying out wars against them. In that way, the Assad regime has collapsed, and Hamas and Hezbollah have suffered substantial blows. It is not difficult to understand why the Israeli Zionist Netanyahu, immediately after US Director of National Intelligence Gabbard’s March 18 congressional testimony, attacked South Pars, Iran’s largest gas field, just one day later, thereby obstructing the flow toward an end to the war. By April 6, barely over a month after the outbreak of the war, Israel had bombed Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant as many as five times. It is also clear why on March 30 Netanyahu apparently said at a press conference that one should not use the Strait of Hormuz and should instead seek an alternative route. The reality in which oil and gas fields in the Persian Gulf are destroyed, nuclear plants are contaminated by radiation through their destruction, and the Strait of Hormuz is continuously blockaded naturally gives great momentum to the three major projects being pursued by Zionist capital and Israel. In wartime, military capital makes money; during reconstruction, civilian capital makes money; and the finance capital that lent money to both makes money at all times. During the Iran war, they make money by selling weapons and profiting from high oil prices, and after the Iran war, they make money through the “three major Greater Israel projects.” Both the West Asian war centered on the Palestine war in 2023 and the West Asian war centered on the Iran war in 2026 are West Asian regional wars carried out under a strategic plan by giant transnational monopoly capital, including Zionist capital, to reorganize West Asia around Israel.
Having failed to transition from the Bretton Woods system in 1944 to the Fortaleza system in 2014, the imperialist camp, centered on Zionist capital, is now pushing a transition from the Jamaica system of 1976 to the as-yet unnamed so-called “Haifa system” of 2026. They are moving under a new plan to maintain US dollar hegemony by shifting from the petroleum standard system, which links the oil of Saudi Arabia and others to the dollar, to a “gas standard system,” which links the gas of Israel and others to the dollar, adding Ben Gurion Canal toll revenues and IMEC logistics costs, and using digital dollars rather than physical cash dollars. After destroying the strategic value of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz—key nodes in China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”—they aim to reroute connectivity between India and Europe through IMEC, via Saudi Arabia and Israel, thereby isolating China within BRICS and drawing India into their orbit.
That is why the Abraham Accords, meaning diplomatic normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, were necessary. And it was precisely for this reason that on October 7, 2023, Hamas made the sacrificial decision that could not tolerate this. This is also one of the reasons why, under the common cause of anti-imperialism, Iran and China could not but support Hamas. There is likely another reason why Iran, when striking major Israeli and US military positions in retaliation for Israel’s attack on Iran, does not overlook Haifa. The same is true of why Iran is symmetrically threatening retaliatory strikes, saying that if Israel and the USA destroy the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran also will destroy Israel’s Dimona nuclear power plant. If Dimona is destroyed, 50% of Israel would be contaminated by nuclear radiation, industrial infrastructure would be destroyed, skilled technical personnel would flee, and the three major projects would become impossible.
3. The Political and Economic Crisis of the Trump Government Further Intensified by the Iran War
Trump won the US presidential election under the banners of “America First” and “MAGA (Make America Great Again).” It is widely known that the Trump forces have consistently taken an anti-deep state position since their first term in power. The problem is that while the Trump forces are anti-deep state, they are also pro-Zionist. The contradictory stance of being anti-deep state in politics and pro-Zionist in economics may appear somewhat like the coexistence in China of the Communist Party’s rule in politics and incorporation into capitalist market order in economics. But as is widely known, the contradiction between the two in the USA is incomparably more severe than the political-economic contradiction seen in China, and has now advanced to the stage of civil war.
For a long time, Zionist capital which is centered on finance capital, has controlled both civilian capital and military capital, and has controlled both sides of the seesaw system through its political proxy bodies, the Democratic and Republican parties. Although the Trump forces, after seizing the Republican Party under the banner of anti-deep-state, removed the “neocons” and made it into the “Trump Party,” Zionist capital immediately planted “new neocons” such as Rubio into the Republican Party and has increased its influence. The Trump forces received $100 million in campaign support from the Zionist capitalist Adelson, and for that reason could not but support Israel’s Zionist policy. The fact that Zionist finance capital has controlled both civilian capital and military capital also means that it has exercised enormous influence not only over the Democratic Party but over the Republican Party as well, through government officials, various foundations, legacy media, and business magnates.
Like Putin, who after taking power strengthened the siloviki and subdued the oligarchs, Trump too may be optimistic that the anti-deep state forces can overpower Zionist capital. But as the reality of today’s Iran war shows, the Trump forces, the US chauvinists, are being fiercely condemned as fascist war maniacs who surpass the globalists. The reality in which the Trump forces are denounced for having become “another deep state” while claiming to oppose the deeps once again makes one acutely feel the cunning strategy and overwhelming power of Zionist capital.
This is also revealed in the fact that the Trump government is experiencing the greatest political and economic crisis in US history. The Trump government’s “tariff war” not only weakens the power of dollar hegemony but has also caused prices to soar, provoking strong dissatisfaction among voters. To make matters worse, even an unlawful ruling by the Supreme Court has been added, making the situation still more complicated and chaotic. Moreover, while immigrants were being persecuted and deported and the Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife Cilia were being kidnapped, the Minneapolis incidents broke out in succession, and public sentiment among Latinos and others completely turned away. These are the direct reasons the ruling Republican Party has suffered crushing defeats in elections over the past year. On top of this, the “Epstein files” affair erupted, and not only Trump but even Melania came under scrutiny, placing the Trump forces in an impossible situation on all sides. As is widely known, Epstein was deeply connected to Israel’s Mossad, and Mossad, the spearhead of Zionism, has exerted influence over US politics by holding extensive compromising information, including the Epstein files. It is a reasonable inference that, like in the film “Wag the Dog,” the Trump government waged the Iran war with the intention of covering over all these problems with the issue of war.
But a “war for Israel, by Israel and the USA” cannot possibly accord with the war-related position that the Trump forces, including MAGA, have long claimed. Amid a storm of domestic and international criticism such as Carlson’s statement that it was an “absolutely disgusting and evil decision,” the initial support rate for the Iran war is coming out as the lowest in US history. A war support rate that is only half the normal level goes hand in hand with the fact that support for the Trump government has now fallen to the low 30 percent range.
As an effect of the Iran war, especially due to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, world oil prices have soared, and as a result the aftereffects of exchange-rate turmoil and soaring prices, led by the ‘ROK,’ are truly severe. For the people in the USA, whose daily lives are based on automobile travel, oil prices are regarded as a tax, and thus they are determined to thoroughly punish the Trump government in every election. If things continue like this, a crushing Republican defeat in the November midterm elections is obvious. Republican lawmakers have begun strongly pressuring Trump, saying that if the current situation in which the party controls both the House and Senate is reversed, it will immediately mean “lame duck.”
The reasons why the Trump government seeks to bring the Iran war to an early end are clear. For whatever reason, the Iran war, once begun, must never be allowed to become protracted like the Iraq War or the Afghanistan War, bringing astronomical fiscal losses and massive human casualties. Moreover, Iran is a missile and drone power beyond comparison with Iraq or Afghanistan, and its terrain is a natural fortress surrounded by mountains. The fact that Iran can retaliate not only against US military bases and the Israeli mainland but also against pro-US Arab states, and can blockade the Strait of Hormuz, is the decisive difference from other wars that severely torments the USA. Zionist capital and Zionist Israel seek the strategic gains that can be obtained from the destruction of the order surrounding Iran, the Persian Gulf, and the Strait of Hormuz, but the Trump government must bear the full political and economic responsibility for all the results arising from the consequences of the Iran war. The differences of opinions regarding the end of the war between the Trump government and Zionist capital and Zionist Israel will only continue to widen.
It appears that the Trump forces are currently considering such options as unilaterally ending the war within several weeks under present conditions, making a big deal with China within several months, or, if an East Asian war breaks out, declaring a decisive national state of emergency and completely overpowering the deep state. A “big deal” is possible in which, in exchange for tacitly allowing China’s annexation of Taiwan—China’s “the core of its core interests” and the Chinese Communist Party’s “century-long aspiration”—China would compensate Iran in place of the USA and restore Iran’s damaged facilities. Now, Iran is showing a determination not to lift the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz until the question of compensation is resolved. However, Zionist capital and Zionist Israel will obstruct and defy this end-of-war option whenever the opportunity arises, because Zionist capital is not stopping at the Iran war but is aiming at the Taiwan war beyond it.
The stockpiles of offensive and interceptor missiles of the USA and Israel are rapidly shrinking. As of the end of March, the USA had expended about one-third of its Tomahawks and SM-3s, so that if an East Asian war such as a Taiwan war breaks out, it will face considerable difficulties. If matters are already in this state within one month, then the longer the Iran war drags on, the more serious a problem the conventional military power of the USA will face. As is well known, the US can never use nuclear weapons against China and DPRK, which are nuclear missile powers. Given MAD (mutually assured destruction), even in an East Asian war it can only be a confrontation of conventional forces in the end, and if so many weapons are consumed in the Iran war following the Ukraine war, then the outcome of a Taiwan war and a ‘ROK’ war is clear. There are many reasons, on various levels, why the Trump government must bring about an early end to the war.
In conclusion, the Iran war is accelerating the political and economic crisis of the Trump government. In consideration of the midterm elections in November and their primaries, the Trump forces must produce decisive achievements by July 4, the 250th anniversary of independence, in order to recover voter support. Concretely, they must end the Iran war, revive the economy, and overpower the deep state forces. The fact that, following the April 2 presidential address, the Trump forces have begun an all-out anti-deep-state struggle can be read as a sign that the time is not far off when they will have to arrive at a conclusion regarding the contradictory position between anti-deep-state and pro-Zionists. If the Trump forces abandon the anti-deep-state position, they will be branded as “another deep state,” break with MAGA, and disintegrate and disappear; if they reject the pro-Zionist position, then a fatal civil war between chauvinists and globalists within the USA will become unavoidable. Whichever path is taken, US politics will enter the eye of the storm and, together with the intensification of World War 3, will accelerate the downfall of US imperialism.
The crisis of the imperialist camp is being further deepened by the Iran war. The Iran war is strengthening the unity of the anti-imperialist camp and accelerating the division of the imperialist camp. At the basis of every victory of the anti-imperialist camp lies a scientific and revolutionary conviction centered on the people, for the people, and by the people. As history and reality have proven, the imperialist camp cannot win on any battlefield. The victory of the anti-imperialist camp in World War 3 is certain.
