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Iran opens civil war in Trump camp | Cuba crisis — AGAINST THE STREAM

Against The Stream · 2026-03-19

Core Argument

The central thesis of this episode is that the US-Israeli war on Iran has entered a phase of strategic failure, producing a political crisis within the Trump administration and the broader MAGA coalition, while simultaneously reconstituting the Iranian regime on a nationalist basis rather than weakening it. The hosts argue that Trump is trapped: he cannot admit defeat without shattering his political position, but escalation only deepens the contradictions. The war is not a demonstration of American strength but of imperialist overreach and declining US credibility.

A secondary but connected argument concerns Cuba: the Trump administration's oil blockade is an attempt to force capitalist restoration through asphyxiation, and the Cuban leadership's long-standing reliance on geopolitical manoeuvring rather than world revolution has left it isolated and vulnerable. The episode insists that the fate of the Cuban revolution was always contingent on the spread of socialist revolution internationally — and that this opportunity was squandered.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on several Marxist concepts without deploying them as jargon:

  1. Imperialism as a system of inter-imperialist rivalry: The war is not explained simply by Trump's psychology or Netanyahu's machinations, but by the structural logic of capitalism in its imperialist phase. Commerce cannot resolve the struggle for markets, spheres of influence, and strategic resources — trade wars become real wars. This is a classical Leninist position on imperialism.

  2. The state as instrument of capital: The hosts argue that the US state serves the interests of multinational capital, not ordinary working people. Trump's promise to "clear the swamp" was always illusory because the state's function is to manage the interests of the ruling class. The war reveals this contradiction in sharp form.

  3. Bonapartism and political crisis: Trump is presented as a figure trapped by his own coalition — a "man stuck in quicksand" whose escalating gambles reflect a loss of strategic control. This resonates with the Marxist analysis of Bonapartism as a form of rule that emerges when no class fraction can impose its will decisively, and the executive attempts to stand above society while being pulled in contradictory directions.

  4. The impossibility of socialism in one country — especially a small island: The Cuba section is explicitly grounded in the Trotskyist tradition. The hosts argue that the Cuban revolution's survival was always conditional on the spread of revolution internationally, and that the leadership's turn to a "multipolar world" strategy — leaning on Russia and China — was a substitute for revolutionary internationalism that has now reached its limits.

  5. Class differentiation within populist movements: The MAGA movement is analysed not as a monolith but as a "mosaic of class interests" — containing fractions of big capital, middle-class layers, and working-class elements whose objective interests diverge. This is a class analysis of a political phenomenon, not a moral condemnation.

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode is set in a very specific conjuncture — March 2026 — and is rich with concrete detail:

  • Oil at $114/barrel and gas prices up 30%, with European gas up 60% before the latest escalation.
  • Strait of Hormuz effectively controlled by Iran, with massive disruption to global supply chains: 20% of world natural gas production, 45% of helium, 24% of aluminium, 22% of seaborne urea (fertiliser) passing through it.
  • Food price shocks looming: fertiliser shortages hitting the April planting season in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India.
  • Trump's approval rating at 40%; a sea change in US public opinion on Israel-Palestine (41% sympathise with Palestinians, 36% with Israelis).
  • High-level defections: Joe Kent's resignation as head of counterterrorism, Tulsi Gabbard's carefully worded distancing statement, leaks from British intelligence (Jonathan Powell) revealing that Iran had offered to stop enrichment entirely before the war.
  • Internal sabotage: The USS Gerald Ford's deployment plagued by fires and plumbing failures, with the Navy's own investigation not ruling out sabotage by exhausted sailors.
  • Cuba: No oil shipments since 9 January 2026; 20-hour electricity blackouts; dialysis patients living in hospitals; universities closed; newspapers reduced to weekly publication. The regime has already conceded direct investment rights to Cuban-Americans.

The conjuncture is one where the costs of imperialist war are being felt directly by working people in the imperialist heartlands, and where the political coalition that launched the war is fracturing under the pressure.

Where the Argument Continues

The episode deliberately leaves several threads open:

  • The internal dynamics of the MAGA coalition: The hosts note that class differentiation within MAGA will produce "monumental class struggles in the future" but do not develop this systematically. This connects to broader RCI analyses of Trumpism as a contradictory formation, and to episodes of Against the Stream and Spectre of Communism that examine the class basis of right-wing populism.

  • The reconstitution of the Iranian regime: The shift from religious to nationalist legitimation, the death of Khamenei, and the rise of a younger, harder leadership are noted but not fully theorised. The suggestion that Iran will now pursue nuclear weapons as a deterrent is left as speculation. This thread connects to the RCI's broader analysis of state forms in the Middle East.

  • Cuba's trajectory: The hosts argue that the leadership's concessions are accelerating capitalist restoration, but the outcome is not predetermined. The question of whether resistance can be rebuilt on a revolutionary basis is left open. The episode references earlier RCI articles from 15 years ago — this is a long-standing analytical thread.

  • The Venezuela comparison: The hosts promise a follow-up show on Venezuela, noting that the "surgical operation" there is not stable.

Connections

Within the RCI corpus: - Earlier Against the Stream episodes on the Venezuela operation and the 12-day Iran war (June 2025). - Spectre of Communism episodes on the class character of Trumpism and the limits of "multipolar world" strategy. - RCI articles from the 2010s analysing the Cuban leadership's turn to market reforms and the failure to promote world revolution.

Broader Marxist texts: - Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism — the theoretical foundation for the analysis of inter-imperialist rivalry. - Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed — on the impossibility of socialism in one country and the degeneration of revolutionary states under isolation. - Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany — on Bonapartism and the crisis of bourgeois rule. - Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte — on the executive power appearing to stand above classes while serving capital.

Thinkers to read alongside: - Any Marxist analysis of the Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic's class character. - Analyses of the Cuban revolution's trajectory from a Trotskyist perspective — the RCI's own archive is the most direct reference.

Key Quotes

  1. "Trump looks like a man stuck in quicksand. He's dug himself so deep that admitting defeat now will shatter him one way or the other."

  2. "This war is not just not weakening the regime — it's strengthening the regime. It's allowing it to reconstitute itself on a nationalist basis."

  3. "The fate of the Cuban revolution will be decided on the arena of the world class struggle. You cannot have a socialist revolution in one country, and even less in a small island 90 miles away from the United States."

  4. "The MAGA movement is a coalition of opposing class interests. It's a mosaic of class interests. And the only way working people can actually be free is to stand on an independent working class basis."

  5. "The idea of a multipolar world is no way forward at all. It's a sidestep. What was needed was a fight against capitalism of all the regimes of capitalism in Latin America, which was within reach."