22:40
The missiles struck on February 28, 2026. Then came the war. ["The US and Israel have launched an unprovoked attack on Iran"] ["Unprecedented joint attack on Iran"] ["A massive and ongoing combat operation"] Israel and the U.S. unleashed a brutal and, despite official claims to the contrary, indiscriminate air assault on the people of Iran over the next few months. The first day set the tone: a missile strikes the all-girls primary school in southern Iran, killing 168 people. ["The first strikes of the US-Israeli attack on Iran hit a girl's school in Minab in southern Iran"]
Bombs fall, thousands die. Sadly, this violent incursion isn't an isolated event. Just a month before this war began, the Trump regime invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president in the dark of night. This is imperialism. But in the age of Trump, in the age of fossil fascism, are these violent escapades just the opening salvo? The Iran war might just be the beginning, because as long as the United States perceives itself as the global hegemon, and as long as fossil fuels remain the primary lubricant for the engines of capitalism and military power, the U.S. will continue to burn and plunder.
[Clip] Our Changing Climate's finances aren't looking amazing. So, I want to make quick ask for your support as I transition this chanel to become a viewer-supported endeavour. If you don't have the financial means right now, no worries, click ahead to this timecode to watch the rest of the video. But if you do have the means, I'll give it to you straight. As of this month, I've chosen to forgo most sponsorships and my ad revenue for YouTube is declining pretty rapidly. The channel is on a financial downtrend. Nothing dramatic will happen to the channel just yet, but up until now, the majority of the channel's revenue,
some 2/3rds comes from in-video sponsorships and YouTube ad revenue. And those have pretty much disappeared, and as I dive into more controversial and leftist topics like this one, the threat of demonetization only makes things worse. This is where you come in. The last third of my revenue has come from the backbone of this channel, the Our Changing Climate Patreon supporters. Over 750 of ya'll pledge to back OCC month in and month out, and that support is the sole reason I'm able to take big risks like making this three-part series on the Earth Liberation Front. Sadly,
Patreon support hasn't been enough to sustain this channel. To pull back the curtain a bit, it is just me, Charlie, working to bring you all this ecosocialist content for free every month. This series alone took six months of work, and I did that work with no prospect of getting paid or even the video doing well. I just want to put out high-quality and engaging stories that examine the climate crisis, capitalist destruction, and what we can do about it. And I want the videos that I make to be free and accessible to everyone. Unfortunately, though,
I have to pay my rent, healthcare costs, and the remarkably extreme prices of 3d models and assets. Looking towards the future, I'm hoping to continue making big, high-quality series like this one, but if I'm not able to make the finances work, I might need to reassess. So, this year I'm want to double down on Patreon, and make this channel entirely viewer supported. So, if you have the means to keep this channel afloat, literally just a quarter of the cost of one movie ticket, I humbly ask that you support OCC on Patreon. And, I want to make becoming a channel supporter
a mutually beneficial relationship. So, when you become a member on Patreon, you get access to all of my videos, including the next episode in this series, one month early and ad-free. We also have lovely little Discord community for talking climate and leftist politics, and there's also a trove of bonus videos and extended content as well. If something else might entice you to become a supporter of Our Changing Climate, please do let me know. If you're still here, thanks for watching, and if you become a Patreon supporter to keep these videos high-quality and free for all,
you have my endless gratitude. You are truly amazing. Anyways back to the video. The Spiral of Contradictions The Iran war didn't just emerge out of nowhere. It is also not just the result of Trump's idiocy or rogue whims, although those certainly do factor into the timing. This new violent conflagration in West Asia has deep roots in the past. Indeed, the history of Iran is one of spiralling contradictions and escalating tensions. A history wrapped up in play and counterplay between Iran and the imperialist reach of the United States.
Indeed, from the 1950s onward, the development of Iran cannot be understood without the U.S. The history that brings us to where we are today starts long before 1953, but 1953 gives us enough context to understand the current situation. And it starts with a coup. [Quick succession of photos] On August 19th, 1953, ex-Iranian general, Fazlollah Zahedi, with the aid of the CIA and MI6 ripped the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh from power. [Shortly after the war, the CIA began to plan his overthrow, teaming up with MI6] By 1953, Mosaddegh had gotten unruly. With the parliament's support, he took back and
nationalized British-controlled oil reserves in 1951, and for British and U.S. oil corporations, thow could not stand. So, the two clandestine wings of the British and American empire took down Mosaddegh and installed their own puppet dictator more amenable to the multinational corporations from the Imperial core siphoning oil from their soil. That dictator's name was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. For 26 years, the Shah ruled under the auspices of the United States, essentially acting as a puppet dictator for the Western superpower in the area.
Importantly, in 1954, the Shah signed a consortium agreement with the United States and England allowing 5 U.S. oil companies a 40% share in oil, while Royal Dutch Shell and BP would take 20%, leaving just 40% to Iran. A deal that would last until 1979, and would allow Western oil multinationals to get rich off Iranian oil. But as the years dragged into 1978, the people of Iran grew restless and angry. The imperialist meddling could not stand. In 1978, over ten thousand seminary students and residents marched en masse to the homes of religious leaders, urging them to join the fight against the Shah- who they saw as unjust, imperialist puppet regime. But the firm hand of the Shah couldn't countenance
this dissent. The government deployed armed forces and shot live rounds into the crowd, killing many. Estimates put the death toll that day anywhere from 5 to 300. Regardless of the exact number of deaths, this was a spark that would ignite an inferno. By 1979, 10% of Iran flocked towards an uprising against the Shah that coalesced around Islamic cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. With this new, and decidedly anti-American, Islamic Republic in power, a new era of tension would stretch on in the Middle East. One that saw the U.S. and Israel, which Nixon's secretary of state called a "the largest American
aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk," work to contain and pry open this new threat to the stability of markets. Specifically, oil markets. This took the form of Reagan sending arms to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, the heightening of sanctions under the Bushes, Clinton, Obama, and Trump administrations, border skirmishes and military exploits like the 12-day war in 2025 and the assassination of Iranian major general Soleimanii. Finally, the pressure from these contradictions grew too intense, and the gasket blew on February 28, 2026.
[Play clip of war explosion] But of course, this brief history of spiralling contradictions that have now led to outright war, isn't floating in a void. The Iran war is materially grounded in resources, in finance, in profit, in labor, in the logic of capitalism. And in the 21st century, nothing is more materially important to the smooth flow of capital accumulation, to the undying acquisition of profits, to financial markets, than oil. Iran, Venezuela, and so many of the United States' other imperialist exploits are grounded in the fundamental nature of our fossil capitalist economy: oil is king. Oil, and more broadly,
fossil fuels, are what make our capitalist economy tick. Fossil fuels allow capitalists to bring production to where the work is cheapest, and enables them to exploit their labor as long as needed. In short, as Andreas Malm describes in Fossil Capital, fossil fuels give the owners of production flexibility in time and space to maximally exploit workers and ultimately achieve maximal profits. Not only that, but oil is crucial for military superiority. All the war machines that the U.S. spends billions on each year are useless without a steady flow of oil to
turn them on and keep them running, and all that fossil fuel use means that if the U.S. military were a country it would rank 47th in terms of emissions. Ahead of countries like Sweden. In our current global order, the core hub of the capitalist exploitation machine, through which the tendrils of multinationals stretch their imperialist arms across the globe, is the United States. In short, the United States' supremacy, both economically, and militarily is reliant on a stable flow of fossil fuels, especially oil. As one professor of political science puts it:
[Oil has continued to play a role in American foreign and military policy because the United States has feared that political disruptions in Middle East-internal instability, the threat of extremist fundamentalist Muslim control in the Middle East, if that came about-could pose a threat to American oil supplies that especially would hurt our prosperity.] This desire for stability can be seen with this chart. When we look at this graph, the United States by no means holds the majority of oil reserves. Indeed, the countries on this chart are overwhelming ones that U.S. deems "enemies of the state." And part of that has
to do with the slow decline of easily available oil in the United States. Starting in the 1960s, as the United States leaned more heavily on fossil fuels for every aspect of our economy, oil production increased, but as more and more oil flowed out of U.S. soil, fossil fuel companies had to dig deeper and use technologies like advanced oil recovery to get more product. Essentially, the days of oil gushing up from wells were over in the United States, and it became more costly to wring oil out of the likes of shale fields and deepwater rigs. It seems as if the
U.S. has reached the moment of peak "easy oil" and now we're scraping at domestic wells with techniques like advanced oil recovery, which uses carbon dioxide pumped into wells to eke out the last drops of oil. And the U.S. has gotten very good at wringing out those last drops. Over the last two decades, it increased its oil exports substantially to the point where the U.S. was exporting more oil than it imported in 2020. The first time it had done that since 1949. But again, this wasn't an easy process, and the eyes of multinationals like Exxon wandered outward
across the Atlantic, because out there, there was oil. And not just any oil. Easy to pump oil. From Nigeria to Iraq, U.S. multinationals have pried open foreign markets to siphon the lush reserves into their coffers. Iran contains more than 11% of the world's proven oil reserves. Venezuela, notably, is home to the largest proven oil reserves in the world. This is telling. But as we will soon see, "its oil" is a vague oversimplification of the imperialist dynamics playing out in West Asia right now.
Regardless of whether peak oil or peak "easy" oil has or will happen, those inside the U.S. government feel it is happening. Back in 2007, "a seventy-five-page report…argued that almost all studies had shown that a world oil peak would occur sometime before 2040." And its very clear that Trump's interest in both of the U.S.'s most recent violent attacks is to prying open resources for American markets: for Venezuela: [play clip] and for Iran he made it clear [play clip]. American Oil Imperialism: Thus, we see the many conditions that have led to this point, with oil imperialism at its fore.
A confluence of tensions that have built up over the last 50 years. Iran is the way it is because it's grown in opposition to the Israeli and U.S. oil militarism in West Asia. But there is also another factor that often gets overshadowed in the face of this history. Fascism needs war. As the remarkably prescient Marxist writer Henri Barbusse, explained in 1935, [Fascism is not and never will be anything but a veneer, and the only really imaginative or original things that Fascists have ever done have been to decide upon the color of their
shirts and to persuade the people that one can live on smoke…What can be the outcome of it all? Only war. And once more we shall have snout-like gas-masks, train-loads of soldiers- hearses full of living men-masses of people rushing headlong to get themselves killed…]. The reality is that Trump, a fossil fascist, has no great economic plan to help everyday working people, he has no plan to "Make America Great Again". [clip] And because Trump is unable to field any economic plan, he instead turns towards military conquest and the scapegoating
of the racialized outsider. A tried-and-true fascist tactic of pointing towards the enemy at the gates as an imminent threat to make people ignore the destruction happening from within. [Play clip of Trump] The only way fascists can produce the outcomes they want is to go to war. That's what happened with Hitler's invasion of Poland, Mussolini's attack on Ethiopia, and Japan's capture of Manchuria. And Trump confirmed this bloody economic strategy in an Easter luncheon. He claimed, ["it's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare-all these individual things. We have to take care of one thing:
military protection."] He then proposed a 44% increase in the military budget to $1.5 trillion built on the back of cutting education, health, and housing programs by $73 billion. Trump, who is soaked in the dollars of multinational oil companies, is a fossil fascist war hawk, and there has been no larger target for him than Iran. [If I had my choice, what would I do? Take the oil, because it's there for the taking and there's not a thing they can do about it]
A country whose control would not just mean control of a significant amount of rich oil reserves but "stabilization" of the region for its own material reasons, and importantly, for Israel's settler-colonial expansion desires. Even as far back as a 1988 interview with The Guardian, Trump claimed that if he ever became president, he would be "harsh on Iran," explaining that he would go after Iran's biggest oil depot on Kharg Island: "I'd do a number on Kharg Island. I'd go in and take it… It'd be good for the world to take them on." And yet this war seems to be a new frontier for the United States. It's revealing cracks in the
foundation of a country that has seen itself at the center of the imperial core since World War 2. As European countries shy away from supporting the U.S. and as China aids countries that are suffering ramifications of this war, the United States loses its credibility as a global hegemon, as an economic power, and as a moral arbiter. But this doesn't necessarily mean the U.S. quiet fall. In fact, it could mean the exact opposite… The Global Trade Hub: As the U.S. war with Iran drags on, it reveals the power and necessity of Iran and the crucial trade corridor that is the Strait of Hormuz. Because Iran and more broadly West Asia, over recent years,
isn't just a country of oil. It's diversified its export portfolio to encompass a host of oil-derived chemicals like fertilizer and helium that are now foundational to global supply chains stretching from food production to semiconductor factories. [the Gulf oil companies have really uh diversified down the value chain. They're no longer simply exporters of crude oil. They are manufacturers of uh basic chemicals. they are manufacturers of basic uh fertilizers. This is really a crucial shift in the nature of these states and their integration into the global economy. About a third of the world's uh fertilizer exports come from uh the Gulf] Additionally, a lot of the oil coming out of Iran is not flowing to the United States;
it's going to Asia, specifically China. [Instead of going westward, the oil exports and gas exports uh from the region now uh flow overwhelmingly eastward in particular to China. China takes around one quarter of the world's oil imports. One in four every one in four barrels of oil go to China.] As a result, instead of stability, a war with Iran, creates the opposite. Massive global instability, exemplified in the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. A bottleneck that provides passage to nearly 34% of global crude oil trade, a third of all fertilizer and helium trade. A chokepoint that Iran can easily monitor and control with just a few gunboats.
Like the sword of Damocles over the world's head, Iran's power doesn't just stem from oil; it comes from the fact that it can hold hostage one of the most important passages of world trade. And the consequences of Iran refusing to back down in the face of American imperial pressure, and also the U.S. refusal to end their imperialist gambits, look like a full-blown crisis for countries like the Philippines, where gas and fertilizer prices have skyrocketed, leaving many farmers unable to harvest and transport their crops to market without taking a loss. Or aid
failing to reach Gaza. But as countries like the Philippines dive into crisis, it's not the U.S. they are turning to, especially after programs like USAID were so readily ripped from the global economic scaffolding when Trump and Elon Musk came to power. They are instead turning to China. This war erodes America's oil imperialist power The Strait of Hormuz reveals the vulnerability and idiocy of the U.S.'s war. This is a war that hasn't been prepped with the manufactured consent of previous oil wars. There is no pretense of spreading democracy, no
facade of policing the world. The American ruling class has been very clear about its intentions: [play clip] The truth is laid bare for all to see. And America's working class, even those deeply embedded in the MAGA fascist thought, are recognizing the folly of this imperialist war. But more broadly, we're seeing the erosion of American unilateral global power in real time. As Brett O Shea from the Red Menace podcast puts it, ["Trump in his desire to make a america great again is making it worse"] The crumbling of American global hegemony is coming slowly, with small cracks in the foundation, like a handful of European countries that refused U.S. fighters from entering their
airspace to do war with Iran. Unfortunately, as this vision of the American superpower declines, and as the U.S.'s European allies turn their backs on the U.S., the fear of retaliation from their longtime ally has meant calls for increased militarization, which can only lead to terrible and violent consequences for the European working class. Meanwhile, China, which has built up a massive petroleum reserve, estimated to be roughly 1.4 billion barrels, to weather this exact situation, is faring much better than the U.S., especially because it has also rapidly built a renewable grid that can provide
some baseline of capacity to the country. China's petroleum reserves and rapidly diversifying energy portfolio means that it benefits from this conflict. It becomes a bastion of stability, especially for countries like the Philippines in desperate need of oil and fossil fuel commodities. This then tightens ties that further destabilize the U.S's hold on the global economy. Meanwhile, the Trump regime's spurning of renewable resources further exacerbates and puts into sharp relief this failing fossil fascist war.
Instead of moving away from fossil fuels, instead the United States and its multinational oil giants are doubling down, because it's profitable to do so. Ultimately, all of this fallout shatters the moral superiority of a country that has so long declared itself the protector of the free world. We need international ecosocialism Perhaps in this war are the conditions, or at least the beginnings, for the toppling of American imperialism. But also within the uncertainty of the future lies further, more dangerous explosions of violence led on by the
illogics of fossil fascism and oil imperialism. There can be no question: we must end the war with Iran now, but for the sake of this planet, for the sake of all working people everywhere, we must lay new foundations. Ones without the deep cracks of fossil-fueled capitalism that lead to the flood of fossil fascist war. Instead, we need international solidarity. We need a system built on the rational planning of the economy that prioritizes people and the planet, not violent resource grabs and the racialized scapegoating of the other. We need ecosocialism. But of course, the construction of
ecosocialism won't spring up out of nowhere. Although this moment of intense contradiction could be the fertile ground for a great change in our current planetary systems. So, right now it means building power- seizing this moment to lay bare that this war is the inevitable consequence of capitalism, of imperialism, and revealing the incompetence of liberal capitalism to prevent it. This means joining up with socialist vanguard parties and in your area, or leftist anti-war organizations, but most importantly, it means joining with people out there, in the real world,
lending your skills to toppling capitalism and building international ecosocialism in its stead. If you want to watch the third and final part of this series right now and learn about the fate of the Earth Liberation Front cell, the consequence of the Green Scare in todays world, it's available right now, ad-free, and a month early, when you become a Patreon supporter. As I explained in the beginning of the video, the channel is in a financial downturn. So, not only
will you be able to watch the next part of the series but, becoming a OCC Patreon supporter means you'll help keep high-quality, non-AI slop videos like this one free and accessible everyone. So, please consider supporting Our Changing Climate on Patreon if you have the means. And if you can't spare the $3 or 6 a month right now, no worries, just liking, commenting below, or even sharing this video with a friend below is more than enough to bring this video to new audiences. Thank so much for watching all the way to the end and for your endless support,
and I'll see you next month for the final chapter of the Earth Liberation Front story.
