The Global Pan-African Movement, North America Delegation, issues this statement in full solidarity with the Iranian people and the Islamic Republic of Iran following the abandoning of “peace talks” for military aggression by the United States and the Zionist entity in more than 10  regions across Iran. On the morning of Saturday, February 28, 2026, the joint attack by the U.S. imperialists and Zionist regime on Iran amidst the holy month of Ramadan, reveals the contempt of the aggressors not only for international law and stability but for the cultural and spiritual dignity of the people across the region exemplified most vividly in the assasination of Iran’s spiritual leader Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, 201 people have already lost their lives to the barbaric and unprovoked attacks of the U.S.-Zionist alliance. In addition, it has been documented that more than 80 school girls have been killed, and reaching a death toll of more than 200 people. Further, the barbaric bombing campaign killed the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran by targeting his home. These attacks constitute the crime of aggression, in blatant violation of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and the fundamental principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the peaceful settlement of disputes. International law clearly prohibits both the use of force and the threat to use force against the territorial integrity of any state, yet the U.S. and the Zionist entity have increasingly demonstrated through successive aggressions their real contempt for these principles.

Neither the U.S. nor the Zionist entity have even attempted to conceal that this aggression is being carried out to facilitate regime change — to install a government amenable to their goals of global domination militarily, economically, and politically. In addition to settler colonial expansionism as an aim of the Zionist entity and imperialist control of resources and global supply chain routes, the primary objective for the Zionist enitity is to deprive the Palestinian people, who are facing an ongoing genocide under occupation, of the support essential to their capacity to resist and liberate themselves from this unlawful occupation. The attack on Iran cannot be separated from the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people.

Iran’s crime, in the eyes of the aggressors, is its unwavering support for the Palestinian resistance and its refusal to normalize relations with an apartheid regime engaged in what has been widely condemned by international legal experts, UN special rapporteurs, and human rights organisations as genocide. The assault on Iran is therefore an assault on the Palestinian cause itself—an attempt to eliminate one of the last remaining state actors in the region willing to materially support those resisting imperialism and colonial occupation. Africans must also note the increased militarized tensions in Eastern Africa, the counterrevolutionary war in Sudan, and the unilateral recognition of Somaliland by the Zionist entity, are all related to the build up and explosion of this attack.

This is the second time Iran is being targeted by external actors within a year. The 12-day war of June 2025, another illegal aggression perpetrated by the same parties against Iran. The persistent lack of accountability or any meaningful consequences for those responsible has not merely enabled further warmongering and destruction; it has entrenched a culture of impunity that effectively amounts to complicity in both the aggression against Iran and the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

We must also expose the disturbing role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has abandoned its mandate as a neutral technical body to instead provide pretexts for illegal war and aggression. The IAEA has been greenlighting these aggressions against Iran by not denying the falsehoods that Iran is enriching uranium for military reasons. IAEA has done this days before, prior to the 12-Day war and two days before this renewed aggression took place. Statements of “unable to verify” is a warmongering talking point that the region is abreast of; the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, which was used to justify the invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation.

The timing is not coincidental. These IAEA statements serve as the diplomatic cover for military aggression, providing the fig leaf of "nuclear concerns" to justify attacks that have nothing to do with non-proliferation and everything to do with regime change. The IAEA's disturbing role in U.S.-Zionist aggression against Iran betrays its stated function in the interests of an undeclared nuclear power (Zionist entity) and the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons in war (the United States). In the process of inventing reality, the role of intellectuals and those wielding the power of informational reach in this moment will be tested in what they choose to reproduce. GPAM has no revocations in declaring its solidarity to the Iranian peoples, and all those in the region that pay the price for fascist aggression in West Asia.

We note the profound hypocrisy at work: the United States, which holds the world's largest supply of nuclear weapons and remains the sole state to have used them against civilian populations, presumes to lecture Iran on nuclear matters. The zionist entity, an undeclared nuclear power that routinely makes threats based on its nuclear weapons capacity, demands inspection of Iranian facilities while refusing to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty or submit to any international scrutiny. We also note the hypocrisy and paternalism of the U.S. leadership - one that has attacked women since it took office and which continues to protect an international network of human traffickers and women’s abusers listed in the Epstein files - in their attempts to cast this aggression as support for Iranian peoples, and particularly Iranian women.

We affirm the legitimate right of the Islamic Republic of Iran to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and people against this unprovoked aggression. As articulated in Article 51 of the UN Charter, every nation possesses the inherent right to individual and collective self-defence in the face of armed attack. Iran has exercised patience and restraint in pursuit of regional stability, yet it retains the full authority to respond decisively to protect its peoples. The question for other regimes in Western Asia, and the Egyptian state, will be whether they are willing to risk the lives of their own people to protect the imperialist alliance.

We further note that purported negotiations that claimed to seek peaceful resolution or to address nuclear development were used as a sham in an attempt to lower Iranian defenses — a tactic previously employed in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Zionist entity’s officials have openly stated that they planned this attack over months and weeks, spanning a period longer than any of the negotiation rounds. Such bad faith not only undermines the credibility of the U.S. as a negotiating partner but actively discourages actors from participating in peace talks. Repeated and continued aggressions on the people of Lebanon and Palestine by the Zionist entity despite a “peace agreement” and a so-called Board of Peace; as well as the most recent violent aggressions which followed foreign mediated “peace” deals among foreign supported warring parties in Africa (including in Sudan, Congo-Rwanda, and Ethiopia-Tigray) have made clear that the fascist alliance has cheapened peace negotiations as a way to pass time until renewed aggression can be launched.

This complete disregard for the process of negotiations only encourages nuclear proliferation around the world. Libya is a lesson here, as it was attacked just a few years after it abandoned its weapons of mass destruction program. When non-nuclear states see that diplomatic engagement offers no protection against attack, while nuclear-armed aggressors face no consequences, the lesson is unmistakable: the only real security lies in acquiring the weapons that the imperial powers seek to monopolize for themselves.

We recognise that the attack on Iran is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of imperialist aggression against the nations of the Global South that refuse to subordinate their sovereignty to Western diktat. The people of Africa know intimately the meaning of foreign intervention, resource plunder, and the imposition of compliant regimes. We have suffered centuries of colonial domination and its modern manifestations — debt traps, conditional aid, military bases, sanctions and covert operations designed to fragment our societies and control our resources. When we see the United States and its allies attacking Iran, we recognise the same forces that destabilised Libya, that partitioned Sudan, that maintain military installations across our continent, and that continue to extract Africa's wealth while leaving poverty and conflict in their wake.

The aggression launched today is the continuation of a sustained and deliberate campaign of hostile acts spanning more than 46 years — including sanctions designed to destroy the Iranian economy, coordinated cyber-warfare operations, targeted assassinations, and systematic acts of sabotage.

We call upon all nations and peoples of the Global South — from Africa to Asia to Latin America — to recognise that Iran's defence of its sovereignty is our common struggle. The same imperialist logic that targets Tehran today targeted Baghdad, Damascus, Tripoli, and Caracas yesterday. The same forces that impose illegal sanctions on Iran have looted Africa and seek a reconfigured entrenchment of imperialism on the  continent.

We stand with the people of Iran because we stand with ourselves. We defend Iran’s sovereignty because we defend our own. We reject the narrative that paints Iran's resistance as aggression, just as we reject the narrative that painted African liberation movements as terrorism. The struggle for genuine sovereignty, for liberation from external domination, and for a just international order is one struggle—and it is ours.

This aggression is a threat not only to all of the peoples and nations of the West Asian region but to the future of multilateralism, international cooperation, and the territorial integrity of states. The persistent impunity enjoyed by the aggressors has not merely enabled further warmongering and destruction; it has entrenched a culture of impunity that effectively amounts to complicity in both the aggression against Iran and the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

The time has come for the Global South to rise, not merely as a geographical designation but as a political force united in defence of our common humanity and our common right to self-determination. Iran's struggle is indeed the Global South's struggle.

We demand:

  1. Immediate cessation of all U.S. and Zionist military operations against Iranian territory.
  2. Full respect for Iran's sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with international law and UN Charter principles.
  3. The United Nations Security Council to fulfil its Charter-mandated responsibility to maintain international peace and security by condemning this aggression and taking measures to prevent its escalation.
  4. All states to provide all necessary assistance, consistent with their obligations under international law, to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Palestine, and other nations subjected to unlawful aggression by the United States and Zionist entity.
  5. The International Atomic Energy Agency to cease its role as a provider of pretexts for aggression and return to its mandated function as a neutral technical body.
  6. All legal organisations, lawyers, and human rights organisations to utilise domestic and international systems to hold Zionist entity’s officials and U.S. officials and soldiers accountable for their unlawful aggression against Iran and their acts of genocide in Palestine, as well as to support and defend organisers and social movements against state repression for their work to end war and genocide.
  7. All supporters of justice, sovereignty, peace, and international law to participate in mass demonstrations and actions against the aggression on Iran, and to mobilise popular pressure to bring the aggression to an end.