The New Dark Age

On Saturday 7th March, the United States and Israel launched one of the largest coordinated chemical attacks against a civilian population in history. A major refinery in Tehran was hit alongside other fuel depots in the city and in Karaj, west of the capital. Oil fires raged across the sky and leaks from the sites exploded in the street-side irrigation channels.

Nowruz, the Persian new year and the arrival of spring in Tehran, usually brings some respite from the pollution of the cold season.

In the morning after the attack however, sunlight in large parts of the city was blocked by a dense black petrochemical smoke, poisoning the air. The soot, composed of toxic residues, clung to the streets, buildings, trees and animals. People in Tehran reported sudden migraines and difficulty breathing on social media. One resident living far from the targeted oil facilities told Drop Site that “it felt like acid had been poured down our throats.” Instead of spring rainfall, sulfuric and nitric acid from the oil fires fell over the city. Iran’s Red Crescent Society warned people in Tehran to stay inside and that the chemicals from the acid rain could damage the skin and lungs.

Tehran relies upon dams for fresh water supply. This act of ecological violence puts the city’s water, food, and air at risk of toxic pollution for more than 9 million residents. The U.S. and Israel’s chemical attack is compounded too by the sanctions that have contributed to drought and the restraint on resources to manage with the disproportionate effects of the climate crisis.

Weather forecasters reported a day later that the toxic petroleum clouds will move into Turkmenistan and may develop into a poisonous extratropical storm in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The attacks on Iran – from the strikes on fuel infrastructure to the assault on sovereignty – are not just an attack upon the Iranian population, but an attack on the very conditions of life itself.

This attack on life is an essential feature of the US-Zionist imperialist project. Following the U.S. “regime-change” campaign in Iraq, the University of Ulster reported a 2,200% increase in leukemia rates in Fallujah. The toxic munitions and radiation exposure led to high infant mortality rates and young children developing cancer and brain tumours.

Just in the past two years alone of the intensified genocide in Gaza, Israel’s bombing of Gaza has amounted to at least six Hiroshimas in terms of the tonnage of explosives dropped. Even so, the destruction of infrastructure, the siege and induced starvation, and the ecocide – including Israel’s systematic poisoning of soil with herbicides in Palestine and South Lebanon and indiscriminate use of white phosphorus – are all part of the broader project to destroy future life as well.

The U.S. military is the world’s largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases, producing more emissions than most countries. Its excess of 800 overseas bases are among the most polluted sites globally. Whilst these bases are typically presented as offering “safety” to countries that align with U.S.-led imperialist hegemony, they contaminate local ecosystems and emit tonnes of waste, significantly driving the climate crisis. Allying with the US and normalising with Israel may provide temporary stability for the comprador elite particularly of the Gulf regimes but U.S. imperialist hegemony, and the bases that maintain it, inflict lasting harm on both people and planet.

U.S. ecological violence in Iran predates the direct military attacks of March this year and June last year. During the Iraq-Iran war, the US and private companies helped facilitate Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare campaign. Mustard gas and the most extreme nerve agents were deployed against Iranians on the frontlines. These chemical attacks had long-term impacts even after the war had ended, contributing to elevated rates of cancer, respiratory illness, and chronic skin conditions for Iranians who were exposed, as well as damaging ecosystems in western Iran.

It is still unclear what the long-term impact of the US and Israel’s ongoing and widespread chemical attacks on Iran will be. The consequences of chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq war still bear a trauma for Iranians in the country.

The deliberate destruction of infrastructure that sustains life, along with the ecological devastation posed by the US and Israel in Iran, serves as the ultimate collective punishment for resistance to the U.S.-led world order.

In countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, sanctions and blockades function as a form of prolonged economic siege and coercion, driving inflation, worsening living standards, and restricting access to life-saving medicine. In 2025, The Lancet revealed that economic sanctions imposed by the USA or the EU were associated with 564,258 deaths annually from 1971 to 2021. U.S. economic warfare has provided the conditions to escalate its imperialist and ecocidal aggression on sovereign nations that are resisting its global hegemony.

Following the widespread and continued attacks on depots and refineries in Iran and Iranian tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, Israeli officials have claimed that the destruction of public and state infrastructure is necessary to halt the fuel that powers Iran’s self-defence.

The fuel depots in Tehran are essential for public transportation, for electricity to power homes and for public services including hospitals. The deliberate US-Israeli attacks on these sites, and the pollution wrought on the country, is in line with Israel’s strategy to inflict as much misery and chaos as possible on the Iranian people with the goal of pursuing complete state collapse.

In Israel, oil refineries fuel settler-colonial occupation and militarism. Energy Embargo for Palestine in 2024 revealed how Paz Oil, the owner of the Ashdod refinery which refines BP crude oil received from the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, has a contract for refuelling Israeli Air Force jets and meeting the fuel needs of settlers. Paz Oil has additionally made “donations” of oil to the Israeli Occupation Forces and petrol stations for settlers that have been used to refuel military tanks.

These “private” actors, namely BP and Chevron, that fuel Israel’s genocide in Gaza are also fuelling the Zionist expansionist project that is destroying life across West Asia.

Since October 2023, parts of the climate movement have pivoted to activism on Palestine. It has never been clearer that any ecological campaign in the global North that is concerned with the future of the planet must confront U.S.-led imperialism and Zionism. The wrecking of ecosystems and livelihoods is not just limited to Palestine, Lebanon and Iran: imperialism and Zionism pose an ecological threat to the world and to all sovereign states.

Anti-imperialism and the unconditional support for national liberation struggles and their resistance must inform and be embedded in all ecological and socialist projects. As organisations across the world unite under the banner for a People’s Embargo for Palestine, it is essential for all people of conscience to halt the arms, fuel, logistics, and technology powering the US-Zionist empire that is destroying the planet.

Kimia Talebi