COMMUNISTS across the world have condemned the US for the “dangerous consequences” of its decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and its “escalation of aggression” in the region.

More than 50 communist parties have signed a statement which was agreed at an international peace meeting in Athens last week. 

They gathered at the request of Iran’s Tudeh Party, which said US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action had “significantly increased tension in the region and has raised the threat of a new devastating war in the Middle East.”

The statement condemned the “reimposition of economic and banking/monetary sanctions on Iran,” saying the decision, which came hours after the collapse of the nuclear agreement, was an “illegal violation” of an international agreement ratified by the UN security council.

They accused the US of co-ordinating with Israel and Saudi Arabia and slammed Israel’s recent military attacks on Syria — which it claimed were targeted at Hamas and Iranian forces — for intensifying the possibility of “all-out war.”

The parties condemned military action against Iran along with the use of punitive sanctions “as a means of starving the people of that country into submission.”

This course of action would only serve to weaken the “continuing struggle of the Iranian people for peace, sovereignty, social justice, as well as human and democratic rights.”

The people of Iran must decide their own future free from foreign intervention and communists called on those campaigning for peace and disarmament across the world to “condemn the politics of confrontation” by the US and its Israeli allies.