The workers who live in the shadow of the Persian Gulf - fishermen hauling nets before dawn, oilfield hands breathing dust and danger, teachers in rural villages, nurses in overcrowded clinics, porters moving cargo under the sun - have an interest not in the calculations of foreign ministries, but in the simple, stubborn hope that their children will not inherit a world of checkpoints, sirens, and empty bread bins. Their collective interest is peace - not the peace of a garrisoned status quo, enforced by drones and sanctions, but the peace that allows a mother to send her child to school without fear, a worker to bargain for a living wage without threat, a community to decide its own future without foreign boots on its soil or foreign hands on its spigots.

Now, here we are again: Washington presents a 15-point plan - like a blueprint drawn in smoke and silence - while Tehran counters with its own conditions, laid out in Tehran, where the air is thick with history and pride. On paper, it looks like negotiation. In practice, it looks like two empires circling each other, each claiming to seek peace while securing advantage. The United States, whose military bases line the Gulf like sentinels, whose arms shipments to regional allies have fueled decades of bloodshed, now speaks of “de-escalation” as if it were a moral imperative rather than a tactical choice. Iran, whose own actions - including support for armed factions, suppression of labor uprisings, and repression of dissent - have deepened regional fractures, now speaks of sovereignty and dignity, as if those could be reclaimed without first acknowledging the suffering it has also helped inflict.

But let us cut through the diplomatic fog. Whose side are we on? Not the side of governments - those are always shifting alliances of privilege and power - but the side of the working people who pay the price. The cost-bearers here are not the generals or the foreign ministers; they are the families in Basra whose water is poisoned by war debris, the oil workers in Khuzestan whose lungs fill with fumes while their wages stagnate, the farmers in Khuzestan whose fields lie fallow under sanctions, the women in Tehran who march for the right to choose, and are met with batons and bullets. These are not abstract categories - they are real people, with names, with families, with dreams that do not include being collateral in a geopolitical chess game.

The division is deliberate. Capital - and its state arm - has long used sectarian, ethnic, and national lines to keep workers apart. In Iran, the state suppresses labor unions while stoking anti-Western sentiment to deflect blame for its own mismanagement. In Washington, politicians stoke Islamophobia while funneling billions to foreign militaries, all while telling American workers that their real enemy is abroad, not in the boardrooms where their wages are held down and their benefits stripped away. This is not foreign policy - it is class management, exported overseas.

What would solidarity look like here? Not a treaty signed in Geneva, but a movement built on the ground - workers in California and workers in Isfahan recognizing that the same system that profits from their labor also profits when they turn on each other. Imagine oil workers in Texas refusing to load arms bound for the Gulf unless their Iranian counterparts are allowed to unionize freely. Imagine teachers’ unions in Chicago declaring solidarity with educators in Shiraz, sharing resources, sharing strategies, sharing hope - not as charity, but as kinship. That is the only peace that lasts: one forged not by decree, but by collective action.

The state, in both capitals, will call this naive. They will say the world is not ready, that idealism is dangerous, that compromise is the only language power understands. But power only understands power - and the only power the working class has is solidarity. When the railroad workers of America stood together in 1894, they were told they were impossible, impractical, idealistic. They were right. And they won a moral victory that still echoes.

Let us not mistake the appearance of diplomacy for its substance. A 15-point plan, no matter how many points it contains, cannot bring peace if it does not begin with the recognition that no one has the right to dictate the future of another people - especially not when the dictates are enforced by sanctions that starve children, or by arms that kill the innocent. Real peace begins when the working class of every nation refuses to be the cannon fodder, the fuel, the silent partner in someone else’s ambition.

So I ask again: whose side are you on? Not the side of flags or foreign policy, but the side of the worker who wakes before sunrise, who works until dark, who dreams not of empire, but of a decent life for their family. That is the only side worth standing on - and it is not a matter of sentiment. It is the only arithmetic that adds up to justice.