[Marxism] Why Washington Hates Iran

[Ian Angus]

SOCIALIST VOICE
Marxist Perspectives for the 21st Century
www.socialistvoice.ca

September 7, 2008

The following is the Introduction to "Why Washington Hates Iran: A
Political Memoir of the Revolution That Shook the Middle East," a
Socialist Voice pamphlet published this week by South Branch
Publications. The author, Barry Sheppard, was a member of the US
Socialist Workers Party for 28 years, and a central leader of the
party for most of that time.

In 2005, Resistance Books published the first volume of his political
memoir, The Party: The Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988. The new
pamphlet is a chapter from the second volume, now in preparation.

"Why Washington Hates Iran" can be downloaded for free from the
Socialist Voice website,
at <http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?page_id=223>

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WHY WASHINGTON HATES IRAN

By Barry Sheppard

INTRODUCTION
The United States and its client garrison state of Israel are openly
saber-rattling against Iran. The immediate issue is Iran's nuclear
program. Both Washington and Tel Aviv have stated that it would be
"unacceptable" for Iran to develop the capacity to make nuclear
weapons, and threaten a pre-emptive military strike possibly including
atomic weapons.

Iran states its nuclear program is for peaceful uses only. But even if
Iran wants to have a future capacity to develop its own bomb, the U.S.
and Israeli stance is patently hypocritical, as both are armed to the
teeth with nuclear weapons. They seek to preserve Israel's status as
the sole nuclear power in the Middle East. However, more is involved.
Washington seeks to turn back Iran's growing influence in the region
resulting from the failed U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Widening
the war to include Iran and possibly Pakistan, however irrational it
would be, could be a desperate gamble for the U.S. to somehow pull its
chestnuts out of the fire.

If there is such an attack, the Iranian people will unite to oppose
it. Iran has many cards to play. Its armed forces are stronger than
Iraq's were before the U.S. invasion. It has middle-range missiles. It
has important influence with its ally, Syria, and armed sympathizers
in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine Partisans of Iran are capable of waging
irregular warfare ("terrorism" in Washington's jargon) against U.S.
interests throughout the world. The recent escalation of tensions
between Washington and Moscow has redrawn the map of international
relations and thrown a monkey wrench into any plans to attack Iran. As
of this writing cooler heads are prevailing in the U.S.
administration, but this could rapidly change in the current unstable
situation.

The confrontation with Iran is the latest manifestation of the
hostility the U.S. has maintained against that country for three
decades, since the 1979 Revolution. A central thrust of that
Revolution was the overthrow of U.S. imperialism's direct control of
Iran through its proxy regime of the Shah. This anti-imperialist
aspect of the Revolution was very deep and survives to this day, which
explains why any attack on Iran will be met with a mobilization of the
Iranian people.

This pamphlet consists of a chapter which will appear in the second
volume of a political memoir of my time as a central leader of the
U.S. Socialist Workers Party and earlier of its youth group, the Young
Socialist Alliance. It tells the story of the first year of the
Revolution from the prism of my involvement in it. I was in Tehran
during the February 1979 insurrection, and returned twice. It isn't a
history of that year, and it doesn't cover the development of Iran in
the following years and decades. Other chapters of my book will
include information on the years 1980-1988 in Iran, including the
violent suppression of the left and the U.S.-backed Iraqi war against
Iran.

My companion Caroline Lund and I were living in Paris in 1979. We were
part of the leadership team of the Trotskyist Fourth International,
representing the Socialist Workers Party. I was assigned to go to Iran
early in 1979, and Caroline went back to New York while I was in Iran.
That is how I happened to be there during the insurrection.

I agree with the editors of Socialist Voice that publication of this
chapter at this time, before the book is published, will help explain
U.S. hostility toward Iran and the anti-imperialism of the Iranian
people as a background to the present crisis.

The chapter also, I believe, sheds light on the contradictions of the
Revolution, contradictions which persist to the present day. Many on
the left internationally have a one-sided view of the Iranian
Revolution, and tend to dismiss it because of the capitalist Islamic
clerical regime that emerged from it. It is beyond the scope of this
pamphlet to describe present-day Iranian reality, but the
contradictions between the capitalist regime and the demands of the
workers, peasants, women and oppressed nationalities continue, with
the regime being forced to make concessions while at the same time
continuing repression to maintain its rule.

Iran's response to the imperialist threats suffers from the fact that
it is governed by a capitalist regime, beset by corruption and
conflict within its leadership, while the workers movement in the
country is not politically independent although it has waged some
militant struggles for better wages and living conditions.

Another aspect of this chapter is the heroic role that was played by
Iranian revolutionists, in spite of the small size of their
organizations, in the cauldron of the Revolution. They got it right.
They were intransigent supporters and defenders of the Revolution
unlike many Iranian leftists who turned against it in face of the
repression of the new capitalist regime. At the same time, as they
formed the Iranian Socialist Workers Party, they retained their
independence and intransigent defense of the workers, peasants, women
and oppressed nationalities — the backbone of the Revolution.

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Download the full text of
WHY WASHINGTON HATES IRAN
A Political Memoir of the Revolution That Shook the Middle East
at http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?page_id=223

Purchase the first volume of Barry Sheppard's political memoir
at http://www.barrysheppardbook.com