5-15-26- The War in Iran (The Leftist View)

This is going to be a shorter, more “ramble-y”, post, but in the last few weeks, I’ve written about why the American attack on Iran was so shortsighted, haphazard, and fundamentally poorly though out. That does not, however, mean that I support the Iranian government. So how should leftists view this latest American war against Iran? Well first of all, I think we must acknowledge that it doesn’t really matter. Many of us can sit from afar and view this war from the safety of computer or television screens, but this is a very real conflict that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iranians and Lebanese, and the longer this war goes on, the greater the death toll and the suffering will be. This is not a sports match where we need to “choose sides”, and the best thing for those who are most directly impacted by this conflict is a rapid cessation of hostilities. Keeping that in mind:

For those with leftist political leanings who are acutely aware of the devastating effect that American imperialism has had throughout the world, there is perhaps a temptation to be sympathetic towards the Iranian government. After all, the Iranian Revolution in 1979 spit in the face of the American geopolitical order in the Middle East, toppling an American puppet (ie. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi) that worked with the CIA to suppress their own domestic political dissidents, primarily communists and Islamists, and who coordinated with Israel to act against Arab countries and frustrate Soviet ambitions in the Middle East.

The victors of the Iranian Revolution, the Shia Islamists who still hold on to power today, had good reason to declare the US their mortal enemy. The US, along with Britain, was responsible for the coup that toppled the democratically elected Mossadegh in 1953, which allowed for the Shah to establish his authoritarian rule that in the following 25 years would see thousands of Iranians imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the Shah’s security apparatus for being political dissidents. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and by association, American support for Israel, were additional motivating factors for the revolutionaries to frame the US as the “Great Satan” against whom they must always fight. Continued American support for Israel, and American support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, would ensure that relations between the two countries would not thaw, despite occasional periods where meaningful negotiations regarding sanctions and nuclear weapons development take place.

Previous Iranian overtures:

For an interesting digression, there have been multiple attempts in the past few decades where Iran makes overtures towards improved relations with the US. Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf War, which saw Iraq crippled as a regional power, the two most powerful countries in the Middle East were Iran and Israel. Israel had been America’s “greatest ally” in the region primarily because they acted as a bulwark to Soviet influence. After the end of the Cold War, this was no longer necessary, and so to maintain relevance the Israelis began pushing a narrative that Iran is a threat not only to the Middle East, but to the whole world, if they were to obtain nuclear weapons, in large part to ensure that they were still seen as vital to American interests in the region.

Legislation pushed through Congress in the early 1990’s that was heavily lobbied for by AIPAC (and helpfully written for Congress by the Israelis) was responsible for widening sanctions to include not only Iraq, but Iran. Senior members of the Clinton administration were opposed to these sanctions, (in large part to try to capitalize on profits that could be made off of Iranian oil), but AIPAC lobbying ensured these sanctions were pushed through Congress. Even after these sanctions were put in place, Iran would elect a reformist president (Mohammed Khatami) who overtly wanted to improve relations between the two countries, but would not be successful.

After 9/11, Iran tried to improve relations with the US by coordinating with them in Afghanistan and providing intelligence against the Taliban, and were involved in helping the US create a post-Taliban government. Despite this assistance, the US would remain hostile to the Iranians, they would be lumped into Bush’s “Axis of Evil”. Another offer was made to the US in 2003 where they offered increased transparency of their nuclear program, normalization of ties with Israel and support for a 2-state solution, and disarmament of Hezbollah in exchange for a lifting of US sanctions, which was disregarded. After which Khatami was replaced by hardliners in the government that were not interested in improving relations with the US. Why the US so doggedly refused to accept these overtures is not entirely clear, but one suspects that it is in Israel’s interest to have Iran portrayed as the boogeyman of the Middle East to justify why they need to receive so much military aid from the US, and their extensive lobbying through AIPAC and the indirect control that gives them over American politics likely played a large role.

The leftist view:

This digression aside, for individuals who would like to see the implementation of alternative forms of economic organization other than capitalism, the US stands as the symbol of the ultimate foe to overcome: the world’s superpower that defeated the Soviet Union, where capitalism is cherished and any talk of socialism is virtually proscribed. Such a worldview would, reasonably, predispose one to seeing the Iranian government in a positive light, staunch opponent of the US that they are. This is without even mentioning that much of Iran’s economy is state-owned and run, an idea that may be appealing to followers of certain leftist ideologies.

We also can’t ignore the fact that this latest conflict was entirely unprovoked by the US and Israel. Iran was negotiating with these two countries to reach an agreement with regards to the sanctions in place as well as their nuclear program when this attack began. Both the Israelis and Americans have assassinated key figures in Iran’s government in recent years, sometimes even luring them to the ambush site under false pretenses (Qasem Soleimani, for example). It’s impossible to earnestly believe that this most recent conflict can be justified as a pre-emptive strike, particularly when Iran does not pose any conceivable threat to the US itself. Instead, we must see this conflict for what it is, the an imperialist venture where the US and Israel are using their superior military to disregard “international norms” to achieve geopolitical ends with a complete disregard for the consequences of their actions and how that will affect not only Iranians, but also everyone else in the region should a wider regional conflict break out.

All this having been said, it’s worth remembering that Iranian government is fundamentally not leftist, and many of their policies are antithetical to most leftist creeds. Iran is a theocracy, and their political and social expression of Islam is ultra-reactionary, fundamentalist, and chauvinist. It is an authoritarian government where access to political power is gatekept by the religious elites, and women face an entirely different set of restrictions around how they can live their day-to-day life compared to men. While much of the economy is state-owned and run, this state of affairs can only (and even then only, optimistically, by certain leftist philosophies) be thought of as “socialist” if access to political power, and therefore control over the capital, is achievable by anyone. Instead, when access to political power is only allowed to a small religious elite, a state-run economy becomes state capitalism of the most perfidious sort. One could go so far as to say that the authoritarian nature of the government, tight control of the media and information its populace receives, extensive use of state security and intelligence apparatus to monitor its populace, use of the US and Israel as enemies that justify their own grasp on authority, and appeal to “traditional values” as part of the justification for their institutionalized misogyny, makes the current Iranian government overtly fascist. Also recall that in the wake of the 1979 Revolution, after the Islamists took power they systematically dismantled the country’s communist party and executed many of their members.

Therein lies the conundrum. How can we “support” Iran when their government is so antithetical to leftist principles? Can their opposition to the US really justify such a stance? We can learn a little bit from history, in that the Russian Tsar was viewed by European socialists as one of the greatest obstacles to the rise of socialism: an autocrat whose intelligence services worked tirelessly to stifle nascent socialist movements throughout Europe. The German Kaiser was similarly reactionary, and yet the Bolsheviks did not shy away from accepting German help to get back into Russia to topple the Tsar.

A dispassionate observer might say that the best thing is for these two evil entities, the Iranian regime on one side and the American/Israeli axis on the other, to exhaust themselves fighting each other. Perhaps the best thing would be for the Americans to topple the Iranian regime, and in the process of doing so financially cripple themselves and reveal to the world their warmongering ways and the limits of their power (manifesting as an inability to completely stop Iranian ballistic missile attacks or protect shipping through the Strait of Hormuz) and further contribute to the development of a multipolar world as they lose international prestige and trust.

But this would require a lengthy conflict, and much suffering on the part of the Iranian populace, with no clear benefit. Perhaps then, insofar as we “choose a side”, the best thing we can hope for is that the conflict comes to a close quickly and with as little additional destruction as possible. Such a result would still achieve a great blow against the US: American domestic perceptions of Israel continue to worsen, and there is tremendous international suspicion of the US due to both the warmongering and the hit to the global economy caused by the disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and we can perhaps glean a small victory in that.