Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1996 22:24:52 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Iran's role for imperialism


Robert M wrote:
>
>>The Americans might have lost their shah. However replacing it with a
>>anti-American pro imperialist Mullah goverment is hardly a great loss. In
>>fact for elementry bougeois rights for women its was certainly a great
>>loss..The shah had a better position on women then the Mullahs..


And Doug H answered:

>"Hardly a great loss" to American imperialism? Perhaps the distance to your
>hog commune in Sweden is too great for the news to travel, but the U.S.
>ruling class has been obsessed with Iran for 17 years now. The hate it,
>Malecki. Perhaps you forget when Saddam Hussein was America's great friend
>for making war on Iran.


Let's look at the significance of Iran for the imperialist system in the
Middle East. With the mindset of English diplomacy.  American diplomacy is
too like the French, being irritated by anything less than complete
subservience. English diplomacy doesn't give a toss, as long as the tribute
is paid, and is a past master at setting local interests at each others'
throats (Zionist and Palestinian, Hindu and Muslim, Turk and Greek, and a
thousand others).

Thus, instead of one  big reliable sub-imperialist puppet (the Shah), the
imperialists have a binary system of Iran and Iraq constantly at each
others' throats, the one helped up when a bit weak, the other dragged down
if getting too uppity.

This setup does two things very well.

1) It prevents any united regional popular action against Israel and its
paymasters from developing, so the main pillar of imperialist policy in the
Middle East is secure.

2) It prevents the unleashing of popular, revolutionary energy in the
Middle East that a free and sovereign Kurdistan would generate. (The
wannabe sub-imperialist Turkey plays its part here, of course).

It also provides very significant diversions from the real problems of the
region and indeed the world. Nothing as useful as a good reliable enemy,
and the Green Peril is the best one the imperialists have for the moment
(along with the druggies and the immigrants, but they don't have states to
declare war on and demonize). I mean, it gave Georgie Bush a place in the
history books that Reagan never managed.

In powder kegs like the Middle East, it is very useful to have tattered
mutually hostile regimes to dissipate social energies and buffer against
more distant external threats.

Consider the valuable role played for English imperialism by the
dysfunctional, terrorist-permeated border between occupied Ireland and the
Republic.

And the similar role on a larger scale being prepared for a chopped-up
Southern Slav region in the Balkans, with terrorist-permeated borders, and
a morass of petty 'Balkanized' states hating each other and very insecure
in themselves. A very useful belt of impenetrable swamp on the southern
flank of Europe. And as in all the examples, difficult places to develop a
powerful, regional revolutionary working-class movement.


As in the question of NAFTA and the EU, we mustn't let the class enemy set
the agenda. A bourgeois state is a bourgeois state, never a friend of the
working class. Obviously some bourgeois regimes are more amenable to
working-class organization than others, but this is secondary to the
necessity of getting rid of them all and replacing them with workers'
states.


Cheers,

Hugh





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