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Iran and Leftist Confusion
by Reese Erlich
Published on Monday,
June 29, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
 When
I returned from covering the Iranian elections recently, I was surprised
to find my email box filled with progressive authors, academics and
bloggers bending themselves into knots about the current crisis in Iran.
They cite the long history of U.S. interference in Iran and conclude that
the current unrest there must be sponsored or manipulated by the Empire.
That comes as quite a shock to those risking their lives daily on the
streets of major Iranian cities fighting for political, social and
economic justice.
Some of these authors have even cited my book, The Iran Agenda, as
a source to prove U.S. meddling. Whoa there, pardner. Now we're getting
personal.
The large majority of American people, particularly leftists and
progressives, are sympathetic to the demonstrators in Iran, oppose Iranian
government repression and also oppose any U.S. military or political
interference in that country. But a small and vocal number of progressives
are questioning that view, including authors writing for Monthly Review
online, Foreign Policy Journal, and prominent academics such as
retired professor James Petras.
They mostly argue by analogy. They correctly cite numerous examples of CIA
efforts to overthrow governments, sometimes by manipulating mass
demonstrations. But past practice is no proof that it's happening in this
particular case. Frankly, the multi-class character of the most recent
demonstrations, which arose quickly and spontaneously, were beyond the
control of the reformist leaders in Iran, let alone the CIA.
Let's assume for the moment that the U.S. was trying to secretly
manipulate the demonstrations for its own purposes. Did it succeed? Or
were the protests reflecting 30 years of cumulative anger at a reactionary
system that oppresses workers, women, and ethnic minorities, indeed the
vast majority of Iranians? Is President Mahmood Ahmadinejad a
"nationalist-populist," as claimed by some, and therefore an ally against
U.S. domination around the world? Or is he a repressive, authoritarian
leader who actually hurts the struggle against U.S. hegemony?
Let's take a look. But first a quick note.
As far as I can tell none of these leftist critics have actually visited
Iran, at least not to report on the recent uprisings. Of course, one can
have an opinion about a country without first-hand experience there. But
in the case of recent events in Iran, it helps to have met people. It
helps a lot.
The left-wing Doubting Thomas arguments fall into three broad categories.
1. Assertion: President Mahmood Ahmadinejad won the election, or at a
minimum, the opposition hasn't proved otherwise.
Michael Veiluva, Counsel at the Western States Legal Foundation
(representing his own views) wrote on the Monthly Review website:
"[U.S. peace groups] are quick to denounce the elections as ‘massively
fraudulent' and generally subscribe to the ‘mad mullah' stereotype of the
current political system in Iran. There is a remarkable convergence
between the tone of these statements and the American right who are
hypocritically beating their chests over Iran's ‘stolen' election.
Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New
York, James Petras wrote:
"[N]ot a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form
has been presented either before or a week after the vote count. During
the entire electoral campaign, no credible (or even dubious) charge of
voter tampering was raised."
Actually, Iranians themselves were very worried about election fraud prior
to the vote count. When I covered the 2005 elections, Ahmadinejad barely
edged out Mehdi Karoubi in the first round of elections. Karoubi raised
substantive arguments that he was robbed of his place in the runoff due to
vote fraud. But under Iran's clerical system, there's no meaningful
appeal. So, as he put it, he took his case to God.
On the day of the 2009 election, election officials illegally barred many
opposition observers from the polls. The opposition had planned to use
text messaging to communicate local vote tallies to a central location.
The government shut down SMS messaging! So the vote count was entirely
dependent on a government tally by officials sympathetic to the incumbent.
I heard many anecdotal accounts of voting boxes arriving pre-stuffed and
of more ballots being printed than are accounted for in the official
registration numbers. It seems unlikely that the Iranian government will
allow meaningful appeals or investigations into the various allegations
about vote rigging.
A study by two professors at Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian
Studies at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, took a close look at the
official election results and found some major discrepancies. For
Ahmadinejad to have sustained his massive victory in one third of Iran's
provinces, he would have had to carry all his supporters, all new voters,
all voters previously voting centrist and about 44% of previous reformist
voters.
Keep in mind that Ahmadinejad's victory takes place in the context of a
highly rigged system. The Guardian Council determines which candidates may
run based on their Islamic qualifications. As a result, no woman has ever
been allowed to campaign for president and sitting members of parliament
were disqualified because they had somehow become un-Islamic.
The constitution of Iran created an authoritarian theocracy in which
various elements of the ruling elite could fight out their differences,
sometimes through elections and parliamentary debate, sometimes through
violent repression. Iran is a classic example of how a country can have
competitive elections without being democratic.
2. Assertion: The U.S. has a long history of meddling in Iran, so it must
be behind the current unrest.
Jeremy R. Hammond writes in the progressive website Foreign Policy
Journal:
"[G]iven the record of U.S. interference in the state affairs of Iran and
clear policy of regime change, it certainly seems possible, even likely,
that the U.S. had a significant role to play in helping to bring about the
recent turmoil in an effort to undermine the government of the Islamic
Republic.
Eric Margolis, a columnist for Quebecor Media Company in Canada
and a contributor to The Huffington Post, wrote:
"While the majority
of protests we see in Tehran are genuine and spontaneous, Western
intelligence agencies and media are playing a key role in sustaining the
uprising and providing communications, including the newest electronic
method, via Twitter. These are covert techniques developed by the US
during recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that brought pro-US
governments to power."
Both authors cite numerous cases of the U.S. using covert means to
overthrow legitimate governments. The CIA engineered large demonstrations,
along with assassinations and terrorist bombings, to cause confusion and
overthrow the parliamentary government of Iran' Prime Minister Mohammad
Mossadegh in 1953. The U.S. used similar methods in an effort to overthrow
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002. (For more details, see my book,
Dateline Havana: The Real Story of US Policy and the Future of Cuba.)
Hammond cites my book The Iran Agenda and my interview on
Democracy Now to show that the Bush Administration was training and
funding ethnic minorities in an effort to overthrow the Iranian government
in 2007.
All the arguments are by analogy and implication. Neither the above two
authors, nor anyone else of whom I am aware, offers one shred of evidence
that the Obama Administration has engineered, or even significantly
influenced, the current demonstrations.
 Let's look at what
actually happened on the ground. Tens of millions of Iranians went to bed
on Friday, June 12, convinced that either Mousavi had won the election
outright or that there would be runoff between him and Ahmadinejad. They
woke up Saturday morning and were stunned. "It was a coup d'etat," several
friends told me. The anger cut across class lines and went well beyond
Mousavi's core base of students, intellectuals and the well-to-do.
Within two days hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating
peacefully in the streets of Tehran and other major cities. Could the CIA
have anticipated the vote count, and on two days notice, mobilized its
nefarious networks? Does the CIA even have the kind of extensive networks
that would be necessary to control or even influence such a movement? That
simultaneously gives the CIA too much credit and underestimates the
independence of the mass movement.
As for the charge that the CIA is providing advanced technology like
Twitter, pleaaaaaase. In my commentary carried on Reuters, I point out
that the vast majority of Iranians have no access to Twitter and that the
demonstrations were mostly organized by cell phone and word of mouth.
Many Iranians do watch foreign TV channels via satellite. A sat dish costs
only about $100 with no monthly fees, so they are affordable even to the
working class. Iranians watched BBC, VOA and other foreign channels in
Farsi, leading to government assertions of foreign instigation of the
demonstrations. By that logic, Ayatollah Khomeini received support from
Britain in the 1979 revolution because of BBC radio's critical coverage of
the despotic Shah.
Frankly, based on my observations, no one was leading the demonstrations.
During the course of the week after the elections, the mass movement
evolved from one protesting vote fraud into one calling for much broader
freedoms. You could see it in the changing composition of the marches.
There were not only upper middle class kids in tight jeans and designer
sun glasses. There were growing numbers of workers and women in very
conservative chadors.
Iranian youth particularly resented President Ahmadinejad's support for
religious militia attacks on unmarried young men and women walking
together and against women not covering enough hair with their hijab.
Workers resented the 24 percent annual inflation that robbed them of real
wage increases. Independent trade unionists were fighting for decent wages
and for the right to organize.
Some demonstrators wanted a more moderate Islamic government. Others
advocated a separation of mosque and state, and a return to parliamentary
democracy they had before the 1953 coup. But virtually everyone believes
that Iran has the right to develop nuclear power, including enriching
uranium. Iranians support the Palestinians in their fight against Israeli
occupation, and they want to see the U.S. get out of Iraq.
So if they CIA was manipulating the demonstrators, it was doing a piss
poor job.
Of course, the CIA would like to have influence in Iran. But that's
a far cry from saying it does have influence. By proclaiming the
omnipotence of U.S. power, the leftist critics ironically join hands with
Ahmadinejad and the reactionary clerics who blame all unrest on the
British and U.S.
3. Assertion: Ahmadinejad is a nationalist-populist who opposes U.S.
imperialism. Efforts to overthrow him only help the U.S.
James Petras wrote: "Ahmadinejad's strong position on defense matters
contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of many of the
campaign propagandists of the opposition...."
"Ahmadinejad's electoral success, seen in historical comparative
perspective should not be a surprise. In similar electoral contests
between nationalist-populists against pro-Western liberals, the populists
have won. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently,
Chavez of Venezuela, [and] Evo Morales in Bolivia."
Venezuela's Foreign Ministry wrote on its website:
"The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela expresses its firm opposition to
the vicious and unfounded campaign to discredit the institutions of the
Islamic Republic of Iran, unleashed from outside, designed to roil the
political climate of our brother country. From Venezuela, we denounce
these acts of interference in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic
of Iran, while demanding an immediate halt to the maneuvers to threaten
and destabilize the Islamic Revolution."
From 1953-1979, the Shah of Iran brutally repressed his own people and
aligned himself with the U.S. and Israel. After the 1979 Islamic
Revolution, Iran brutally repressed its own people and broke its alliance
with the U.S. and Israel. That apparently causes confusion for some on the
left.
I have written numerous articles and books criticizing U.S. policy on
Iran, including Bush administration efforts to overthrow the Islamic
government. The U.S. raises a series of phony issues, or exaggerates
problems, in an effort to impose its domination on Iran. (Examples include
Iran's nuclear power program, support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and support
for Shiite groups in Iraq.)
During his past four years in office, Ahmadinejad has ramped up Iran's
anti-imperialist rhetoric and posed himself as a leader of the Islamic
world. That accounts for his fiery rhetoric against Israel and his denial
of the Holocaust. (Officially, Ahmadinejad "questions" the Holocaust and
says "more study is necessary." That reminds me of the creationists who
say there needs to be more study because evolution is only a theory.) As
pointed out by the opposition candidates, Ahmadinejad's rhetoric about
Israel and Jews has only alienated people around the world and made it
more difficult for the Palestinians.
But in the real world, Ahmadinejad has done nothing to support the
Palestinians other than sending some funds to Hamas. Despite rhetoric from
the U.S. and Israel, Iran has little impact on a struggle that must be
resolved by Palestinians and Israelis themselves.
So comparing Ahmadinejad with Chavez or Evo Morales is absurd. I have
reported from both Venezuela and Bolivia numerous times. Those countries
have genuine mass movements that elected and kept those leaders in power.
They have implemented significant reforms that benefitted workers and
farmers. Ahmadinejad has introduced 24% annual inflation and high
unemployment.
As for the position of Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez, they are
simply wrong. On a diplomatic level, Venezuela and Iran share some things
in common. Both are under attack from the U.S., including past efforts at
"regime change." Venezuela and other governments around the world will
have to deal with Ahmadinejad as the de facto president, so questioning
the election could cause diplomatic problems.
But that's no excuse. Chavez has got it exactly backward. The popular
movement in the streets will make Iran stronger as it rejects outside
interference from the U.S. or anyone else.
This is no academic debate or simply fodder for bored bloggers. Real lives
are at stake. A repressive government has killed at least 17 Iranians and
injured hundreds. The mass movement may not be strong enough to topple the
system today but is sowing the seeds for future struggles.
The leftist critics must answer the question: Whose side are you on?
Freelance foreign correspondent Reese Erlich covered the recent
elections in Iran and their aftermath. He is the author of The Iran
Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis.
(Polipoint Press)
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