IRAN NEEDS BETTER ADVOCATES
By Rostam Purzal

CounterPunch
Aug 21 2008
CA

Because Iran’s leadership and the U.S. power elite each
include influential figures who press for dialog between the two
countries, we must conclude that Iran is not in danger of a military
attack. Conclusion: people of conscience should drop their opposition
to a possible U.S. or Israeli attack and instead condemn imperialism’s
best ally in the Middle East, Iran. You may laugh, but this is the
essence of Reza Fiyouzat’s hawkish argument as he struggles in a
recent Counterpunch article to sow antagonism towards Iran. Never
mind that the former government of Iraq had diplomatic and trade
relations with the U.S. and still was violently overthrown with
calamitous consequences. His assessment is the familiar one that
we have heard for decades from Iranian Monarchists, who swear that
Washington forced out the former Shah in 1979 in order to install a
pliable Islamic order in his place.

Such simplistic far left and far right analyses portray Iranians
as a nation of simpletons and victims without agency. Missing from
Fiyouzat’s neoconservative-style rush to blame the victim is any
reference to the enthusiasm of a great majority in Iran, registered
in survey after opinion survey, to restore trade and diplomatic
relations with the U.S. If Iran’s leadership is indeed eager to
welcome U.S. diplomats, investors, and tourists after nearly three
decades of estrangement, it is certainly acting with the consent
of the governed. With his rejection of detente, Fiyouzat in effect
advocates minority rule even as he demands an expanded democracy in
which Iran’s left forces would have more room to organize.

What’s more, Fiyouzat argues, mainstream pro-dialog groups, such
as the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran
(CASMII), are aiding a Tehran-Washington conspiracy to fool and exploit
Iranians. His evidence that Iran is, behind the scenes, a partner in
crime with Yankee imperialists? Why, of course, it is Iran’s declared
but unsuccessful attempts to attract foreign investment. That is
proof enough to Fiyouzat that Iran is for sale and advocates of
Iran’s national rights, like CASMII, are sell-outs, even if their
purpose is to help expose Western double standards. According to
this sophomoric fantasy, presumably the nations of the world must
all boycott the U.S. to prove their independence! Fiouzat does not
explain why Iran should be the first. I suggest he personally set an
example by refusing to boost the U.S. war machine with his income tax.

Apparently, journalist Seymour Hersch, who regularly warns us about
ongoing U.S. efforts to destabilize Iran, is just another dupe of the
Islamic Republic, and so are the other award-winning authors Reese
Erlich and Stephen Kinzer, who each spoke in dozens of American cities
last fall and winter against a U.S. attack on Iran. The 118-nation
Non-Aligned Movement’s repeated declarations of support for Iranian
nuclear rights must similarly be delusional.

Ironically, contrary to Fiouzat’s tired claim that Iran’s leadership
uses the threat of a foreign attack as a fig leaf for legitimacy,
Iran’s Farsi-language state broadcast monopoly downplays the
possibility of U.S. or Israeli aggression. Last January, I was asked to
leave a televised show on Iran’s Channel Two (I was being interviewed
by telephone) after I refused to agree with the host that Iran was
safe from foreign attack.

Real anti-imperialists, Fiyouzat suggests with self-righteous rage,
should stand by and refuse to take U.S. and Israeli threats of
aggression seriously. He conveniently forgets that in 1953, Iran’s
communist Tudeh party hastened the overthrow of Iran’s most revered
anti-colonial campaigner ever, Mohammad Mossadegh, by withdrawing its
support. Tudeh abandoned the prime minister because, it explained,
he was too cozy with Washington. Months later the CIA overthrew
Mossadegh, ostensibly for his softness on communism! The coup
resulted in the executions of hundreds of Tudeh activists, social
democrats, and nationalists and ushered in a quarter century of
brutal dictatorship that led to the Revolution of 1978-79. The widow
of one of the perished, Mossadegh’s heroic foreign minister, Hussein
Fatemi, returned to Iran March of this year for a meeting with Iran’s
President. Afterwards she told reporters that her husband would have
been proud of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s resistance to foreign manipulations.

The centerpiece of Fiyouzat’s attempt to mobilize the progressive left
against Iran is Tehran’s participation in regime change in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Here, too, Fiyouzat is so eager to paint Iran’s decision
makers as unrepresentative that he ignores overwhelming support
for that policy among Iranians. He assures us that "Western powers
prefer an Islamic to a secular government" and "Western imperialists
cannot have it any better than the regime that exists [in Iran] now",
conveniently overlooking the considerable U.S. support for secular
elites against the popular Islamist resistance movements in Palestine
and Lebanon. Nor does Fiyouzat recognize that Iran’s alliance with
Christian Armenia and tense relations with the Shi’i-dominated Republic
of Azerbaijan is inspired by Iran’s opposition to U.S. domination in
the region.

Similarly, he makes no mention of Iran’s incessant demand, consistent
with the wishes of almost all Iraqis, that U.S. forces leave
Iraq without extracting concessions. He also fails to mention that
Iran’s closest international ally is Venezuela, hardly a U.S. client
state. All that seems to matter to him is that the Iranian government
is interested in conditional peace with Washington. Never mind that
Cuba’s anti-imperialist government is as anxious as Iran’s to have
normal trade and diplomatic relations with the U.S.

The obsession leads Fiouzat to lump defenders of Iranian sovereignty
with the "realist" wing of U.S. imperialism. It matters not to
him that advocates of Iran’s national rights against the West’s
intimidation may be motivated by other than blind support for the
current Iranian government. He is troubled that Iran has frustrated
desperate U.S. efforts to isolate it. On the fifty-fifth anniversary
of the August coup in which anti- imperialists acquiesced in the
U.S. subversion of Iranian sovereignty, Fiyouzat recommends that
the U.S. antiwar community do the same. Fortunately, only a tiny
fraction in the U.S. antiwar movement is likely to be swayed by his
short-sighted ideology.

Rostam Pourzal is a board member of the US branch of the Campaign
Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran.