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| Proletarian issue 20 (October 2007) |
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| Editorial: No to imperialist interference in Iran |
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¬Given the mess in which US-British imperialism has landed itself in Iraq, it seems preposterous that it would be seriously considering a new war against Iran.
However, as we go to press, the likelihood of US-led military action against Iran appears to be increasing.
The leaders of the world’s most warmongering, terroristic and antidemocratic states have been falling over themselves to denounce Iran, and in particular its president, Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, as a warmonger, supporter of terrorism and enemy of democracy.
Not only are the ‘hawks’ shouting loudly about the need for intervention, but liberal opinion on both sides of the Atlantic is being mobilised.
As described elsewhere in this issue, even the trade unions are joining in with the calls to ‘democratise’ Iran, while the US and its allies are champing at the bit to bring ‘democracy’ to Iran and free it from the ‘tyranny’ of its nationalised oil and its advanced welfare state.
The masses of the world are only too familiar with the type of democracy favoured by imperialism. It’s the ‘democracy’ of Pinochet, Mobutu, Batista, Suharto and countless other brutal dictators who have stopped at nothing in the service of foreign monopoly capital.
The Iranian people have already tasted the fruits of US-style ‘freedom’ when the CIA so generously chose to engineer a coup against the progressive nationalist Mossadeq government in 1952.
Make no mistake – any imperialist-sponsored ‘regime change’ in Iran would result only in a government that served the interests of the US, Britain and others. We must unstintingly reject all external interference into the internal affairs of Iran.
Perhaps our readers consider that we’re being needlessly cynical and uncharitable, that we’re wrong to invest the imperialist powers with such dastardly motives.
Well, don’t take our word for it. John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN and a highly influential figure within US government circles, told Tory delegates on 30 September that “efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country” . (‘Bolton calls for bombing of Iran’, The Guardian, 30 September 2007)
Calling for the direct overthrow of Ahmadinejad’s anti-imperialist government, he said: “If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change ... The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back.” Such reckless candour from a figure like John Bolton is certainly welcome, and renders further comment superfluous.
No, dear reader, we are not being harsh or cynical. We, like billions of people around the world, have learnt to deeply distrust the motives of the representatives of capital.
If it seems as though we always say the opposite of what the imperialist media say, well, there’s a good reason: the central contradiction in the modern world is between imperialism and the oppressed masses of the world.
We make no apologies for the fact that we stand resolutely with the latter.
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