Iran: The campaign for regime change in its last phase, TAKIS FOTOPOULOS, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter 2010)

As I have stressed in a booklet on Iran published a few months ago,[1] the transnational elite (roughly, the members of G7), led by the hegemonic American elite, had set a sort of deadline, expiring at the end of 2009, for stepping into the final stage of the campaign for regime change in Iran. And indeed, before 2009 was over, a series of events confirmed that the campaign of the transnational elite to replace the Islamic regime, which is fighting for political independence of the country and against the imposition of a client regime, did enter its last phase.

Thus, first, mass demonstrations erupted in Iran last December, although not for the expected reasons by the elites. Thus, the reformist elites in Iran and the transnational elite abroad, fully expected such demonstrations to erupt at the end of the year, when the Iranian calendar is full of religious and political anniversaries that could well be exploited by the “unholy alliance” of bourgeois modernisers and Islamist reformers. Fortunately, (for the elites) an even better excuse was given by the death of a reformist ayatollah, whose funeral was the pretext for the outbreak of new militant demonstrations (see below).

Second, it is now clear the transnational elite is preparing to impose (probably without the participation of the unwilling Chinese and Russian elites) new devastating economic sanctions against Iran, supposedly on account of the nuclear weapons that Iran is planning to produce ―without, of course, any shred of evidence to substantiate this, exactly as in the case of Iraq, which did not stop, however the predatory invasion and subsequent destruction of the country!

Third, the attempt to blow up a US airliner, under conditions which make it highly likely that the transnational elite knew in advance about this attempt and did nothing at all to stop it (exactly as it did with respect to the 9/11 events[2] and possibly the London bombings as well) gave the pretext for creating a new anti-“terrorism” hysteria to terrorise peoples in order to accept any kind of possible new adventure (this time going for the “big fish”, i.e. regime change in Iran followed by “cleaning up” any kind of resistance in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and beyond) ―not to mention the humiliation forced on them of having to be subjected to “full body” scans involving a voluntary striptease of all air passengers, supposedly for their own security! At the same time, the elites as well as the pink “revolutionaries” in Iran, fully plan to exploit the February anniversary of the 1979 Iranian Revolution in order to create mass scale demonstrations ―of which the December events were probably just a dress rehearsal― which could well bring the regime in conflict with parts of the regular army that may be sympathetic to the Islamic reformists (Rafsanjani, Mousavi, Karroubi and the rest) and bourgeois modernisers. Such a conflict could well trigger a bigger internal clash between the army and the Revolutionary Guard loyal to the regime (who, in the last resort, may be bombed into submission by the unbeatable air power of the transnational and the Zionist elites) and a possible coup to replace the present regime with a client regime.

The important characteristic differentiating the December demonstrations from any previous ones was that, for the first time ever, they took a clear anti-regime form, directly raising the demand for regime change ―a fact that should have created some hidden, from the limelight, cracks in the unholy alliance of bourgeois modernisers and Islamist reformers, given that the latter were always fighting for a change in the regime personnel and not for a regime change itself.

As was to be expected, the international mass media which are controlled by the transnational elite were again engaged in a systematic propaganda campaign to distort the facts and mislead the public with the aim to create the image of a violent suppression of a supposedly popular uprising, if not a people’s revolution! There is no doubt, of course, about the violent nature of the state repression which followed, but this violence, as the same media themselves admitted, was not simply one-sided, as it was, for instance the case in the brutal suppression of the demonstrations in London at the beginning of last year during the G20 conference, or in Copenhagen at the end of last year during the summit conference on climate change, or, finally, in Athens last December on the anniversary of the assassination of a Greek student a year before.[3] In Iran, the violence was clearly mutual, as reporters in the Western media admitted:[4]

This clearly indicates that had the demonstrators in the aforementioned “democratic” countries used the same means against the security forces, as the Iranian demonstrators used in clearly anti-regime protests and with slogans such as "this will be the month of blood,” the death toll in London, Copenhagen or Athens could well have been much higher than in Tehran! Similarly, and despite the systematic attempt by the international media to falsify the facts about the counter-demonstrations by supporters of the fundamentalists of the Islamic revolution, there is no doubt about the incomparably greater massiveness of their demonstrations compared to the demonstrations of the “pink revolutionaries,” a fact which forced the Western media to talk about government-organised protests ―in contrast to the supposedly fully “spontaneous” demonstrations by the reformists which they did not have any qualms to compare with those that brought down the Shah’s regime 30 years ago!

But, to anybody with a good knowledge of history, it is clear that no authoritarian regime can bring together millions of people in the streets if it does not enjoy mass popular support itself. Nor did, of course, the Shah, with the billions of dollars he put up for propaganda and counter-insurrection activities, ever succeed in gathering any support in the streets comparable to the millions of Iranians who swept away his regime in a genuine revolution in 1979 ―the successors of which are today’s millions of demonstrators in favour of the ideals of this revolution and particularly the ideal for political independence from the West. However, arrogant reformists such as Karroubi and Makhmalbaf, the Paris-based Iranian film-maker and unofficial spokesman for Mousavi, the well-known opportunist professional politician,[5] did not hesitate even to compare the present regime with Shah’s tyrannical regime. Thus, the reformist leader, Mehdi Karroubi, implied that Khamenei was worse than the former Shah, whose troops never opened fire on Ashura. “What has happened to this religious system that it orders the killing of innocent people during the holy day of Ashura?” Karroubi asked in a statement posted on the Rah-e-Sabz website. In the same vein, Makhmalbaf compared Khamenei to the 7th century Umayyad Caliph Yazid, hated in Shia Islam as the slayer of Imam Hossein, and added: “I’m upset with myself for fighting against the Shah. At least when he realised people didn’t want him, he left the country.”[6]

But let’s see how a reputable historian of the Iranian revolution described the Shah’s reaction to the actual revolution of 1979 and everyone can draw for oneself the conclusions about the current parody of revolution, with the blessing of the transnational elite:

If one takes into account that even the greatest revolutions in Europe, the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917, may have not involved much more than 1% of the population and that in Iran more than 10% of the country marched in anti-Shah demonstrations on these two December days^{^[8]} ―which shortly afterwards led to the overthrowing of the regime― a good idea of what a real Iranian revolution means could be derived!

As I tried to show in the aforementioned booklet,[9] the campaign against the Iranian regime is extremely important for the transnational elite and the system of the globalized market economy and representative “democracy,” given that regime change in Iran ―either by a coup from within, or by a military strike from the “outside”, or a combination of both― followed by the installation of a client regime, will have huge implications for the movements not only of the entire Middle East but also much beyond it. Not only the client regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are shaky at the moment under the heavy blows of the resistance movements) will be stabilised and a fully fledged regime of Bantustans will be established by the Zionists in Palestine, but also the equally shaky dictatorial client regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc. will be strengthened, in a radical redrafting of the geopolitical map of the Middle East for decades to come (until at least oil resources are exhausted). Furthermore, such a development will also pave the way for the dismantling of “rogue” regimes everywhere: from Latin America (Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, etc.) ―the infrastructure for this has already been set up in Colombia― up to North Korea.

Despite this and what I mentioned in the previous section about the true nature of the present “revolution” in Iran, compared to the real 1979 Revolution, the present huge propaganda campaign by the transnational elite is supported, either deliberately or “objectively”, not only by the systemic apparatus and the corresponding ideological commissioners of the system, but also, by a huge part of today’s post-modern “Left,” which includes the reformist Left and the mainstream Greens (who, for a long time, have been integrated in the system) and even part of the “anti-systemic” Left. The same Left has invariably adopted a similar stand with regard to the recent criminal wars of the transnational and Zionist elites, keeping usually “equal distances” from both the persecutors and the victims in the brutal bombing of Yugoslavia, the massacres in Palestine, the murderous embargo and the following destruction of Iraq, the continuing slaughter in Afghanistan, etc. This is the kind of “Left” (Znet, Albert, Zizek, Chomsky, et. al.) ―which, perfectly in line with the transnational elite, welcomes today as radical the pink “revolution” of bourgeois modernisers and Islamic reformists in Iran― that is, the “Left” which Russian anarcho-communists aptly called “the left boot of imperialism,”[10] or, as I would prefer to call it, “the left boot of the system”.

Clearly, the stand of the real anti-systemic Left has nothing to do with the disorienting stand ―adopted by the reformist Left (Znet, etc.) as well as by several “libertarians” (Chomsky, Castoriadians and the like)― which can be summarised with the slogan: “neither with imperialism, nor with theocracy ― Solidarity with the uprising of the Iranian people”. Such a stand clearly pushes activists to inactivity in the face of the planned crime against the Iranian people.[11] The antisystemic Left has always recognised that the precondition which has to be met for paving the way towards a genuine democracy and autonomy is the political (and, if possible the economic as well) independence of a country from foreign elites ―today from the transnational elite. This is why Bakunin supported the struggle of the Polish people for independence from the Tsarist elite and not because he was a supporter of nationalism! But, it is precisely the political independence of the Iranian people that is at stake this time and not the violation of some human rights by the theocratic regime, which is anyway neither the first nor the last one in the area and beyond that could be accused of similar violations. The fact that the “insurgents” in Iran have never raised any anti-systemic demands (as opposed to demands against the Islamic regime) nor have ever raised the demand for the country’s independence from the transnational elite, makes apparent the role of the entire “Left,” which fights for the rights of the “rebels,” in perfect harmony with the transnational elite, obscuring reality and disorienting peoples from what is actually at stake in the Middle East today.

However, the fact that the task of the anti-systemic Left today is actually to fully support the national liberation movements (i.e. what the transnational elite and the Zionists call “terrorist” movements ―Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.), as well as any resistance organisation in the occupied by the transnational elite countries (Iraq, Afghanistan) and, generally, any independence movement against the same elite, does not mean uncritical support for these regimes and movements, as does part of anti-systemic Left (Monthly Review, James Petras, et. al.). It is of course true that the Islamic regime in Iran expresses the movement that manned the revolution of 1979, which is still active today and supports the fundamentalists in their fight against the bourgeois modernisers and reformists within the regime. It is also true that if the modernisers and reformists, with the full support of the transnational elite, prevail after all, they are going to open the way for the establishment of a client regime controlled by the transnational elite. Yet, all this does not negate the fact that this regime is still an irrational theocratic regime, even if it also plays the role of some kind of “liberation theology”. We saw the consequences, for example, in its profane alliances with the Shia in Iraq against the Sunni (enabling the transnational elite to easily implement the tried out method of “divide and rule”, which finally allowed the conversion of Iraq into a client regime) and in the corresponding alliances in Afghanistan, which has also been transformed to a client regime,[12] not to mention the religious restrictions on women, gays, etc., which flagrantly violate individual autonomy.

Undoubtedly, the Islamic regime, like any religious and theocratic regime, is incompatible with autonomy and true democracy. After all, theocracy and religion in general, as I tried to show elsewhere,[13] constitute prime examples of heteronomy and absolute incompatibility with a genuine democracy, such as Inclusive Democracy. Despite all this, however, the necessary condition for opening the road to a genuine democracy is the political ―and if possible economic― independence from the transnational elite. And it is precisely this political independence of the Iranian people that is at stake today, and not some human rights, granted by states (even after bloody struggles) and easily withdrawn by the same states, as is happening currently in the New World Order, even in states-cradles of similar rights, such as the UK! The confusion, therefore, which is created by the reformist Left in partnership with post-modern “anarchists” on the need to fight for civil rights in every country, in fact, shifts the centre of social struggle from the anti-systemic to the reformist field.[14]

In other words, the struggle for the independence of Iran that is carried out by the Islamic regime, with the support of the popular movement which backs it, is anti-systemic on two counts:

Moreover, the historical role of the anti-systemic Left, when similar conflicts arose in the past as the current ones in Iran or in Palestine, was not to side with the pink “revolutions” of the bourgeoisie or, respectively, to condemn equally perpetrator and victim, disorienting and making millions of activists around the world inert ―as the “left” boot of the system does today, which effectively plays the role of its fellow traveller. Instead, the role of the antisystemic Left was to critically support those movements, as well as the “rogue regimes” backed by them, which took a stand against the international elites that represented the system itself. For any consistent supporter of anti-systemic Left it is, therefore, evident that the fall of ayatollahs, that will inevitably lead to their replacement with a client regime of the transnational elite, not only is not bound to have any anti-systemic significance at all but, also, it could possibly have cataclysmic political and social consequences worldwide, since, the elimination of any significant resistance against the transnational elite may well lead to the establishment of its hegemony for many years to come.

The nature of the movements which developed in the New World Order,[15] namely, those which rose in the ‘80s and consolidated in the ‘90s, is particularly significant in understanding the present “anti-authoritarian” movements. These movements flourished through a process of interaction of the new objective conditions (massive expansion of multinationals and subsequent opening and liberalisation of capital and commodities markets, and flexibility of labour relations) with the new subjective conditions (dislocation of labour and socialist movements, as a consequence of the decimation of the working class in metropolitan centres, but also of the collapse of “actually existing socialism”).

The main feature of the New World Order was the historically unprecedented concentration of economic and political control/power which is not effected any more in the hands of the political and economic elites of the nation-states (even if the U.S. elite have tried and succeeded for a time, during the post war period until the early 70’s, to play a similar role), but in the hands of a transnational elite which controls the global economy as well as the political-military establishments and also the ideological mechanisms that ensure the reproduction of this power system. However, this New World Order has not yet imposed its sovereignty worldwide, as is amply demonstrated by the predatory wars unleashed over the last two decades against non-client regimes which, as a rule had emerged from, and were backed up by, big popular movements (e.g., Yugoslavia and Iraq), but also by the new, even greater preparation for a possible strike against the Iranian regime that emerged from the great popular Revolution of 1979. The enormity of the significance of such a strike and its possible repercussions (positive or negative) for the transnational elite implied the need to mobilise this time every part of the post-modern “antisystemic” Left. This fact is of enormous significance for anti-systemic popular movements.

To my mind, a clear distinction should be made by genuine anti-systemic movements as regards their stand with respect to the various kinds of regimes today:

However, the above, almost self-evident, political truths are anything but the political practice of today’s movements. This brings us to the issue of ideological globalisation, namely, the spreading of a transnational ideology that “legitimizes” the economic and political globalisation, i.e. the New World Order itself. This ideology on the one hand, attempts to justify the minimisation of the role of the state in the economy ―which in a market economy implies the corresponding maximisation of the role of markets and private capital― and, on the other hand, the shrinking of national sovereignty, the political complement of the corresponding shrinking of economic sovereignty involved in economic globalisation. All the wars in the New World Order were undertaken on the basis of this ideology, and the same applies to the planned strike against the Iranian people, supposedly to protect us from the nuclear weapons that is about to produce and at the same time to save one of the most powerful, militarily, states on Earth (which is fully equipped with nuclear weapons) from obliteration, and also protect the “rights” of the Iranian people which are violently suppressed by a tyrannical regime!

The movements that emerged in the New World Order ―whether they are parodies of initially anti-systemic movements (e.g. feminist, green, etc.) currently fighting for rights or for single issues respectively (rights of women, movement for a “green capitalism” etc.), or new “anti-authoritarian” movements which fight for the rights of minorities (e.g. the rights of immigrants, ethnic minorities, gays, etc.)― have one common feature: the lack of anti-systemic universalist projects which they consider either “obsolete” or potentially “totalitarian”. For these movements, there is no need for an anti-systemic movement, but rather for a struggle against the power relations that turn up in various social practices. It is therefore obvious that this stand confuses the (correct) view that political and economic power are not the only forms of power, with the (reformist) view that there is not a single turning point. A clear example of this stand is an interview with a “post-structuralist” anarchist, prominently hosted by the theoretical organ of the American Institute of Anarchist Studies (IAS).[17] In this interview, the author made explicit his anti-universalist, if not anti-democratic, tendencies, as well as his hostility against any kind of mass anti-systemic movement with clear democratic goals and strategy. Thus, as Todd May, the author of post-structuralist anarchism stressed, “I would point to the necessity of understanding and participating in struggles against racism, sexism, the WTO, etc., and in doing so to see the interactions among those struggles and the oppressions those struggles seek to overturn, without trying to reduce them all to a simple formula,” the “formula” consisting ―as he then goes on to explain― of the main political and economic institutions of the present system:

It is not surprising that this stand ends up with a reformist “anti-authoritarian” problematique which aims at a mythical “capitalism with a human face” in place of the present “corporate and predatory capitalism”[18] ―as “anti-authoritarian” anarchists of Znet, Chomsky and others argue for. On the contrary, a really anti-systemic problematique has as its starting point the inextricable link between political and economic control/power and the other social forms of power (patriarchal, racist, nationalist, etc.) and aims to overthrow the system itself, which is the source of all forms of power.

However, in light of this post-modern ideology, these movements are fully compatible with the New World Order, playing in practice the role of the left boot of the system. This is because the system does not need the active support of these movements, but only their fellow-travelling, which obscures the real goals and essentially disorients activists in struggles for rights and civil liberties, instead of anti-systemic struggles against the New World Order. Clearly, such struggles have no chance at all in creating anti-systemic consciousness, and, even more so, the conditions for the transition to a society of equal distribution of all forms of control/power among all citizens. In this sense, these movements and the “anti-authoritarians,” who support them, play the game of the transnational elite and its supporters.

As if it were not enough that the entire reformist Left in the West came out in complete support of the “pink” revolutionaries in Iran and against the “tyrannical” theocratic Islamic regime, several Leftist film directors boycotted this year’s Tehran's Fajr International Film Festival “in protest at its brutal crackdown on the opposition, which includes torture, prison rapes, countless killings and Stalinist-style televised show trials of reformists”.[19] The boycott was a response to a plea by Iranian artists. Thus, a joint statement from Iranian cinematographers (no doubt people like Makhmalbaf, the unofficial spokesman of Musavi we mentioned above, would have played a key role in contacting the Western filmmakers!) playwrights and actors (unsigned to protect those still working in the country) had circulated in recent weeks urging their foreign counterparts to stay away from Tehran to avoid conferring respectability on Ahmadinejad’s government. In a statement these artists were stressing, in a kind of moral blackmail, “Your presence in this year's Fajr festival will be akin to ignoring the struggles of oppressed people of Iran for their rights.”

Of course, for many who responded enthusiastically to this call, like Theo Angelopoulos, the well known film director whose political views clearly belong to the reformist Left ―who lately shoots purely anti-communist films about the gulags (The Dust of Time, 2009), thinly disguised as just an anti-stalinist film, which, however, Hollywood studios and directors would have nothing to be envious about― there was no surprise at all. Thus, Theo had this to say (in his usual confused way, which is also the main characteristic of his utterly confused films as well) in withdrawing his film as a protest at recent events: “Freedom of expression is the only form of discourse with a nation’s future”. Therefore, for this “leftist” director, political independence, national sovereignty, let alone a struggle for systemic change have nothing to do with the discourse on a nation’s future! It is only human rights and freedom of expression (that supposedly exists in the West ―despite the fact that it is of course the capitalist economic elites which vet which films (including his own) will be produced and distributed in the West and which will simply be buried!

But, if there was nothing surprising in the response of film directors on the “Left” like Angelopoulos, it was a particularly painful and lamentable experience to see Ken Loach, the British film director (who in the past has shown a consistent anti-systemic stand in his films and was even interviewed ten years ago by this Journal expressing views diametrically opposite to the ones he supports today), to take part in this boycott campaign.[20] Thus, Ken Loach said that while many governments, “including our own,” commit human rights violations, he felt compelled to back the Iranian artists’ appeal. Below is what Ken Loach (2010) stated:

So, for Loach, it is “the people themselves say(ing), «Don't come because you will be endorsing the regime that is perpetrating the violence».” In other words, it is Makhmalbaf and bourgeois directors and artists like him who, for Loach the ex-Trotskyite, are the “people” and not the millions of poor people, farmers and others who came out in the streets in support of “their” (1979) revolution, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of workers who did not stage a single strike in favour of the pink “revolutionaries”. Perhaps (according to Loach) this was because the workers were afraid the punishment of the tyrannical regime, but presumably were not afraid of striking and demonstrating against the Shah’s regime, which had killed many thousands of them, and not just two dozens or so of demonstrators as has recently occurred. And then, he ends up by keeping equal distances from both Israel and Iran. Thus, according to the new Loach, the Iranian regime has to be boycotted in exactly the same way as the Israeli regime, despite the fact that it is the latter and not the former which has engaged in massive collective punishments (presently starving the entire population of Gaza because they dared to vote the wrong way) and which was repeatedly condemned by the UN General Assembly as a racist regime and just recently was accused by a committee of UN enquiry as committing massive war crimes in Gaza last year.

Therefore, “progressive” film directors have finally joined the Non Government Organisations (financed directly or indirectly by the transnational elite) in adopting the ideology of globalisation (fight to support human rights, etc.) “forgetting” in the process that they fight also the same good fight for which the transnational elite has killed hundreds of thousands of people all over the world!

[1] T. Fotopoulos, The Pink Revolution in Iran and the “Left,” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 5, No. 3, special issue (summer 2009), http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/

[2] Gore Vidal, “The Enemy Within,” The Observer (27/10/2002), http://www.lawyersagainstthewar.org/articles/vidal.html

[3] See T. Fotopoulos, “The worsening of the systemic crisis in Greece” (in this issue).

[4] See e.g., Robert Tait, “Nine die as Iranian security forces unleash furious crackdown and protesters fight back,” The Guardian (28/12/2009), http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/27/iran-protests-tehran-ashura-ceremony

[5] T. Fotopoulos, The Pink Revolution in Iran and the “Left”, op. cit.

[6] Robert Tait, “Activists and relatives held in crackdown as Iran accuse Britain of backing protesters,” The Guardian (30/12/2009), http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/29/activists-held-crackdown-iran-britain

[7] Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 122.

[8] Ibid., p. 121.

[9] T. Fotopoulos, The Pink Revolution in Iran and the “Left,” op. cit.

[10] See Left.ru International , http://left.ru/index.phtml

[11] See e.g., Robert Fisk, “The tree-lined bunkers that could change the face of the Middle East,” The Independent (21/1/2010), http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-treelined-bunkers-that-could-change-the-face-of-the-middle-east-1874228.html

[12] T. Fotopoulos, The Pink Revolution in Iran and the “Left,” op. cit.

[13] T. Fotopoulos, “The Rise of New Irrationalism and its Incompatibility with Inclusive Democracy,” Democracy & Nature, Vol. 4, Nos. 2/3, issue 11/12, double issue (1998), http://www.democracynature.org/vol4/fotopoulos_irrationalism.htm

[14] See for references T. Fotopoulos, The Pink Revolution in Iran and the “Left,” op. cit.

[15] T. Fotopoulos, The Global Crisis, Greece and the Anti-systemic Movement (in Greek) (Athens: Koukkida, 2009), chs. 12-14, http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/fotopoulos/greek/grbooks_koukida_2009/grbooks_koukida_2009.htm

[16] T. Fotopoulos, “Transitional strategies and the Inclusive Democracy project,” Democracy & Nature, Vol.8, No.1 (March 2002), http://www.democracynature.org/vol8/takis_transitional.htm

[17] Todd May interview with Rebecca DeWitt in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall 2000), http://flag.blackened.net/ias/8may.htm

[18] See Comsky’s capitalism, Albert’s post-capitalism and Inclusive Democracy (in Greek) (Athens: Gordios, 2004), ch. 1, http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/fotopoulos/greek/grbookschomsky/grbookschomsky.htm

[19] Katherine Butler, “British directors lead boycott of Iran's cultural showpiece,” The Independent (23/1/2010), http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/british-directors-lead-boycott-of-irans-cultural-showpiece-1876487.html

[20] “On Media, Culture and the Prospects for a New Liberatory Project: An interview with Ken Loach,” Democracy & Nature: The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 1999), http://www.democracynature.org/vol5/loach_media.htm