Iran
Iran
Jan. 2020.
Of course we have to oppose Trump's war measures against Iran. Trump is a perfect hypocrite. If he wanted to help Iranians he would allow Iranians into the U.S. He would not be levying sanctions that harm everyday Iranians. He just want Iran's ruin.
On the other hand we offer no sympathy or apology to the Iranian regime. Iran is a theocratic tyranny. It executes hundreds each year and laws have the death penalty for things like "waging war against God". In this way it's just like reactionary Saudi Arabia. The Iranian regime smashed the Left in 1979 and massacred those in its prisons ten years later. There are no labor rights. Arabs in Iran are sorely mistreated. Ahvaz, an Arab majority town in Iran, is a militarized zone and it may be the most air-polluted city on earth.
People are smart enough to oppose two things at once. Only opposing Trump and Netanyahu and ignoring regime repression of Iranians in the name of clarity or of criticizing only those things close to home would properly expose us as hypocrites.
War Resisters League Statement January 8
Dan Fischer in PeaceNews "No War with Iran. No Tears for Soleimani"
Arash Azizi, “You don’t need to mourn Qassem Soleimani to be deeply worried.”
The Anarchist Era Collective, based in Iran and Afghanistan, "Statement on the Assassination of an Iranian State Terrorist"
The Worker Communist Party of Iran, "Qasem Soleimani, hated commander of the Islamic Republic's Quds Force has been killed"
"Iraqi protesters denounce twin occupiers US and Iran", Yahoo News
"Iranian-American Organizer Sina Moravej Discusses Current U.S.-Iranian Political Climate"
Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation (U.S.-based), "The Greatest Purveyor of Violence"
Jan. 5, 2020
A Kurdish feminist writes:
Killing Sulaimani- How The Butcher of the People Became an Anti-Imperialist Hero
" You can cheer the end of Sulaimani and still be anti-war. You can condemn the way Sulaimani was executed but still be relieved that he is no longer around to terrorize people. You can be anti-US imperialism and anti-Iranian dictatorship and brutality."
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Sina Zekavat (Iranian in Germany) On Facebook:
To assume that all Shias in Iraq are mourning the death of Suleimani is not only false but is simply racist and orientalist, because you assume they are a block of people without diversity of thought and agency.
Let's go back a couple of months, you know where the popular Iraq protests were most brutalized and killed? southern/central Iraq, Najaf and Karbala, holy Shia cities predominantly working class. So let's review again, Qasem Suleimani was a commander of Iran backed sectarian militia in Iraq (and Syria), who ordered and master minded the violent repression and shooting of Shia and non-Shia young protesters in Iraq. would you mourn the death of the killer of your loved ones? I doubt you would, you would celebrate it, regardless of the grand geopolitical games of the situation.
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Alliance of Middle East Socialists 1/3/2020
"The most worrisome aspect of these developments is that they might lead to catastrophic consequences and full-scale war. That would in turn overshadow the wave of uprisings that have broken out in the Middle East and North Africa region in 2019, from Sudan and..."
Oppose U.S. and Iran War by Showing Solidarity with Uprisings in the MENA Region
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Dan LaBotz on the New Politics site
"We socialists must stand against U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military pressures or attacks on Iran...Within Iran, we stand on the side of the movement for democracy, for political pluralism, for civil rights, for freedom"
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Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books "Trump Declares War" Jan 3
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From Stanley Heller
Danger of a major war? First, there’s no “danger of a major war”. There’s already been major war in the Middle East for years. Syrians have been bleeding in immense numbers since 2011 and Gen. Suleimani has been a major sponsor of the killing. There is a major danger that “white” people of the West will be dying in a war starting in the Middle East. Be honest, that’s what a lot of the concern is about in the U.S.
A steady creep to World War III is possible, but more likely is that the brave movements in both Iraq and Iran that have stood up to incompetent and corrupt leadership at a cost of perhaps 2,000 lives will be forced into the shadows by sectarian state-sponsored “defend the homeland” movements.
Obviously Trump is no liberator. Remember all the "anti-imperialist" claptrap about him being an "isolationist" and secret "anti-war" figure. The Democrats are no better. Their leadership folded over Yemen and Iran in the last months NDAA negotiations. They put no limits on Trump's warmongering at all in exchange for a few Family Leave benefits. They even allowed billions for Trump's wall. We need protest, but not the same old dumb "anti-imperialism" that glorifies Middle East tyrants not the the good graces of the U.S.
Little mention is being made of jolly old Israel. For years Netanyahu has been demanding war on Iran. He's not a puppet-master, but Israel is hugely important in U.S. politics.
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And from independent journalist Oz Katerji an article in the New Statesman
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click for article
Trump says He’s Targeted 52 Iranian Cultural Sites (War Crimes, of course)
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Anti-War Protests Across Many U.S. Cities
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Remove Sanctions on Iran, "yes", but a One Word Answer Doesn't Settle the Manner
Shiyam Nabila Ghalyoun of the War Resisters League and
Sina Zekavat (A War Resisters League video)
2018 Slogan
Oppose War Measures, Solidarity with the Iranian People
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2018 Resolution Iran
After unilaterally exiting from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran in May 2018, an agreement which had been signed by Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China, the U.S. is planning to impose the "strongest sanctions in history" on Iran in November. Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani also proclaims "The collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran is around the corner." The rulers of apartheid Israel are doing all they can to have Iran destroyed by a U.S. war. The Republicans enthusiastically support Trump's military threats. The Democrats can't be expected to mount any serious opposition – indeed many of them will also support war. All this means the U.S. is on the road to a new war. We must oppose it.
Yet, we have to be honest. Iran's woeful human rights record and its participation in Assad's destruction of the Syrian revolution, mass murder of Syrian people and displacement of half the Syrian population are indefensible.
We say,
· No war on Iran, no cyberwarfare, no economic sanctions that would hurt the Iranian masses.
· The anti-war movement must remind the world about the horrors of the sanctions on Iraq 1990-2003
· Iran get out of Syria right now. Your intervention is criminal. Stop direct and indirect military intervention in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
· Solidarity with the current uprising of workers, women, unemployed youth, students, teachers, farmers, oppressed ethnic and religious minorities and the dispossessed for social justice and against the Iranian regime and its military interventions abroad.
· While we express support for Iranian democratic forces struggling against the regime, we do not support monarchists and the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) that support U.S. imperialism and receive money from the CIA.
· Iran, end capital punishment and free political prisoners
· Americans, realize that an attack on Iran will not only be devastating to Iranians but will likely lead to a wider war, with catastrophic consequences for the people of the Middle East, the United States, and much of the rest of the world.
adopted August 7, 2018.
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