It is truly amazing to read this interpretation of Iranian politics. In a way,
it's closer to the US government's neo liberal interpretation than to others
that I've read. There are journalists who report the reality in very different
terms. And there's that Iranian professor who is interviewed by several
outlets, who speaks with an American accent and is employed by a university in
Iran as, I think, a professor of American studies. He describes various sectors
of Iranian society and the government, and their motivations very differently
from this article. When I look at material from The Militant, to me, it seems
like they have a formula, in the same way that US mass media has a formula, and
they run everything through it. You never get the actual truth of situations
from either.
Miriamt
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, June 11, 2021 1:51 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Iranian rulers seek to tighten grip, advance Mideast
clout
Iranian rulers seek to tighten grip, advance Mideast clout
https://themilitant.com/2021/06/05/iranian-rulers-seek-to-tighten-grip-advance-mideast-clout/
BY TERRY EVANS
Vol. 85/No. 23
June 14, 2021
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, in car, surrounded by protesting coal miners
in Azadshahr, Iran, May 2017. His reformist forces have been barred from
running in June 18 presidential election. For years workers have fought to end
rulers’ wars abroad, economic crisis at home.
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF IRAN
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, in car, surrounded by protesting coal miners
in Azadshahr, Iran, May 2017. His reformist forces have been barred from
running in June 18 presidential election. For years workers have fought to end
rulers’ wars abroad, economic crisis at home.
Volatile conflicts within Iran’s cleric-led capitalist regime flared up this
month after the Guardian Council barred candidates from President Hassan
Rouhani’s reformist forces from running in the June 18 presidential elections.
Since the last election in 2017, authorities have faced waves of protests by
working people propelled by mounting opposition to the deadly consequences of
their expansionist foreign policy and resulting economic crisis.
Only seven of more than 590 presidential candidates that registered are being
permitted to run. The Guardian Council is led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
Among those excluded are prominent figures within the regime, including Eshaq
Jahangiri, Rouhani’s first vice president; Ali Larjani, a former parliament
speaker; as well as former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a frequent critic of
the government. Rouhani has been in office since 2013 and by law cannot seek a
third term.
“What the Guardian Council did … has made elections meaningless,” Azar
Mansouri, a spokesperson for the Iran Reformists Front, told the Financial
Times. Khamenei condemned calls made by capitalist opposition groups for a
boycott of the vote.
The decision ensures that a conservative candidate closely aligned with
Khamenei and his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps allies will win the
election. Ebrahim Raisi is the front-runner. Backed by both Khamenei and the
Revolutionary Guard, he ran in the 2017 election, but was soundly defeated by
Rouhani.
Decision-making on key questions, including foreign policy, remains in the
hands of Supreme Leader Khamenei, not the president.
In addition to being a military and repressive force, the Revolutionary Guard
runs many of the largest, most profitable industries in the country.
All wings of the regime, including disqualified presidential candidates, back
the Iranian rulers’ assaults on working people at home and their
interventionist foreign policy abroad. Tehran seeks to export its
counterrevolutionary policies throughout the region. That course has brought it
into sharper conflict with working people in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, as well
as in Israel. Moreover, the human and financial toll of these conflicts is
borne at home by workers and farmers and has eroded any moral legitimacy
claimed by Iran’s rulers and their state.
The Iranian rulers have intervened in bloody conflicts across the Middle East,
entrenching militias and weapons bases to extend their power. This included
supplying weapons-making material to Hamas in the Gaza Strip that it used in
the thousands of recent rocket attacks launched on Israel.
The 1979 Iranian Revolution
Iran’s workers and farmers carried out a popular revolution that overthrew the
dictatorial rule of the U.S.-backed shah. Workers councils were set up in
factories and oil refineries across the country, gains were made in the fight
for the national rights of the Kurds and other oppressed peoples, and in the
fight for the emancipation of women.
The Iranian rulers’ expansionist course was part of their moves to drive
through a far-reaching counterrevolution against these advances.
Capitalist politicians of all stripes in the U.S. present the Tehran regime’s
counterrevolution as if it is the revolution itself.
In 2019 up to 1,500 people were shot and killed by Iranian security forces and
paramilitary squads during country-wide protests against the regime. Widespread
demonstrations had begun in 2017 as working people took advantage of widening
divisions within the regime. For factional reasons, Rouhani had released some
of the facts about the authorities’
vast spending on the Revolutionary Guard and other military forces, hoping to
deflect anger away from his administration’s cuts to subsidies on basic
necessities that millions depend upon.
This year’s election takes place after years of U.S. sanctions have sharply
exacerbated the impact of the economic crisis bearing down on working people in
Iran, widening class inequalities. On May 23 the semiofficial government news
agency ISNA reported the prices of six basic food items had increased 70% since
the end of March.
President Joseph Biden’s administration and Iran’s rulers have begun talks
aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal Washington struck with Tehran, in
exchange for cutbacks in sanctions.
As part of its negotiating tactics, Tehran announced last month it was
enriching uranium to levels far above those agreed to in the 2015 deal.
Since that pact was reached Tehran has also expanded its deployment of
precision missiles, rockets and drones to allies across the region.
The clerical regime aims to use the elections to push back the ongoing popular
opposition, to continue to extend its reach abroad, and to strengthen its hand
in its conflict with Washington.
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Okay, thanks
--
Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through disbelief
and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were so! Your
patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply a child's
wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the eveastingly
bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory scientifically
demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had not the courage to
follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely, you must realize that we
created God, and that all of us together now have killed him.” ― Irvin D.
Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept