Showing posts with label Iranian revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iranian revolution. Show all posts

Sunday, June 22, 2025

The Dead End of U.S./Israeli War Against Iran

 By Kamran Nayeri, June 22, 2025


Author's note: What follows is a free translation of an essay I wrote and sent for the online socialist journal Critique of Political Economy (نقد اقتصاد سیاسی) in Iran on June 19. Because of the ongoing Israeli and U.S. attacks, Internet service has been compromised, and the work of an online journal has been delayed. Therefore, this translation appears before the publication of the original Farsi version. Writing about a highly dynamic series of events, such as this war, is a challenging task. Thus, I appeal to the reader to focus on the main line of my argument and forgive any details that may seem less important at this time.  Although I anticipated Trump's decision to attack Iran's nuclear sites, it happened yesterday, a significant event as it brings the U.S. into direct war with the Islamic Republic, which U.S. administrations had avoided since 1979. Clearly, Trump's action has not ended the conflict but elevated it, and it is likely to lead to the Islamic Republic's decision to produce nuclear weapons as a deterrent.  KN.

                                                                            *     *     *

A bloody war has broken out between the Zionist colonial-settler State and the Islamic Republic. On Friday, June 13, about 100 fighter jets targeted parts of Iran's nuclear program, including the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, some missile production sites, and residential neighborhoods in Tehran, and assassinating several commanders of the Guard of the Islamic Revolution (commonly mistranslated as "Revolutionary Guards"), senior politicians and nuclear scientists were assassinated. 

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared that he will continue this war "for as long as necessary" to destroy the Islamic Republic's nuclear capabilities. This is a vague and unattainable goal. Israel does not have the means to destroy the Fordow facility, which is deep underground.  As a result, Donald Trump has announced that he will enter the U.S. into this war by using the 30,000-pound "bunker buster" bomb that only B2 bombers can deploy. Trump has also called for the Islamic Republic's "unconditional surrender." 

Thus, a war that started under the pretext of preventing the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons has turned into a war to overthrow that regime by U.S. imperialism and the Zionist regime in just a few days. Even though a majority of the American public opposes a U.S. war with Iran, and even part of the coalition that brought Trump to power opposes it, the Democratic Party leaders in Congress seem to support it, as they have not mentioned the constitutional requirement that gives only Congress the power to declare war. 

Thus, the Middle East is facing a long-anticipated war that risks spreading to the region and threatening the region with nuclear contamination. 

 

There is no doubt that Israel's preparations for an invasion of Iran and Donald Trump’s negotiations with the Islamic Republic were a political game to surprise the Iranian regime. The Times of Israel confirmed this fact on the same day Israel attacked Iran (Berman, June 13, 2025). 

The Origin of the War

The Mohammad Reza Pahlavi dictatorship installed by the August 1953 CIA/MI6 coup d’état was overthrown through a year-long mobilization of millions of Iranians, general strikes against it cumulating in the February 1979 insurrection. The Shah's regime and the Israeli state, also created with significant interventions by Britain and the United States, were the bastions of Western imperialism against the Arab revolution and the influence of the Soviet Union in the Middle East. The 1979 revolution dissolved the Cold War military alliance of CENTO. It destroyed the major power in the Middle East that supported the Zionist colonial Settler regime in Palestine and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Western imperialism lost a powerful ally in the Middle East. 

Trusted by the people due to his irreconcilable opposition to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Ayatollah Khomeini was able to establish a provisional government. At the same time, he organized the Revolutionary Council, whose members he chose and dominated by his clerical supporters, to lay the foundations for an Islamic government in Iran. In his treatise, Velayat-e Faqih (The Rule of Islamic Jurisprudence) in the early 1970s, Ayatollah Khomeini argued that Muslims everywhere lived under non-Islamic governments and in the absence of Imam Mahdi, the final Twelfth Imam in Twelver Shia Islam, who is believed to be in occultation (hidden) and will reappear someday, a learned ayatollah a group of such ayatollahs can and must form an Islamic government so that Islamic laws can be implemented.  His goal was to achieve the political unity of all Shiites in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic in Iran was established according to this view, and it became the basis of its foreign policy towards Israel, Palestine, the governments in the region, and the United States. 

From the first day after the February 1979 insurrection that toppled Shah's regime, new Islamic institutions and organizations, especially the Guards Corps of the Islamic Revolution (Guards), the Islamic Revolution Committees, and later the Basij of the Dispossessed as a paramilitary organization attached to the Guards formed a vast armed force to protect the Islamic regime. At the same time, the Islamic Regime dissolved or destroyed all grassroots and democratic movements and independent political parties. Thus, an expansionist Islamic capitalist state was formed in Iran by repression of the Iranians and in conflict with regional and world powers. 

On November 4, 1979, Students Following the Imam's Line occupied the U.S. embassy and held 55 of its employee’s hostage for 444 days. Thus, the first set of sanctions against Iran was imposed by the United States. Among these sanctions was the prohibition on the sale of arms to Iran, which effectively eroded its air force, which the Shah had built up by purchasing F-4 fighter jets from the United States, along with training Iranian air force pilots in the United States.  Iran was dependent on the U.S. government and companies for the maintenance and repair of its air force. 

With Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran and the eight-year war that ensued, the Islamic Republic prioritized the development of a domestic arms industry. Military commentators agree that its drone and missile industries are at the highest level in the Middle East. The experience of eight years of war with Iraq and then cooperation with Islamic military groups in other countries of the Middle East has created a vast and experienced military cadre for the Islamic Republic. 

 

In September 2011, the Bushehr nuclear reactor, designed by the Germans but built by the Russians, was put into operation. The Islamic Republic began a nuclear enrichment program for nuclear reactor fuel and medical uses.  

Iran's nuclear program began in the 1950s after the overthrow of the nationalist government of Mohammad Mossadegh by the CIA and the British MI6 because Mossadegh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company on March 15, 1951.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's nuclear program was part of Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program. This program was expanded in the 1970s with plans to install nuclear reactors, but the 1979 revolution disrupted these plans.

The Islamic Republic revived the plan to build a nuclear power plant in Bushehr during the Iran-Iraq War. In 1995, Clinton imposed new sanctions on Iran's nuclear program in response to the Islamic Republic's support for anti-U.S. and anti-Israel Islamic groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza Strip. Clinton banned U.S. investment in the energy sectors and trade and investment in Iran. 

 Successive U.S. cabinets have imposed additional sanctions on Iran. 

Colonialism, Imperialism, and the Middle East

The U.S. policy toward Iran and the Middle East is a continuation of the British policy, which controlled a significant part of the Middle East, along with French imperialism, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. 

The League of Nations, formed by four Allied countries after World War I—Britain, France, Italy, and Japan (the United States did not participate) —gave Britain the mandate for Palestine. In 1917, the British laid the groundwork for the creation of Israel in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration.  In a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, who was a Zionist, he promised to create a "state for the Jewish people" in Palestine. The Rothschilds, who were a Jewish banking and finance family, were considered the richest in the world in the late 19th century. 

At that time, Jews were a small minority in Palestine. 

Zionism as a European Colonial-Settler Ideology

The ideology of Zionism emerged in Central and Eastern Europe as a colonial-settler ideology prevalent in 19th-century Europe in response to waves of antisemitism there. Progressive Jews, of course, were looking for another way to overcome antisemitism. In the mid-19th century, the Young Hegelians raised and discussed the problem of antisemitism. Bruno Bauer in his book The Jewish Question (1843), argued that Jews could only achieve emancipation by abandoning their religious consciousness through the establishment of a secular state. Karl Marx, in "On the Jewish Question" (1843), criticized Bauer's assumption that a secular state solves the problem of religion. Marx pointed to the pervasiveness of religion in the United States, which, unlike Prussia, had a secular state. For Marx, Bauer's mistake was that he did not distinguish between political emancipation and human emancipation. Political emancipation is compatible with holding religious views, which can lead to religious bias. As a result, Marx argued that the liberation of the Jews (and others) from the bondage of religious thought lies in the complete emancipation of humanity, which would ensure the absence of the need for any religion.  Marx, however, acknowledged that human emancipation is impossible "within the framework of the "hitherto existing world order." 

The revolutionary socialist movement adhered to Marx's view on religion and antisemitism.  The relationship between the Bolshevik Party and the "General Jewish Workers' Alliance" (the Bund) serves as an example. The Jewish workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia formed the Bund in 1897. The Bolshevik policy of staunchly opposing antisemitism and fighting for a socialist revolution resulted in the revolutionary wing of the Bund splitting and joining the Communist Party. In 1918, the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree condemning all forms of antisemitism and calling on workers and peasants to fight against it.

After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin, who was organizing a bureaucratic counterrevolution, occasionally resorted to antisemitism as his main rival, Leon Trotsky, came from a Ukrainian Jewish family.  In the period that Stalin sought an alliance with Hitler, Stalin again used antisemitism. From late 1944 onwards, Stalin pursued a policy of supporting Zionism. 

In this way, Israel was created with the support of the imperialists and Stalinists. The Stalinist parties continued to support Israel. 

Israel as a Colonial Settler State

Despite the Zionist propaganda that tried to justify the occupation of Palestine based on myths of the return of the Jews to The Promised Land, the Zionist Movement initially had other places for colonization.  For example, in 1903, at the Sixth Zionist Congress, Theodor Herzl, "The Father of Modern Zionism," proposed Uganda as the location of the Jewish state. However, after the First World War (WWI) and the division of the Middle East and North Africa between British and French imperialism, Palestine became part of the British Mandate from 1931 to 1948. Balfour Declaration was initially a promise made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, to Lord Walter Rothschild,  a Zionist tycoon, on November 2, 1917. The Rothschild banking and finance family was considered the wealthiest in nineteenth-century Europe. 

 

Subsequently, Zionists began to migrate to Palestine and acquire land through the purchase and use of force, including terrorism. For example, Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary terrorist force,  was headed by young Menachem Begin, who later became the prime minister of Israel.  

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations, which was dominated by the Allied powers,  voted to divide Palestine into two independent states, one Palestinian and the other Jewish. According to this plan, Jerusalem was declared an international city. The plan was implemented on October 1, 1948, which the Zionists celebrate as "Independence Day." However, the Palestinians and the Arab regimes saw the partition of Palestine as another example of Western imperialism's interference in their land and opposed it. At that time, there were approximately 1,300,000 Palestinian Arabs and 600,000 Jews (some of whom were  Palestinian Jews who thus became citizens of Israel) living in Palestine. 

Thus, the Zionist movement and its imperialist supporters have created a Frankenstein in the Promised Land: a reliable military base of Western imperialism located in the heart of the Middle East and North Africa. 

According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israel began a push to acquire nuclear weapons immediately right after it was established. The search for uranium began in 1949, and the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1952. On October 3, 1957, France and Israel signed an agreement to build a 24-megawatt reactor (although the cooling systems and nuclear waste facilities were designed for a reactor with three times this capacity), all under the guise of establishing a chemical plant. All this was carried out secretly outside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection regime.  In 1968,  the CIA published a report on Israel's nuclear weapons production. Although the United States was aware of Israel's nuclear ambitions and activities, as a strategic ally in the Middle East, it was allowed to join the small group of states with nuclear weapons (the Nuclear Club). 

While Israel is a member of the IAEA, it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This is a significant difference because membership in the IAEA gives Israel access to certain benefits and services related to nuclear technologies and fosters international nuclear cooperation. Failure to sign the NPT means that Israel will not be subject to full inspections by the IAEA.  As such, the Israeli government neither officially denies nor acknowledges the possession of nuclear weapons.  Currently, Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid from the United States annually. Although a UN resolution created Israel, it has never been reprimanded by the United Nations for repeated violations of international law thanks to the veto power of the United States in the Security Council. Israel was a staunch supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa but has opposed any anti-imperialist and revolutionary movement in the Middle East and around the world.  It has supported the U.S. war in Indochina but opposed the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979   and is one of the few countries that voted against the U.S. lifting the embargo at the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. 

Thus, the cause of Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Europe and the Nazi Holocaust, especially those who came to Palestine with socialist ideals, has been betrayed by Zionist leaders. Worse still, many of them have become racist oppressors who serve colonial and imperialist interests while opposing the Palestinian movement for self-determination and the Arab revolution.

In contrast, Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The treaty was signed in 1968 and ratified in 1970 by the Shah's regime. However, due to the hostility of the United States and Western imperialism after the 1979 revolution, numerous concerns and reports about Iran's compliance with the safeguards and obligations of the treaty have been raised to oppose Iran's use of nuclear energy, a right given to other states.

Why Israel and the U.S. are allowed to have a nuclear program and nuclear bombs, but Iran is not even allowed to enrich uranium for peaceful means? 

Did not the Islamic Republic sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed on July 14, 2015, with the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) to allow for regular inspection of Iran's nuclear activities to ensure it is for peaceful means? Why did Israel oppose the treaty, and Trump tore it apart? 

Ten years ago, after the signing of the JCPOA, I wrote in an article titled "Their milk wins, our line loses":

"The July 14 agreement between 5+1 and the Islamic Republic reflects the balance of power between Iran and imperialism, headed by the United States.  America's pyrrhic victory in the Gulf wars and subsequent rise and unraveling of the Arab Spring has resulted in region-wide instability where extremist Islamic organizations like Al-Quada and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that routinely use terror have gained ground.  Meanwhile, the influence of the Islamic Republic has increased in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and the Gaza Strip.  The Islamic Republic has been an ascending force in the region whose interests have coincided with those of the U.S. when Washington invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and now that both regimes are engaged in the fight against ISIS.  At the same time, a majority of the Islamic Republic's regime realizes that their immediate interests in dismantling the sanctions regime and pursuing economic development, as well as their strategic regional ambitions, are best served by reaching an understanding with the United States.  Thus, the Iran nuclear agreement is a win-win for American imperialism and its allies and the clerical capitalist Islamic Republic.  However, it would be a mistake to suppose that the agreement will prevent future wars—conflicts can arise over implementation, and the balance of power can change in the future, making Iran vulnerable again.  Nor would the agreement make the Middle East and the world safer from nuclear "accidents" or nuclear wars (emphasis added, Nayeri, 2015)."

Israel's war against Iran has now confirmed my argument that the agreement signed ten years ago is no longer possible due to changing power relations in the region. As Israeli and American policymakers have repeatedly insisted, the Islamic Republic has never been as politically weak as it is today. The dictatorship of Bashir al-Assad in Syria, which was an ally of the Islamic Republic, has been overthrown, and the current Sunni Syrian regime prefers closer ties with Washington and has stayed quiet in the Israeli attack on Iran. Armed forces allied with the Islamic Republic, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, have been weakened, and their influence in Iraq has diminished. By creating a tyrannical clerical capitalist regime, oppressing women, religious minorities, oppressed nationalities, interfering in the private lives of citizens, suppressing any independent organization, suppressing all forms of protest, attacking, imprisoning, torturing, and executing its critics and opponents, the Islamic Republic has been discredited in the eyes of most Iranians and the world public opinion.  Adherence to neoliberal policies and the inability to manage the economy, according to official accounts, 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The 1979 revolution made it possible for the redistribution of income, which elevated the lot of many poorer Iranians, but this proved temporary, and now deep class divisions and government corruption are evident everywhere. 

 

The key motivation for the Islamic Republic's negotiations with the United States has been the lifting of sanctions to reduce the economic crisis. The regime used uranium enrichment as a bargaining chip to reduce, if not end, economic sanctions. 

Thus, the Islamic government project undertaken by Ayatollah Khomeini has reached a dead end. 

This situation provided Israel and the United States an opportunity to launch a military attack on Iran with an eye on the possibility of overthrowing the Islamic Republic. However, unlike Syria, where an alternative force had been established over the years, there is no such an alternative existing in Iran. 

Furthermore, both Israel and the United States are in relative decline. As the year and a half of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza shows, despite killing more than 55,000 Palestinians, injuring nearly 120,000, and displacing the majority of the inhabitants of Gaza, Israel has not yet been able to win the release of all its hostages or defeat Hamas. Israel is politically isolated and more isolated in public opinion than at any time in the past, as its prime minister, Netanyahu, is wanted by the International Court for war crimes. Zionism has proven a dead-end as much as political Islam. 

U.S. imperialism has been facing a relative decline, particularly against the rising power of China as a global power, while it has been challenged by regional powers such as Russia in Ukraine, Iran in the Middle East, and China in the Pacific region. The second election of Trump as president demonstrated the increasing polarization within the political class, as every four years, the newly elected president cancels many of the policies implemented by his predecessor. This trend is entirely the opposite of what the U.S. economic ruling class needs. 

 

The Ecocentric Socialist Alternative 

The 1979 Revolution was suppressed and eventually crushed by 1983 through Ayatollah Khomeini's project of Velayat-e Faqih (rule of Islamic jurisprudence), which aimed to establish and consolidate the Islamic Republic. At least two generations of Iranians were demoralized in the process: the generation of the 1979 Revolution and the generation that was born and grew up after the Islamic Republic came to power. The former was mainly a victim of despair due to defeat, and the latter has been a victim of ignorance regarding the reality of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's dictatorship, the secular nature of the 1979 revolution, and the reasons for its failure. Out of ignorance about the democratic anti-imperialist goals of the revolution, this generation holds the revolutionaries responsible for the creation and crimes of the Islamic Republic even though they were the first victims of this regime. As a result, some of them have been attracted to the propaganda of the United States, the remnants of the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and even Israel. These same people have become anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian, an echo of the Fars nationalism of the Pahlavi monarchy. 

However, the 1979 Revolution was a great historical movement for independence, freedom, and social justice (استقلال، آزادی، عدالت اجتماعی). It was a movement that had the potential to create the broadest and deepest form of democracy based on the grassroots movements of workers, peasants, oppressed nationalities, youth, and students. Of course, these organizations had weaknesses and flaws.  However, had they not been dissolved or suppressed by the Islamic Republic, it would have been entirely possible for them to develop as the basis of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, establishing the first democratic government in Iran's history. 

 

In the Russian socialist revolution of October 1917, it was this process that determined the socialist character of the revolution, not merely the leadership of the Bolsheviks and the nationalization of the economic infrastructure. As Lenin remarked: 

"The socialist character of Soviet, i.e., proletarian, democracy, as concretely applied today, lies first in the fact that the electors are the working and exploited people; the bourgeoisie is excluded. Secondly, it lies in the fact that all bureaucratic formalities and restrictions of elections are abolished; the people themselves determine the order and time of elections, and are completely free to recall any elected person. Thirdly, it lies in the creation of the best mass organization of the vanguard of the working people, i.e., the proletariat engaged in large-scale industry, which enables it to lead the vast mass of the exploited, to draw them into independent political life, to educate them politically by their own experience; therefore for the first time a start is made by the entire population in learning the art of administration, and in the beginning to administer (Lenin, April 1918).”

Policy Framework

Even if the working people take over state power, the question still arises as to what framework should be adopted for policymaking. 

Some Native Indian tribes used a golden rule: choose a policy that will be good for the next seven generations. As the Native Americans considered themselves an inseparable part of nature, the good policy must also be good for the ecosystem of which we are a small part. 

In addition to a consistent policy to create the infrastructure for democracy from below, Iran's economic structure must change to create a society that is compatible with the well-being of its people and the ecosystem of the Middle East and the world, ensuring social justice. The current war demonstrates the dead-end of Islamic fundamentalism, Zionism, and imperialism. However, we know that the world is facing several existential crises, such as global warming and climate chaos, the Sixth Extinction, recurrent pandemics, and nuclear annihilation. The root cause is the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization. 

Science and technology are not value-free. They have been, especially since the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, instruments for the domination and control of nature, allowing for its plunder for wealth and power (Nayeri, 2021). The fossil fuel-based economy contradicts the need for a transition to a green economy in every way.  Nuclear technology, whether for energy or nuclear weapons, is inherently dangerous to the ecosystem and life on the planet  (Friends of the Earth undated). As the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011 and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in August 1945 demonstrated. As the recent conflict between Pakistan and India showed and, the danger posed by bombing Iran's nuclear facilities by Israel and possibly the United States demonstrates.  Progress toward a healthier, safer, and better world requires the elimination of all nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.  

Here, I am only referring to the climate crisis in the Middle East. In 2023, the United Nations Climate Change Risk Assessment Group published a report on the future of the Middle East and North Africa. The World Bank provided an analysis of its economic impact (World Bank 2023).

The World Bank predicts that if climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions is not prevented, real annual GDP in countries in the Middle East and North Africa will decline by 1.1% by mid-century, and poor and vulnerable families will increasingly bear the resulting damage. Despite the unique characteristics of the needs and facilities for water, energy, and food security in the countries of the region, their interdependencies are the only way out of this crisis that requires their cooperation. Structural challenges, primarily related to the lack of financial resources, inadequate reforms, and limited resources, as well as the lack of commitment from capitalist state institutions, increase the likelihood of exacerbating the vulnerabilities caused by climate change in countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The solutions proposed by the UN research group, including the "green transition" from existing fossil economies to one based on renewable energy (mainly solar and wind), will significantly reduce the costs of electricity generation. Such a transition would entail economic benefits, energy security, and long-term financial and job creation advantages. Eliminating oil and gas flaring and reducing methane emissions in oil and gas-producing countries could lead to significant economic benefits while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

Another scientific study was published this week (Santer et al., 2025) that provides evidence that the onset of atmospheric warming could have been documented as early as 1880. In fact, in 1896, the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius had shown that the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere had doubled. Today, there is no longer any doubt that atmospheric warming and the climate crisis are caused by the emissions of greenhouse gases resulting from human-centered industrial capitalist civilization (Nayeri, April 2023). 

Of course, the United Nations research group does not address the human-centered industrial capitalist civilization as the root cause of the climate disaster. The United Nations is, in fact, the organization of non-allied capitalist states, not an independent organization of united working people. 

A group of academics and environmentalists has long argued that the current system pursues unlimited economic growth while providing us with limited possibilities on the planet we live on. The confluence of these two realities is the cause of ecosystem crises. Some of them have created the degrowth movement. Unfortunately, most of them do not realize that growth in the capitalist system is driven by the system's need for capital accumulation, and the accumulation of capital depends on profit, which is only possible by creating surplus value (Nayeri, 2022). However, contrary to Marxist belief, the source of surplus value is not only the exploitation of the worker but also the plundering of non-human nature (Nayeri, December 2023). 

As a result, the only way out of the existential crises and other social problems, including the wars in the Middle East, is to transition to Ecocentric Socialism. This vision and goal also represent a redefinition of the type of human life free from all forms of alienation in a society where money and power deteriorate as quickly as love for nature and human solidarity become part of our daily lives.

In Iran, this process will require the rejection of imperialism, Zionism, and religious dictatorship to open a window to the final emancipation of humanity.

References:

Bruno Bauer. The Jewish Question. 1843.

Berman, Lazar. “How an Israeli-American Deception Campaign Lulled Iran into a False Sense of Security.” Times of Israel, June 13, 2025.

Bruno Bauer. The Jewish Question. 1843.

Friends of the Earth. “Is Nuclear Power Bad for the Earth? No date.

Lenin, V.I. “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government.” April 1918.

Marx, Karl. On the Jewish Question. 1843.

Nayeri, Kamran. “Heads They Win, Tails We Lose: On Iran Nuclear Agreement.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. August 12, 2015.

______________. “The Case for Ecocentric Socialism.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. July 22, 2021.

______________. “On Degrowth.”  Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. July 24, 2021.

______________. “The Labor Theory of Value and Exploitation of Nonhumans: The Case of the Meat Industry.”  Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. December 31, 2022..

______________. “The Anthropocentric Industrial Capitalist Civilization and Ecological Crises.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. April 1, 2023..

Santer, Benjamin, Susan Salmon, David W. I. Thomason, Yaowei Li. “Human influence on climate detectable in the late 19th century.” PANS, June 16, 202.

World Bank. MENA Country Climate and Development Report: Climate change Action in the Middle East and North Africa (key insights from the reports).November 2023. 

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Women, Life, Liberty: A Protest Promising a Revolution to End All Oppression and Exploitation

By Kamran Nayeri, Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism, October 20, 2022

A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini during a demonstration in support
 of Mahsa Aminiin Tehran on September 22. 
Photo by Ozan KOS /AFP) 

The song Baraye (For) composed by the singer Shervin Hajipour has been described as "the anthem" of the "Women, Life, Liberty" protests in Iran. Hajipour wrote the lyrics using a collection of tweets by the protesters. Shortly after the release of Baraye, he was arrested. However, he has been released on bail.  As such, the lyrics offer a random sample of what motivates some of the protesters. To keep the authenticity of these, the following is my literal English translation of the lyric, which sacrifices it musical and poetic forms.


Baraye (For)

For the sake of dancing in the street

For the fear felt in the moment of kissing

For my sister, your sister, our sisters

For changing the rotten minds

For shame, for pennilessness

For the yearning for an ordinary life

For the sake of the children that mine the garbage and their dreams

For this government-run economy 

For this polluted air 

For Vali-Asr street and its dying trees

For Piruz, the cheetah cub and his imminent extinction

For the banned innocent dogs

For nonstop weeping

For imagining the repeat of this moment

For a laughing face

For the students, for the future

For this compulsory paradise 

For the imprisonment of educated intellects

For the Afghani children

For all these never repeated fors

For all the hollow slogans 

For the collapse of the chaffy houses 

For tranquillity

For the sun after the endless night

For tranquilizers and insomnia

For men, country, prosperity

For that girl who wished to be a boy

For women, life, liberty

For liberty


The protests

The death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman in the custody of the Islamic Republic morality police in Tehran on September 16, 2022, has ignited ongoing protests. With a population of 86.3 million and a median age of 32, street protests have been mainly organized and attended by young people, including many young women. Some college campuses and high school students have joined, especially women and girls. Women's protests have included the symbolic removal of the 42-year-old compulsory headscarves. Some women have burned their headscarves, and some, in a symbolic act, have cut pieces of their hair in public protests. There has been growing mass support for the protests, including a growing number of solidarity labor strikes including in the oil and gas, petrochemical, and steel industries. The Islamic Republic has been losing support even among the religious sectors of society, as was in full display in the  October 13 security forces attack on Shahed High School in Ardabil, Azerbaijan. The school is part of the network run by the Shaheed (Martyr) Foundation. These schools are dedicated to the students who are typically children of those who died or were critically wounded in the Iran -Iraq war. Video recordings of the students' protest show them wearing the full black chador typical of practicing Muslim women. Officials had tried to force the students to sing in a pro-government show, "Salam Farmandeh," a pledge of allegiance to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Instead, a group of students chanted, "Death to the Dictator!" Nineteen students were arrested, and ten were injured. One student was killed.


Energized by the protests in Iran, solidarity rallies and marches have been organized in many cities worldwide by expatriate Iranians. The protests in Iran have also won the solidarity of many non-Iranians worldwide, especially women. Very creative solidarity art and music developed in Iran and elsewhere have been posted and shared on social media.


The Islamic Republic does not seem to be able to stop the protests, and the young protesters promise not to return to passivity. It is a matter of time before broader layers of Iranians take to the streets. When millions mobilize in the streets, and a mass general strike happens, especially in critical industries like oil and gas, the days of the theocratic capitalist rule in Iran are numbered. The strategic question is: what will replace it? 


The current protests reject the Islamic Republic regime in its totality. Some commentators see the present demonstrations in continuity with earlier ones going back to the Green Movement in 2009. However, the Green Movement gave political support to two presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, of the reformist wing of the Islamic Republic. 


Other commentators have called these protests a revolution. That is an overstatement. It is true that a fast-growing section of the population is being mobilized to support these young fighters, including an unfolding wave of solidarity labor strikes. However, there has not been any mass street protests to challenge the regime and a  nationwide general strike, not to mention publicly organized grassroots movements of the crucial sectors of the population. Street protests in Tehran have been limited to after-business hours as daily life seems to go on.  


The 1979 revolution

While every revolution is unique, it is helpful to consider the 1979 revolution when Iran had a population of 36 million (for a political summary of the lessons of the 1979 revolution, see Nayeri and Nassab 2006). A convenient way to mark the beginning of the revolution is the February 1978 demonstration of a few hundred thousand in Tabriz, Azerbaijan. It was then followed with some regularity mass demonstrations in other cities. By the summer of 1978, these were supported by a general strike of workers, including government office employees.  Workplace strike committees were formed. On December 10 and 11, 1978, under martial law conditions, as many as 17 million Iranians took to the streets in many cities, including the most populous, as the oil workers staged a general strike. In neighborhoods, local committees were formed to distribute heating and cooking fuel that oil workers made sure to get to the public but denied to the government.


In combination, these divided the conscript ranks of the Shah’s army and demoralized its officers rendering martial law ineffective. The Shah was forced to flee the country on January 16 after setting up a caretaker cabinet with Shahpour Bakhtiar, a nationalist, as its prime minister. The February 1979 insurrection was the final blow to the American-installed and supported dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi regime as the youth and sections of the army resisted an attempted military coup by the high brass.  In three days, insurrections destroyed all repressive organs of the Shah’s regime across the country, beginning in Tehran on February 11.   

 

It is helpful to recall the fatal weaknesses of the 1979 revolution. The central slogan of "Death to the Shah" united Iranians of all political persuasions against the regime. However, there was little discussion among the revolutionary masses and even in the socialist and labor movement about what kind of society we wanted to build after the overthrow of the Shah’s regime. 


Although the 1979 revolution provided us with a surprisingly rich set of self-organization and self-mobilization of workers, oppressed nationalities, peasants, neighborhoods, and students, the idea of the bottom-up direct democracy as a form of government that would act on the immediate and long-term needs of the working people did not get much attention. 


Instead, the masses rallied around existing opposition forces. The charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini, with a history of opposition to the Shah's regime and the support of a network of clergy and mosques, became the acknowledged leader of the revolution. As the left was heavily influenced by the Stalinist ideology of the two-stage revolution, it did precious little to dispel the illusion in Khomeini and offer an alternative. Instead, the main Stalinist current, Tudeh Party, with the most experience and infrastructure, actually spread this illusion. Thus, most of the left identified Ayatollah Khomeini as the representative of the "national bourgeoisie," who they argued should lead the anti-imperialist bourgeois-democratic revolution. In the interest of "unity", even the non-Stalinist left ignored that Khomeini opposed the Shah from a reactionary position: his opposition to the extension of the right to vote to women and land reform.  His “anti-imperialism” was because of his pan-Shiism, not the international solidarity of the working people and anti-capitalism. Thus, the principle of self-organization and self-mobilization of the working people was undermined by the left as even the non-Stalinist currents still believed that the future of the revolution would depend on their vanguard party to lead the masses, ignoring the creative potential of self-organized and self-mobilized shoras movement (which undoubtedly had weaknesses). Even leftist currents that aimed to be independent of the Islamic Republic substituted themselves for the actual mass movement. Some turned to "armed struggle" against the regime despite mass illusion in Khomeini. Today, we must acknowledge these errors and make the lessons of 1979 a basis for our work to develop a politically independent and self-reliant mass movement of the youth and working people. 


There is also a key difference today compared to 1979.  In the past four decades, the world has become aware of existential ecological crises: catastrophic clime change, the Sixth Extinction, recurrent pandemics, and the nuclear holocaust. Regionally, there would be an unfolding crisis of freshwater scarcity as governments compete to make clouds rain in “their country” by seeding them, a questionable technology. Within 20 years, freshwater would be rationed in Iran. Dust storms, air pollution, and over-populated heated cities are now a norm in Iran. Much of the Middle East, including large sections of southern Iran, will become uninhabitable (Alaaldin, 2022). The future of the Iranian people depends on rapid response and effective responses to these ecological crises.  As we know from 50 years of no action by the capitalist world governments, especially in key polluting countries including Iran.


It is also imperative to critically review the history of the world revolution, beginning with the Russian revolution. (Nayeri, 2022)


Women, Life, Liberty

The slogan “Women, Life, Liberty” offers the political maturity of the current movement compared to the 1979 revolution. Not only it places the oppression of women in Iran front and center, but it also provides a framework to think about the kind of society we need to build after overcoming the current regime.  When Ayatollah Khomeini declared on March 7, 1979, less than a month after the overthrow of the Shah's regime and the day before International Women’s day on March 8, that women should wear hijab to enter government offices, it provoked thousands of women and many men to protest for three days. After a planned rally in front of Tehran University, a majority decided to march to Freedom Square. Some, mostly men, quickly created a defensive chain around the marchers as the newly organized Hezbollah goons attacked the marchers with sticks, chains, and knives.  Despite a heroic effort by the marchers to proceed to the end, the crowd was dispersed well before reaching Azadi Square. There were also protest rallies of a similar size, one at the prime minister's office. But the millions who overthrew the Shah’s regime did not join us in the street to protest the beginning of what came to be compulsory hijab in Iran.  What is worse, just three weeks later, on 30 and 31 March, 98.2% of eligible citizens, according to official results, voted for the Islamic Republic.  There was no mass protest against the undemocratic referendum, which posed an artificially polar choice: the Islamic Republic or monarchy.  Nobody knew what the Islamic Republic was supposed to look like, as its constitution was drafted by an Assembly of Experts in Islamic jurisprudence between August 3 and October 4 when it was approved. 


The central slogan of the current protest has its origin in the Kurdish women's movement in the Middle East in the 2000s as ژن، ژیان، ئازادی  (pronounced Jin, Jiyan, Azadî; Women, Life, Liberty). It was adopted in the Iranian Kurdistan in response to Mahsa Amini's death and was quickly adopted in its Farsi translation (زن زندگی ٱزادی, pronounced “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi”) nationwide.  It has been also translated into other languages and chanted worldwide. The theoretical framework is Abdullah Öcalan's concept of Jineology, a form of radical feminism, to achieve gender equality in a future independent democratic Kurdistan.  


Born in 1949, Öcalan is a founding member of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). He has been a political prisoner there since 1999. In prison, Öcalan shed his Stalinist ideology in prison after studying social theorists, including Murray BookchinImmanuel Wallerstein, and Hannah Arendt. By 2004, he advocated a "democratic con-federalism” for an independent Kurdistan based on a system of municipal assemblies fashioned after Bookchin's The Ecology of Freedom: the emergence and dissolution of hierarchy (1982). 


Critical of the Marxist mode of the production-centered theory of history, Bookchin proposed a more nuanced social analysis: 


"My use of the word hierarchy in the subtitle of this work is meant to be provocative. There is a strong theoretical need to contrast hierarchy with the more widespread use of the words class and State; careless use of these terms can produce a dangerous simplification of social reality. To use the words hierarchy, class, and State interchangeably, as many social theorists do, is insidious and obscurantist. This practice, in the name of a "classless" or "libertarian" society, could easily conceal the existence of hierarchical relationships and a hierarchical sensibility, both of which – even in the absence of economic exploitation or political coercion – would serve to perpetuate unfreedom." (Bookchin 1982, p. 3)


Jineology

Öcalan describes jineology as follows:


"The extent to which society can be thoroughly transformed is determined by the extent of the transformation attained by women. Similarly, the level of woman's freedom and equality determines the freedom and equality of all sections of society. . . . For a democratic nation, woman's freedom is of great importance too, as a liberated woman constitutes a liberated society. A liberated society, in turn, constitutes a democratic nation. Moreover, the need to reverse the role of man is of revolutionary importance." (cited in Düzgün, 2016)


During the Syrian civil war, The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, was established in 2012. Its supporters state that it is a secular polity organized with direct democracy relying on jineology, anarchism, and libertarian socialist ideology. Thus, the idea of the centrality of women's liberation in human emancipation has been welcome in the century-old Kurdish struggle for self-determination in the Middle East.  


The Russian socialist revolution

Historically, the Marxist class struggle view of politics has been compromised by class-collaborationist Social Democracy and Stalinism.  There are two exceptions, the Russian socialist revolution of 1917 and the Cuban revolution of 1959.  I will briefly discuss their contributions to the historical task of women's liberation. 


The February 1917 revolution that toppled the Tsarist autocracy and culminated in the October 1917 socialist revolution was initiated by women workers striking against the privations of World War I on International Working Women's Day. The provisional government that took power after February 1917 made Russia the first major country to give women the right to vote. The Bolshevik Party that helped lead the socialist revolution included prominent women leaders like Inessa Armand (1874-1920), Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952), Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939), and Aleksandra Artyukhina (1889–1969). Among the first decrees of the Bolshevik government were measures aimed at guaranteeing equality of the sexes and abolishing the centuries-old enslavement of women to their husbands and fathers. 


In October 1918, Soviet Russia liberalized divorce and abortion laws, decriminalized homosexuality, permitted cohabitation, and ushered in many reforms that made women more equal to men before the law (Goldman, 1993). In 1919, the Communist Party program included the following to advance women's rights, 


"The task of the party at the present moment is mainly to carry on ideological and educational work for the purpose of finally stamping out all traces of the former inequality and prejudices, especially among the backward strata of the proletariat and the peasantry. Not satisfied with the formal equality of women, the party strives to free women from the material burden of the obsolete domestic economy by replacing this with the house-communes, public dining halls, central laundries, nurseries, etc. (The Communist Party, 1919)


These and many other gains of the working people were lost as the revolution degenerated and the counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucratic caste came to power in the 1920s. 


The Russian revolution led by the Bolshevik Party was unique. Except for Cuba, all other revolutions whose leaders claimed to pursue socialism were led by Stalinist parties that did not support women's rights and even suppressed political, democratic, and personal freedoms.  


The Cuban revolution

The Cuban revolution of 1959 was led by the July 26 Movement, a revolutionary current seeking political independence for Cuba and supporting the Cuban working people based on Latin American revolutionary nationalist heritage (Castro Ruz, 1953).  Women played a significant role in it, at least 10% of the Rebel Army fighters were women, and some held leadership positions. (Klouzal, 2008, p. 97) Several women were involved in the assault on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953, which initiated the uprising against the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. It also helped found the July 26 Movement. These women included Haydée Santamaría(1923 – 1980), Vilma Espín (1930– 2007), Melba Hernández (1921 – 2014), and Celia Sánchez (1920-1980), who were leaders of the revolution. In a speech in Havana after the revolution's victory, Fidel Castro proclaimed: "When a people have men who fight and women who can fight, that people are invincible." (Murray, 1979)


Before the 1959 revolution, women's social role in Cuba was defied by the patriarchal notions of domesticity, and they had minimal access to educational or professional opportunities. The 1959 revolution provided women with free access to education and professional career opportunities. Universal education, health care, access to child care centers, and the right to safe abortion on demand have worked in combination for Cuban women to live fuller lives. 


Unlike the Bolsheviks, however, the July 26 Movement was not trained in socialist theory and history. The Cuban leadership has not encouraged self-organization and self-mobilization of the working people, including women. The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) was established in 1960 with Vilma Espín as its president and has been closely tied to the Communist Party established in 1965 and the government. Thus, the Cuban leadership has proved insensitive to some non-class forms of hierarchy and oppression. 


In the 1960s and 1970s, many homosexuals in Cuba were fired, imprisoned, or sent to "re-education camps" (Arguelles & Rich, 1984; Cuba-Solidarity.org.uk, no date). It took a fight by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Cubans and their supporters to correct this homophobic policy of the Cuban government rooted. In 2010, the eighty-four-year-old Fidel Castro took some responsibility for these policies (BBC News, 2010). Mariela Castro Espín (born 1962), the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana, the National Commission for Comprehensive Attention to Transsexual People, and an activist for LGBT rights in Cuba, played an important role in helping their mobilization and in public education. 


On September 25, 2022, in a referendum, Cubans overwhelmingly voted in favor of a family law legalizing same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption. The new law also promotes equal sharing of domestic rights and responsibilities between men and women. (Aljazeera, September 26, 2022)


The revolution to end all forms of oppression and exploitation

It is a common mistake among socialists that Marx's concept of socialism is to end the exploitation of the working class. Marx's lifetime commitment to the working class was because he viewed it as the universal class, the social agency to emancipate humanity as it liberates itself from the system of wage slavery. Marx's preoccupation has always been human emancipation, emancipation from alienation from nature, and social alienation. 


Historically and theoretically, alienation precedes exploitation because to exploit something or someone, it must be first alienated. In his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Engels explains how these three particular forms of alienation emerged in civilization. However, given the state of knowledge at the time, Engels did not and could not discuss the transition from hunter-gatherers to early farmers that replaced ecocentrism of the former with anthropocentrism of the latter as a manifestation of alienation from nature which laid the groundwork for the development of social differentiation and forms of social alienation, including private property, patriarchy, and the State. 


Bookchin’s broadening of the analytical attention from the Marxian focus on classes and modes of production to various forms of hierarchy brings into focus non-class forms of alienation, oppression, and exploitation.  


Nonetheless, both Marxian and anarchist theories remained anthropocentric in their design as they focused on pathological social relations. Invariably, they abstract from the natural world of which humanity is a part and, without it, cannot exist. Human emancipation, including women's liberation, cannot be attained unless alienation from nature is also overcome. Human emancipation, including women’s liberation, will require de-alienation from nature by a return to ecocentrism while shedding all traces of anthropocentrism (Nayeri, 2021; 2013). Instead of the Marxian and anarchist theories focusing on social relations, it is necessary to consider the matrix of ecological social relations historically and trans-historically. For 2.5 million years, our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers with an ecocentric worldview. They saw themselves as inseparable from the rest of nature and considered other species as kin and persons. With the rise of farming about 10,000 years ago, which required systematic domestication of plants and animals and domination and control over nature, a new worldview, anthropocentrism, emerged and systematically replaced ecocentrism.  Social alienation, as reflected in social stratification, followed when early farmers turned a sustained economic surplus. The “Women, Life, Liberty” protests require ridding society of anthropocentrism. Thus, women’s liberation, which is correctly seen as vital for a good society in Öcalan’s account itself, will require transcending the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization in the direction of Ecocentric Socialism. 


Ecocentric Socialism is based on animistic ecological materialism (for comparison with Marx’s and Engels’s historical materialism, see Nayeri, 2021, Table 1). It views the question of agency as the interrelationship of animate and inanimate beings in an ecosystem. Everything in nature, including human society, has agency only in its interconnection and interaction with all others. Everything has an intrinsic value. This view rejects all hierarchies in nature and in society. If liberty and the pursuit of happiness are humanity’s rights, they must also be extended to all others in nature. Thus, human emancipation, women’s liberation, and animal liberation are co-equal and are necessary for each other. No human society will ever be free unless all forms of systematic domination, control, and management of nature are eradicated.  


Ecocentric Socialism proposes, among others (Nayeri, 2021, Section 4), four planks: unconditional love for nature and Mother Earth, dismantling all power relations in society and in its relationship with the rest of nature, voluntary simplicity, and a culture of being and loving.  "Women, Life, Liberty," if understood as in Shervin Hajipour's lyrics based on a random set of protesters’ tweets, suggests an ongoing consideration among the youthful protesters of the same themes. They oppose a society with an authoritarian government saddled with corruption, national chauvinism, poverty, ongoing social repression and stress, homophobia, feral and outcast dogs and cats, and species extinction. They celebrate sisterhood, love, individual and sexual freedom, human rights, and solidarity with Afghan immigrants. In this spirit, the movement should also repudiate all forms of brutality, including against those who have brutalized the people of Iran for 43 years. We must live and act with the values we want to see in the society we want to build as we try to overcome the theocratic anthropocentric capitalist Islamic Republic. 


In their power of imagination, courage, self-sacrifice, and defiance, I rest my trust and hope for a revolution to end all oppression and exploitation.


References:

Alaaldin, Ranj. “Climate change may devastate the Middle East. Here’s how governments should tackle it.” March 14,2022. 

Aljazeera. "Cuba Overwhelmingly Approves Same-Sex Marriage in Referendum." September 26, 2022. 

Arguelles, Lourdes, and B. Ruby Rich. "Homosexuality, Homophobia, and Revolution: Notes toward an understanding of the Cuban Lesbian and Gay Male Experience, Part I." 1984. 

BBC. "Fidel Castro Takes Blame for Persecution of Cuban Gays." August 31, 2010. 

Bookchin, Murray. The Ecology of Freedom: the emergence and dissolution of hierarchy. 1982.

Castro Ruz, Fidel. History Will Absolve Me. 1953. 

Cuba-Solidarity.org.uk. "Gay and Lesbian Rights in Cuba." No date. 

Düzgün, Mera L. "Jineology: The Kurdish Women's Movement." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. July 2016. 

Engels, Frederick. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. 1884. 

Goldman, Wendy Z. Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936. Cambridge University Press. 1993.

Klouzal, Linda. Women and Rebel Communities in the Cuban Insurgent Movement, 1952–1959. 2008. p. 97.

Murray, Nicola. "Socialism and Feminism: Women and the Cuban Revolution, Part I"Feminist Review (2): 57–73. 1979. 

Ocalan, Abdullah. "Democratic Modernity: Era of Woman's Revolution." In Liberating Life: Woman's Revolution. Neuss: International Initiative Edition with Mesopotamian Publishers. 2013.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Political Program, 1919. 

Murray, Nicola. "Socialism and Feminism: Women and the Cuban Revolution, Part I"Feminist Review (2): 57–73. 1979.

Klouzal, Linda. Women and Rebel Communities in the Cuban Insurgent Movement, 1952–1959. 2008. p. 97. 

Nayeri, Kamran, and Alireza Nassab. “The Rise and Fall of the 1979 Iranian Revolution: Its Lessons for Today.” 2006.

————————-. "Economics, Socialism, and Ecology: A Critical Outline, Part 2," 2013

-------------------."The Case for Ecocentric Socialism." 2021. 

————————-. “Socialism in the 21st Century: Why It Is Needed and Some of Its Salient Features." 2022. 

Peña, Susana. ""Obvious Gays" and the State Gaze: Cuban Gay Visibility and U.S. Immigration Policy during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift." Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 16, Number 3, July 2007, pp. 482–514.