From A World to Win News Service

Iran Maoists Hit Islamic Regime’s “Nuclear Posturing”

Note to our readers: This article appeared on p. 11 of last week's print issue of Revolution with significant typographical errors in the final two paragraphs. The errors were our responsibility; they were not in the original article in Hagighat, publication of the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), or in the abridged version distributed by A World to Win News Service. The correct article appears below.

May 1, 2006. A World To Win News Service. The following article, originally entitled “The Islamic Republic is indulging in nuclear posturing and leaving the people defenceless in the face of great dangers,” is abridged from the April issue (no. 27) of Hagighat, publication of the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist).

With the false swagger of champion puppets, the heads of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) have announced that they have joined the nuclear powers club. Their posturing is even shallower and more hated than that of the ex-shah who used to inject phony “national pride” into his veins and the veins of the people by parading the F16 fighter planes he acquired from the U.S. and the tanks purchased from the UK.

At the Friday prayers, with lots of noise but without any shame, the ayatollahs proclaimed that Iran’s new status as a “nuclear power” should be celebrated as a patriotic holiday and demanded that the people’s hearts be filled with “national pride.” However, the majority of the people who have suffered under a medieval religious regime for 27 years are not inspired to feel any national pride by this. In fact, now their pride has been trampled upon even more by the reactionary mullahs. This posturing was more comic than that of Pakistan’s generals. The people make fun of the mullahs and Western nuclear analysts ridicule them.

Two days after this announcement, The New York Times wrote that Western nuclear analysts believe that Iran lacks the necessary skills, materials, and tools to come close to achieving their nuclear desires. “Nothing has changed to alter current estimate of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020.” (April 13, 2006) This newspaper quoted David Albright, the head of the Institute of Science and International Security in Washington who is following Iran’s nuclear program: “They have a long way to go.”

However, the Bush government seized the opportunity and demanded that the world’s powers punish Iran. The options put on the table by the U.S. range from economic sanctions to bombardment.

The real reason for the Islamic Republic’s rush to proclaim itself a “nuclear power” is that the regime is worried about its own survival. They have adopted a policy of seeking to accelerate a confrontation with the U.S. based on relying on Russia and China. Western journalist Michael Slackman reported in mid-March from Tehran: “When [Iranian Prime Minister] Ahmadinejad took office, he embraced a decision already made by the top leadership to move toward confrontation with the West about the nuclear program… But one political scientist who speaks regularly with members of the Foreign Ministry said that Iran had hinged much of its strategy on winning Russia’s support… The political scientist said some negotiators believed that by being hostile to the West they would be able to entice Moscow into making Tehran its stronghold in the Middle East. ‘They thought the turn east was the way forward,’ the person said. ‘That was a belief and a vision.’”(NYT, 15 March 2006)

The heads of the IRI think that their nuclear policy can serve several goals: to silence the people, cool down the differences within the regime, and find new international friends.

Regarding the people, this policy is an absurd effort to boost “Iranian national pride” in the hope that they would temporarily stop thinking about the regime’s crimes and plunder. Regarding the ranks of the regime, the point is to unite the different factions around a plan for survival. And regarding the U.S. and European imperialists, their aim is to provoke the U.S. to accelerate an attack on Iran. These reactionaries are counting on the religious sentiments of the Muslims of the Middle East and inside Iran. They hope that when the shocked and bombarded people have to collect their loved ones’ bodies, that will give the regime a chance to survive—an opportunity that the people will have to pay for with tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands killed.

Regarding the regime’s policy towards the powers competing with the U.S., the regime’s aim is to separate Russia and China from the U.S. and Europe, following their “East versus West” strategy. So far they have been the lackeys of the Western imperialist capitalists. Now that the West does not want them any more, they have to sell themselves on the world market to another master, and they are hoping for Russian and Chinese buyers.

Censuring News That Threatens the People

There is no limit to the regime’s hostility toward the people. Every single individual in it is worried only about their own political and economic class interests and not the interests of the people and the “national interest.” These reactionaries forced the Iranian media to censor the news that the Iran dossier was referred to the UN Security Council. They want to hide the dangerousness of the situation from the people. But even more criminal is the censorship of the news about U.S. military plans to bomb Iran and the possible use of the nuclear weapon in this attack.

The Islamic regime’s media takes every opportunity to expose U.S. crimes in all corners of the world, but when it comes to American preparations to attack Iran, they just shut up! They make a deafening noise about their own war games involving a few boats in the Gulf, but they hide the reports published everywhere else in the world about U.S. military exercises in the Gulf to practice aerial bombing runs on Iran. The question of a nuclear attack on Iran is so serious that it has given rise to intense differences among U.S. military forces and some high-ranking American army officers have threatened to resign. But the IRI has maintained silence on this matter.

In his extensive exposure of U.S. planning and preparations to attack Iran, the well-known U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh quotes a Pentagon military affairs adviser as saying the Bush government’s serious consideration of using nuclear weapons for this purpose is the result of the more general re-emergence of the policy of using tactical nuclear weapons among the American military and U.S. government policy makers. (The New Yorker, April 17, 2006). That means the nuclear option is not limited to Iran but is a much broader matter.

The nuclear powers—the U.S., UK, France, Russia, and China—are threatened by each other, not by Iran. Iran is an excuse for their efforts to recast the world imperialist system through destruction and death. U.S. nuclear weapons are not aimed primarily at Iran but Russia (despite the end of the cold war era) and France. In his State of the Union speech two years ago and again this year, George Bush referred to the policy of the “pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons.” A few months ago, French President Jacques Chirac—in the name of threatening Iran—announced that France is prepared to use its nuclear weapons pre-emptively. The powerful capitalist countries will not hesitate to commit crimes against humanity. They would do anything in the interests of capital. They believe they have more freedom in relation to Iran, since the regime there is extremely reactionary and extremely hated by the Iranian people.

The U.S. government and their military and intelligence experts know perfectly well that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not have a single nuclear bomb and will not for some time to come. Just as they had to justify their attack on Iraq with lies about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD, they are doing the same about Iran. But the difference between Iraq and Iran is that the heads of the IRI themselves boast that they will possess nuclear bomb shortly and then they will threaten Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the West. This is a bluff. Bush, who believes that he is on a mission from God, is confronting fellow religious lunatics in Iran. Hersh writes that a high-ranking diplomat in Vienna told him, “All of the inspectors are angry at being misled by the Iranians, and some think the Iranian leadership are nutcases—one hundred per cent totally certified nuts.” He added that “[International Atomic Energy Agency head] ElBaradei’s overriding concern is that the Iranian leaders ‘want confrontation, just like the neocons on the other side’—in Washington.”

Who can protect the people and their interests? Only the people can! We have a regime that cannot protect us against foreign aggression and worse, wants to turn the people into cannon fodder for its own reactionary interests. This regime is a big barrier in the way of the people, hindering their becoming alert to the danger and starting to protect themselves and their children from U.S. military attack. This regime must be overthrown as soon as possible so that the people can unite and prevent this crime.

When we start rising up in Iran, all the military and economic plans that are prepared against the people of Iran will be thrown into disarray. The world’s people will rush to help us, and if the imperialists commit crimes against Iran, the people of those countries will support us and our revolution. We should not fear the possibility that many of the people of the Middle East may be blinded by emotion and sympathize with the Islamic regime. We must make them aware that the interests of the people of the Middle East will not be fulfilled by the phony, self-styled “anti-American” Islamists nor by the so-called civilized imperialists. To be shocked by the enormity of the situation and wish it were not real is not a wise and an intelligent approach. The Islamic regime is the biggest barrier to the unity and sensible preparation of the people of Iran to defend themselves. It must be overthrown.

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