Meeting mobilizes to stop U.S. war on Iran

People filled the seats, sat on the floor and stood in the back of the meeting room at the Judson Memorial Church here May 12 to launch a struggle to stop the U.S. from unleashing a military attack on Iran.

While both Iranian and U.S. anti-war speakers had various ideological and analytical viewpoints, they all agreed on the need to fight against any U.S. intervention in the region. All also agreed that the U.S. should pull out of Iraq immediately.

Speakers included former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Larry Holmes of the Troops Out Now Coalition, Nada Khader of the WESPAC Foundation, Larry Everest of World Can’t Wait, and Kazem Azin and Ardeshir Ommani, both of the American-Iranian Friendship Committee and both of whom, as youths, participated in the revolutionary movement that overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah Reza Pahlavi.

Sara Flounders of the International Action Center chaired the meeting and spoke, outlining how the 1979 Iranian revolution brought gains to the bulk of the population. Holmes, Flounders, Everest and Dustin Langley, who also spoke for the IAC, had been arrested together in Washington in March while protesting Congress’s funding of the Iraq war.

Hossein Aghabeikzadeh set the mood by singing a famous 800-year-old poem by Sheikh Saadi, considered the king of Persian poets. His daughter, Nina Aghabeikzadeh, accompanied him on the balaban, an ancient Azeri instrument.

The speakers all agreed that the U.S. had no right to intervene in Iran and that the Iranian state could no longer be used by U.S. imperialism as a client or junior partner to police the oil-rich Middle East and South Asian region. Most believed that the Iranians would resist and confound any U.S. military aggression and that such an aggression would boomerang against U.S. interests.

Clark said that the result of a military attack would be catastrophic, as it would be a U.S. declaration of war on 1.5 billion Moslem people.

At least three of the speakers brought up the news that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had just threatened Iran while standing on the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf with the deadly firepower of five F-18 Super Hornet jets behind him. (See article by Sara Flounders in this issue of WW.) Holmes raised the point that Cheney was able to make such a statement because the majority of the U.S. ruling class and the top politicians of both political parties support strong measures to stop Iran from developing nuclear power.

Azin described U.S. policy changes since the collapse of the USSR as going from “containment to re-conquest.” He also exposed Bush’s program of promoting “democracy in Iran”—and the U.S. support for various Iranian opposition groups— as an attempt to weaken the Iranian state and its anti-imperialist stance.

Ommani, who was about to leave for an extended visit to Iran, pointed out that Iran’s 72 million people were living in a society that was the product of one of the most popular revolutions in the 20th century. He said he was exuberant because of his upcoming trip and to be among friends who would continue to struggle to prevent any attack on Iran.

Langley ended the formal talks by announcing an initiative by www.StopWar OnIran.org to collect 100,000 signatures protesting a possible U.S. attack.