Why Workers World defends Iran

Why is it important for the worldwide movement to defend Iran? Is it because this country of 92 million people was recently bombed by the U.S.-backed Zionist regime of Israel on June 12, followed by the bombing of its three nuclear reactors by the Pentagon on June 22? Is it because Iran has had a decades long, consistent history of supporting, both in word and deed, the heroic Palestinian people resisting the fascist, apartheid occupation of their land and resources? 

All of these reasons and more are but the tip of the iceberg in answering this fundamental question. 

The material basis for defending Iran is not that its leadership is perfect in terms of all its policies; much of what is happening in Iran is rooted in its historical oppression first by British and then U.S. imperialism. Since the world is still dominated by a parasitical, profit-hungry, war-driven imperialist system, it is not surprising that no government is perfect. 

The basis for WW’s defense is that the Iranian people carried out an earth-shattering, anti-colonial revolution that began in the late 1970s and finally in February of 1979 swept away the brutal monarchical rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi, himself a client of U.S. imperialism put into power by the CIA in 1953. 

That the clerics played such a leading role in this mass revolution does not negate its character as an anti-colonial social upheaval that rightfully restored control over the oil and gas to the Iranian masses. These resources had been stolen earlier by the then Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now BP, under the shah’s rule. 

Provoked when the U.S. welcomed and sheltered Shah Pahlavi, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 U.S. military and civilian personnel hostage on Nov. 4, 1979. They held 52 of them for 444 days until Jan. 20, 1981, when the revolution was consolidated. Since that time, Iran has used the oil and gas reserves on its own territory to build its technologically advanced civilian infrastructure and build a military to defend its population. 

Since the victory of this revolution, the U.S. ruling class has been united behind Washington’s efforts to overthrow the Iranian government, using economic sanctions, military interventions and assassinations of Iran’s scientists and military leaders. This has been accompanied by outright demonization in the corporate media, which uses inflammatory, false characterizations such as “autocratic,” “terrorist” and “hardliners.” 

All of the U.S. violations of Iran’s right to sovereignty and independence are attempts to overthrow a government that has vowed to never succumb to regime change or imperialist threats and intimidations.   

The Iranian government’s defiance has inspired the masses — inside Iran, throughout the West Asian region and the Global South. Other sovereign countries that have gained the ire of Iran’s imperialist enemies, including China, North Korea and Russia, have politically and materially sided with Iran against imperialism, because they have also been targeted for regime change. 

The growing global admiration for Iran has imperialist Western powers like the U.S., Britain and elsewhere shaking in their boots because of growing antiwar sentiments amongst their own populations who are seeing their living standards plummeting due to their monies going to arm the Nazi-like, illegal state of Israel. 

It’s time for the working class in the imperialist countries to get off the sidelines and show solidarity in the streets with Iran, a nation that has a rich history of siding with the world’s workers and the most oppressed. This will help weaken imperialism and bring us closer to the day when all of humanity is finally rid of this rotten, oppressive system.