Nothing except a nuclear strike against Iran is off the table. Whether or not there will be sanctions against Iran depends on Moscow, Beijing, and a specter of $100 per barrel that Joseph Stiglitz warned (at <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,409710,00.html>).
> You seem to be going further, saying
> we should actively "support" the Ahmedinejad government against, say,
> Rafsanjani or Khatami. To me that conjures up images of Global Exchange
> reality tours to Iran and so on, which strike me as wildly far-fetched
> for a lot of reasons, mostly political.
When Ahmadinejad won a surprise victory, I posted the following, to give people a flavor of so-called "reformists'" neoliberal economic politics:
<blockquote>* Food and housing subsidies, as well as public education and health care continued as long as Khomeini was alive. But with the Ayatollah's death and the election of Hashemi Rafsanjani to the presidency of Iran, neoliberal policies replaced those of the welfare state of the Khomeini years. This marked a new era; in the late 1980s, when President Rafsanjani came to power, open-market policies led to economic measures such as devaluation of the currency (which increased the cost of living for the poor), privatization (which left many workers unprotected), and the decline of social services, all of which forced many women to enter the labour market. (Roksana Bahramitash, "Islamic Fundamentalism and Women's Economic Role: The Case of Iran," International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 16.4, Summer 2003, p. 565)
* President Rafsanjani was very clear about its economic policy. He called for liberalization and he himself benefited from through easier borrowing and became a rich man. His neo-liberal policies increased female employment, but they did not necessarily bring more economic power to women, as is the case in the rest of the developing world. Throughout the Third World, the percentage of female labour is increasing but because of the liberalization of the economy, rising prices of basic goods and welfare reduction have badly affected women.24 Today, there are 1.3 billion people living on less than a dollar a day and 70 percent of them are women.25 Iran is no exception: the increase in labor force participation by women may have increased, but the poverty and income disparity that has come with liberalization of the economy remain a serious challenge to female empowerment. The fact that there are more women in the labor force in Iran is important because it does give them some degree of autonomy. But rising prices of basic goods and cutbacks on social spending have hindered the growth of women's economic autonomy by undermining their decision-making power. (Roksana Bahramitash, "Revolution, Islamization, and Women's Employment in Iran," The Brown Journal of World Affairs 9.2, Winter/Spring 2003, p. 238)
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud-ahmadinejads-face.html></blockquote>
That's what Iranian masses rejected, in favor of Ahmadinejad's platform. Since then, Ahmadinejad has poured "Iran's ballooning oil cash into wage and pension increases, cheap loans and debt cancellations for farmers" (at <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050501663.html>).
That's far beyond populist "rhetoric" -- that's populist practice. I doubt that it will move you or Doug, but I bet that Iranians who are its beneficiaries prefer that to the previous government's neoliberal policy. That's not enough, but it's a good start, imho.
As Tariq Ali suggests as much, however, some sectors of the Iranian working class will probably get restless over the pace of economic improvement , the degree of economic populist measures, etc. That's where the Solidarity Center comes in. I expect it to do the same thing it did in Venezuela.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>