What the American power elite mind is Iran's economic populism at home and support for Hizballah, Hamas, etc. abroad, just as they mind Cuba's socialism at home and support for various socialist and national liberation movements abroad (the latter more in the past than the present). They don't care if populism or socialism in domestic policy and support for movements against US clients in foreign policy are practiced in the name of Islam or Marxism or whatever.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are by far the most important US strategic asset and burden in the Middle East, nay the entire world, far more important than Israel, which doesn't have oil after all and whose only virtue -- military power -- was just shown to be incapable of defeating Hizballah. Iraq's trouble began when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In Cheney's words, whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a "stranglehold" on not only American economy but also "that of the other nations of the world as well."
Eric Hooglund, among others, has argued that Iran's populism presents a threat to the Saudi and other Gulf power elites: "For the Saudis, the populist government of republican Iran posed a more serious ideological threat than the repressive Ba'thi regime of republican Iraq. . . . For Gulf Arabs dissatisfied with the political status quo in their own countries, neighboring Iran presents a readily observable alternative model of government. . . . This is troubling for hereditary ruling families who view demands for democracy as threats to their privileged status. . . .Disenfranchised Arabs see in the Islamic government of Iran what appears to be a good example of democracy within an Islamic context. As long as the rulers of the Persian Gulf states continue to resist demands for political reform, dissatisfied citizens will be tempted to see Iran as an attractive alternative"("Iranian Populism and Political Change in the Gulf," Middle East Report, No. 174, January-February 1992, p. 19-20). More than ten years since his essay, the Gulf states are still neither democratic nor populist nor republican, i.e., their subjects are still liable to get an idea that populist and republican Islamism beats autocratic Islamism.
On 11/28/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 28, 2006, at 11:31 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > The entertainment continues.
>
> What exactly do you find so entertaining? That the editor of MRZine
> is essentially arguing that the Iranian regime was justified in
> killing Marxists?
The Muslim Mojahedin (Sazeman-e Mojahedin-e Khalq-e Iran), the main challenger to and victim of Khomeinists, never claimed to be Marxists, though they infused Marxist concepts into Islam or tried to interpret Islam in an Islamic-socialist fashion of Ali Shariati. Since the early days of the Iranian Revolution, that organization has left behind its ideological roots, become a cult, sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War, and acquired US neo-conservative friends -- it is very much hated and despised by most Iranians, in Iran as well as in the diaspora.
That said, there is no shortage of instances of Marxists killing Marxists in history, justified by one kind of Marxists and deplored by other kinds. If I am not shocked, shocked by the Iranian Revolution, that is because I know all too well the brutal acts committed by people in the name of Marxism as well as other ideologies. If Marxism is not exactly the most popular ideology in the world today, there is a reason for that, is there not, in addition to capitalist power? Thanks to Hugo Chavez, the idea of socialism has begun a slow process of recovery, but it still has a long way to go to get people to think that socialism equals democracy. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>