I won't use names here because I don't want to imply anything about any one.
>And, yes by the standards of what we view as leftist: committment to
>solidarity, equality, liberty, internationalism, rights of
>minorities etc., the Iranian govt. is pretty reactionary.
Yes Alex but Iran is a sovereign state while your leftist movement is not a territorially bounded political society in which there is a central authority. So why does it deserve respect or defense? It is nothing, non historical just as Native American political society was non historical and nothing for Locke and thereby worthy of colonization (see Hegel on non historical peoples). An Iran defender does not play (or even dream)--as a realist the person defends one or another state in the system of inter-state competition, not any political movement or society. If I am understanding the politics of Iran defense correctly, there is no other politics. Just as for many French workers the Soviet Union was their homeland, their locus of loyalty, so Iran and Venezuela are the homeland for some Americans today. So they--though perhaps not their states--are internationalists. There are no other politics. Politics centers of defense of nation-states or it is nothing, marginal, howling in the wind, weak, pathetic, worse than pitiable. It's time to come out of the cold for them and bask in the warmth of an actual nation-state. So get real, get a state. Rakesh