[lbo-talk] On Iran

Michael McIntyre morbidsymptoms at gmail.com
Sun Jun 21 06:46:29 PDT 2009


My new colleague, Kaveh Ehsani, recently wrote this takedown of James Petras' nonsense about Iran in Global Research. Chossudovsky is refusing to publish it, so Kaveh will be rewriting it for publication elsewhere, but I have his permission to circulate it in its original format.

MM


> Date: Saturday, June 20, 2009, 4:09 PM
> Dear Professor Chossudovsky
> I just read James Petras' appalling article about 'the
> stolen election 'hoax' in Iran'.
>
> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14018
>
> For a well known and respected scholar of the left to write
> such an uninformed and outrageous piece, at this critical
> time, when unarmed and peaceful protesters are being
> arrested, tortured, and openly gunned down by what can only
> be called fascist forces of repression in Iran is, to put it
> simply, shocking!
> Petras is not alone in taking this ignorant position. Many
> others on the American left, equally contently misinformed,
> have taken similar positions in support of a mounting rise
> of fascist repression. I can appreciate the good hearted,
> politically correct, sentiment behind this misguided
> article. Petras is worried about a possible strengthening of
> imperial US tendencies if the Iranian regime is demonized.
> All good and well. Many of us have opposed and continue to
> oppose US imperial policies. But Petras, like many other
> sincere members of the US left, is reading Iranian political
> developments entirely through the more familiar lens of
> anti-imperialist critiques of US foreign policy, and/or
> knowledge of the class and regional fragmentations of some
> Latin American states. Iran is specific, not only for its
> regional or religious identity, but for its particular
> postrevolutionary political development and culture. The
> strength of a thoughtful and principled
> left has always resided in the ability to distinguish
> between proto-fascistic populism and genuine democratic
> movements, rather than simplistically supporting what the
> opposition opposes. Perhaps a re-reading of 'the 18th
> Brumaire' would have prevented this gaff!
> I also cannot help but think that Petras,
> a scholar of Latin America, but certainly not Iran, should
> have done some minimal background research about electoral
> patterns in Iran, or at least consulted with someone who
> knows a bit more about the topic, or can read the language
> and provide access to the enormous amount of online
> information in Persian, before venturing an opinion. Among
> other US sources the journal I co-edit, Middle East Report
> (Merip) has written numerous pieces in English on the
> subject over the past few years.
> The simple facts are these:
>
> 1] Legally, election observers have to be present when
> ballots are counted, and sealed. They sign the result sheet,
> and are given a copy. This is the law, respected for the
> past 30 years. This time they were expelled from the room
> BEFORE the counting, and were not given copies of the
> results.
>
> 2] 57m. ballots were printed (40 m people voted), but in
> major polling stations ballots ran out at 10 am, leading to
> voters being unable to vote for up to 8 hours. Extra ballots
> were used to pre-stuff and pre-seal boxes, which is why
> Ahmadinejad's vote tally never changed during the counting.
> Officially Rezaei is supposed to have received 600 thousand
> votes. He asked those who voted for him to email him their
> national card numbers. He has received 900 thousand emails!
> In his case alone the obvious fraud makes a 50% difference.
> What if we were to apply the same ball park figure to
> Mousavi who officially received 13m. votes?
>
> 3] Mr. Petras should STUDY 30 years' pattern of ethnic and
> provincial voting before he ventures to express an opinion
> about a place so far from Latin America! Those patterns are
> clear. Go to www.merip.org as just one source, and read
> about the past elections and voting patterns.
> I have worked for the past 20 years in Khuzestan's rural
> and provincial areas. Other observers who do regular
> research in rural Iran have already written about what has
> taken place in peripheral areas (Eric Hooglund, for example
> who has worked in rural Fars). Reliable reports from across
> the country confirm the same point: Ahmadinejad lost
> heavily, including in rural and provincial areas, which is
> why we are facing a coup d'etat.
> Ahmadinejad does have popular support. No one denies that.
> But local elections 2 years ago displayed the extent of his
> popularity. This time around, reliable polls in working
> class satellite towns around Tehran, like Eslamshahr,
> Sardasht, Varamin, etc. where his support was supposed to be
> strong, indicated that Moussavi had 55% popular support,
> Karoubi and Rezaei had a 10% total support, and Ahmadinejad
> 35%. These polls, as well as the unprecedented illegal
> behavior of the Interior Ministry after the elections are
> the bases of the popular outrage and the claims of
> widespread election rigging. As to the numbers, the
> conservative mayor of Tehran has estimated the number of
> protesters over the last few days at around 3m! These are
> NOT only middle class people. Look at the pictures, if you
> cannot follow the flood of material coming online.
>
> In these elections a third of the historically passive
> electorate decided to cast their votes this time around, not
> to affirm Ahmadinejad's administration, but because in the
> last week of the election they witnessed 2 things:
> 1. The strength and organization of Mousavi's campaign
> which led them believe his campaign can accomplish the
> changes he is promising, and
> 2. in the televised debate they witnessed first-hand the
> reality of the divisions that are splitting Iran's ruling
> elite. The population realized the elections are not a show,
> and the division among these candidates are real. Within
> this division the voters sought to express their desire for
> reform through peaceful means.
> 3. They were profoundly shocked and outraged by the brazen
> lies and the vicious tone of Ahmadinejad. The man looked at
> the camera and lied about inflation figures which his own
> Central Bank had published. People may not know about
> statistics, but they can tell how much the price of basic
> needs has inflated!
> People in Iran are not fighting to establish a neo-liberal
> order, or a client state of the West. Iranians have endured
> 3 decades of revolution, war, and isolation, not to go back
> to what they rejected under the monarchy, but to establish
> an independent polity, which is democratic and respects
> social justice and the public culture of the population.
> Today they are risking everything to establish a state of
> law, which is the next stepping stone toward accomplishing
> that goal. They deserve the support of the international
> forces and figures who claim to share the ideals of social
> justice and democratic politics.
> Petras claims Ahmadinejad has strong support in 'the oil
> provinces', and that he is opposing neo-liberal
> privatization policies that Mousavi supports! I wonder if
> your journal has an editorial, fact finding policy at all?
> For Ahamdinejad's position on privatization please see my
> piece in the recent issue of Merip (
http://merip.org/mer/mer250/mer250.html). Suffice it so
> say that Ahmadinejad's model of privatization is close to
> what took place in Yeltsin's Russia, distributing near
> worthless vouchers to the poor, concentrating wealth in the
> hands of a new oligarchy of military-security allies who
> enjoy preferential access to banking capital. If this coup
> succeeds we will witness the rise of Iranian equivalents of
> Gazprom and Neftogaz, semi privatized econmic empires run by
> Ahmadinejad's allies.
> Mousavi's economic policy, on the other hand,
> has been shaped by a number of vocal critiques of
> privatization, and by economists who had clustered in the
> Institute of Religion and Economics. The core of their
> arguments about the economy is based on good governance,
> institution building, and maintaining sate enterprises for
> their employment generating role, while channeling surplus
> oil revenues to expand an independent private sector: A
> social democratic policy.
>
> Over the past century, at great cost, Iranians have made
> several attempts to build an accountable polity. In all
> these attempts they have been frustrated and eventually
> betrayed by a combination of domestic reactionaries and 'the
> West'. The Constitutional Revolution of 1906 was eventually
> crushed by the Great Game of Russian and British
> imperialisms. The Oil Nationalization movement was
> overthrown by the 1953 British and American coup d'etat. The
> democratic aspirations of the 1979 revolution were
> extinguished under the double blow of the repressive forces
> that today support Ahmadinejad ( a point emphatically made
> by Mousavi in his televised debate with Ahmadinejad), and a
> bloody war with Iraq instigated and supported by the US and
> European powers. The 1997 reformist movement was shunned by
> the West and eventually defeated by Khamanei's intransigence
> and sabotage. When Khatami was calling for dialogue abroad
> and rule of law at home, Bill Clinton pushed
> for dual containment and George Bush called Iran an Axis
> of Evil. These betrayals by the international community have
> harmed the development of democratic politics in Iran.
> Let me be clear: Iranians are not looking to anyone but
> themselves to build a democratic polity. This is NOT an
> American inspired and financed velvet revolution. They are
> not facing the vicious violence of Khamenei-Ahmadinejad
> forces to build a neo liberal client state. They are trying
> to build a state of law, where the real differences of
> opinion that exists in this society are recognized and
> respected, and that politics is shaped by mutually respected
> rules, not demagoguery and violence.
> If successful, this movement will revolutionize the
> politics of Iran, and the region.
> The least Iranians can expect from the progressive
> international forces, if they are not going to show
> solidarity and comprehension, at least do not stab us in the
> back, yet again!
>
> I hope you will pass this along to James Petras. Ideally I
> would like to ask you to print this as a response to the
> Petras piece, but of course that is up to you. However,
> given the gravity of Petras' piece this debate should be
> made public, and I will seek to have it published elsewhere
> if you decide against posting it.
> Thank you for your time
>
> Sincerely
>
> Kaveh Ehsani
> Assistant Professor of INternational Studies,
> DePaul University, Chicago
>
> Editorial Board Member, Middle East Report (Washington DC)
> Goftogu (Tehran)
>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list