photo by Crannofonix News of anti-regime, pro-Pahlavi rally in Sweden last month, from wikipedia CC BY 4.0
Iran has been dealing with sanctions, embargoes and blockades from the US, Israel and the rest of White Empire for decades. Each new administration selects ways to further squeeze and punish America’s favourite whipping boy. The result is that Iran’s economy, like that of other US ‘enemies’ like Venezuela and Cuba, has been utterly crippled. Their currency has collapsed, inflation is over 70%, and supplies of essential goods have become ever scarcer. Unemployment is rampant because there is no surviving economy to enable businesses to employ anyone. A huge proportion of the country’s GDP now comes from exports of oil. The people are suffering, and they’re understandably scared and angry, and most of them weren’t even alive when the current religious dictatorship seized power from the brutal and despotic Pahlavi regime.
Preying on how much we forget over time, each US administration and its massive CIA and intelligence service further propagandizes the population into believing this is entirely the fault of the current regime. And yes, unlike the governments of equally-propagandized Venezuela and Cuba, Iran’s religious extremist government has severely mistreated its citizens. But were it not for the incessant economic war by the US, Israel, and their vassal states, the economic situation in Iran would be vastly better — perhaps among the strongest in the world.
The playbook the US is using in Iran is lockstep identical to the one used next door in Iraq in 2003, when its president of the day got too uppity and encouraged the oil states in the region to use their oil wealth to lessen White Empire’s economic hegemony. In 2003, exactly as now, the US blamed the Islamic government for economic woes largely created by the US’ economic war on the country. In 2003, exactly as now, utterly preposterous and evidence-free US Empire assertions of a ‘nuclear threat’ were used to drum up support for destroying the Mideast nation. In 2003, exactly as now, the government claimed its reason for bombing a country to utter decimation was to ‘liberate’ it from its current government and quickly usher in (US-monitored) democratic elections to restore economic prosperity.
And in 2003, exactly as now, big oil corporations and other corporate interests and billionaires who depended on an endless, reliable flow of cheap energy, were rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a country being so utterly destroyed that its resources would be substantially free for the taking.
They were right to do so, and are probably right to be doing so again now. All of the US’ justifications for destroying Iraq were quickly found (despite mainstream media interference) to be utter and deliberate fabrications. All of its promises to the Iraqi people were immediately and completely broken, and were revealed to be false from the outset (the horribly bungled “Shock and Awe” campaign was always the plan).
You don’t hear much about Iraq, 23 years later. It is a broken country, riven with massive corruption, economically destroyed, its soils and agriculture ruined, its scarce water stolen by multinational oil companies to frack oil and gas, and it is run by massively unpopular despots working hand-in-glove with oligarchs to pillage what little is left of the country’s resources.
When I talk with Iranian ex-pats in the diaspora, and read reports from those protesting in Baghdad, they assert, almost unanimously, that “anything would be better than how things in Iran are now”. Do you think they will still say that when (not if) their country is reduced to rubble by the US, Israel and its vassal states?
Many of them even want to bring back the son of the despotic Pahlavis to replace the religious regime, as the western propaganda machine is working furiously (on citizens who aren’t old enough to remember his father) to whitewash the horrific legacy of the western-supported shahs. Pahlavi the heir is a very close friend of many in the genocidal Israeli government.
It’s a cliché that those who don’t learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. In most of the west, we are no longer taught (in schools or in the media) the lessons of history, only the propagandized, whitewashed versions of them.
And in many struggling nations, they are drowned in western propaganda, dealing with immediate, constant, and ghastly crises, and have ceased to trust anyone, including their educational institutions, local media, and politicians. And most of them are too young to remember what happened twenty or more years ago anyway, so they don’t know, and can’t bear to imagine, that it could indeed get much worse.
We have all been played by the brain-damaged patriciate, who care only about the well-being and happiness of themselves and their privileged ‘bros’. And given how stupid most of them are, it’s a sad epitaph to our civilization that they look likely to be able to continue to get away with it, even as this civilization staggers into its final decades.
