Why is Washington "backing" the opposition in Iran?

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't think that backing the Iranian opposition is a valid
alternative to military action against Iran for the US rulers,
although they may be able to win a few to their side. And I think that
the U.S. rulers know this.  Washington may be deterred from militarily
attacking Iran, but they are on a course toward that now.  And if they
are deterred, they will not be able to accomplish the same goals by
"subversive" means.  I think a major goal of the public support to
opposition groups in Iran is to set a trap for the regime and create
illusions here in the United States of broad support for a US
invasion.

The US wants much tighter control of the Iran's government, strategic
positions, borders, and resources than would be obtainable from the
bourgeois opposition, and they want to transform the national culture
from one of nationalist defiance and confidence toward imperialism to
one of submission plus perhaps elections where the people can choose
from among various enemies and US puppets. (Hence, I suspect, the
apparent indifference to the destruction of Iraq's historic cultural
conquests and education system. The destruction of Iraq's national
culture is seen as a positive step in breaking and degrading the
resistant Iraqi mentality.)

Washington was unable to get support for its invasion of Iraq from any
substantial domestic forces except the Kurds, and the price they paid
for the Kurdish organizations  runs counter to their goal of reversing
fundamental gains of the colonial revolution in Iraq  and is going to
become a big problem in the course of the occupation. The fact that
Iran has a much more open opposition movement and much wider political
organization makes U.S. success in winning substantial support for
more direct control by US imperialism even less likely than in Iraq.

Of course Washington hopes some forces can be lined up, but they don't
expect to be greeted by crowds though they may have hoped for this in
Iraq.  They have learned otherwise.

I think a purpose of the big noise about subverting Iran and backing
opposition groups is to encourage the Khamenei regime, which pursues
both broadly  capitalist but above all narrowly factional goals, to
use this as a pretext to crack down on the opposition as US agents,
including using this to cut down or suppress the Khatami faction in
the top leadership.   This would be a disaster for the Iranian nation.

With the opposition leaders in jail as US agents and repression and
religious impositions  significantly escalated, the US would try to
sell the US population and the world on the claim that only military
occupation could liberate poor suffering Iran.  And they would claim,
knowing otherwise of course, that the vast majority of Iranians, who
are quite critical if not downright opposed to the current Khamenei
(the real ruler) regime, long for US liberation.  This would also
savagely disrupt efforts to organize popular defense of the nation.

I think that baiting the Khamenei government to launch such a
repression is at least one part of the much-publicized reaching out to
various opposition groups.  For instance, public US support to the
Mujahideen scum in the name of democratizing Iran  helps smear the
whole opposition demanding democratic rights with the label of this
discredited gang.  It can also be pointed to at home as showing that
even Iranian "revolutionaries" and "far left" are allying with the
United States against "Islamic reaction" and "fundamentalist
repression."

A posture of "support" to the domestic opposition and backing "far
left" but actually ultrareactionary gangs like the Mujahideen  also
adds to confusion about Iran among antiwar forces and the left in the
United States.  Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic in this regard, but I
think that they are deeply confused about Iran, and that there is a
widespread illusion that, by comparison with Iran in the grip of
"Islamic reaction," Iraq under Saddam was a more progressive society.

Launching a repression in the name of fighting US subversion would be
the most disastrous lesson that Iranian leaders might claim to "learn"
from Cuba. In Cuba, the dissident groups that came under fire really
were direct US agents and creations.  They had no broad popular base.
The procapitalist dissidents who were not direct paid US agents are
still running around loose, talking to reporters, and even holding
public vigils to support the imprisoned mercenary-dissidents. No
significant sector of Cuban society -- not the workers and peasants,
not the intellectuals, and not the even the more privileged and
capitalistic sectors  -- has been silenced, demobilized or demoralized
by these repressions, and unity for national defense appears to have
increased.

What Iran needs to "learn" from Cuba is not the suppression of
dissidents as US agents. This will be nothing but the use of a
criminal amalgam and frame-up against the organizing and fighting
capacity of the people. The people of Iran today, and the government
if it can, should be learning from the territorial troops militias,
the gun-landmine-hand grenade for every man, woman, and child and so
forth. This is actually a much higher priority for deterring attack
and defending the nation than building nuclear power plants or
producing nuclear weapons -- although Iran certainly has as much right
and much more moral justification for doing this than the United
States

If Khamenei launches a broad repression, cracks down on Khatami and so
forth in the name of fighting America, the US trap can begin to shut.
Nonetheless, it is my estimate that, despite the vast differences
between the two societies, Iran is probably a country that, as they
say in Cuba, can be occupied but never pacified.
Fred Feldman