[Marxism] Re:Iraq-Iran

[Suresh <borhyaenid@xxxxxxxxx>]

This notion of the U.S. seeking to destroy even the
intellectual infrastructure for developing nuclear
weapons was also expressed by an Iranian anti-war
activist and some fellow émigré?s at a local anti-war
forum recently. There was a fear back home that this
man?s mother might be in danger simply for living in
proximity to a university in Tehran. This might not be
so far-fetched. Just as American institutions like MIT
were attacked for being part of the
military-industrial complex during the Cold War, their
Iranian counterparts like the Amir Kabir University of
Technology and Tehran University are alleged to be
assisting in Iranian nuclear research.

Of course, much of the Iranian intelligentsia has fled
the country over the years, a brain drain that
corresponds with ongoing capital flight, going back to
the three year shutdown of academic institutions in
1980. Current President Ahmadinejad, as part of the
Office for Strengthening of Unity Between Universities
and Theological Seminaries, played a key role in
orchestrating the purge of leftist and other
oppositional elements in universities in this period.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the clerical
regime did greatly expand higher education, creating
dozens of new state universities throughout the
provinces, and paying for student?s tuition, room, and
board.

Yet, like every other country in the world today,
including the leading bourgeois democracies, the
Iranian government has been compelled to gradually
reform away its public services. It was over the
proposed privatization of Tehran University that mass
student-led protests rose up in 2003. In a way it?s
reminiscent of how austerity measures in Poland led to
the growth of Solidarity, which when eventually
catapulted into power, proceeded to impose the
draconian structural reforms demanded by the
counter-revolution. Yet, no matter how compromised
Iranian academia may be by budget cuts and
pro-democracy sentiments, it still stands to reason
that it will be a target of the U.S. war planners. As
we?ve already seen, Iraqi intellectuals and scientists
have been systematically taken out since the invasion,
in a cloak and dagger scheme in the tradition of
Operation Phoenix and Condor.




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