Iran is not a Victim
Trump is terrible, but Iran’s regime is no better.
In any conflict where on one side you have the grotesque figure of Donald Trump, it feels second nature to side with whoever has slighted him this time. Not least because, like all bullies, he has a habit of picking on people weaker than him.
But in his latest fight, we would be wrong to reflexively give in to that instinct.
Last week, Donald Trump ordered the US Armed Forces to assassinate Major General Qassem Soulimani as he was leaving Baghdad’s main airport. Soulimani was the head of the Quds force, an elite paramilitary arm of the Iranian military. Part soldier, part spymaster, he was widely regarded as the second-most-powerful person in Iran, reporting directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini. His killing sparked outrage in Iran, a mass-outpouring of grief, ferocious statements from Iran vowing revenge, and anger in neighbouring Iraq, where many in the Shi’a majority regarded Soulimani as a hero who helped lead the violent resistance to the US-led occupation of the country following the removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
It is Soulimani’s presence in Iraq and his purpose there that is one of the many reasons why we should not fall into the possible trap of seeing Iran is a victim of US aggression or imperialism. Soulimani had allegedly been flown into the country to help violently suppress anti-government protests that have been sweeping Iraq over the past few months. The protestors, many of them young, were demanding better employment prospects, improved public services, an end to corruption, and an end to what many Iraqis resent as Iranian interference in their politics and government. In other words, Soulimani was in Iran not as an opponent of imperialism, but as an active agent of Iranian imperialism.
His activity in Iraq stretches back to the 2003 US-led invasion that removed Saddam Hussein’s Sunni dictatorship. Eager to strengthen the Shi’a majority there, he orchestrated and organised countless attacks on coalition troops, but also helped fuel the horrific sectarian conflict between the two factions of Islam that under other circumstances may have cooperated to rebuild their country.
And perhaps most egregious of all, he is the person most responsible for the continued survival of the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad, the verminous dictator who rules Iran’s main ally in the region, Syria. Alarmed by the prospect of the Ba’athist dictatorship falling to the rebellion, Soulimani personally took charge of the Iranian-backed forces and militia sent there to bolster Assad’s forces. That so many Syrians have died as Assad’s dictatorship limps on with Iranian, and of course Russian, help, can be traced directly back to Soulimani’s enthusiastic taking of any opportunity to pursue Iranian imperialism abroad.
There are numerous other actions that it would take too long to outline here, but I would urge anyone reading this to look up the bombings and assassinations conducted by Iran, from Vienna to Buenos Aires, all showing a pattern of behaviour from a nation that pursues repression and persecution at home, and violence and chaos abroad.
Any military action taken by the US in the Middle-East should be ruthlessly analysed and critiqued where appropriate. Under Trump in particular, America’s policy has been chaotic at worst, outright criminal at best.
But our disgust at his administration should not draw us into sympathy with the Iranian theocracy, which has imprisoned, tortured and murdered so many of its own people, and many others abroad.
The best hope for both nations is for the Iranian people to finish the revolution that started in 1979, and take their political future into their own hands, and for the American people to elect a president that will pursue a rapprochement with Iran, one that is long overdue.