NM's blog

“The Minab case was no longer just a military case. It developed three layers. The first was technical and legal: was a school wrongly included in a military target package? The second was political: who, in those first days, denied responsibility or tried to shift it elsewhere?  And the third, perhaps more important than both, was moral: how did the deaths of children stop being a red line and become something people bargained over in the battle of narratives? This report begins with that first layer, but it does not stay there . Because the story of the Minab school is also the story of the moment when war contaminates language itself.”

A discussion between Vivek Chibber and Jason Brownlee Chibber a socialist/Marxist has excluded the political economy of capitalism in this long discussion about the US and Iran. Brownlee, speaking about the American army, used the phrase 'our troops' as a liberal identifying himself with the American state.  Both Chibber and Brownlee have used the words 'terrorist' and 'counterterrorism' when referring to non-state violence without putting them in inverted commas, i.e. in the same way the dominant mainstream narrative uses them. Oxford dictionary defines 'blunder' as 'a stupid or careless mistake'. Is that what should Marxists and socialists employ in describing imperialist actions such as wars, invasions, 'regime change', etc.?

“One thing that tends to happen when war breaks out is that everyone forgets everything that happened up until three minutes before the war.” But saying that “it's  all leading to the fact that this war was a massive mistake” is failing to see or acknowledge that the political economy of the United States at the current context and conjuncture. It fails to see that this war was likely had Biden or Harris was in the government. Biden too would have been influenced by Netanyahu. It also fails to see the connection an imperialist action on Venezuela and the war on Iran. It fails to see that internal contradictions in the US influence imperialist actions. Calling it a mistake remind us of how a few said the same thing about the invasion of Iraq.  “ The only winners at this point are the Israelis .” They are not the only winners. In the long term, American and Israeli interests converge. Other winners include a few Arab regimes, the oil companies…The lack of strategy reflects a lac...

“Do not dare challenge Israel’s bid for regional hegemony or ethnic cleansing of Palestine . Achieving the first would give Israel the immunity it needs for the second: rectifying the mistake the historian Benny Morris lamented when he criticized Ben Gurion for not expelling all the Palestinians in 1948.”

“Iran’s current economic and political crisis is often narrated as the cumulative outcome of international sanctions or authoritarian governance alone.  Such accounts, however, obscure the deeper political-economic transformations that have unfolded since the early 1990s.”

No collapse of the Soviet union, no China, no capitalism and American nationalism. All what has happened since 1991 happened without a global context and international and regional power relations, or class realignment.  A liberal analysis by Patrick Wintour Related America's long war in the Middle East

A very brief summary as a reply to one of the common comments. Comment: “you get what you vote for. can't recall a single example in trump's long fat life where he ever cleaned up one of his many messes.” Harperium My reply: Does that mean had more Americans voted for a different contender, Biden or Harris, things would have been different? You are ignoring Israel's influence and that both Biden and Harris supported a genocidal war on the Palestinians. You ignore that the situation has to be contextualised within the political-economy of the US vis-a-vis China and how the US is trying to regain its capitalist hegemony by weakening China. Both Venezuela and Iran are two proxies. And the more the US declines, the more violent it becomes.

'Changing regime behaviour rather than the regime itself', writes Gilbert Achcar .

“Anger directed at high levels of economic corruption and mismanagement in the regime often target the  aghazadeh , a pejorative used to describe children of the elite accused of amassing great wealth thanks to the political connections of their relatives.”

An in-depth analysis Rethinking anti-imperialist politics in the Middle East

“Deep political-economic transformations created the context for the events of this month …” What is  their meaning for the future of the Iranian regime? “Roiled from within and menaced from without, what are its chances of survival?”

by Siyǎvash Shahabi Just look at the size of this crowd. These are people who came out fully aware of the risks—live bullets, arrest, even death. This presence is not random, not emotional, and not the result of some outside call. It is a conscious decision by people who feel they have nothing left to lose except humiliation and silence. Anyone who reduces the anger and uprising of Iranians to “foreign interference” or to “Pahlavi” is either not stupid but knowingly lying, or is a racist who does not want Iranians to deserve freedom, dignity, and the right to decide their own future. Or worse, they are someone cheering from afar, treating the clash between East and West like a Colosseum spectacle—applauding a gladiator fight while real people’s lives, futures, and deaths mean nothing to them. Our lives as Iranians cannot be reduced to this naive and stupid “East versus West” binary. We are not pieces on a geopolitical chessboard, and we are not tools for settling power struggles. The p...

An view by Sirantos Fotopoulos The protests now convulsing Iran are the inevitable revolt of a working-class pushed beyond the limits of survival. Inflation has shredded wages, the rial’s collapse has turned food, fuel, and medicine into luxuries, and millions of people who once lived precariously now find themselves unable to make a living at all. Shopkeepers, bazaar merchants, transport workers, students, and casual laborers are protesting the daily violence of an economy organized to extract obedience through deprivation. When bread becomes unaffordable, dissent is the first step towards survival. The Iranian state’s response has been brutally consistent — repression first, reform never. Security forces have met demonstrations with live ammunition, mass arrests, beatings, and intimidation. Internet blackouts attempt to sever workers from one another, isolating struggles city by city. The message is unmistakable: survival is conditional on silent obedience. To demand wages that keep ...

This was published about three months before the ongoing protests.  An article available in 4 languages “ The present crisis is the combined result of past political choices, climate constraints, and economic pressures exacerbated by international sanctions and regional tensions, to which is now added the very real threat of military escalation. For much of the population, this everyday life fuels a feeling of injustice and the constant bitterness of a future with no prospects. Are the absence of ambitious structural reforms and the persistence of external tensions not liable to threaten the country’s internal security and trigger a major internal crisis   ?”

A chapter by Jospeh Daher  in  The Future of the Occupation of the Palestinians Territories After Gaza

“How can the Islamic Republic justify such strict enforcement of mandatory veiling when even the Quran does not explicitly require women to cover their hair?” —  Sedigheh Vasmaghi The “broad spectrum of civil disobedience—from women’s public unveiling to the drafting of charters and statements of solidarity in the post-Jina era—reflects a significant shift in public consciousness and a growing commitment to radical democratic change, despite an unyielding state. Many protesters hope that these cumulative acts of resistance will continue to gain momentum , ultimately paving the way for transformative change.”

A long, but a coherent and encompassing analysis

 

“ Haji Agha  is not merely the name of a fictional character —it is a title that embodies a social type deeply rooted in Iran’s historical class structure…  a kind of historical alliance emerges between religion,  the bazaar , violence, and the state apparatus, whose goal is to suppress public awareness, preserve class hierarchy, and sustain exploitation.”