The Islamic Republic of Iran Is a Bogeyman Enemy Created by the U.S. Ruling Class for that Purpose

Trump (who defends using nukes) says war with Iran (whose supreme leader bans even possessing nukes) is needed to stop Iran from using nukes.

Trump (who defends the use of atom bombs) is threatening to go to war against Iran (whose Supreme Leader declares it immoral even to possess atom bombs, and whose nuclear bomb-making facility was ‘obliterated’ by earlier U.S. bombing according to Trump) in order (supposedly) to prevent Iran (which is not at war against anybody) from using atom bombs.

It’s time to dismiss the absurd lies we’re being told to support a U.S. war on Iran.

It’s time to talk about the ACTUAL reason for U.S. warmongering against Iran. Here we go!

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a bogeyman enemy that U.S. rulers LOVE to have in the world.

As The Guardian reported:

Iranian leaders have reacted with fury to reports that newly declassified US diplomatic cables revealed extensive contacts between Ayatollah Khomeini and the Carter administration just weeks ahead of Iran’s Islamic revolution.

It was previously known that Ruhollah Khomeini, the charismatic leader of the Iranian revolution, had exchanged some messages with the US through an intermediary while living in exile in Paris. But new documents seen by the BBC’s Persian service show he went to a great lengths to ensure the Americans would not jeopardise his plans to return to Iran – and even personally wrote to US officials.

The BBC’s reporting suggests that the Carter administration took heed of Khomeini’s pledges, and in effect paved the way for his return by holding the Iranian army back from launching a military coup.

U.S. rulers love anti-working class regimes. But as the times change, some anti-working-class regimes suit the purposes of U.S. rulers better than others. This is why former friends of the U.S. rulers such as Saddam Hussein get declared enemies. This is why the United States in 1979 dumped its BFF, the Shah of Iran, a notoriously anti-working-class ruler whom the U.S. inserted into power by first having the CIA in 1953 remove the far more pro-working-class and popularly elected Mohammad Mosaddegh. Twenty-six years later in 1979, however, U.S. rulers preferred to have Islamic fundamentalists instead of the secular Shah be in charge of oppressing the working class in Iran.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is indeed an anti-working-class regime.

This academic talk describes in detail how the Islamic regime made egalitarian-type promises and reforms initially to consolidate its control, and then did what all other pro-capitalist governments do to maintain class inequality with some rich and some poor.

Why did U.S. rulers prefer to have Islamic fundamentalists rule Iran? A big reason is that at this time U.S. rulers were inventing a new bogeyman enemy—Islamic Fundamentalism—to replace the old one—Communism. Read about this in great detail in the late Dave Stratman’s 2004 article, “Inventing the Enemy.” Here is an excerpt from it:

THE PERFECT ENEMY

Political Islam perfectly suits the needs of America’s rulers for an enemy. The lands of the Middle East and Central Asia occupied by Muslims are the most strategically important regions of the world, sitting astride the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas; the US could never justify attacking these nations without first convincing Americans that Muslims need either to be attacked -- because they are dangerous terrorists -- or liberated. Seeing Islam as the enemy also supports Israel’s role as an outpost of Western colonialism in the Middle East; according to this script, Christians and Jews supposedly share a common Judeo-Christian heritage which is meant to exclude Muslims, and we are encouraged to support a Jewish state based on savage ethnic cleansing against Islamic fanatics.

The greatest benefits to America’s rulers of political Islam as the enemy, however, are ideological: religious demagogues like Osama bin Laden and Iranian mullahs channel the poor and oppressed of the Muslim world into politically reactionary rather than revolutionary formations and legitimize the power of elites acting in the name of Islam; at the same time, they make the ugly face of contemporary capitalism look by way of contrast almost desirable to non-Muslims and many Muslims, in much the same way that Soviet Communism did. US rulers would like the world to perceive the choice before it in effect to be between an admittedly decadent capitalist civilization with unlimited freedom to do your own thing and a pre-modern theocratic state.

Iran and Israel are each other’s bogeyman enemy, they are not REAL enemies.

Here is why:

1. The Israeli government is a government of, by and for billionaires who severely economically oppress the Israeli Jewish working class and get away with this by oppressing Palestinians ultra-severely in order to make them hate Israel and be a credible bogeyman enemy from which the Israeli ruling class pretends to protect Israeli Jews and thereby controls and gets rich off of them. I prove this here, with mainstream and often Israeli sources. I prove here that Zionist leaders have been enemies of ordinary Jews since the Holocaust. The Israeli billionaire class and the politicians and generals beholden to it have so frightened Israeli Jews (already extremely frightened of a new Holocaust because of what the Nazis did in the past) with this Palestinian bogeyman enemy that many—perhaps most now—Israeli Jews express this fear with hatred of Palestinians and support for Israel’s genocide of them. But what most Israeli Jews want is peace without fear of imminent attack on them.

2. The Hamas organization is ruled by billionaires who oppress ordinary Palestinians (as you can read about here) and who have a tacit alliance with the Israeli billionaires who have funded and worked to keep Hamas in power (still today!) in order to make the Palestinian bogeyman enemy maximally frightening to ordinary Israeli Jews. I prove this with mainstream sources here. Ordinary Palestinians want peace without fear of imminent attack on them, as I write about here. In 2006 I wrote “What Would it Look Like if Hamas and Hezbollah Fought a Class War?” which shows that the goal of these organizations is not to do what is required to truly defeat Zionism but something very different.

3. The power of Zionism (the Israeli ruling class) depends, as everybody knows, on the virtually unconditional and massive support—military and diplomatic and economic—it gets from the United States ruling billionaire plutocracy. But in order for the United States ruling class to get away with supporting the obviously genocidal and apartheid Israeli government, it needs the American public to believe that the Israeli government (and its violence against Palestinians) is all about making Israeli Jews safe, safe for Jews towards whom the American public is particularly sympathetic because of Americans’ rightful horror at the Holocaust, of which they have been particularly well-informed by the mass media.

4. If anybody told the American public the true anti-Jewish-working-class purpose of Israeli violence against Palestinians (see item #1 above), then public support for Israel’s government would vanish, the same way public support for the apartheid South African government vanished once Americans learned the previously secret fact about the ugly reality of apartheid there, and the U.S. government would be unable to support Israel just as it had to do a 180 and switch from supporting South Africa to condemning it for its apartheid.

5. In fact, all it would take to make the American public learn the anti-Jewish-working-class purpose of Zionism, to thereby destroy the power of the Israel lobby (which gets its power from the American ruling class) and turn the U.S. public—including initially passionately pro-Israel Jews (at least those who weren’t rich) against the Zionist Israeli government and thereby destroy the Zionist project of Israel, is one single billionaire launching a media campaign telling the public the truth stated in paragraph #1 above. Yes, just one billionaire could do it, as I discuss here.

6. Iran’s government could fund the media campaign to make what I talk about in paragraph #4 happen. Easily! Iran could destroy the Zionist project. So why doesn’t the Iranian government do it???????????

7. Here’s why. Iran’s rulers, just like United States billionaires, don’t WANT to do it. Read here (PDF written in 2007) why U.S. billionaires don’t want to do it. It is because Israeli Zionist violence helps keep the have-nots divided and out of power so that the haves can continue to oppress and get rich off of them. Well guess what? The Iranian rulers have exactly the same reason for not wanting to destroy the Zionist project, which is why they don’t do the obvious thing that would destroy it. Iran’s rulers are an upper class of the haves who want to keep the have-nots of the world (and in Iran) out of power.

I wrote these six points in my earlier article, “Iran’s Rulers Could Destroy the Zionist Project Without Firing a Single Missile, But They Refuse to Do So Because It Would Strengthen the Have-Nots of the World and In Iran.”

An Iranian ruling class that does this (locks up its labor activists), that fears the have-nots taking the real power in the world, does not want to defeat Zionism by creating solidarity of the have-nots against it. Absolutely not! Instead, it attacks its own have-nots and tries to control them and make them obey and be loyal to the ruling class by, in the case of Iran, posing as the supposed enemy of Zionism and, in the case of Israel, posing as the supposed protector of Jews from Palestinians.

A U.S.-Iran War Looming

The U.S. ruling class needs bogeyman enemies to control the American have-nots, just as other oppressive classes around the world and for millennia of human history have required bogeyman enemies to control their own have-nots. I write about this in great detail in my article, “Oppressors Need Bogeyman Enemies and Invent them When Necessary: Which explains the actual, versus apparent, aims of U.S. imperialism.”

If the U.S. ruling class decides to launch a war against Iran—as seems likely now—it will NOT have anything whatsoever to do with protecting Americans or Israelis or anybody else from any actual threat, nuclear or otherwise. On the contrary, it will be yet one more war against a bogeyman enemy for the purpose of enabling the American billionaire ruling class to get away with oppressing the American have-nots and have-nots elsewhere too. It will be a war for the purpose of enabling the U.S. ruling class to accuse any who resist its oppression of being un-patriotic (or anti-American if they live elsewhere) and “on the side of the terrorists.”

The U.S. war on Iran will also have support from all sorts of people in the ruling class who hope, personally, to grab the oil in Iran or other resources with which to enrich themselves at the expense of the world’s have-nots.

As my friend, Nayvin Gordon writes:

Premeditated wars of aggression led to World War Two and the death of 80 million people. Now the World is bristling with massive nuclear weapons. $1.5 Trillion for war and ICE secret police, while jobs, education, and health benefits are slashed for millions. What can be done to block the path to World War?

At the end of World War Two, the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46 concluded that The Supreme Crime is the act of unprovoked war of aggression.

Nuremberg Principles: Established that initiating a war of aggression is a “supreme international crime”.

UN General Assembly Resolution 3314: Defines acts of aggression, including invasion, bombardment, blockade, and sending armed bands against another state.

Those in government who do nothing, say nothing, and those who actively promote these crimes are all guilty of criminal actions. For the sake of humanity, they must be stopped.

Let’s remove the rich from power everywhere. Here’s how it CAN be done.