Translated from GegenStandpunkt 2-2026
War enemy:
the Islamic RepublicAfter a little over a month of war, the Iranian president writes an open letter to the American people in which he asks them to consider, among other things, the following:
“Iran – by this very name, character, and identity – is one of the oldest continuous civilizations in human history. Despite its historical and geographical advantages at various times, Iran has never, in its modern history, chosen the path of aggression, expansion, colonialism, or domination. Even after enduring occupation, invasion, and sustained pressure from global powers – and despite possessing military superiority over many of its neighbors – Iran has never initiated a war. Yet it has resolutely and bravely repelled those who have attacked it.
The Iranian people harbour no enmity toward other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighboring countries. Even in the face of repeated foreign interventions and pressures throughout their proud history, Iranians have consistently drawn a clear distinction between governments and the peoples they govern. This is a deeply rooted principle in Iranian culture and collective consciousness – not a temporary political stance...
Relations between Iran and the United States were not originally hostile, and early interactions between the Iranian and American people were not marred with hostility or tension. The turning point, however, was the 1953 coup d’etat – an illegal American intervention aimed at preventing the nationalization of Iran’s own resources. That coup disrupted Iran’s democratic process, reinstated dictatorship, and sowed deep distrust among Iranians toward US policies. This distrust deepened further with America’s support for the Shah’s regime, its backing of Saddam Hussein during the imposed war of the 1980s, the imposition of the longest and most comprehensive sanctions in modern history, and ultimately, unprovoked military aggression – twice, in the midst of negotiations – against Iran.
Yet all these pressures have failed to weaken Iran. On the contrary, the country has grown stronger in many areas ...
At the same time, the destructive and inhumane impact of sanctions, war, and aggression on the lives of the resilient Iranian people must not be underestimated. The continuation of military aggression and recent bombings profoundly affect people’s lives, attitudes, and perspectives. This reflects a fundamental human truth: when war inflicts irreparable harm on lives, homes, cities, and futures, people will not remain indifferent toward those responsible.
Is it not also the case that America has entered this aggression as a proxy for Israel, influenced and manipulated by that regime? Is it not true that Israel, by manufacturing an Iranian threat, seeks to divert global attention away from its crimes toward the Palestinians? Is it not evident that Israel now aims to fight Iran to the last American soldier and the last American taxpayer dollar – shifting the burden of its delusions onto Iran, the region, and the United States itself in pursuit of illegitimate interests?
I invite you to look beyond the machinery of misinformation – an integral part of this aggression – and instead speak with those who have visited Iran. Observe the many accomplished Iranian immigrants – educated in Iran – who now teach and conduct research at the world’s most prestigious universities, or contribute to the most advanced technology firms in the West. Do these realities align with the distortions you are being told about Iran and its people?
Today, the world stands at crossroads. Continuing along the path of confrontation is more costly and futile than ever before. The choice between confrontation and engagement is both real and consequential; its outcome will shape the future for generations to come. Throughout its millennia of proud history, Iran has outlasted many aggressors. All that remains of them are tarnished names in history, while Iran endures – resilient, dignified, and proud.”
In short: Iran did not ask for this American war; as far as Iran is concerned, it could have been avoided. But if America believes it must wage this war, then the Iranian people will prove that this war is unwinnable for America. And this is because, first, Iran has always been great and beautiful, and secondly, because the US attempts to diminish Iran – which began over 70 years ago – were not only bound to fail, but have actually made Iran – “one of the oldest continuous civilizations in human history” – even stronger than it has ever been. So, speaking in the tone of friendly admonitions addressed to the Americans, who are actually nice but have been beguiled by their government’s propaganda, he speaks of nothing less than Iran’s reason of state.
Iran’s reason for existing and for war: anti-Americanism, Shiism
Peseschkian evokes with much pathos the greatness of modern Iran. Essentially, his history lesson is information about the standpoint he represents for his nation: it is too great to accept that foreign powers – including, and above all, the most powerful of all – attack Iran, seize its riches, and presume to dictate who governs the country and how.
And there is certainly some truth in his Cliff Notes lesson for American simpletons: For a few decades, the modern history of US-Iranian relations was marked by the gradual transformation of Iran into a powerful outpost of American enrichment and strategic presence in the region. Under the last two Shahs, Iran became an important anti-Soviet ally that, under the profitable leadership of American corporations, supplied the global oil market created by America, and it earned a great deal of money in the process; this money was channelled into ambitious projects for developing Iran into part of the anti-Soviet West. For the vast majority of the Iranian people, this meant one thing above all: the destruction of their living conditions, which were already pretty wretched to begin with. In a very short time, millions found themselves in the slums of Tehran and other major cities, trying to somehow eke out a living in the national oil economy as day laborers. The Americans counteracted tentative attempts to limit foreign profits in favor of national gains at an early stage and took particular care to ensure that their anti-communist outpost remained stable, with its ruler firmly in the saddle. And that is why they helped him gradually expand his security apparatus over a population that was mostly useless to the regime.
Peseschkian presents today’s Iran as a practical lesson drawn from this. The Islamic Republic of Iran, which he leads as president, embodies the practical standpoint that Iran must not – and will not – tolerate this American imperialism. The Shiite Revolution was – and the state that emerged from it is, in this respect, above all else – anti-American. Peseschkian represents a state that arose from the criticism that Iran had been made a complete victim of American imperialism by the Shahs of the short-lived Pahlavi dynasty; that they had deprived this nation of the role it actually deserves in the world and – measured by the standards of modern states and state competition – sold off half of its actually great potential to Western powers and squandered the other half on themselves. This is the founding principle of the state established in 1979: to secure the Iranian nation its rightful place and to harness its vast material and human potential for the nation’s greatness and success – and this is synonymous with resistance against the USA, whose aims have demonstrably been the exact opposite. When Peseschkian points out that all the USA’s attempts to fight and belittle this Iran and to once again make it an object of exploitation have not only failed, but have actually made Iran even stronger in its resistance, then the message is this: His Iran exists only as an anti-American power; that is its reason.
The anti-Americanism that has governed Iran since 1979 is of a distinct nature.
Under the leadership of the Shiite cleric Khomeini, national discontent with the imperialist treatment of Iran – along with its consequences for the condition of the people and the nation – was given a religious interpretation: The main point of outrage among the believers rallied by Khomeini was that the disruption of traditional ways of life – caused by the forcible alignment of the country with the interests of imperialism – had corrupted the morality of the people, which is what actually distinguishes them and what they traditionally followed: The people’s community of faith had been destroyed, along with the piety they cultivated over the centuries and in which they allowed themselves to be guided by preachers well-versed in the scriptures, with gratitude and in joyful anticipation of a reward in the afterlife. And on the other side of earthly relations, in the view of this religious critique, disorder had also become rampant: those who rule over the people within the framework of God-given natural laws had, in exercising their grave responsibility, ceased to be guided by the mullahs in bestowing on the people the kind of rule they were entitled to: one that strictly – that is, kindly – urges and enables the people to live in a way that, in the judgment of the mullahs and ayatollahs – based on the study of the Quran, the sayings of the Prophet, and a lot of deep, deep reflection – must simply be mercilessly pleasing to the Most Merciful.
The pious agitators logically found the final and most important proof that they were right to condemn the Shah’s rule as a rule by foreigners that goes against the Shiite character of the Persian people in the treatment that this evil puppet of US imperialism was meting out to them. The mullahs are reasonable on many matters; if they reflect long enough, even harsher forms of poverty are not inherently shameful – provided they are handled fairly; and agrarian feudalism is no more a priori disqualifying than capitalist enrichment. But when the secular ruler denies them – the appointed intermediaries between God and His humble servants – their claim to authority over the souls of the people, treats them with contempt, and ostentatiously introduces a host of new customs that not only objectively destroy old traditions, but are explicitly intended to destroy them, the mood in the mosque turns sour. So for the men of God the contempt they experienced from the ruling powers became inextricably linked with the wretched state of the people as a whole and of the nation as a whole – a nation that is actually called to something higher in every respect, both in this world and the next, yet was having its resources squandered and its native customs corrupted by the puppets of godless foreign powers.
So the educators of the people and teachers of the rulers – who are provided with a hotline to the afterlife – set themselves a clear mission: Under such circumstances, under the rule of a regime that has estranged the people and itself from God and treated His most zealous servants with hostility, pious resistance becomes a duty. It was necessary then to no longer attempt to stand by the secular rulers in their endeavors, offering religious counsel and admonition, but one should instead, and must, incite the people to drive them out – not least by setting a personal example in terms of resistance and a willingness to make sacrifices.[1]
Encased within this conservative moral view of Iranian affairs and the need for change was always a perspective that extends beyond Iran, and Peseschkian also speaks of this in his letter to the Americans: When he lectures that it is deeply ingrained in Iranian culture to distinguish between foreign governments and their peoples, this is not simply the usual hypocrisy of modern statesmen, who are, after all, always adept at presenting their wars against other states as a service to those states’ peoples, whom they then turn into the objects of their deadly collateral solicitude. Rather, he is pointing out that Iran, under Shiite leadership, attributes a very special responsibility to itself: The mission that these devout anti-Americans have assigned to themselves applies to all Muslims. By virtue of their Muslim nature, the Iranian people are part of a larger community that is not confined solely within the borders of modern Iran, but extends primarily and at the very least “across the region” – specifically, the Middle East, which is predominantly populated by Muslim Arabs. On closer inspection, they are kept in a state of tyranny and poverty by the unbelieving, anti-religious, and “materialistic” West, much like their Persian-speaking brothers and sisters were. In their nation states – artificially created by Western colonialism and imperialism – they likewise suffer the fate of being forcibly prevented from leading a devout life by more or less non-believing vassals of the West. This applies particularly to the Shiites, who constitute either a majority or a minority in the region surrounding Iran, and are invariably subject to either Sunni monarchies or secular nationalist regimes that impoverish them materially, oppress them religiously, and marginalize them politically. Helping them in the struggle for a devout rule in the form of a regional movement of all Muslims within and for their community has been, from the very beginning, an integral part of Iran’s “revolutionary” rationale under its Shiite leadership, and remains so.
No wonder, then, that the revolutionary Shiite clergy has long viewed Israel – the regional outpost of the USA, the “Great Satan” – as the main enemy of both itself and its flock, a view in which they have been repeatedly vindicated: A state that imperialism implanted in the region in the wake of its victory over the region’s traditional Islamic rulers, in order to implant itself there and establish an oppressive presence for all eternity; with a people imported from abroad who, with their thoroughly corrupt morality, displace, combat, and oppress the indigenous Muslims; a nation which is there to reproduce itself and permanently expand. From the standpoint of this critique, Israel’s destructive superpower politics in the region embodies everything about the West that warrants hatred and opposition; and conversely, the West’s greatest crime is the creation and continued support of the State of Israel. So it must have been completely clear to a Persian Shiite, even without any Christian-Western-schooled anti-Semitism: this is the “Little Satan,” or, to use medical terminology, a “cancerous tumor.”[2] Complementary to this – as is also evident from Peseschkian’s avuncular talk with the Americans – the suffering of the Palestinians, from the Iranian perspective, epitomizes the imperialist-Zionist oppression of Muslims and their right to an indigenous, pious rule. From the very beginning, this has lent the theocratic state project not only its anti-American, but also its anti-Israeli character: a victory for Muslims can only be a victory over Israel; that’s how clearly incompatible they have always been and will remain.
* For this purpose, after the overthrow of the Shah, Khomeini and his followers set about reshaping the nation they had seized by force, reorganizing the people, and providing them with the necessary and appropriate basis for it. And they have come so far in this endeavor that they feel up to the confrontation with the USA and Israel that has been thrust upon them – quite decidedly too far for them not to feel obligated to defend what they have achieved, even under the threat of total destruction. This includes the decisive bone of contention – their nuclear program at its current stage – as the primary issue.
The realization of Islamic anti-Americanism through Shiite national capitalism and theocratic democracy with the status of a regional power that possesses nuclear capabilities
A modern state power – subject to the constant authority of its Supreme Leader
After the Shah’s overthrow, the men around Khomeini set about, on the one hand, taking over power within the state[3] that had been ceded to them by the deposed god-king. The republican form of government, in which the state is organized according to rules laid down in a constitution which everyone must observe, seemed to them particularly suitable for this purpose. Right from the start, they placed great emphasis on ensuring that the constitution itself would be drafted and enacted as the embodiment of the will of the people[4]: Their revolution was meant to finally serve the people, to ensure genuine representation of them in their various classes and social strata, and do justice to them. That’s why parliamentary elections are held regularly in Iran and the president is elected directly, with loose coalitions or individual candidates vying for the people’s mandate – and the state places great importance on the people’s participation in these events. The candidates should certainly represent the different views on the proper way to govern, through which the material interests of the people are politicized even in Iran. Those elected then share legislative and executive responsibilities horizontally and vertically – from parliament and the president down to the local municipalities – in accordance with the provisions of the constitution. That means that they are in fact elected to offices that are endowed with a fixed set of duties and powers that remain constant regardless of the individual holding office. These duties center on state administration and the shaping of the nation’s material life – encompassing everything a modern state must do, from economic policy and the state’s management of a sound currency (around which life in Iran also revolves) to the promotion of public health and education; and, of course, the maintenance and safeguarding of state power itself – as the monopoly on violence whose decrees are binding, which punishes violations, and which secures its sovereignty over the nation’s internal affairs vis-à-vis the outside world. When it comes to the administration of justice, law enforcement – involving both judicial and police apparatuses – and a well-organized military, the Islamic Republic leaves nothing to be desired.
In the case of Iran, all this is admittedly bound by the directive – seditiously commenced and intended for the long run – to elevate the people to their true destiny as a functioning community of devout Muslims and to unite them with their rule in a pious nation. That was, after all, the decisive starting point: the higher purpose has been lost amid the materialistic hustle and bustle of society, from the very top to the very bottom. Restoring that purpose is therefore the overarching task that the mullahs have set for themselves in their rule over Iran. They are now ensuring that this higher purpose – the higher unity of the people and the government – is organized within the state. And this, too, from the very top to the very bottom.
At the apex of this construct stands the Supreme Leader; unlike in, for example, fascist dictatorships, however, he does not preside over a state apparatus centered completely around him, but rather functions and acts as the ultimate arbiter with final say over everything that takes place, gets decided, or is enforced at the subordinate levels and departments of the nation’s civil and military administration. Historically, it took a while until Khomeini and his successor had consistently wrested ever-increasing responsibilities for the Supreme Leader – usually in the course of quarrels with their presidents and other high-ranking officials, including conflicts over authority that were resolved by force, but never without a corresponding formalization in the constitution, with the necessary changes, if needed. Religiously, the whole thing with the general formula “wilayat al-faqih” (rule/governance by the jurist) was, even before the seizure of state power, easily comprehensible and rigorously finalized in political-theological terms: in view of the absence of the Hidden Imam who, by virtue of his lineage, is designated and empowered by God to lead the Ummah, the most scholarly of all scholars – the “Sign of God” (this is the translation of “Ayatollah”) as these gentlemen see themselves – must lead the Ummah; he is closest to God and therefore knows best and, in cases of doubt, is the only one who knows what God expects from a pious, institutionalized, permanent revolution in His name. At his side, meanwhile, a whole system of review and corrective authorities is at his complete command for the exercise of this difficult office, which always bindingly measure the activities of the various state agencies – otherwise aimed at the mundane course of material necessities – against the higher task of the people’s never completely attained religious-moral formation and the nation’s capacity to fulfill its higher task, not least those oriented to the outside world.
Consequently, the permitted competition among politicized interests, represented by individual candidates and associations, is dogged by the unshakable suspicion that it does not represent the natural pluralism of decent Islamic interests within the devout community, but rather divides that community. In this sense, there must be no plurality of parties, but only one party – the Party of God, “Hezbollah” – and this is led by the Supreme Leader in the form of the community of his active followers. Furthermore, before candidates even stand for election, they are vetted to determine whether they conform to the Shiite spirit of the constitution. And even after they are elected, the Shiite-revolutionary caveat does not end; so committees staffed with experts trained partly in theology and partly in civil law also review the laws enacted by the elected officials for their constitutionality; and a committee with the telling name “Council for the Identification of the Interests of the System” is, in turn, tasked with rendering a final judgment should the various civil and religious committees completely deadlock one another. This naturally raises the question of who has the authority to decide the composition of this body, and ultimately, this just proves once again that it all comes down to the Supreme Leader’s religiously inspired final decision-making authority...
And that’s why he needs – and has gained for himself – the enforcement power that actually makes him independent from the other institutions he is supposed to correctively guide in their daily operations toward the cause personified by him. This power exists in the Revolutionary Guards. According to their official designation, the Guards ensure that the Leader of the Islamic revolution is listened to in all matters of dispute and decision-making in which he has the final say.[5] They ensure that the religiously revolutionary anti-American content is consistently upheld within and toward the Republic in which it is organized. These Guards answer only to the Supreme Leader, are accountable to no one else, and are provided with their own budget – organized independently of the rest of the military budget – and have since expanded into a second army that ensures the internal implementation of the Shiite state program and is available, ready, and equipped for defending against external threats. It is fitting, then, that the Revolutionary Guards directly operate certain sectors of the Iranian economy that constitute the material basis for carrying out their anti-American mission. Financially, they thus ensure that they receive their share in the competition for funds made available primarily through oil and gas exports; and at the same time, that the economy also produces everything that the permanent revolution needs for the Islamic improvement of the Iranian people and for the anti-Western liberation of Muslims in general.
Alongside the professionally equipped, trained, organized, and funded Revolutionary Guards – or rather, organized under their command – is a militia force numbering several hundred thousand men, aptly named the “Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed,” known by its abbreviation “Basij.” Also founded immediately after the revolution, the religious leadership thus rallied its active followers and thereby gave concrete form to the idea of a “Party of God.” It thus provided the impoverished beneficiaries of its Shiite inspired liberation program with the opportunity to champion the cause themselves from within a movement, fighting – with an eye toward the ultimate reward in the afterlife – the enemies whom their leaders say are responsible for their misery in this world. Evidently, even 50 years after the pious revolutionaries seized power, Iranian earthly life still produces enough impoverished people who are receptive to this militant-activist interpretation of their misery; and it is equally evident that it ensures these leaders simply never run out of enemies to single out for their wretched militiamen to violently deal with. In the West, this provides the usual demonizers with ample, albeit superfluous, evidence of how cynical and deceitful all the Shiite promises of popular happiness have always been – that is, with proof that there is no alternative to what Iran claims to be an alternative to, and that any attempt at such an alternative is a crime. In fact, it is merely an indication of how horrifyingly normal things really are even in permanently Shiite-revolutionary Iran: State rule produces the misery of the masses, provides them with such interpretations of their situation that the active segments of these masses can be productively deployed to keep the contradictions associated with rule and exploitation under control and to use them productively for the rulers.
* For this is what “the mullahs” have accomplished: They have embedded their project – the religious improvement of the people and the nation – in the state they have taken over; they do not shy away from any conflict that arises as they organize a modern state rule around this project; and they certainly do not shy away from the violence required to protect it against internal and external enemies. The economy they have organized provides them with the real material basis for this.
A modern capitalism –
Shiite, streamlined for national self-assertionIn 2011, the incumbent Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei summed up the economic project he wanted to lead and see implemented with the term “Resistance Economy.” Of course, the immediate starting point for this was the specific condition in which the Iranian economy found itself at that time – more than thirty years after the seizure of power by the defiant Shiites – that is, the condition into which it had been driven by Western, particularly American, hostility: The country faced a situation in which the Western powers that largely dominate the world market were deploying, under US leadership, even their non-military means to undermine Iran, a power they found unacceptable, with the aim of breaking its far-reaching resistance. They possessed the means for these highly effective efforts precisely because Iran, even under Khomeini and his followers, never simply sought nor tried withdrawing from the capitalist and imperialistically organized world market. For, on the whole, their criticism was never aimed at the capitalist mode of production as such, whether national or international, but rather at its consequences which they deemed counterproductive for the nation, ruinous for the people as the nation’s foundation and resource, and corrosive to their morality. That’s why they didn’t reverse the steps taken toward capitalist industrialization – including the anti-feudal restructuring of agriculture undertaken by the hated Shah – in order to return to the good old days which exist only in legends anyway. Rather, they set out to transform what was already present in Iran – and its existing integration into the world market of capital – into something different: something successful in a way that pleases God, or something pleasing to God that achieves success.
To this end, they initially built upon the development of Iran pursued under the Pahlavi Shahs into a source of oil for global capitalism. They never intended to abandon this role, but rather to transform it into a source of funding for their project. Nevertheless, this could not have been achieved without the one decisive act of rebellion against that role: placing the management of national oil resources under national control. Foreign capitalist powers were not willing to let this pass without resistance, branding it an ideological atrocity that supposedly proved the absolute necessity of the final battle against communism that had been launched at the time; in the end, however, they accepted it. This was not least because Iran, in its own way and with its own intentions, merely adapted to a certain shift that had already taken place on the global oil market anyway and didn’t cast in doubt its usefulness for its operators and actual profiteers, even if they first had to learn that who the price for the energy source or chemical raw material oil is paid to – whether to Anglo-American or Dutch capital, which still exercises control over Middle Eastern oil fields through colonial power, or to a nationalized oil company – is, first of all, irrelevant in the capitalist calculation with the price for all companies that pay it because it pays off. In their profit calculations, where energy is a cost component, it simply does not make a difference which parts of the energy bill constitute revenue and profits for oil companies, and which portions flow to the state authorities that allow Western oil multinationals to extract and sell the oil under their political sovereignty. And secondly, these multinationals – expropriation and nationalization or not – remained in demand even in anti-Western Iran: Precisely because the new people-friendly economists in Tehran remained dependent on the revenues from oil exports for their revolutionary projects regarding the national economy, they needed the technology of the well-capitalized oil multinationals, which they themselves did not possess. Thus, Western corporations remained sought-after business partners for Iran’s new economic leaders, albeit under changed but still profitable conditions.[6]
As a result, Iranian oil – and later gas – remains a sought-after good on the world market, even increasingly so. Because in addition to the long-established parties interested in this stuff, a few new ones have appeared on the scene as the world has developed for capitalism, particularly in Asia – notably China and India. And together, they have not only driven an extremely rapid surge in global demand for oil and gas – from which Iran has also been able to profit – but, thanks to their demand, they have also liberated Iran’s devout oil economists from a completely one-sided dependence on Western demand. This has, not least, proven to be an effective means of circumventing Western sanctions on the oil sector. And so to this day, despite all the sanctions, Iran is able to leverage its position – partly inherited and partly upgraded – as a key supplier of the commodity that still remains vital to capitalist energy needs, in order to secure the funds necessary to act as a financially powerful customer on the world market and meet its demand for everything a modern economy – especially one under constant attack – needs for its survival and its “resistance.” This goes so far, in fact, that even in a situation in which a US president is determined to ruthlessly wield his country’s dollar power and impose the “most crippling sanctions,” Iran – firmly entrenched in the global oil and gas market – simply can’t be sanctioned out of it.
Iran’s role and potency as an oil and gas supplier was and continues to be the lasting basis for financing the other sectors of the country’s national economy. The Shiite economic policymakers designated it, and continue to designate it, to replace the nationally unproductive enrichment of a few domestic or foreign private interests along with the ruinous impoverishment of the people, with a use of the people that reconciles all these: a reproduction of the people in a way that is on a par with, and is conducive to, their higher moral purpose, and strengthens the state power of pious men over the people, so that they are effectively in a position to indoctrinate them effectively authoritatively in the correct way of life and to protect them from their internal and external enemies.
In keeping with the state requirements for their project of capitalist development and pious education of the people, Khomeini’s heirs have set rules for this which, in their own view, they either found exactly as they were in their religion or – through the intellectual effort of drawing conclusions for modern times from ancient doctrines, a practice that is particularly highly valued in Shiism – deduced them from ancient tenets to suit current requirements. In substance, the national economy is all about steering the interest in enrichment of private money owners – which even under Khomeini and his successors was not prohibited, but rather licensed – in terms of the greater national whole. On the one hand, this can never be fully achieved: The competition for enrichment – which is permitted with certain reservations – constantly produces results that contradict the purpose of a flourishing capitalism that enriches the ruling class while simultaneously reproducing the people as the basis and means of its pious project.[7] But that doesn’t matter: that is precisely why the mullahs seized power – so that they can put their program into practice, time and time again. The fact that this nationalist-religious capitalist project is increasingly suffering from the hostility directed at it by the West may indeed exacerbate its objective economic contradictions, but it is certainly not likely to shake the “mullah regime’s” determination regarding the purpose for which the national economy it administers must serve – and that, under wise leadership, it is indeed capable of doing so. After all, it set out on this path itself, precisely out of hostility toward imperialism, and it remains steadfast in that stance, seeing itself as vindicated. Consequently, this has led it to increasingly shape its program of harnessing capitalist enrichment as a resource for its anti-imperialist project – in parallel with the progress made in combating imperialism, particularly by the USA – into a form of war capitalism geared toward defense, which renders itself largely independent of the hostile West and, in crucial areas, entirely self-sufficient.
On the one hand, the anti-American political economists have developed this into a system of rules that must be constantly revised, designed to ensure that the national economy and its key actors actually deliver the results required of them.[8] And on the other, they have advocated that these key actors – including, in the Shiite monetary economy, those who work with money rather than merely for money – should not simply act in a capitalist manner, but should, of their own accord, view their economic activities as a service to the national cause and act accordingly: The leadership has managed the waves of “privatization,” as well as the resulting outcomes and the reorientation of strategically important privatized sectors of the economy necessary for national “resistance,” by shifting priorities in such a way that, on the one hand, it has increasingly designated religious foundations, and, on the other hand, the Revolutionary Guards – the core force and guarantors of its anti-American, pious reason of state – into the decisive economic actors that operate key sectors of the Iranian economy on their own initiative.[9] So through political and police measures Iran’s leadership has not only gained for itself ever-expanding means of enforcement, responsibility, and authority over its society, but has also made sure that the revolutionary anti-American purpose – which this national economic machinery does not have on its own – is anchored both personally and institutionally in the society and its economy. As mutual hostility between the USA and Iran has evolved, this has increasingly translated into the practice of transforming Iran and its entire material existence into a “resistance economy”: a form of national capitalism that thrives on its integration into the global capitalist market but must remain immune to the economic hostilities Iran faces from the global economic power.
* The leaders in Tehran – who are constantly at odds with one another but ultimately obey the Supreme Leader’s final word – have come a long way. Not in terms of material prosperity for their people: they treat that, as is ultimately fitting for a project of their kind, as a resource for a program whose protagonists draw from their people-friendly ethos the good conscience needed to inflict any hardships they deem necessary on those entrusted to their pious guidance. Even for the likes of the Khomeinis and Khameneis, the ultimate criterion for determining exactly where the difference between halal and haram with regard to the state organized or moderated economic impoverishment of the people is whether it serves to strengthen state power.[10] And in this respect, particularly given the existential challenges posed by US imperialism and its allies, there are undeniable successes to report:
– With its extensively developed oil and gas sector, Iran has a continually available source of foreign exchange that, even in times of US sanctions, serves a need of nations that dare, and can afford to, circumvent US demands to isolate Iran from the global fossil fuel market. This goes so far that even under Trump, the US is taking a calculated approach to Iran’s role as an oil and gas supplier in managing the war and its aftermath.
– This provides the Tehran leadership with the means to maintain relations with other countries – even in the face of exclusion from the international payment system (SWIFT) and other primary, secondary, and whatever sanctions – that allow it to import essential goods.
– These primarily serve to promote the development of an economy that is self-sufficient in key areas. These concern, on the one hand, the foundation of all its successes, the petroleum industry itself, in which, according to its own reports of success, Iran is now largely independent of Western capital and Western technology. Here, as in other areas, one effect that is particularly evident is that the ban on access to the world market also acts as a shield from competition, which “participation in the global market” simply always entails. If the industrial base is in place, then the externally imposed prevention of this competition can be used as a starting point for promoting domestic production. On the other hand, these concern the national weapons industry, which is not merely independent in some sense, but produces at a technological level commensurate with the level of resistance demanded. Iran now has this and manufactures key components for its defense capabilities in large quantities itself, including in the realm of more complex technologies such as missiles, drones, etc.
– The country is so successful in this regard that it also sells the products of its weapons industry abroad: In particular, the export of drone technologies helps offset the high costs associated with building a weapons industry that is as autonomous as possible. And it at least partially compensates for the shortfall in foreign exchange earnings that Iran must contend with in the heavily sanctioned oil export sector.
In this sense, the Tehran regime has paid off for its people. Although it has been severely impoverished in the wake of sanctions, the other strategic constriction and the efforts to assert national sovereignty against it, nevertheless: with its economy, the Shiite state power has positioned itself to fulfill its religiously grounded claim to its anti-American and anti-Israeli responsibility for the fate of its fellow Arab-Muslim peoples in this region of the world by attaining the status of a regional power.
A major region state power – for the liberation of the great community of believers
The Shiite revolutionaries have never confined their anti-imperialist struggle and fighting spirit to Iranian territory. Their Shiite community in the strict sense is by no means identical with the citizenry of modern Iran, particularly in neighboring Iraq, where Najaf and Karbala serve as two pilgrimage sites and centers of Shiite piety, which in turn are centers for the education of Shiite clergy and have produced a good number of Iranian clerics and legal scholars whose numbers surged following the revolution. Furthermore, as previously mentioned above, Shiites are also found in other countries across the region, where, as a rule, they not only lack access to the levers of state power, but exist as minorities or in some cases even as majorities who are marginalized by Sunni or secular rulers.
With the seizure of state power in Iran, the Shiite liberation struggle against US imperialism, against Israeli domination of the region, and against pro-Western vassal regimes takes on a somewhat dual character: Religious anti-imperialism now takes the form of establishing, shaping, and asserting Iran as a regional power factor advancing this mission. To the extent they are increasingly able to stabilize their own state apparatus, the leaders of the Islamic Republic seek to establish themselves and the country they govern as a beacon, as a political-military reference point in the region; not only for Shiite and other Muslim liberation movements inspired by the Iranian model, but also for states – such as Syria – whose leaders see a fundamental need to correct the status that imperialism has assigned them in the region. So the Iranian state is seeking to counter the US-led world order by forging alliances and positioning itself as an open advocate and active supporter of various Shiite, and possibly Sunni, groups, liberation organizations, and states in the region that share its anti-Americanism. With these allies, the wielders of Iran’s considerable state power can launch armed resistance against the USA and its creature, Israel – which, in their firm view, is effectively carrying out the US mandate to oppress the indigenous Islamic population on the ground. The “Axis of Resistance”[11] comes into being as the practical realization of Islamic resistance against the “Great Satan.”
Of course, the “axis” must also deliver in reverse by effectively supporting the proud leading and protecting power that those who are oppressed by imperialism now have in Iran, as a regional power capable of standing up to the West and its local “puppets.” Because as this, Iran develops its own imperatives which help shape its calculations regarding adversaries, allies, and everyone in between – and which factor in the regional strategies employed by US imperialism in its efforts to contain and roll back Iran as such a power: Historically, this began immediately after the Islamic Revolution when Iran was forced to wage – and did wage – a nearly decade-long, costly war of attrition against Iraq. In that conflict, a coalition of states equipped and financed Iraq with the aim of using the much better-equipped proxy – Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – to bring a swift and ignominious end to the Shiite specter in Tehran. As is well known, this attempt failed; instead, it gave the Shiite revolutionaries around Khomeini the opportunity to mature into true statesmen who are prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of the very people they had set out to liberate from imperialist oppression and lead to a God-pleasing life in this world, all for the sake of asserting state power.[12]
In the following period too, Tehran’s pious leaders always consistently calculated their power politics in relation to the dynamics of global and regional imperialist competition. They also learned to view their oppressed Shiite allies in the region through the lens of how they might be strategically leveraged to advance Iranian interests.[13] And vice versa, they always also assess the oppressive regimes of the Sunni Gulf monarchies or secular dictatorships in the Arab world based on the opportunities that cooperation with them might open up, thereby giving Iran additional power.
And even in its dealings with the USA, Iran has more to offer than just fundamentalist anti-Americanism: As the anti-American hegemonic power in a region that the USA traditionally defines and claims as its special strategic asset, Iran calculates exactly how much hostility toward the US it can actually afford – and how much it absolutely must afford. For an Iran that has matured into a power capable of shaping the region’s dynamics of violence, liberation from US domination means precisely this: wresting recognition from the hated US as an anti-American regional power that simply can’t be eliminated. This contradiction is coming to a head with the current war and the diplomacy that is both accompanying and concluding it. And it is no coincidence that for Iran the nuclear issue is the focal point in this.
The nuclear weapon: The necessary – and necessarily contradictory – safeguard for anti-imperialism in the name of God
It is inconsistent with the religious-moral liberation program of the pious men around Khomeini and his successors to take up the means of imperialist domination over the world of states and to make it their own: the military capacity for the mass destruction of enemy populations, nature, and material wealth. The distinction between foreign governments and their peoples, which President Peseschkian presents as part of Iran’s cultural heritage, has its basis and starting point in the principle that the object of liberation is “humanity,” which, as God’s creation, is unfortunately permanently deprived of its relationship with God – lived out in a community united in that faith – by evil earthly powers, their representatives, and their accomplices. This stands in stark contrast to equating the masses of people with the enemy power – by which, according to this view, those very masses are themselves oppressed. So it’s no coincidence that this pious anti-imperialism identifies and condemns the nuclear weapon with imperialist world domination itself, for which such a weapon serves as the ideal instrument.
On the other hand, given the hostility with which the USA has met their pious uprising and the subsequent Shiite regional power project, it very quickly became clear to the revolutionary leaders that they could not stop at a religiously motivated rejection of nuclear weapons: To survive and assert itself as a regional power, Iran needs “the bomb.” Not to use it to destroy the Jewish homeland – as is claimed by the Israeli government and its allies, citing Iran’s declaration of enmity; that would not only be strictly forbidden at the highest levels, but would also, as the Iranian leadership knows, result in the immediate dismantling of their own state by the infinitely superior nuclear power, the USA. The purpose is a defensive one, of the kind that Iran needs precisely as an autonomous and respected anti-American power: as a sovereign protecting power of its own existence as well as of a circle of protégés in a region the USA keeps under political and military control and maintains as its exclusive, incontestable asset; in which, therefore, an American monopoly on the use of force prevails, which essentially entails a declaration of incompatibility against the Islamic Republic. The intention to annihilate it, which the “mullah regime” sees itself exposed to here, is countered by a nuclear weapon – such as the one Iran seeks to acquire – with the threat of instantly and inexorably inflicting damage on an unprecedented scale on the surrounding world of states, which have been occupied and effectively adopted by the USA; for America, the supranational, supra-regional power, this would constitute an even greater political disaster than the continued existence of its Iranian enemy.
For the country’s rulers, accessing this means of deterring even the nuclear superpower from eliminating the Islamic Republic is worth a tremendous material expense and political and economic costs that are hardly any less significant. By building a complete nuclear industry – a success that testifies to the country’s industrial capabilities and the army of scientists and engineers mobilized for the task, a feat envied by its neighbors – they have equipped themselves with what is needed to take the final step toward building a nuclear bomb with their own resources. As a result, they have incurred, in addition to the sanctions long imposed by the USA, the hostility of the united West, extensive political isolation, the seizure of financial assets, as well as military strikes, acts of sabotage, and assassinations of key personnel – in other words, a campaign of terrorism carried out in tandem by the USA and Israel. The state has withstood all of this and fortified its military-nuclear industrial complex against attacks, including the most intense airstrikes.
Iran’s leaders, however, are not taking the final step toward a deployable nuclear weapon. Whether this is because something is still missing can be left open: For them, this is a political decision:
“We are not after nuclear weapons. And this is not because they are telling us not to pursue these things. Rather, we do not want these things for the sake of ourselves and our religion and because reason is telling us not to do so. Both shar'i and aqli [related to logic and reason] fatwas dictate that we do not pursue them. Our aqli fatwa is that we do not need a nuclear weapon either in the present time or in the future. A nuclear weapon is a source of trouble for a country like ours.” (Khamenei, 2015)
The rational reason for the at best partially feigned renunciation of the deterrent weapon, which Iran nevertheless wants to possess, is not hard to discern: The state is dealing with an enemy that will under no circumstances tolerate such a deterrent from an anti-American regional power within its own sphere of rule. The state leadership has no choice but to take seriously the world power’s declaration – repeated countless times and with increasing urgency since Obama’s presidency – that it will definitely prevent the completion of an Iranian nuclear bomb with all the force necessary[14]; not least because of this, a significant portion of its military has been deployed there since Obama’s threat; and Israel’s decimation of all partners and protégés in the “Axis of Resistance” not only confirms the brutal “gravity of the situation,” but also pushes the Islamic Republic further and further onto the defensive.
For Iran, America’s threats are the reason for a remarkable dual strategy. On the one hand, continued damages and an existential threat are even more compelling reasons to further develop its military capabilities in general, and its nuclear industrial capacity – with the option of nuclear armament – in particular. It endures the by no means “cold” state of war that America – with strong Israeli backing – has imposed on it and the region, despite rising costs; more precisely, it makes its people endure it, regardless of growing discontent. At the same time, it makes its access to the forbidden deterrent weapon the subject of diplomatic deals it proposes to America: a voluntary, yet closely monitored international commitment not to complete its nuclear program – which, by its own admission, was never intended to be a nuclear weapons program in the first place – in exchange for lifting the the USA and its allies’ declaration of incompatible with the Islamic Republic, and credibly formalizing it through the withdrawal of Western economic sanctions and security guarantees from the world power. At the time, the Iranian government actually did reach a deal of this kind with President Obama – the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA) – agreed upon by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany, the EU, and Iran itself. Of course, from the US perspective, this agreement was intended to do nothing more than prevent the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb and not to substantially ease the West’s repressive grip on Iran’s conditions of survival. It therefore did nothing to change Iran’s subjugation to a permanent American threat of war and its continued damage – including through military and terrorist means – nor did it alter Iran’s efforts to work toward possessing a nuclear deterrent. This, too, is only logical: Just as US hostility did not begin – and does not begin – with Iran’s desire for deterrent self-defense, but rather with the program of a Shiite regional power on equal footing with the super-regional power America, so Iran’s renunciation of a nuclear bomb is only a diplomatic offer to the US to withdraw its existence-threatening hostility as long as Iran renounces something it is capable of doing. And conversely: As long as Iran is still capable of doing so – which it uses as a bargaining chip in diplomatic negotiations – the USA will not waver in its determination, let alone its power, to dominate the region and eliminate Iranian-Shiite anti-Americanism.
President Trump put an end to this relationship – which was precarious for Iran and absurd for the USA – during the first half of his second term, just as he promised at the start of his first term and had already set in motion by terminating the JCPOA. Iran can neither prevent the elimination of its top three tiers of leadership nor the extensive destruction of its military capabilities; it is also questionable how much is left of its uranium enrichment industry and its ominous 400 kg stockpile. Its Shiite cosmos has been liquidated, or is in the process of being liquidated, by an Israel unleashed to do so without hindrance. The state thus finds itself on the defensive in a quite different way than before: it no longer has the status of a regional enemy of the USA to defend; rather, it is fighting for what little respect remains by making itself felt as a disruptive force on the global energy market, on the exports and imports of key Arab neighbors, and on global economic growth. Should it attempt to encroach by force of arms on US assets in the region, it faces the threat of further devastating strikes from the overwhelmingly dominant superpower.
This does not mark the end of diplomacy. It is being revived; with a division of roles that couldn’t be clearer: Following the now-defunct JCPOA, the American side has put a new deal on the table. Iran’s contribution would be a capitulation sealed by a treaty which, from the US perspective, would merely acknowledge what is already the case anyway; America’s generous concession would be to channel all of Iran’s options for state autonomy into participation in a general Middle Eastern peace: in a renunciation of violence that explicitly constitutes a renunciation of enmity toward Israel, so that it implicitly recognizes the legitimacy of Israel’s far-reaching practice of anti-state terrorism; and a general prohibition on violence, which Trump expressly demands as a debt owed to America.[15] For Iran, this would mean abandoning the anti-American reason of state that underpins its very identity – effectively, a voluntary act of suicide as a Shiite state, protecting power and leader with at least regional influence. The only real alternative to this is the continued existence of the Islamic Republic with its eroded claim to power, under constant threat to its state existence by a bombing campaign that could flare up at any time on an unpredictable scale whenever American needs dictate – and for which the depletion of ammunition is certainly the least of its problems.
Either way: Entering the ideal world of MAGA-world peace would transform the Islamic Republic into a different Iran.
Footnotes
[1] Iran’s predominantly Shiite faith, this finds its appropriate religious elevation and symbolic representation in the veneration of twelve leaders – imams – the first of whom was a cousin of the Prophet, from whom the other eleven are direct descendants, and all of whom, in an exemplary manner, died fighting for their faith; the last of whom is considered “hidden” until he reappears for the final battle to defend the true faith. Until then, the devout Shiite masses must – but are also permitted to – make do with representatives who, while no longer distinguished by blood kinship to the last of the Prophets and the resulting infallibility, are nonetheless qualified by their scholarship to hold together this eschatological provisional arrangement, as the Muslim community living under their leadership must regard itself and its entire earthly existence.
[2] This is what Khomeini said about Israel in 1963. Iran’s anti-Israel politicians place great emphasis on the fact that their hostility is not directed at the Abrahamic religion of Judaism and its indigenous representatives in the region: they have always been able to get along quite well with them – subject to the minor caveat of their own supremacy – which they – so Western are the mullahs – gladly credit to a tolerance inherent in Islam. Of course, enlightened Western Iran-haters can’t understand that Iran’s leaders might be serious about condemning Israel not for its Jewish identity, but for its expansionist Zionist nature and its Western-style governance.
[3] This takeover required no small amount of force, even in the early days. From the perspective of Khomeini’s supporters, this was necessary not so much because of the Shah’s former followers, but rather to assert themselves against former allies – left-wing nationalists and the communist Tudeh Party – who were, in fact, gradually forced onto the defensive and, in some cases, completely crushed.
[4] Khomeini held the first constitutional referendum in 1979, and the second – its reform – in 1989.
[5] It’s no wonder that even a religious scholar who has been thoroughly trained in the teachings of Khomeini and Khamenei, such as Rouhani once was, as soon as he is elected President of the Republic, in that capacity complains that he is confronted by a power center within the Revolutionary Guards that effectively limits the scope of his office – which he, for his part, intends to exercise entirely in the spirit of the Islamic Revolution.
[6] For more details, see the article “On the political economy of oil: A Strategic Good and Its Price” from GegenStandpunkt 1-2001.
[7] The most prominent example of this is the matter of that vile Mammon when it becomes the subject of lending transactions: These are a thorn in the side of pious economic leaders, insofar as they grant the lender’s right to increase his wealth at the borrower’s expense in a way that undermines the benefits the pious state seeks to achieve in building a national economy. It is therefore convenient that the Islamic religion – like the Jewish religion, from which it has borrowed much, particularly regarding the Old Testament’s condemnation of interest – has a few disparaging prophetic sayings from ancient times in its repertoire: from a time when the moral condemnation of interest as usury was based on the fact that enrichment through interest was not – and could not be – a necessary and productive service to an economy, because the economy itself did not simply have the systematic purpose of increasing money. Iranian legal scholars and financial experts may continue to debate what constitutes interest – that is, usury, which is prohibited – and what instead constitutes “participation” in pious endeavors, which is therefore permitted; among other things, this debate has resulted in nothing less than a national stock market.
[8] And once again – how could it be otherwise under national capitalism? – the crucial factor here is the establishment of a truly productive relationship between private producers and their key resource for business success and expansion: credit. Since credit is supposed to be available, those from whom it is to come must be motivated and empowered to provide it. It is simply not acceptable – and, when in doubt, must be prevented time and again – for businesses that produce goods vital to the state as a whole and its anti-imperialist program to cease production, possibly due to a lack of profitability and the resulting lack of creditworthiness. Nor is it desirable for interested business owners to rely on – or even base their own business models on – the assumption that the state will keep their businesses afloat with its solvency, and so on and so forth. There is much work to be done for Shiite planners under constant imperialist siege.
[9] The transformation of Iranian society into a powerful force of resistance for Tehran’s anti-American factions has also given the Revolutionary Guards increasing significance in other areas. The fact that, for example, the university destroyed by Israel was a stronghold and training ground for the Revolutionary Guards is not propaganda, but a reality resulting from the ongoing effort to shape all segments of Iranian society as closely as possible to the revolutionary ideology, of which the Revolutionary Guards represent the elite.
[10] There are also appropriate religious justifications for this, which – as summarized, for example, in Khamenei’s comforting treatises on the “Resistance Economy” – always boil down to the idea that such a resistance economy not only necessitates increased efforts on the part of the people, but also makes it possible for them and that self-directed effort on God’s path has always been a matter very pleasing to God and one for which God rewards people even in this life.
[11] Hezbollah in Lebanon, pro-Iranian groups in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, Ansar Allah in Yemen, and Syria under Assad.
[12] Here, too, the Shiite faith – like any religion – has everything at its disposal to ensure the necessary willingness to make self-sacrifices among some, and a clear conscience among others who allow others to be sacrificed: Khamenei has gone so far as to refer to Iran’s youth, ready to make sacrifices, as “our nuclear weapon,” rendering a real atomic bomb superfluous. With a clear conscience, Iran’s leadership also compensated for its military inferiority during the first Gulf War simply and brutally by throwing vast numbers of people into battle; in waves, countless adolescents, among others, served as human mine clearers, with a plastic key hanging around their necks, because of paradise and all that awaited them afterward. Also quite a sight are the marble fountains, in which red-dyed water jets symbolize the blood of the martyrs – at the sight of which a good Shiite is not supposed to mourn, but rather to rejoice for those who were allowed to make the sacrifice. Only in the very same West that pumped billions into Iraq for nearly a decade – in order to bleed Iran dry through it – can one write indignant reports about this. Just as one absolutely must write newspaper articles and entire books on the subject, illustrating the bigotry of hypocritical mullahs – who did not shy away from accepting military aid from the “Little Satan,” Israel, during the Gulf War, which Israel had to offer as part of its calculations against Iraq: Such quasi-Western duplicity is simply not something these anti-Western fundamentalists are entitled to.
[13] This dynamic is evident, among other things, in the way Iran handles the Lebanon issue in the context of war and war diplomacy: For Iran, it is important not to lose its ally Hezbollah for good and, with the help of US pressure on Israel, to grant it some respite from the IDF’s relentless attacks.
[14] This is the subject of the articles “‘American Leadership’ in the Case of Iran” in Issue 2-12 [untranslated], “Comments on D. Trump’s Withdrawal from the Nuclear Agreement with Iran” in 2-2018, “Trump’s America vs. Iran” in Issue 1-20[untranslated], and “Trump Travels to Arabia …,” the subsection “Trump Presses for Iran’s Prompt Signing of the Capitulation Deal” in issue 2-25 of this journal. These articles also explain, in a timely manner, the topics that will be discussed below.
[15] Iranian diplomats and propagandists – sometimes explicitly, but always implicitly – offer the US the option of viewing Israel as the culprit behind all the costs of the effort to eliminate Iran, and thus America as a victim of Israeli warmongering. Even in their diplomatic negotiations, the Iranians seek to capitalize on the fact that the US claims to stand above the violence in the Middle East – and on that level, they argue, the US should instead show Iran the respect it deserves, rather than degrading itself to the level of Israeli anti-Iran fanaticism. This is the quasi-agitational aspect of their still-ongoing attempt to gauge how much recognition – as a regional power still capable of negotiation – they can possibly extract from Trump’s peace mandate for the region.