COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle
I have visited Iran twice. Once in June 1980 to witness an unprecedented event: the world’s first Islamic Revolution. It was the very start of my writing career.
The second time was in 2018 and part of my interest was to get a sense of how disenchanted the population was — or was not — with life under the Ayatollahs decades after the creation of the Islamic Republic.
I loved my time in Iran and found ordinary Iranians to be such wonderful, cultured and kind people.
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When I heard the news today of Israel’s attack on Iran I had the kind of emotional response that should never be seen in public. I was apoplectic with rage and disgust, I vented bitterly and emotively.
Then I calmed down. And here is what I would like to say:
Just last week former CIA officer Ray McGovern, who wrote daily intelligence briefings for the US President during his 27-year career, reminded me when I interviewed him that the assessment of the US intelligence community has been for years that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and had not recommenced since.
The departing CIA director William Burns confirmed this assessment recently. Propaganda aside, there is nothing new other than a US-Israeli campaign that has shredded any concept of international laws or norms.
I won’t mince words: what we are witnessing is the racist, genocidal Israeli regime, armed and encouraged by the US, Germany, UK and other Western regimes, launching a war that has no justification other than the expansion of Israeli power and the advancement of its Greater Israel project.
This year, using American, German and British armaments, supported by underlings like Australia and New Zealand, the Israelis have pursued their genocide against the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, and attacked various neighbours, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran.
They represent a clear and present danger to peace and stability in the region.
Iran has operated with considerable restraint but has also shown its willingness to use its military to keep the US-Israeli menace at bay. What most people forget is that the project to secure Iran’s borders and keep the likes of the British, Israelis and Americans out is a multi-generational project that long predates the Islamic Revolution.
I would recommend Iran: A modern history by the US-based scholar Abbas Amanat that provides a long-view of the evolution of the Iranian state and how it has survived centuries of pressure and multiple occupations from imperial powers, including Russia, Britain, the US and others.
Hard-fought independence
The country was raped by the Brits and the Americans and has won a hard-fought independence that is being seriously challenged, not from within, but by the Israelis and the Western warlords who have wrecked so many countries and killed millions of men, women and children in the region over recent decades.
I spoke and messaged with Iranian friends today both in Iran and in New Zealand and the response was consistent. They felt, one of them said, 10 times more hurt and emotional than I did.
Understandable.
A New Zealand-based Iranian friend had to leave work as soon as he heard the news. He scanned Iranian social media and found people were upset, angry and overwhelmingly supportive of the government.
“They destroyed entire apartment buildings! Why?”, “People will be very supportive of the regime now because they have attacked civilians.”
“My parents are in the capital. I was so scared for them.”
Just a couple of years ago scholars like Professor Amanat estimated that core support for the regime was probably only around 20 percent. That was my impression too when I visited in 2018.
Nationalism, existential menace
Israel and the US have changed that. Nationalism and an existential menace will see Iranians rally around the flag.
Something I learnt in Iran, in between visiting the magnificent ruins of the capital of the Achaemenid Empire at Persepolis, exploring a Zoroastrian Tower of Silence, chowing down on insanely good food in Yazd, talking with a scholar and then a dissident in Isfahan, and exploring an ancient Sassanian fort and a caravanserai in the eastern desert, was that the Iranians are the most politically astute people in the region.
Many I spoke to were quite open about their disdain for the regime but none of them sought a counter-revolution.
They knew what that would bring: the wolves (the Americans, the Israelis, the Saudis, and other bad actors) would slip in and tear the country apart. Slow change is the smarter option when you live in this neighbourhood.
Iranians are overwhelmingly well-educated, profoundly courteous and kind, and have a deep sense of history. They know more than enough about what happened to them and to so many other countries once a great power sees an opening.
War is a truly horrific thing that always brings terrible suffering to ordinary people. It is very rarely justified.
Iran was actively negotiating with the Americans who, we now know, were briefed on the attack in advance and will possibly join the attack in the near future.
US senators are baying for Judeo-Christian jihad. Democrat Senator John Fetterman was typical: “Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel. We must provide whatever is necessary — military, intelligence, weaponry — to fully back Israel in striking Iran.”
We should have the moral and intellectual honesty to see the truth: Our team, Team Genocide, are the enemies of peace and justice. I wish the Iranian people peace and prosperity.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
