Thread by @bikrumsinghgill

Thread

You cannot effectively oppose the zionist war on Iran by drawing a distinction between the Islamic Republic and a generic category of the Iranian "people." To do so is to reproduce the ideological basis of regime change. And to do so at this moment is unforgivable.

The first, fundamental point: the zionist-imperialist war on Iran is being waged to destroy the state structure - the Islamic Republic - that was historically produced by the Islamic Revolution. This revolution, which remains in motion, is premised upon overturning...

the material and ideological basis of imperialism-zionism in West Asia. This is necessary for the region to achieve substantial sovereignty. That the Islamic Republic has been uncompromising on this question is the sole reason it has been attacked by the West for the past 45 yrs

The Islamic Republic has been materially indispensable to the rise and reproduction of anti-imperialist and anti-zionist resistance movements in the region. This revolutionary power is all the more significant as it emerged at a historical moment...

when the West was otherwise imposing defeat on West Asia and Global South more broadly. The "end of history," as Western ideologues named the apparent victory of the West over Soviet communism and third worldism, was a profound setback for the sovereignty of the South/non-West

This was the moment when the South was forced to undertake structural adjustment by Western finance capital. The moment in which the West had secured near total hegemony over the Arab states, flipping previously resistant states into compliant normalizing ones.

This historical context forced the Palestinian resistance to disarm and to enter into a framework - Oslo - through which Palestinians were rendered entirely dependent on US imperialism for the achievement of their sovereign right. This could only ever fail Palestinians.

The Islamic Revolution constituted one of the principal challenges (the other is the economic rise of China) to this "end of history" order. Having emerged in response to US imperialism imposing the pro Western Shah on Iran for a quarter century, the revolution understood...

It could never safeguard its sovereignty without contesting imperialism at the regional and international scale. It understood that its religious duty to liberate Palestine was also bound up with safeguarding its own sovereignty. And so the revolution refused the end of history

At the very moment the PLO was being disarmed, the Islamic Republic was providing the necessary strategic depth and knowledge transfer that backed the rise of Hezbollah, and strengthened Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In so doing it challenged the material basis...

through which sovereignty was denied by imperialists and zionists. It is this refusal to submit to the material domination of the region by zionists and imperialists that has subjected Iran to sanctions and regime change attempts by the West.

The US and the West sanctioned Iran under the Clinton administration explicitly citing the support it gave Hezbollah and Hamas. Even the concerns they would later raise about Iran's nuclear program is about maintaining the monopoly on force in favor of zionism-imperialism

The Islamic Republic, due to both its ideological foundations and its awareness of material conditions of sovereignty, refused to compromise on its national rights and its support for resistance groups. If Iran were to abandon the axis of resistance, the West would accept Iran

And Iran would emerge as one of the wealthiest most developed countries in the world. It refuses to do so however because of its principled commitment to Palestinian liberation and sovereignty for the region. We could all learn from such principled commitment.

The sanctions have not worked, however, as Iran has withstood and continued to safeguard its sovereignty while supporting the resistance and engaging in a significant degree of national development even while under sanctions. It is the failure of sanctions that...

explains why the West has returned to a military approach to regime change. And though its zionist proxy has achieved some success militarily in Lebanon and Syria that led it to believe it could now strike Iran, it failed to realize that Iran had its own strategic calculus

Iran clearly understood that their enemies had overstretched themselves and experienced attrition to an extent that striking back now made more sense than doing so this past October. In any case, where we are now is that Iran is fighting to defend a state structure that has...

been essential to the challenge to the genocidal profit oriented system the West seeks to impose on South and non-West. At this moment, we see clearly that the victory of the Islamic Republic is essential to overturning the genocidal world order the West seeks to renew in Gaza

To return to where I began, it is not a war on an abstract Iranian "people." If Iran was governed by the Shah, if it did not materially challenge the basis of zionism and imperialism, its people would not be subject to sanction and war

So to separate the Iranian "people" from the Islamic Republic at this point is to reinforce the language of the imperialist, and reproduces the logic of the war on Iran. It has the same implications of separating the Palestinian people from their resistance.