Previous meddling has damaged the region, and once again the the US and Israel don’t have Iranians’ best interests at heart
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hat does it take to shake illusions in western intervention? This is not a question designed to deflect from the barbarism being unleashed by Iran’s theocratic regime. Because it severed the country’s internet connection, facts are difficult to establish, but the respected Human Rights Activists in Iran has confirmed 544 have been killed and well over 10,000 arrested – those numbers are probably significant underestimates.
Here is a regime that consolidated its power in the 1980s by butchering leftists – helped, it should be noted, by both MI6 and the CIA, who supplied them with lists of alleged Soviet agents. Today, trade union activists are arrested and tortured, while women’s activists languish in jails. The economic disaster resulting from sanctions may have helped spark these latest protests, but millions of Iranians are fed up with living under fundamentalist rule – underlined by surveys confirming growing religious non-observance and opposition to the compulsory hijab.
But those who believe freedom will arrive on the back of western bombs seem incapable of learning from the catastrophes that have defined this century. Donald Trump continues to threaten to bomb Iran, egged on by Reza Pahlavi, son of the late deposed shah. The one advantage of Trump is that – unlike his predecessors – he generally does not pretend to champion noble ideas. He incited an attempted coup against his own democracy, and after recently attacking Venezuela, made clear that oil was his primary concern. He has paid lip service to the protests in Iran. But as far back as 1980, he publicly declared his support for intervening in the country, claiming that “right now we’d be an oil-rich nation” if the US had done so. Similarly, overseeing the killing of Qassem Suleimani, and attacking the Fordow nuclear facility at a time of extreme regional tension, were hardly done with the best interests of average Iranians in mind.
