the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 18, 2019
At a recent international conference put together by the U.S., Vice President Mike Pence admonished European powers—Germany, Britain and France in particular—for doing trade with Iran’s “evil” and “murderous” regime. On the same day, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did his own saber-rattling: “You can’t achieve peace and stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran.”
Never mind that the U.S. itself has worked together with the Iranian regime—to set up a new government in southern Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003, for example, and more recently, to fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
The current devastation in the Middle East can be traced back to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the chaos and instability its policies have caused have prompted the U.S. to realign alliances in the region. So while the U.S. reinforces its permanent allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, it tries to maintain pressure on certain other countries—especially Iran, whose rulers have maintained a level of independence from the U.S. for the past 40 years.
The following article, on the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and the subsequent rise of a religious regime, sheds some light on the origins of the U.S. imperialism’s hostility towards the Iranian regime.