Iran breaking free from its imperial chains

Iran breaking free from its imperial chains, U.S. author says
by Kourosh Ziabari – 7 September, 2012 – Tehran Times

Iran is breaking free from its imperial chains given its vast reservoir of history and knowledge from which to draw on in getting back on its feet, said Dr. Colin S. Cavell during a recent interview with the Tehran Times.

Colin S. Cavell is a member of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the Massachusetts Community College Council (MCCC). His writings have appeared on Press TV and Global Research, among other publications.

Following is the text of the interview:

Q: What’s your viewpoint on the U.S. media’s portrayal of Iran and its people? I think as a result of the biased and lopsided coverage, many U.S. citizens are unaware of Iran’s rich culture, civilization and its people’s cosmopolitan lifestyle. What’s your view?

A: Iran has a long rich history dating back to ancient Greece and Rome, and its culture predates the rise of Islam in the seventh century. Reclaiming its dignity and patrimony in the 1979 revolution, it is logical that Iran would be the first country in the Middle East to break free from its imperial chains given its vast reservoir of history and knowledge from which to draw on in getting back on its feet.

The extent and richness of Persian culture intimidates the monarchs across the Persian Gulf, as their regimes are relatively new creations forged by or with the assistance of imperialist powers only within the last 200 years or less. And Iran’s greatest asset today, and what most threatens its Western enemies, is the democratic aspects of its government, aspects which are imbued with an ethos which is anathema to the autocratic and hereditary Arab despots which are trying to fend off the rising democratic aspirations of its own peoples. To the extent Iran continues to develop as the champion of democracy in the Persian Gulf region, it will become invincible and a beacon to be emulated throughout the region.

Q: What’s your prediction for the upcoming presidential elections in the U.S.? Will President Obama successfully convince the American voters that he is a suitable choice for the Oval Office?

A: If there is a fair vote, then Obama will win reelection to a second term this November. With Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, now designated as the official nominee of the Republican Party after their convention in Tampa, Florida in the last week of August, the race is now clearly between a White venture capitalist millionaire and a Black law professor and community organizer.

The profit bubble for the top U.S. capitalists during the George W. Bush years popped in 2008 causing widespread unemployment and misery to millions, as well as bringing to office the first African American in the nation’s history, and this is a significant development for the U.S. Bush spent billions to bail out the top banks and financiers, and Obama is trying to provide some relief to middle class Americans and workers who have been most severely impacted by the economic recession and depression of 2008-2009. Since taking office in 2009, Obama has tried traditional Keynesian measures, including increasing effective demand through increased government spending, but he has been largely hampered by a highly partisan Republican Party which is appalled both by the fact that a Black man has taken control of the nation’s highest political office and, as well, that he is attempting to implement the rudiments for a national healthcare program, which eventually could become as popular as the Social Security program implemented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935.

As a consequence, the Republican Party representatives in Congress have virtually blocked most of Obama’s initiatives in the last four years, and this includes Obama’s attempt to close the U.S. detention and torture camp in Guantanamo, Cuba. Many progressives here in the U.S. have been disappointed with Obama’s lackluster performance and may stay home during the upcoming presidential election. However, given the outrageous display of juvenile behavior by disgruntled capitalists who miss the casino years of the George W. Bush Administration and their Tea Party front organizations, many will turn out to the polls on November 6th to prevent these predatory capitalists, racists, and warmongers from returning to power. In addition, Obama is currently running at least ten percentage points ahead of Romney with women voters, and this could be the decisive group to clinch the election for Obama. Don’t get me wrong: Obama is a capitalist and is supportive of continued U.S. imperialist policies; but in the present election, he is definitely the lesser of two evils.

Q: The alternative press has reported that the Israeli officials have come to conclusion that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons. So, what are these sanctions, war threats, assassinations and Stuxnet stuff all about? Why should Iran be the target of such an intensive campaign of economic sanctions?

A: The attacks on Iran, including U.S. sanctions, assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists by Israel and its Mujahedin-e-Khalq clients, insertion of computer viruses, or worms, like Stuxnet and Flame, to destabilize Iran’s nuclear centrifuge program, and the overall attempt to redirect the Arab Spring revolt against Iran and its ally Syria has its origin in a very scared and paranoid Saudi Arabia, whose aging monarch, King Abdullah, is, in his last days, fearful that the days of the House of Saud are numbered. And, he is correct, as the Arab peoples are fed up with the autocratic dictators which have ruled over them for the past thirty, forty, or even fifty years or more.

The complete loss of legitimacy of the Al-Khalifas in Bahrain was a wake-up call for the Saudi royals who reacted by sending in troops from the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council Peninsula Shield forces in March of 2011 in an attempt to wipe out the democratic activists and pacify the Kingdom, an effort which has been a dismal failure. Trying to get control of the massive rebellion against the 229-year-old Khalifa monarchy, both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain reached into its well-worn bag of tricks and began to accuse Iran as the instigator of this latest revolt. Ever since the successful 1979 revolution in Iran against the pro-Western dictator Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, when the Iranian people were able to reclaim their patrimony of vast reserves of oil and other natural resources, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along with the other Persian Gulf monarchies, have been playing a two-track rear-guard action which entails portraying themselves, on the one hand, as the true interpreters and guides of Islam while, on the other hand, attempting to undermine and subvert the Iranian revolution hoping to install a counterrevolutionary regime, reclaiming control over Iranian oil, and thus putting a stop to anymore movement towards democracy in the Persian Gulf region. However, with the successful ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003, Mubarak in Egypt, Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, followed by the ouster of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen this year, the Saudi royals have grown increasingly worried that their longtime ally and defender, the United States, may abandon them in a classic case of clausula rebus sic stantibus (Latin for “things thus standing”) which, in international law, means that under changed conditions, prior agreements no longer hold validity.

And conditions have indeed changed. In the case of Saudi Arabia and the United States, the deal in question is the famous agreement between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia’s Ibn Saud in the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt in 1945 wherein FDR promised U.S.-backed military security for the House of Saud and its regime in the Arabian Peninsula in exchange for steady and relatively cheap access to the Kingdom’s crude oil. Sensing correctly that the U.S. is in the process of restructuring its longtime relations with its Arab client states—in order to both bring some semblance of democracy to these states and, as well, to bring these states’ business production and cultural relations into the modern world—the Saudi regime is thus faced with an existential threat. Consequently, it has attempted to defend itself with the largest purchase of weapons from the U.S. in history worth over 60 billion dollars. It has increased its social welfare spending dramatically and has attempted to buy off its population with significant salary increases. Moreover, in an effort to divert attention away from the internal corruption and lack of democratic freedoms in the Kingdom, the regime has, along with Israel and the U.S., instigated a massive Western effort to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria which, if accomplished, will then set the stage—in their view—for a final confrontation with Iran. So, again, subverting and overthrowing the Iranian revolution is seen as the only solution to Saudi Arabia’s existential crisis, and this is why Iran is the current international scapegoat from a Western power perspective.
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