Labour MP Richard Burgon Warns that War with Iran Could be Worse than Iraq

Yesterday’s I, for Monday, 22nd July 2019, also carried a very important piece by Chris Green, ‘Iran conflict could become ‘worse than Iraq war”, reporting the views of Labour’s shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, on the consequences of war with Iran. The article, on page 6, ran

A full-blown conflict between the US and Iran with Donald Trump in charge as President could prove to be worse than the war in Iraq, a senior Labour MP has warned.

Richard Burgon, the shadow Justice Secretary, said the UK risked being drawn into a conflict between Iran and the US as Mr Trump’s “sidekick”.

Comparing the deteriorating political situation to the build-up to the Iraq war, he said Boris Johnson and Mr Trump could act in concert in the same way as Tony Blair and George W. Bush did.

He called for the next prime minister to focus on “de-escalation” and “conflict resolution” rather than allowing the UK to become “messengers” for the US administration.

“If we end up in a conflict backed by Donald Trump then I think it would not only be comparable with Iraq, in fact it could be even worse than Iraq, and that should really scare everybody,” Mr Burgon told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme.

He added: “We need sensible negotiations. We’ve got a really important part of play diplomatically in this. We can use our negotiating weight.

“I think that our government has international respect and this country has international respect in a way that Donald Trump doesn’t.

“I think we need to use that for the purposes of conflict resolution and for the purposes of making sure this doesn’t escalate out of control.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also spoke out about the crisis over the weekend, accusing the US President of fuelling the confrontation by “tearing up” the Iran nuclear deal.

Burgon and Corbyn are exactly right, as I’ve said many times before in posts about the possibility of war with Iran. Iran is like Iraq in that it’s a mosaic of different peoples. Just over 51 per cent of the population are speakers of Farsi, the ancient language of the poet Saadi and the Iranian national epic, the Shah-Nama. But the country is also home to Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Reshtis, Luris, Bakhtiaris and various Turkic-speaking tribes. Some of these peoples have very strong nationalist aspirations for an independent homeland. The Kurds have been fighting for theirs since before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, while there was also a series of jihads by some of the Turkic nomad peoples, after the Iranian government confiscated part of their tribal lands for settlement by Farsi speakers. The Arabic-speaking province of Khuzestan is also under very strict military control, and conditions in the camps for the oil workers there are similar to those concentration camps. In addition to a very strong military presence, the inmates are kept docile by drugs supplied by the Pasdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. While the majority of the population are Twelver Shi’a, there are other religions. Three per cent of the population are Armenian Christians, and there are also communities of Jews and Zoroastrians, the followers of the ancient Persian monotheist religion founded by the prophet Zoroaster/Zarathustra. Tehran also has a church and community of Anglican Christians.

If, God forbid, the US and Britain do invade Iran, the country will descend into a chaos of ethnic violence and carnage exactly like Iraq. But perhaps, due to the country’s diverse ethnic mix, it could even be worse. The Anglican Church in Iran has, naturally, been under great pressure. If we do invade, I’ve no doubt that they will be targeted for persecution, as will the Armenian Christians, simply because their religion, Christianity, will be taken to be that of our forces. They’ll be killed, tortured or imprisoned as suspected sympathisers.

And any war we might fight won’t be for any good reason. It won’t be to liberate the Iranian people from a theocratic dictatorship or promote democracy. It will be for precisely the same reasons the US and Europe invaded Iraq: to seize that country’s oil industry and reserves, privatise and sell to multinationals its state enterprises, and create some free trade, low tax economy in accordance with Neocon ideology. And as with Iraq, it will also be done partly for the benefit of Israel. The Israelis hated Saddam Hussein because he sided with the Palestinians. And they hate Iran precisely for the same reason.

If I recall correctly, Burgon was one of those accused of anti-Semitism, because he said that Israel was the enemy of peace, or some such. It’s a controversial statement, but it’s reasonable and definitely not anti-Semitic. Israel is the enemy of peace. The expatriate Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, very clearly and persuasively argues in his book, Ten Myths about Israel, that throughout its 70 year history Israel has manufactured causes to go to war with its Arab neighbours. It has never been serious about peace. And that’s particularly true about Iran. Netanyahu was chewing the scenery in front of the UN a little while ago, arguing that the Iranians were only a short time away from developing nuclear weapons. It was rubbish, as Netanyahu’s own armed forces and the head of the Shin Bet, their security ministry, told him. In fact, the evidence is that Iran kept to the nuclear treaty Trump accuses them of violating. They weren’t developing nuclear weapons, and commenters on Iran have said that when the Iranians said they wanted nuclear energy to generate power, they meant it. Iran’s main product is oil, and developing nuclear power for domestic use would mean that they have more to sell abroad, thus bringing in foreign cash and keeping what’s left of their economy afloat. And if we are going to discuss countries illegally possessing nuclear weapons, there’s Israel, which has had them since the 1980s. But as they’re the West’s proxies in the Gulf, nobody talks about it or censures them for it. Presumably it’s anti-Semitic to do so, just like it’s anti-Semitic to criticise or mention their ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

I think Burgon, or someone else like him also said that conquering Iran would not be as easy as defeating the Iraqis. The Iranian economy is stronger and more developed – it was under the Shah the most westernised and industrialised national in the Middle East. And its armed forces are better equipped.

I am not impressed by their seizure of our tanker, but I think it’s simply a case of tit-for-tat after we seized theirs off Gibraltar. And despite the noise from the Tories about calming the situation down, there are strong forces in the Trump’s government and the general Republican party agitating for war. Just as I’ve no doubt there is also in the Iranian government.

Such a war would be disastrous, and the looting of the nation’s industries, resources and archaeological heritage would be simply massive theft. And the destruction of the country’s people and their monuments, as happened in Iraq, would be a monstrous war crime.

The warmongers in the Republicans and Tories must be strongly resisted, and thrown out of office. Before the world is thrown into further chaos and horror.

Trump Puts Iran ‘On Notice’

It seems that Drumpf is gearing up to start another war, this time with Iran. Yesterday the Trumpists’ National Security advisor, Michael Flynn, stated that they were putting Iran ‘on notice’ following an attack by Houthi rebels on a Saudi warship and the Iranians’ testing of a ballistic missile. The Houthis are supported by Iran. Under UN resolution 2231, Iran is barred from developing ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The missle launched by Iranians was not capable of carrying such a weapon. The rocket flew 500 miles before crashing. Iran has tested ballistic missiles before, and while they are observing the letter of the resolution, Obama’s administration condemned them for violating the convention’s spirit. This was because the results from these tests could be used to construct a missile that would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The former Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, said that ‘this is not the first time an inexperienced person has threatened Iran … The American government will understand that threatening Iran is useless. Iran does not need permission from any country to defend itself.’ He also stated that the weapon was not covered by the nuclear accords, and that they would not use missiles produced in Iran to attack another country.

Trump also made a statement attacking Obama’s agreement with Iran, in which frozen assets were returned to the country in return for the regime abandoning any effort to development nuclear weapons. I think the monies returned to Iran was about $180 million. Trump declared that until Obama gave them the money, the country was on its last legs. There’s no evidence for that, and Drumpf misrepresents the payment as some kind of gift. And like his Republican predecessors, Drumpf also seems to want to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. Despite the fact that it is preventing Iran from developing nuclear arms, and international monitoring agencies have confirmed that Iran is abiding by the agreement.

In the video, John Iadarola and Ana Kasparian also state why an invasion of Iran would be a bad idea. They make the point that the Iraq invasion and consequent occupation has been bad enough, but Iran would be much more difficult as it has a larger army and is better armed and equipped.

There are also a number of other points that could be made here. Firstly, any invasion of Iran would not only face difficulties presented by confronting a much better armed country, but would also cause the same ethnic blood bath that broke out in Iraq. 51 per cent of the Iranian population speak Farsi, but the country is also a mosaic of other tribes, including Arabs in Khuzestan, Kurds, Baluchis and various nomadic tribes speaking languages related to Turkish. Many of these have also waged war in the recent past for their independence. The Kurds have been fighting for their independence since the reign of the Shah, and several of the Turkish tribes rose up in revolt in the 1970s after the Iranian regime confiscated their tribal lands as part of a programme of land redistribution.

It’s hardly known in the west, but there is also a massive, growing underground Christian church in Iran similar to underground church in China. Apostasy from Islam is forbidden, and converts to Christianity imprisoned and persecuted. It has got to the point that the Iranian regime is posting armed soldiers around the ethnic Armenian churches, so that Iranians don’t sneak in to participate in their worship. If America invades Iran, this already persecuted minority will suffer even worse harassment and victimisation as they will be identified with the invaders. And the same will be true of the Bahai’is. They see themselves as a separate religion, which has grown out of Islam, in the same way that Christianity developed from Judaism. Mainstream Islam, at least in Iran, sees them as a heresy, and they have been savagely persecuted. Because Baha’ullah, one of the religion’s founders, was imprisoned in Haifa, which is now in Israel, there’s a conspiracy theory grown up about the Bahai’is, which accuses them of being spies and saboteurs working for Israel. It’s rubbish, but this hasn’t stopped tens of thousands of Bahai’is being killed in pogroms. Any American invasion of Iran will see these people suffer even worse persecution.

Iadarola and Kasparian also make the point that Trump’s belligerence also threatens to miss a golden opportunity to turn the country into an ally. They make the point that it’s a young country, with a burgeoning middle class, who want western consumer products. It should be possible to draw Iran into the international community, and neutralise any threat they may pose simply through friendly relations. But Trump is taking the much easier route, of turning it into another North Korea, isolated from the rest of the world.

The peoples of the Middle East have suffered too much. The last thing they, and indeed the rest of the world need, is another wretched, stupid war of aggression. And let’s forget the rhetoric about Iran being a ‘rogue state’ and part of the ‘Axis of evil’ as George Dubya put it. The Iranian theocracy is brutal. But it is still more liberal than many of the other countries around it, like Saudi Arabia. There is a democratic component to their constitution, which there is certainly isn’t in the Wahhabi kingdom. And I’ve also heard that if the Iranians were developing nuclear weapons, it wouldn’t be to use against Europe, but to defend themselves against the Saudis.

If America were to invade Iran, it wouldn’t be to spread democracy. That would be another lie, the same that has been used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The reality would be that it would be another attempt by the Neocon political and economic elite to loot another Middle Eastern country, and steal its oil and industries. While the Saudis would back it in their campaign to advance their kind of repressive Sunni Islam against Iranian Shi’a.

Shirin Ebadi and the Regime’s Oppression of Working-Class Iranians

It’s the centenary this week of the death of the British Suffragette, Emily Davidson. Davidson protested against the exclusion of women from the franchise by jumping in front of the King’s Horse at the Derby. More recent historical research has suggested that she actually hadn’t wanted to commit suicide, and fell, rather than deliberately jumped. Regardless of her precise actions, her death has become one of the most notorious events associated with the campaign for votes for women. The BBC and a number of other media have been running features commemorating the event and the Suffragette campaign over the past week or so.

Shirin Ebadi and the New Suffragettes

The Independent newspaper has been running a series, ‘The New Suffragettes’, on contemporary women campaigning for women’s rights. Yesterday’s (Friday, 31st May) edition featured the Iranian judge and social campaigner, Shirin Ebadi. Ebadi was the country’s first female, appointed by the Shah. She lost that position following Khomeini’s Revolution in 1979. She was also dismissed from her position on another prominent legal organisation because it was considered that her gender was unsuitable for such a position of authority. She has campaigned for divorced women in Iran to gain custody of their sons, as well as their daughters, and has set up a number of NGOs to improve conditions for women and the poor in Iran. She has particularly campaigned against the persecution of Iranian dissidents. She also campaigned for the release of the Canadian Iranian young woman, who was brutally imprisoned in Iran a few years ago. She has lived in exile in London after attempts on her life, sponsored by the Regime, and the savage beating of her husband. In the article she described her shock when reading transcripts of a recorded meeting between members of the Iranian secret police. Reading the report, she came across a statement there was a piece where one of the government thugs said, ‘And the next one’s Ebadi’. It made it all too clear that she was one of those marked for death.

Despite this, she is still very much a Muslim. She stated in the interview that the low position of women in Middle Eastern society was not due to Islam, but to these nation’s traditional patriarchal culture. The Independent noted that despite official hostility, she is a real heroine to many Iranians and has been greeted by cheering mobs when she has appeared to speak to them.

Ebadi and Swedish Journalistic Colleague on Right-Wing Oppression in Iran

A year or so ago I came across a book written by her and a Swedish journalist in one of the bargain bookshops in my home town. It was written from a left-wing, Social Democratic perspective. I seem to recall that her co-writer belonged to one of the unions or other left-wing organisations in Sweden. The book was an attempted to describe the regime’s oppression of the Iranian working class. It also attempted to argue that the Iranian regime was not attempting to buid nuclear weapons, and that there should therefore be no military action taken against the country. The first point was made abundantly clear by her descriptions of thuggery, arrest and violence against Iranian factory workers, truckers, busmen and trade unionists. The second argument I found much less convincing. Her point was that in Iran much, if not most of the oil revenue is exported to gain foreign currency. The Iranian regime is trying to develop nuclear power to lower domestic oil consumption, so that more can be sold abroad. The Iranian government is, however, aggressively anti-Semitic and has made a number of vicious threats against Israel, America and their European allies. It also has developed missiles with capable of reaching Vienna. Even if the primary purpose of Iran’s nuclear programme is to provide electricity, the possibility is all too real that it could be diverted to military purposes.

Ebadi and her co-writer were critical of contemporary Western writers on Iran, who glowingly described the life-style and attitudes of the westernised middle class. If I recall correctly, they viewed this as extremely condescending and culturally imperialist. They also attacked such attitudes for excluding the mass of the Iranians, the ordinary Iranian working class, who were not westernised.

Suppression of Worker’s Organisations by Revolutionary Regime

In the first half of the book she described how the fragmented Iranian radical left, which at one time consisted of 74 different organisations and groups, was suppressed by Khomeini and his followers after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Their members were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured and killed, or forced into exile. As I mentioned, Ebadi herself is still a devout Muslim, and denounced this as un-Islamic. She is critical of the radical Marxist Iranian group, the MEK, as it is militantly atheist and deliberately broadcasts and publishes blasphemous material in order to offend Muslims. Trade unions and other working class political organisations are banned. Their members are harrassed and imprisoned under trumped-up charges of colonialism or collaboration with imperialism. Wages for Agha and Begum Average Iranian are kept appallingly low, and working conditions are horrendous. The only working-class organisations that are permitted are factory shuras (councils). These deliberately include both employees and employers, and exist to promote the regime’s version of Islam in the workplace. Ebadi and her fellow author state that these councils have been compared with the DAF (Deutsche Arbeitsfront), the labour organisation the Nazis introduced to replace trade unions and control the German workforce. In the last days of the Shah, according to Ebadi, the regime was so terrified of armed revolution that soldiers were stationed in the factories to prevent the workers from rising up. The contemporary Revolutionary regime has done exactly the same.

The ‘Millionaire Mullahs’

She describes the close alliance between the merchants of the Tehran Bazaar and the governing ulema. This has produced a new class of ‘millionaire mullahs’. This is the English translation of a Farsi term, which literally means ‘the son of a mullah who becomes a prince’. Although private property is sanctioned and protected in Iranian Revolutionary law, the country’s economy is dominated by the bonyads, Islamic charities that own large sectors of Iranian industry, including oil. The largest of these is the ‘Foundation for the Poor’, part of whose remit is to provide subsidized housing. As a result, there is massive corruption, with the mullahs exploiting their control of these bonyads and their industries to enrich themselves.

Working-Class Protest Action

As a result of this, there is massive discontent among ordinary, working class Iranians. Strikes and industrial action are brutally suppressed. In one case, Tehran’s busmen attempted to form a union and were arrested and imprisoned. Nevertheless, some concessions have been wrung out of the authorities when members of a particular factory or industry have had all they can take. These then organise mass protests, sometimes numbering thousands. These then force their way into the management’s offices, or those of the officials in charge of that particular industry.

Poor Conditions and Violence Towards Women

Women have particularly suffered under the Revolutionary regime. They are paid less than men, and in addition to working long hours are also expected to cook the meals and do the housework at home. There is also high male unemployment. This has resulted in a rise in domestic violence as unemployed men take out their frustrations on their wives.

Ahmadinejad’s Attempts at Reform Blocked by Regime

Ebadi recognises that Ahmadinejad himself comes from a poor background, and was serious about improving conditions for the Iranian working class. He made a speech during his election campaign in which he promised that he would put more on the sofiyeh, the cloth spread on the grounds on which Iranians place their food, like the dinner table in Europe. His attempts at reform have been stifled, and will continue to be thwarted, by the structure of the Iranian state and its component institutions. The Pasdaran – The Revolutionary Guards – and the Regime’s theocratic governing bodies are directly involved and profitting from the exploitation of the working class. As a result they have more than once block Ahmadinejad’s attempts to improve matters, and arrested or removed from office his allies.

Corruption and Exploitation by Liberal Politicians

Ebadi is critical of the apparently liberal politicians and members of the ulema, including the former president Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani is a pistachio merchant, and notoriously corrupt. He and the other liberals are, according to the book, interested solely in pursuing their own commercial profit and careers. She recalls the outrage felt when the regime agreed to meet with striking workers in one of the nation’s football stadiums. The politicians promised political and economic improvements – raised wages, better conditions. In the event, when the meeting finally occurred the workers found instead that it was being staged as a propaganda event to promote Rafsanjani’s political career.

Dispossession and Oppression of Ethnic Minorities

The regime has also worked to oppress and dispossess the country’s numerous ethnic minorities. The Farsi-speaking population accounts for only about 51 per cent of the population. Other ethnic groups include Kurds, Luris, Baluchis, Turkic-speaking peoples, including nomads, and Arabs in Khuzestan. These people’s have seen their homelands seized and settled by Farsi Iranians. Some of these areas, such as Resht in the north, and Khuzestan in the west, are rich in natural resources. The industries in these areas are run by Farsis, and frequently employ only Farsis, so the indigenous peoples are excluded from enjoying the benefits of their own homelands. A similarly policy has been pursued in China in Sinjiang, so that Han Chinese have settled and dominated industry in the homeland of the Muslim Uighurs. It is this policy that is responsible for the discontent and jihadist violence amongst the Uighurs.

Exploitation in the Oil Industry

Khuzestan possesses considerable oil reserves, and a result is one of the major centres of the Iranian oil industry. Working conditions are appalling, with migrant workers housed in camps surrounded by armed guards. Wages are slightly higher than in the rest of the country, but are still insuffient to support the workers. Many have become heavily in debt to support themselves, and drugs are widely used. The Regime and the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards, are heavily involved in this trade. The book includes a statement by an oil worker that while there, he saw the column bringing the drugs flanked by guards from the Pasdaran.

Iranian Fascist, Question of Support by Leftists like George Galloway

The picture of the regime presented by the book is one of a brutal suppression. It is a regime that would be denounced as Fascist, as well as racist and colonialist if it occurred in a western country in the Americas or Europe. Ebadi herself and her Swedish co-writer come across very much as very left-wing. They are pro-Iranian, and definitely anti-racist. The book raises an important question, notably the support the Regime has enjoyed from members of the European far Left. The most prominent Left-wing politician in this regard is George Galloway, the former Labour MP and one of the founders of the Respect Party. Galloway now has a job as a presenter on Iranian Press TV. He previously supported Saddam Hussein, and there’s a clip of him hailing the deceased dictator for, amongst other qualities, his indefatiguability. It would seem from Ebadi’s and her colleague’s book that Galloway abandoned his socialist principles a long time ago to support an oppressive regime that attacks the Iranian working class and brutalises and dispossesses its ethnic minorities.