BEHIND THE IRAN US/CONFLICT скачать в хорошем качестве

BEHIND THE IRAN US/CONFLICT

The recent mass protests in Iran have been brutally suppressed by the regime with more than ten thousand killed. How has the Iranian economy been reduced to such low levels in a country with so many natural resources and a relatively educated workforce? The answer is two-fold… First it is the result of the failures of successive corrupt regimes, starting with the CIA’s 1953 coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, that installed the pro-imperialist Pahlavi dynasty which ruled as an absolute monarch for two decades. The Iranian revolution of 1979 eventually drove the Shah out. But Iraq under Saddam Hussein then invaded, leading to an eight-year war that killed half a million people. Iran survived, but under a clerical autocracy supported by a military elite that owns and controls large sections of the economy. The second reason is the unending efforts of the imperialist powers which used to rule Persia, determined to weaken and strangle independent economic development, first through the coup of 1953 and then with massive sanctions on Iran’s exports and the blocking of any foreign investment and technology. Using the excuse of the mullahs’ funding and support for religious guerrilla forces like Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and for Assad’s (now overthrown) Alawite pro-Shia government in Syria, the Western powers have done everything they can to weaken and destroy the living standards of the Iranian people. The recent protests were triggered by a sharp collapse in the Iranian currency engineered by the US authorities which drove up the cost of basic commodities dramatically. Now Trump, egged on by Israel, is threatening yet another military attack. The excuse is that Iran is still developing nuclear weapons; the real aim is regime change and the setting up of yet another pro-Western puppet regime. Iran's misery continues... Perspectives for war and revolution were reviewed at this week's WIN meeting by Michael Roberts (Marxist economist and publisher of the influential blog The Next Recession), and the Iranian revolutionary activist Aman Kafa.