The Abdication of Iran

The signing of the agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme on Nov. 24 in Geneva, was, with the exception of Israel, unanimously hailed as the end of a misunderstanding. All signatories have tried to persuade us that this agreement would have been arrived at much earlier had it not been for the excessive manners of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Thus, Iran’s international trade would have been wrecked and the world nearly plunged into World War inadvertently.

The reality is obviously very different: Westerners have conceded nothing but Iran has abdicated all. Even if the signed text is only transitory, Iran has given up the construction of the Arak plant, its 20% enriched uranium and its enrichment technique [1] .

In 2005, the election of President Ahmadinejad was to reinvigorate the Khomeini Revolution. Unlike his two predecessors, presidents Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and Khatami (1997-2005), Ahmadinejad was not simply in favor of a policy of national independence. He was anti-imperialist, in line with the revolutionary thinker, Ali Shariati. In a few years, he made Iran a major scientific and industrial country. He developed nuclear research to develop a type of plant that can be replicated in the Third World and grant humanity its energy independence without coal, oil or gas.

One cannot emphasize enough the opposition between Iranian parties. Rafsanjani and Katami are clerics while Ahmadinejad is a revolutionary guard. During the Iraqi aggression, the Guardians are the ones who saved the country at the peril of their lives, while the clergy used privelege to avoid sending their sons to the front. The clergy manages immense wealth, Rafsanjani himself is the richest man in the country, while the Guardians are common people living a spartan lifestyle. For eight years, the West made no mistake in its assessment of Ahmadinejad as an adversary, but it was mistaken in calling this leader, who is both mystical and anti-clerical, a “mullahs’ man."

In response to the revolutionary pretensions of Ahmadinejad, Westerners cast doubt on the Iranian nuclear program [2] and used the UN to prevent Iran’s enriching its own uranium, of which it has huge reserves [3]. So, they prevented Iran from using its own resources and forced it to sell its precious metal at low prices. They established, either through the Security Council or unilaterally, a series of historically unprecedented sanctions to strangle the country. In addition, they conducted a vast propaganda campaign to make Ahmadinejad look like a dangerous luminary. Finally, with the help of Rafsanjani and Khatami, they organized an attempted color revolution in 2009 [4].

Everyone remembers the false translation of one of his speeches to make people believe that he wanted to annihilate Israelis (Reuters falsely attributed to him an intention to wipe Israel off the map ). [5] By falsifying the Congress on the Holocaust, which aimed to show how the West had destroyed all spirituality in their societies and created a new religion around this historical fact, the public was led to believe that, despite the presence of rabbis at this congress, he celebrated Holocaust denial, not to mention the assertion that he discriminated against Jews. [6]

Sheikh Rohani’s team represents both the interests of the clergy and the bourgeoisie of Tehran and of Isfahan. It aims for economic prosperity and does not feel concerned by the anti-imperialist struggle. The gradual lifting of sanctions allows it to get broad popular support, for a time, Iranians being under the impression that the agreement is a victory that will raise their standard of living.

Westerners, for their part, still have the same goal. The plan of attack of President George W. Bush envisaged the destruction of Afghanistan, then Iraq, then simultaneously Libya and Syria (via Lebanon ), and simultaneously Sudan and Somalia, and finally they would finish with Iran. From their point of view, the sanctions against Tehran were, though under a dubious pretext, an easy way to weaken it. For them, the surrender of Sheikh Rohani is comparable to that of Muammar Gaddafi, abandoning his nuclear program and submitting to all the requirements of Washington to avoid war. But Sheikh Rohani’s concessions will be used against his country later just as was the case with Gaddafi’s concessions.

It was indeed wrong for Muammar el-Qaddafi to believe that US warmongering against him was based on political beliefs. The only motive that prompted the decision of George W. Bush was geopolitics. In 2010, Libya became the ally of Washington in the "global war on terror" and had opened its domestic market to U.S. multinationals. This did not prevent it from being treated as a "dictatorship" and destroyed by bombing. Similarly, becoming an ally of the United States will not protect Iran from war.

During the next four years , Iran will abandon the historical dream of Shariati and Khomeini to refocus on its state interests. It will withdraw from the Arab world and turn to the members of the Economic Cooperation Organization (Turkey, Iran and all Central Asia) to do business. It will gradually reduce its military and financial support for Syria, Hezbollah and the Palestinians. When Tehran will have dissolved its outer defense line, Washington will again enter into conflict with it.