Color Revolution

den 28 maj 2007, 00:03:32 | gowans
The arrest by Iranian authorities of U.S.-Iranian scholar Haleh 
Esfandiari should come as no shock. She is almost certainly guilty of 
working to foment a color revolution, and governments, especially 
revolutionary ones, never stand for attempts to reverse their 
revolutions or to make fundamental changes in the class which wields 
state power. Whether her arrest was legitimate depends on which rights 
one believes to be senior: the rights of public advocacy and freedom to 
organize politically or the rights of self-determination and freedom 
from foreign domination. 

By Stephen Gowans

Few people had heard of Haleh Esfandiari until she was jailed by 
skittish Iranian authorities who feared she was involved in a U.S. plot 
to engineer a color revolution in Iran.

The director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson 
International Center for Scholars, Esfandiari had been visiting her 
mother when she was detained by Iranian authorities in May. She was 
accused of co-opting Iranians into a U.S.-sponsored regime change 
program, offering them research grants and scholarships, paying their 
way to conferences and linking them up with ?decision making centers in 
America.? (1)

This wasn?t the first regime change-related arrest. Last summer, 
Iranian authorities arrested Ramin Jahanbegloo, a scholar with dual 
Canadian-Iranian citizenship (*). The Ministry of Intelligence said the 
arrest was made in connection with U.S. efforts ?to start a soft 
revolution in Iran.? (2)

Parnaz Azima, a reporter who works for Radio Farda, a Persian language 
radio station financed by the U.S. government has also been arrested, 
as has Kian Tajbakhsh, a consultant with billionaire speculator George 
Soros? Open Society Institute. OSI has been instrumental in providing 
funding for color revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine.

While there has been ?a spate of recent crackdowns against Iranian 
activists? reflecting a ?concern by the government of President Mahmoud 
Ahmadinejad that the United States is using democracy advocates to 
promote regime change,? (3) Esfandiari?s case has received the most 
attention.

Left scholars, like Noam Chomsky and Juan Cole, have condemned 
Esfandiari?s arrest, and others have suggested that the Ahmadinejad 
government is cracking down on legitimate dissent.

But how legitimate, and how independent, are the so-called democracy 
advocates, Tehran has jailed?

Esfandiari is the director of the U.S. government-established Woodrow 
Wilson Center?s Middle East Program. The Center is hardly a neutral 
body, independent of either the U.S. government or its foreign policy 
goals. Partly funded by the OSI, the Middle East Program was launched 
in February 1998 to assess ?American interests in the region? and 
?strategic threats to and from the regional states.? It?s no secret 
that the U.S. considers Iran to be a strategic threat and considers its 
interests are best served by regime change in Iran.

Esfandiari?s program, according to the Center?s website, ?devotes 
considerable attention to the analysis of internal domestic and social 
developments in Iran? including ?the aspiration of the younger 
generation for reform and expansion of individual liberties? as well as 
the development of ?civil society.? (4)

Is it any wonder Iranian authorities regard Esfandiari as a threat? 
She?s an Iranian living in the U.S., works for a U.S. government-
established body, and directs a program whose mandate relates to 
American interests in the region. The program receives funding from the 
OSI, which has been instrumental in regime change operations in 
countries that had remained stubbornly outside the U.S. imperial orbit.

By itself, this is damning, but in the broader context of U.S. policy, 
it?s difficult to dismiss Tehran?s accusations as either paranoid or 
contrived.

Bankrolling a counter-revolution

In May of 2005, R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for 
political affairs said the U.S. was ready to hike funding to groups 
within Iran seeking regime change. The United States had already spent 
$1.5 million in 2004 and $3 million in 2005 on exile groups with 
contacts inside Iran. (5)

Burns equated the ramped up spending to ?taking a page from the 
playbook? on Ukraine and Georgia, where, as the New York Times 
explained,? in those countries the United States gave money to the 
opposition and pro-democracy groups, some of which later supported the 
peaceful overthrow of the governments in power.? (6)

But it would take longer to spark a color revolution in Iran, Burns 
warned. ?We don?t have a platform to do it. The country isn?t free 
enough to do it. It?s a much more oppressive environment than Ukraine 
was?during the Orange Revolution? where the U.S. was able to take 
advantage of the country?s openness to meddle in its internal affairs. 
(7)

On February 15, 2005 U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proposed 
to add $75 million to the $10 million already earmarked for U.S. 
government programs to ?support networks for Iranian reformers, 
political dissidents and human rights activists.? Two-thirds of the 
additional funding was to be used to ?increase television broadcasting 
to 24 hours a day all week in Farsi into Iran.? (8)

It?s unlikely that Esfandiari, working for the U.S. government through 
the Woodrow Wilson Center, and on a program that emphasized U.S. 
interests in Iran, wasn?t part of the stepped up efforts to oust the 
Ahmadinejad government.

Mercenaries of non-violent struggle

Equally unlikely is that the Iranian Center for Applied Non-Violence 
was passed over for Uncle Sam?s regime change largesse. The Center 
invites Iranians to workshops to teach them how peaceful revolts in 
Georgia, the Philippines and elsewhere were set off. Training sessions 
are held ?every month or so, hoping to foment a non-violent conflict in 
Iran.? The Washington-based International Center on Non-Violent 
Conflict helps organize the sessions. (10)

The U.S. Center is interesting. It appears to be a grassroots 
organization ? the kind of group that appeals to Z Magazine-reading 
activists in the West ? but has strong connections to Wall Street and 
the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

The Center?s founding chair is New York investment banker Peter 
Ackerman, who is also a member of the board of the Council on Foreign 
Relations, an organization dominated by directors of major U.S. 
corporations, corporate lawyers and CEOs. The CFR formulates foreign 
policy for the U.S. State Department. Its key members circulate between 
the council, corporate board appointments and State Department 
positions.

Ackerman is also chairman of the board of Freedom House, an 
organization that champions the rights of journalists, union leaders 
and democracy activists to organize openly to bring down governments 
whose economic policies are insufficiently friendly to U.S. trade and 
investment. Funded by the OSI, USAID, the U.S. State Department and the 
U.S. Congress?s National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House 
features a rogues? gallery of U.S. ruling class activists that have 
sat, or currently sit, on its board of directors: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul 
Wolfowitz, Otto Reich, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Steve 
Forbes, among others. The only freedom these people are interested in 
is the freedom of U.S. corporations and investors to accumulate capital 
wherever and whenever they please.

Ackerman?s Center has been heavily involved in successful and ongoing 
regime change operations, including in Yugoslavia, which Ackerman 
celebrated in a PBS-TV documentary, Bringing Down a Dictator, about the 
ouster of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. If Ackerman, who 
studied under U.S. non-violence guru Gene Sharp, is truly committed to 
the peaceful way, he?s done a terrible job of transmitting a commitment 
to non-violent change to his children. Ackerman has two sons, one of 
whom is a U.S. Marine Corps officer, who earned a silver star for 
service in Iraq, using bombs and bullets to change Iraq?s regime.

The Center?s vice-chair is Berel Rodal, formerly a senior Canadian 
government official in foreign affairs, international trade, defense, 
security and intelligence (hardly the background of a budding Ghandi.)

Another Center associate is Robert Helvey, whose book ?On Strategic 
Non-Violent Conflict: Thinking about the Fundamental?, is promoted on 
the Center?s website. Anyone who does a little digging into Helvey?s 
background will soon discover that strategic non-violent conflict means 
enlisting grassroots activists to bring down socialist or economically 
nationalist governments in order to privatize their socially-owned 
assets for the benefit of U.S. corporations and investors.

Helvey is a retired U.S. Army colonel and former U.S. military attaché 
to Burma (like Rodal?s, an improbable background for a budding Ghandi) 
who was brought to Caracas in 2003 ?by a group of businessmen and 
professionals to give courses to young activists on how to ?resist, 
oppose, and change a government without the use of bombs and bullets.?? 
(10) Helvey?s dalliances with the anti-Chavez opposition came fast on 
the heels of ?his work in Serbia before Milosevic?s fall? where he 
?briefed students on ways to organize a strike and how to undermine the 
authority of a dictatorial regime.? (11)

What comes after a color revolution?

So, what has happened to Serbia, now that the non-violence loving, 
dictator-hating Ackerman and Helvey have completed their missions and 
moved on to plotting the overthrow of other foreign leaders, like Hugo 
Chavez, Robert Mugabe and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

?In Serbia dollars have accomplished what bombs could not. After U.S.-
led international sanctions were lifted with Milosevic?s ouster in 
2000, the United States emerged as the largest single source of foreign 
direct investment. According to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, U.S. 
companies have made $1 billion worth of ?committed investments? 
represented in no small part by the $580 million privatization of Nis 
Tobacco Factory (Phillip Morris) and a $250 million buyout of the 
national steel producer by U.S. Steel. Coca-Cola bought a Serbian 
bottled water producer in 2005 for $21 million. The list goes on.? (12)

Meanwhile, in the Serb province of Kosovo, the ?coal mines and 
electrical facilities, the postal service, the Pristina airport, the 
railways, landfills, and waste management systems have all been 
privatized. As is the case across the Balkans, ?publicly-owned 
enterprises? are auctioned for a fraction of their value on the private 
market with little or no compensation for taxpayers.? (13)

It should be recalled that prior to the U.S. corporate takeover, the 
Yugoslav economy consisted largely of state- and socially-owned 
enterprises, leaving little room for U.S. profit-making opportunities, 
not the kind of place investment bankers like Ackerman, or speculators 
like Soros, are keen on. That the toppling of Milosevic had everything 
to do with opening space for U.S. investors and corporations should 
have been apparent to anyone who read chapter four of the U.S.-authored 
Rambouillet ultimatum, an ultimatum Milosevic rejected, triggering 
weeks of NATO bombing. The first article called for a free-market 
economy and the second for privatization of all government-owned 
assets. NATO bombs seemed to have had an unerring ability to hit 
Yugoslavia?s socially-owned factories and to miss foreign-owned ones. 
This was an economic take-over project.

Helvey hasn?t limited himself to training activists to overthrow 
governments in Venezuela and Serbia. Wherever Washington seeks to oust 
governments that pursue economically nationalist or socialist policies, 
you?ll find Helvey holding seminars on non-violent direct action: in 
Belarus, in Zimbabwe, in Iraq (before the U.S. invasion) and in Iran. 
?Helvey conducted a week-long course on nonviolent struggle for a group 
of Iranians in March 2003. The participants were young professionals in 
exile in the United States and Canada who would be used as spokespeople 
for various Iranian democracy groups.? (14)

A mercenary of non-violent direct action, Helvey would be a much more 
sympathetic figure were he also organizing seminars on how to use non-
violent direct action to overthrow the U.S., British and other war-
mongering Western governments, but somehow his list of targets always 
seems to line up with the governments Washington wants to overthrow. 
Helvey and Ackerman aren?t really committed to non-violence as a way of 
life, but only to non-violent struggle as one of a number of tools to 
be used (along with air strikes, ground invasion, saber-rattling and 
economic warfare) to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives ? 
objectives which have nothing to with the stated goals of promoting 
human rights and democracy and everything to do with putting U.S. 
capital in the driver?s seat.

Advancing U.S. corporate interests

Iran, as is true of other countries Washington has targeted for regime 
change, is economically nationalist, and it is this, and less so 
concerns about Iran?s nuclear program, that lies the heart of U.S. 
efforts to bring down the Ahmadinejad government. ??Regime change? did 
not begin with the administration of George W. Bush,? New York Times 
journalist Stephen Kinzer points out in his book Overthrow, ?but has 
been an integral part of American foreign policy for more than one 
hundred years?starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 
1883? (15) and yes, including the overthrow of Iran?s economically 
nationalist president Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. Mossadegh had 
nationalized British-owned oil companies. The U.S. engineered his 
overthrow and then handed the once British-owned and now nationalized 
oil industry over to U.S. companies.

In his survey of Washington?s addiction to regime change, Kinzer 
couldn?t help but trip over the centrality of the profit-making 
interests of U.S. capital in decisions to overthrow foreign 
governments. American corporations, Kinzer explains, are so powerful 
that they find ?it relatively easy to call upon the military or the 
Central intelligence Agency to defend their privileges? in other 
countries. Of course, no one ever says regime change is about profits. 
Who?s going to rally around fattening ExxonMobil?s, Lockheed-Martin?s, 
GM?s, General Electric?s and Bechtel?s bottom lines? Regime change is 
always said to be about something larger: democracy, human rights, 
freedom, checking the spread of nuclear weapons and combating 
terrorism.

From the perspective of U.S. corporations and investment banks the 
problem with Iran is the same as the problem with Yugoslavia under 
Milosevic and Belarus today. There are too many publicly-owned 
enterprises, which means not enough room for U.S. investors and 
corporations to sell their goods and services and to profitably invest 
their capital. ?Today,? observes the New York Times, ?Iran?s economy ? 
is almost entirely in the hands of the government.? (16) The country 
has its own automobile industry, and has secured deals with Venezuela 
and Syria to produce cars in those countries. Virtually all of the 
country?s drugs are produced domestically. (17) And, of course, there?s 
oil. ?Iran?s petroleum reserves are the second largest of any OPEC 
country.? Only ?Russia has more natural gas.? (18)

Ahmadinejad represents the economically nationalist wing of the 
Iranian ruling class, which ?advocates state control of the economy, 
subsidies, continuation of uranium enrichment and the standoff with the 
U.S.? (19) ?His call for justice ? primarily economic justice?resonate
(s) with a population angered by a perception that it had been denied 
the benefit of oil wealth.? (20) Iran will spend $25 billion this year 
to hold down the price of flour, rice, even gasoline. Ali Hashemi 
Rafsanjani, who lost the last presidential election to Ahmadinejad, 
represents the neo-liberal faction and favors ?privatization, 
negotiations over Iran?s nuclear program and overtures to the U.S.? 
(21)

While Tehran?s support for the Palestinian nationalist struggle and 
the country?s nuclear program may irritate Washington?s policy makers, 
it?s unclear that these irritants figure prominently in Washington?s 
regime change policy. Soon after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran 
approached Washington with a proposal for a broad dialogue, to include 
?full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the 
termination of Iranian support for Palestinian groups.? (22) In other 
words, Iran would act to resolve all the irritants Washington said were 
at the heart of its dispute with Iran.

Richard Hass, then head of policy planning at the U.S. State 
Department and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said 
Washington rejected the proposal because the administration wanted the 
regime changed. And the administration believed ?the Iranian government 
was on the verge of collapse.? (23) If Ahmadinejad?s government fell, 
or was toppled from within thanks to U.S.-funded regime change efforts, 
the neo-liberal, pro-West Rafsanjani would likely be the successor.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, pro-capitalist ideologue Francis 
Fukuyama asked, ?What is it that leaders like Iran?s Mahmoud 
Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah?s Hassan Nasrallah and Venezuela?s Hugo Chavez 
have in common that vastly increase their local appeal?? His answer: 
?Their ability to promise, and to a certain extent deliver on social 
policy ? things like education, health and other social services, 
particularly for the poor.? Fukuyama lamented that ?The U.S. and the 
political groups that it tends to support around the world?have 
relatively little to offer in this regard.? (24)

The Brzezinski warning

Earlier this year, former Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew 
Brzezinski speculated on how Washington might engineer a ?plausible 
scenario for military collision with Iran.? He warned that U.S. 
military action against Iran could follow ?Iraqi failure to meet the 
benchmark followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the 
failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.
S. blamed on Iran.? (25)

In late May, Brzezinski?s prediction seemed to be coming true. U.S. 
officials began to accuse Iran of forging an alliance with al Qaeda, 
Sunni insurgents, and Syria, with the goal of undermining achievement 
of the benchmarks in Iraq. In addition, the U.S. claimed to have ?proof 
that Iran had reversed its previous policy in Afghanistan and is now 
supporting and supplying the Taliban?s campaign against U.S., British 
and other NATO forces.? (26)

Bush has repeatedly warned that while the United States is prepared to 
explore non-military means of forcing Iran to relinquish its right 
under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium, ?all 
options are on the table.?

The Democrats are equally bellicose. ?Top Democrats in the House and 
Senate issued a report? in July 2005 calling for the United States to 
use ?military pressure, including ?the possibility of repeated and 
unwarned strikes?? against Iran. (27)

Earlier this year, the U.S. and Britain started to beef up their joint 
armada of warships and strike aircraft in the Persian Gulf region ?in a 
show of military resolve toward Iran.? (28)

The American Enterprise Institute, a principal fixture of the U.S. 
ruling class policy formulation network, has been ?urging Mr. Bush to 
open a new front against Iran.? (29) The think tank, whose mandate is 
to promote free enterprise, counts Coors, Microsoft and ExxonMobil 
among its major funders. Bush?s decision to send more troops to Iraq 
originated in a recommendation from the AEI. (30)

Economic warfare

?More than 40 major international banks and financial institutions 
have either cut off or cut back business with the Iranian public or 
private sector as a result of a quiet campaign launched by the Treasury 
and State Departments.? (31)

The campaign began last September, when the U.S. treasury secretary 
Henry Paulson announced plans to isolate Iran financially, by 
prohibiting U.S. banks from dealing with Iran. (32) Paulson also 
strongly suggested that foreign banks follow suit, listing more than 30 
Iranian companies and government enterprises banks should steer clear 
of. Afraid of jeopardizing their access to the U.S. banking system, 
several European banks, including Credit Suisse and UBS in Switzerland, 
HSBC in Britain and ABN Amro in the Netherlands announced that they had 
scaled back their dealings with Iranian banks and enterprises. (33)

Pressure was also brought to bear ?on major U.S. pension funds to stop 
investment in about 70 companies that trade directly with Iran and 
international banks that trade with the oil sector, cutting off the 
country?s access to hard currency. The aim is to isolate Tehran from 
world markets.? (34)

This is part of a ?full-court press on foreign companies?to impress 
them that it would be a mistake to do anything with? Iran. (35)

The Iranian view

Former Iranian Interior Minister and deputy foreign minister Ali 
Muhammad Besharati told the New York Times last August that, ?If we 
backed down on the nuclear issue, the U.S. would have found fault with 
our medical doctors researching stem cells. What they would like to see 
us do is plant corn, make tomato paste and bottle mineral water. They 
do not want to see us high-tech.? (36)

Support for this thinking comes from the Bush administration itself. 
Asked whether Iran ?might at some point in the future be allowed to 
enrich uranium on its own soil? ?after it has satisfied regulatory 
bodies that its nuclear ambitions are peaceful? a senior Bush 
administration official replied ?when hell freezes over.? (37)

The Iranian leadership sees the conflict with the U.S. as ?a fight for 
survival against a far more powerful enemy that has lumped them into an 
?axis of evil? and allocated millions of dollars to oust the 
government.? The fight is ?Tehran?s frontline effort to?never again 
allow Washington to have the upper hand in Iran.? (38)

Conflicting rights

It?s no secret that Washington is maneuvering to regain the upper hand 
in Iran it lost when the U.S.-backed Shah was overthrown in 1979. 
Washington has a tripartite game plan: threaten air strikes; pressure 
the world?s banking and investor community to ruin Iran?s economy 
through financial isolation; build up grassroots activists and exile 
groups to bring down the government. By these means, Washington hopes 
to put itself back in the driver?s seat, to reclaim Iran?s resources, 
labor and markets, and to plunder its publicly-owned assets, on behalf 
of the U.S. corporations and investors.

Short of capitulation, there?s little the Iranian leadership can do ? 
either to stop the massing of U.S. and British warships and strike 
aircraft in the Persian Gulf or to stay the quiet campaign of financial 
isolation the U.S. Treasury Department is pursuing against Iranian 
banks and enterprises. But it can disrupt U.S. efforts to build a fifth 
column in the country. Arresting Esfandiari, and other members of the U.
S. government and corporate funded complex of regime change groups, is 
part of that.

Were Iranian authorities justified in arresting Esfandiari? Those who 
place advocacy rights above other rights will say no. We can place Noam 
Chomsky and Juan Cole in this group. Neither man, for obvious reasons 
of self-interest, would like to see much legitimacy given to the idea 
that fierce opponents of established authority can be locked away for 
advocating non-violent opposition. This applies even if the critics are 
on the payroll of a hostile foreign government. On the other hand, 
those who place more value on the right of societies to be free from 
foreign domination and meddling will say yes, Tehran was justified.

There are no absolute rights, only conflicting rights whose valence 
depends on perceived interest. Advocacy rights are favored by corporate 
groups and the governments they dominate, because they have the money 
to exercise those rights ? and reap the benefits of their exercise ? 
more fully than anyone else does. The class that benefits most from 
freedom of the press is the class that can afford one.

Rights of economic independence are favored by those who have suffered 
from economic subordination to a metropolitan power. To them, the right 
to be free from foreign domination is senior to the right of others to 
advocate, and organize politically to achieve, the restoration of 
foreign domination.

What about the interests of ordinary people in the U.S., UK, Canada 
and other Western countries? Where do their interests lie?

Neutrality or alliance?

There are three views that I know of on this. One says interference in 
the affairs of other countries is illegitimate. It subverts democracy 
and the self-determination of other people. Those who hold this view 
are also likely to say that jailing those who are working to remove a 
government through peaceful means ? even if they?re funded by outside 
governments and corporations ? is also illegitimate. But what happens 
when these rights clash? Which is senior to the other?

Proponents of this view usually have no answer other than to say that 
the two rights are equally legitimate and neither cancels the other 
out. Governments, they contend, shouldn?t be meddling in the affairs of 
other countries, but equally, victimized governments shouldn?t be 
jailing the people on the ground whose meddling, however deplorable, 
amounts to nothing more than political organizing. This is the 
schoolyard monitor mentality. Johnny shouldn?t beat you up, but 
equally, you shouldn?t fight back to defend yourself. Like the neutral 
school authority who abhors the violence of self-defense as much as the 
violence of the aggressor, proponents of this view refuse to take 
sides.

Related in its neutrality, but not in the way the neutrality is 
arrived at, is the view of those who say they are partisans of the 
working class alone, and since the clash has no direct bearing on the 
working class per se, there is no need for them to take sides. Indeed, 
why should they side with capitalist governments, either that of the U.
S. or Iran?

A third view says that the defense of the economic independence of 
countries from the predations of foreign capital is indeed a working 
class issue, even if the government under threat is not a working class 
government. The reasoning is that corporations and investors in 
metropolitan countries become stronger ? or at least, avoid crises ? as 
they increase their sphere of exploitation. In one view, this furnishes 
governments and employers with sufficient wealth to keep the working 
class in their own country docile with social welfare programs and 
comfortable living standards.

Alternatively, or additionally, outward expansion averts the otherwise 
inevitable economic crises in the metropolitan areas that would create 
momentum for revolutionary change. Since the working class and 
capitalist class are antagonistic, what strengthens one weakens the 
other. If Iran?s successfully defending itself from integration into 
the imperial orbit of the U.S. capitalist class checks growth in the 
strength of that class, or disorganizes it, the revolutionary 
possibilities for the working class are strengthened. Proponents of 
this view, then, are quick to side with governments that resist 
subordination to the profit-seeking interests of the corporations, 
banks and investors of their own country.

Conclusion

It?s probably true that Haleh Esfandiari was working to build a U.S. 
government and U.S. corporate-funded fifth column within Iran to bring 
down the Ahmadinejad government with a view to installing a pro-
Western, neo-liberal government that would open Iran to U.S. exports 
and investments. Iran?s arresting Esfandiari, as well other mercenaries 
of public persuasion in the pay of the U.S. government and corporate-
backed regime change organizations, is aimed at defending the country 
from subordination to U.S. corporate interests.

Whether the arrest is legitimate (assuming Esfandiari is guilty of 
what she is accused), cannot be asserted or denied as an absolute. It 
depends on which rights are senior ? those related to public advocacy 
and freedom to organize politically or those related to self-
determination and freedom from foreign domination. And which right is 
senior depends on where you?re situated within the global capitalist 
system.

Iranians who would profit by facilitating U.S. political and economic 
domination of Iran will favor Esfandiari?s civil liberties. The 
government of Iran will favor its right to defend itself from outside 
interference and U.S.-directed regime change. Ordinary people in 
metropolitan countries who are conscious of belonging to a class, and 
are able to work through the fog of nonsense on Iran, will take sides, 
or not, on the basis of strategic considerations: are the interests of 
the working class advanced by siding with governments resisting 
integration into an imperialist orbit, no matter what their stripe, or 
are they advanced by limiting alliances to members of the working class 
of other countries alone?

There are a number of class-conscious leftists who espouse the latter 
view sincerely, but there are those who use it as an excuse to climb 
into bed with their country?s own ruling class, to advance its 
interests. Left groups that worked to oust the Milosevic government in 
Serbia have nothing to show for their efforts but a country that is 
precisely where those leading the charge against Milosevic wanted it to 
be: subordinate to U.S. corporations and investors. Left groups that 
are working to oust the Mugabe government in Zimbabwe will have 
achieved, if they?re successful, not the succession of a socialist or 
working people?s government, but the installation of the Western-
backed, neo-liberal opposition, which will reverse land reforms, and 
sell off the country?s publicly-owned assets. The rural poor won?t be 
cheering, but investors, corporate lawyers and CEOs in the West will, 
along with the former colonial-settler land owners.

Likewise, a color revolution in Iran will not be followed by the 
flowering of a progressive, socialist or working class movement in the 
country, but by the replacement of an economically nationalist pro-
capitalist government with a government prepared to compromise with 
Western and especially U.S. capital. State enterprises will be sold off 
at a fraction of their value, subsidies will be cancelled, profits from 
the sale of the country?s oil and gas will disproportionately accrue to 
U.S. oil companies, and the lives of ordinary Iranians will become 
poorer and more uncertain.

It is hard to muster much sympathy for Esfandiari. Anyone who works to 
reverse the gains of a revolutionary government ? and this is 
undoubtedly what those engaged in regime operations in Iran are up to ? 
should expect to be cracked down upon, especially where their 
activities constitute a very real threat to the survival of the 
revolution. With its threats of air strikes, economic warfare, and tens 
of millions of dollars in overt (and who knows how many more millions 
of dollars in covert) spending on regime change operations, the U.S., 
and its agents, of which Esfandiari must surely count herself, are 
lethal threats to Iran?s revolution. No one should be surprised she was 
arrested.

Iran?s efforts to resist domination by U.S. capital are no less worthy 
of solidarity than the efforts of the resistances in Iraq and 
Afghanistan to throw off the U.S.-led occupations or of Cuba?s and 
north Korea?s resistances to the unceasing efforts of the U.S. and its 
allies to return both countries to the capitalist fold and bring them 
into the U.S. imperialist orbit. Taking sides with the Iranian 
government in its resistance to U.S. aggression is in no way equivalent 
to endorsing the Iranian regime, theocratic rule or the theories of 
Iran?s president on the anti-Jewish holocaust. It is, instead, a 
recognition of the rights of other people to self-determination and to 
be free from foreign domination. If the exercise of these rights 
implies the arrest of those actively working to deny these rights ? as 
it appears Esfandiari was ? so be it. The civil liberties of one person 
? especially when exploited to aid a privileged minority of hereditary 
capitalist families and wealthy investors ? are not senior to the 
rights of hundreds of millions.

1. New York Times, May 22, 2007
2. New York Times, July 3, 2006
3. Associated Press, May 13, 20074
4. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?
topic_id=1426&fuseaction=topics.intro
5. New York Times, May 29, 2005
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. New York Times, February 16, 2006
9. New York Times, November 20, 2006.
10. Reuters, April 30, 2003; Venezuela?s president Hugo Chavez accused 
Helvey?s employer, the Albert Einstein Institution, of being behind an 
imperialist conspiracy to overthrow his government. The Guardian, June 
7, 2007.
11. Ibid.
12. Elise Hugus, ?Eight Years After NATO?s ?Humanitarian War?: Serbia?
s new ?third way??, Z Magazine, April 2007, Volume 20, Number 4
13. Ibid.
14. The Albert Einstein Institution, Report on Activities, 2000 to 
2004, http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/2000-04rpt.pdf
15. Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America?s Century of Regime Change from 
Hawaii to Iraq, Times Books Henry Holt & Company, New York, 2006.
16. New York Times, May 28, 2006
17. Workers World, May 5, 2007
18. Washington Post, April 20, 2006
19. Lalkar, September/October, 2005
20. New York Times, December 20, 2005
21. Lalkar, September/October, 2005
22. Washington Post, June 18, 2006
23. Ibid.
24. Wall St. Journal, February 1, 2007
25. Granma International, February 8, 2007
26. Guardian, May 22, 2007
27. Boston Globe, August 14, 2005
28. New York Times, December 21, 2006
29. Guardian, February 10, 2007
30. Washington Post, February 11, 2007
31. Washington Post, March 26, 2007
32. New York Times, September 17, 2006
33. New York Times, October 16, 2006
34. Guardian, January 26, 2007
35. Washington Post, February 1, 2007
36. New York Times, August 28, 2006
37. New York Times, September 12, 2006
38. New York Times, August 28, 2006

* ?On April 27, 2006, the Iranian philosopher was detained at Tehran?s 
Mehrabad airport, and shortly after was accused of actively preparing 
to take part in a ?velvet revolution? in Iran. This polyglot thinker ? 
elected to write his doctoral dissertation on Gandhi?s philosophy of 
nonviolent change, Satyagraha. Jahanbegloo continued to espouse 
nonviolence after returning from the West to his homeland. ?On one of 
his many trips to India, Jahanbegloo met with the Dalai Lama, who in 
turn has made frequent visits to Prague to meet with Havel since 1989. 
All such links reinforce suspicion among Iran?s clerical rulers that 
?the velvet revolution? is at hand.

?Rasool Nafisi has suggested that the main reason for Jahanbegloo?s 
arrest was his research project for the German Marshall Fund in which 
he compared the Iran?s democratic dissidents with their East-Central 
European predecessors. This line of comparative inquiry analyzed the 
balance of political power between Iranian civil society and the 
governing clerical regime. While Jahanbegloo sat in Tehran?s notorious 
Evin prison, eminent international figures?among them Havel and 
Habermas?sent an Open Letter to Iran?s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 
protesting the philosopher?s detention. The Iranian minister of the 
interior, Hojjatoleslam Qolamhoseyn Mosheni Eyhe?I, said in a July 
interview that Jahanbegloo was arrested on suspicion that he had been 
assisting the US to provoke ?a velvet revolution in Iran,? an activity 
that, according to him, seems to be the US?s main business these days.?

Martin Beck Matu?tík, ?Velvet Revolution in Iran??, Logos: A Journal 
of Modern Society and Culture, Fall 2006,
Comments 
Unusual Sources Radio Program
den 16 april 2007, 00:52:52 | gowans
Brendan Stone interviews Stephen Gowans on the subject of left and 
support for demonized regimes.

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