Tir-e Nimâ
(Nimâ’s Arrow)
This is a socialist blog that is intended to comment about many political and social issues of our time, but there will be a focus on the nation of Iran. In the center of a maelstrom of global and regional conflicts in 2024, the ruling Iranian regime is hobbling badly weakened into 2025. The stunning and glorious success of Syrian opposition forces toppling Iran’s proxy, the hated genocidal dictator Assad, is just the latest in a series of political defeats Iran has suffered in the region. Smelling blood in the water, the far-right imperialist regimes of Trump and Netanyahu—who continues to carry out his own genocidal assault on the Palestinian people—are plotting to exploit Iran’s weakness with a combination of military attacks and/or “coercive diplomacy” to further expand their imperialist influence in the region at Iran’s expense.
The horrific events all over the world today put a great burden of responsibility upon socialists who are looking for answers to the extremely difficult political questions that are placed upon the order of the day. Many of the most critical issues are complex and do not have easy answers. Recognizing this truth is an important first step in the journey to find the actual answers.
It may be fair to say that the urgent political questions about Iran may be among the most difficult and complicated in the world for socialists to grapple with. Every genuine socialist must reject the “campist” perspective, which falsely claims that the answers are easy, and which mindlessly supports any and all political forces in the world that come into any conflict with U.S., Western, and Israeli imperialism. Thus, these campists have always supported the far-right reactionary regimes of Putin, Assad, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, merely because they are seen as rivals of U.S. and Israeli imperialism. This blog categorically rejects and condemns the campist viewpoint.
Many socialists, as a result of correctly rejecting campism, have fallen into the much trickier and more complicated mistake of adopting an ultraleft perspective about conflicts such as those between the U.S. and Iran, or between Israel and Iran. This perspective claims to “take no side” in such conflicts and claims to oppose both sides equally. This viewpoint seems to be especially popular among many Iranian socialists and leftists. It is understandable that Iranians who have bravely and heroically devoted their lives to the struggle against the reactionary Islamic regime, may see that regime as no better than or no different than the U.S. and Israeli states.
But this ultraleft perspective is nevertheless still mistaken. The Iranian regime is a vicious oppressor of its own people—especially women, LGBTQ people, and Afghan immigrants and refugees. The Iranian regime also oppresses numerous minority nationalities within the present state borders of Iran, as well as other nations and peoples in the region, above all the Sunni Muslim people of Syria. But as horrific as these crimes are, on a global scale they cannot compare with the oppressive role of U.S., Western, and Israeli imperialism in subjugating oppressed people and nations around the entire world, beginning with the Palestinian people. If the U.S. and Israeli imperialists make political gains at Iran’s expense, that will do great harm to all oppressed people and nations of the world, in particular to all the Arab people of the Middle East and North Africa. For this reason, all socialists, including Iranian socialists, have a duty to oppose all U.S. and Israeli imperialist attacks and threats against Iran. An Israeli missile attack on Iran cannot and should not be equated with an Iranian missile attack on Israel.
The crucial question, therefore, is how revolutionary socialists can express their opposition to U.S. and Israeli imperialist attacks and threats against Iran, while simultaneously expressing their opposition to the Iranian regime’s own attacks and threats against Syrians, Afghans, Kurds, Azeris, Balochs, Arabs in Khuzestan, and other minority peoples, as well as against women, LGBTQ people, immigrants and refugees. No one should pretend that this is an easy or simple task. This blog is intended to be dedicated to the search for answers to these difficult but absolutely vital questions of our time.
Tir-e Nimâ
January 2025
Dey 1403
Rajab 1446