“Inside Iran – the Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran” by Medea Benjamin, 2018
This is a straight-forward pocket history, culture and political primer about Iran by a prominent U.S. anti-war activist, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink. Benjamin is known for disrupting Congressional hearings with signs and shouts, a form of political theater that hints at another name - 'Media” Benjamin. But here she writes as a researcher into Iranian history, politics and economics. Once the Trump II administration starts, Iran will once again be in the enhanced cross-hairs of U.S. foreign policy. Trump's earlier administration scuttled the working Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015 negotiated by Obama.
Most of this information is already known to anti-war activists and a bit dated. Benjamin asserts that if only U.S. citizens 'knew more' about Iran, they would not be so susceptible to the government's hostility to Iran. The idea that the political elite or citizens will read this book and reject U.S. policy is somewhat naive - but then so is the U.S. anti-war movement's whole reformist approach. Benjamin herself is a left-liberal unconnected to Marxism. At the same time she rejects the reactionary 'geo-political' types who ignore class or democracy in favor of any group that opposes the U.S. The anti-working class Iranian mullahs style themselves as 'anti-imperialists' after all! Instead she looks to internal youth demographics to move Iran in a more democratic direction.
What can we learn from this book that is relatively unknown?
The first point Benjamin makes is that Iran has a long, long history of independent existence, in spite of the many invasions of Persia over the centuries. From Cyrus the Great in 550 B.C. it's been an enduring coherent area for 2,500 years. In the late 1800s the Russian Czar and the British Parliament both had their hands in controlling Iran. In 1906 it had a Constitutional Revolution, which was reversed. In recent times, the pivotal event was the CIA-MI6 coup against Mossadegh in 1953, which put the son of Shah Pahlavi back in power. This protected U.S. and British (later called BP) oil interests in Iran, which Mossadegh had nationalized. The 1953 coup against a progressive nationalist backfired, first enabling a vicious dictatorial Shah and then the Iranian Right after he was gone. Since 1979 an Islamic theocracy has dominated the country when it took over leadership after the overthrow of the Shah. A year before that overthrow the sainted Jimmy Carter praised the Shah as “an island of stability”, later inviting him to the U.S. for medical treatment. Since then hostile U.S. policy has played the biggest role in keeping the Shiite theocrats in power against their own labor movement, Azeri, Kurdish, Turkic or Baluchistani minorities, peasants, middle-class and the urban population.
Benjamin supported the Green Movement's mass demonstrations against the conservative Iranian ruling class and its economic policies in 2009-2010. She wrote this book before the mass demonstrations in 2022 against the regime's sexist hijab and women's policies that started after the death of Mahsa Amini. She has little to say about the labor movement strikes, unions and the like. Strikes in Iran are illegal but frequent; union leaders are jailed; labor is treated as an enemy by the state. She mentions the CP-like Tudeh Party once. Being a socialist in Iran is illegal, so many went underground, were killed or have fled the country. Her only position is that U.S. citizens work against aggressive war moves by the U.S. - an incomplete, parochial platform. Benjamin blames Israel, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. weapons industry, AIPAC and domestic war hawks for the U.S. position on Iran. She seems to think U.S. policy doesn't have a geo-political, corporate and economic agenda of its own.
Economically, Iran is the second largest economy in the ME after Saudi Arabia. It is a petrostate dominated by large deposits of oil and gas, but has other sectors in its 80 million population. The Iranian ruling class consists of clerics, the Revolutionary Guard, the bazaar of urban small businessmen and merchants, the rural landlords and the big capitalists. After an initial spread of nationalizations, between 1988-2003 Iran began privatizing assets. The Shia clerics, religious foundations (bonyads) and the Guard now own large chunks of the economy and are invested in capitalist methods. The foundations are estimated to own 20-40% and the Guard's 30% percent.
The government itself, while having a parliament after the British model, is legally dominated by a Shia Supreme Leader, a Guardian Council and an 'Assembly of Experts.' There is direct clerical control of the voting process, the Sharia judiciary, the Basij morality police, the Revolutionary Guard, the intel services and the military. The hardliners can veto anything that is 'un-Islamic' coming out of the 'elected' unicameral parliament. Certain religious sects like the Baha'i are outlawed, along with many other un-Islamic practices too numerous to mention, but you can guess. Yet, as is well known, fewer and fewer inside Iran follow Islamic prayers or teachings.
Benjamin goes into Iran's relations with every country in the Middle East; countries like China and Russia, their allies in 'non-state' actors like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, PFLP and IJ. She goes into the many ups and downs of international diplomacy, including Iranian attempts to negotiate over crucial issues that were repeatedly ignored by the U.S. She describes the vile '80-'88 Iraq-Iran war, where the U.S. supplied both sides and the instability brought by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which later rebounded to Iran's benefit. Added to this are the various atrocities carried out by the U.S., including the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in 1988 by Navy warships in the Persian Gulf. Sanctions, SWIFT blockage, seizure of assets and the like have been bipartisan moves from the Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama,, Trump and now Biden administrations. Like Cuba and Venezuela, sanctions have not 'worked' except to immiserate the populations.
Internally within Iran there is a constant see-saw between the clerical establishment and more democratic 'reformers.' It is clear that the 'reformers' can never bring more democracy without an overthrow of the entrenched Islamic ruling elite and their corporate masters. This will have to be the work of revolutionary organizations and a united front inside the country, which as yet has no large organized presence except as temporary electoral coalitions. As long as the U.S. government uses sanctions and violence to harass Iran, this will be more difficult. No one wants to be seen as the patsy of the U.S., as are the right-wing terrorists of the Mojahedin-E-Khlaq (MEK) backed by the U.S.
This primer will give you a short inside look into Iran as the war drums bang again.
Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “Iran,” “Islam,” “Lipstick Jihad,” “The Death of the Nation” (Prashad); “RFK Jr. The Libertarian,” “Argo,” “Libertarian Atheism versus Liberal Religionism,” “Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire,” “The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism” (Amin); “FGM.”
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog / January 5, 2025
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