Episode 138: The War on Iran

We discuss the recent war on Iran launched by America and Israel, focusing on why regime change in the Middle East through interventionism has no precedent of success. Whatever happened to Trump's sentiment of America First? And what will the impact on our economies be? Plus, liberal democracy, chaos in the gulf states, and why so many feminists from a place of good intention support the war.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Hello everyone, you are listening to Red Femme. And on today's episode, we thought we would talk about the really non-contentious, calm topic of Iran. So on February 28th, the United States alongside Israel began their attack on Iran. There is now a full-scale war in Iran by those co-belligerents, I guess we could say. Understatement of the century. 80% of Iranian society apparently, I don't know how they did this survey, given the police state there, you know, were against Ayatollah Khomeini, who has now been killed by the Americans and Israelis aiding one another in that endeavour. And I feel like everybody wants regime change in Iran apart from a very small contingent of what we could say are Islamists and people on the far left who view Iran the Iranian regime as a kind of um stalwart against anti-Western imperialism. And a lot of the time when you listen to people talking about geopolitics, they're not really talking about what kind of society Iran is under the regime. They're not really talking about the experience of everyday people, but they're really focusing on, well, they're against Israel, therefore they are in favor of the Palestinians. And I think it often just boils down to their worldview and that they want there to be less, what they see is Western expansionism in the Middle East, and they see Israel as the fault line of that, backed by the United States, and the key player against that is the Iranian regime. I remember when the green movement happened years ago, a lot of the time on the left, people would say, Oh, but look, this will simply mean that uh Iran starts to align with Israel and the United States, and this will be very bad for the Palestinians. And talk of kind of democracy was brushed aside. We can talk about that a bit, but I think that nobody now really makes those arguments very much in the way that they did around the Iraq war era. But for me, I would be fine with toppling a awful, oppress genuinely oppressive, like let's use the word properly, oppressive regime. And to give an example of that, I have a friend who was working in Iran as a journalist for Al Jazeera. He asked one basically tricky question or the kind of question that a journalist asks to a government minister. At a press conference, it was filmed, and he asked just the kind of thing that we would see every day here. It wasn't particularly going for the jugular, it was just a critical question, and it was putting the guy on the spot in a mild way. Within days, his visa was cancelled and he had to leave Iran. So they are a completely different. There is a crackdown in a way that we don't really ever have in the West. I know that in the West people get arrested for tweets, but this is against really every institution that even if you just ask a question that is mildly put, but it's a bit critical, you have to leave the country. And I am imagine if he was an Iranian, he would have been arrested and put in prison. So I I of course would be for the ending of the Iranian regime, regardless of the geopolitics for the people in Iran, right, to not live under this uh hostile, illegitimate ruling system. But I have never seen an example where regime change from outside works. And if there was one example in history that somebody could point to, then I might think, okay, perhaps it could be a good idea. But given that the only examples we have that really lead to disaster and a worse situation, and this is this is aside from, you know, is it worth the cost of life? The 150 schoolgirls, their school was bombed. Maybe that I'm sure that was a mistake by the Americans, but it doesn't really matter, there's still 150 dead schoolgirls. Even if we put the cost to life aside and we say, well, you know what, that's collateral, that's just something that's part and parcel of war, show me where it's worked ever, and I might have some kind of uh appetite for it. But given that that doesn't exist to my uncertain knowledge, then it's very difficult, it's a very difficult thing to support.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Well, yeah, when I was a uh headbanging communist in my early 20s and active on all of these issues, most of the or many of the people I organized and worked with in uh Vancouver were uh Iranian communists who who very much were, you know, were not in favor of the Islamic Republic. There was a struggle for power after the after the Shah was deposed. It really was the communists versus the Islamists, at least how they describe it to me. The Communist Party was one of the largest parties in Iran, had massive support among the peasant class, which was quite huge at the time, and the Islamic regime went and uh murdered thousands of communists when they came to power. Uh, but even those people, with some exceptions, um, but most of them were against a regime change war. And I think that all that that really needs to be said is that, you know, it is when has the United States, or Britain for that matter, uh, gotten involved in a war in the Middle East or North Africa for a humanitarian concern in a kind of genuine way, and also had an outcome. I mean, in in Libya, a good outcome. In Libya now, which was, you know, not a democratic place to live, repressive in its own way, but had free health care and free housing and all sorts of social programs. Now there are open slave markets on the street. Um, you can see this repeated again and again. The, you know, the the vacuum of power that happened after the Iraq war that led to ISIS and all sorts of Islamist forces. Um, there's no way that uh that this kind of regime change war will end um how people expect it to. And I think that there's obviously when it's brought up immediately how repressive and anti-feminist and so on uh the Iranian regime is gets thrown in your face as if you're saying that you're in favor of the Islamist government. But I really do just have a kind of realist perspective, which is that it simply will not work because we don't have any historical examples of this working. And um, the you know, the 80% number um is is very difficult to prove. Certainly the Iranian diaspora is against the regime, but there are very many committed Islamists who are very loyal to the government. Like you definitely, and even among people who are critical of the government who aren't Islamists themselves, I think there is a people who there are Iranians who share my kind of realistic perspective. And I just don't know how many times we can kind of see this film again and again and again, where we go, you know, uh, we haven't even discussed Syria. Again, not a democratic place, uh not a democratic government very much dominated by a particular sect of Shia Islam, the Alawites. Um trade unions are illegal, maybe not a very nice place to live, but relatively stable, specifically, especially, you know, it relative to the rest of the states in the region. Um, there were people who had genuine concerns and were democratically protesting during the Arab Spring. And now it is run by an Islamist warlord. It's um a Sunni Islamist warlord, which generally seems to be how this film ends. It how it ended in Libya, how it ended in Afghanistan, how it ended in Syria, was we get some kind of very backwards Islamo-fascist, um, but just a Sunni Islamo-fascist in power. So I don't really see there's also just the um geopolitical situation in general. I mean, I don't how Russia fits into all of this. Are we really equipped to fight and win this war? I do not know. Um, and it does seem um to be something that the Israelis have wanted, obviously, for a very long time. Um are we gonna go to war with Iran uh for Israel? If they're, you know, if it was just a like a foregone conclusion, we're gonna have, we're gonna go in and do regime change, there's gonna be democratic elections, and they're going to have a government that is a liberal democracy like anywhere else, then yeah, fine, but that's not been the case at all. And as much as I'm more than sympathetic, isn't it doesn't even really cut it, but you know, as much as I think that the women in that country are completely and totally right in opposing uh an Islamist repressive government, it just it just does not work. So it does it doesn't work, and sometimes um there isn't a happy ending. Like I think there's also um kind of a idea here that liberal democracy, humanism, universalism is like the great victor of history, and every state is gonna end up there if we only intervene at the right time or provide provide the kind of right conditions for that sort of development. Maybe that simply is not the case, which is very sad. And, you know, I'm in favor of humanism and universalism and think it's certainly better than a government run by a Mullah, but it just might not be the case, which is a very horrible, horrible thing. But what else, what what else is horrible is uh a regime change war that drags on for 20 to 30 to 40 years with thousands of people dead. Um, and there are also just people living their life in Iran, going to school, going, yeah, the government is shit. These hijab laws are really regressive. Like it sucks that it's not democratic, but I'm gonna go work at a bank or I'm gonna go be a school teacher and I'm just trying to live my life, who now have their shit bombed, and we don't get any of that perspective. Um, it's always amazing to me that you know, there are people who genuinely seem to think that we can um terrorize a people into liberal humanism, that that really like endears them to our values. Like, how many times do we have to play this out? So very much um not in favor at all. And I I also uh just you know, reflecting on the kind of British liberal commentariat class who will say, you know, this this government is uh really regressive and backwards and has terrible ideas about women and and so on, um that kind of acknowledgement that there are people, specifically men in the Middle East and North Africa who have terrible ideas about women and have regressive backwards ideas about women, that understanding completely flies out the window when we're talking about migration. But when it becomes the justification to bomb a place and make a bunch of money off of doing so, then suddenly, oh yes, that is actually the reality. Um, can we survive another situation like the Syrian war, where we had millions and millions and millions of refugees flooding Europe? I mean, given the um mood in this country at the minute where we are genuinely seeing uh like a rise in uh an ethno-nationalism, people are actually speaking in serious ways about that. Can we survive another refugee crisis and maintain the kind of um liberal democracy we have in this country? I do not know. Uh so there's a many things to consider here. And this kind of reductive idea that I see from a lot of British feminists that if you're against a regime change war, that means that you hate the women of Iran. Um I just I just don't really think that that's a reflection of the reality. And there's always this kind of identity politics that happens whenever one of these wars or occupations is um pitched to people where, you know, universally every person in Syria, every person in Libya, every person in Venezuela, every person in Iran wants a regime change war, where of course, like any other place, there is a range of political views with um the kind of same nuances that we approach our own government, but now it's only this one unilateral voice that we have to listen to from Iranians who live in Vancouver or Los Angeles or wherever, because they actually are the people who are not feeling the consequences of having a school full of children bombed, for example. So we'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

I feel like it was probably sold to Trump on the basis of if we take out the leadership, that then it will give people the people opportunity and breathing space for an uprising. However, I mean, and that would be, you know, fine. It it it would be good if the Iranian regime was overthrown by its own people, but clearly they've not taken out enough state infrastructure, right? Whether it's the um police, the army, and so on. And I feel like you know, clearly it's not happened. But I think that Trump will not put boots on the ground, it will not be in Iraq or in Afghanistan precisely because those worked out so badly. You know, Netanyahu has said that he's wanted this for 40 years, he coincided it with Purim, which commemorates the defeat of Haman, who was a uh high-ranking official in the ancient Persian Empire who was plotting to annihilate the Jewish people. Netanyahu's kind of uh in this way calling on some um as if this is a kind of echo from history, you know, and I am sure he does this for the optics, though I don't really know how many people in Israel really buy into uh that kind of thing because many are secular. And I'm less concerned about, you know, and I think that those kind of arguments around democracy, liberalism, or humanism, or universalism, I don't really see people making them very much. It's more just like the Iranian regime is bad, which it is, of course, it absolutely is. And I'm much more interested in outcomes. Perhaps this is the ancient communist, now well buried within me, still sending out signals. But I'm more concerned with outcomes than process. And if we look at, you know, if we look at our own liberal democracy in the UK, which you know we're currently living through a shit show, the vast, vast majority of people now despise the government, and yet there is no mechanism in order to call a general election. And if that were to happen next week, obviously it would be Nigel Farage who became prime minister, and then people are talking about because he supports the the war in Iran, people are talking about okay, well, then what we're gonna have a Farage wave, a Farage wave of Iranian refugees, one million, two million. And again, this is not what people want, so then presumably we'd have to wait another four years to vote him out. So we hardly uh live in a healthy, robust, thriving democracy ourselves. And this is kind of causing chaos in general around the Middle East. I mean, Iran has attacked the UAE, Qatar. I was a bit confused why that happened at first, but apparently it's to do with that those states cooperate with the Americans, and some of them even uh with Israel, certainly the United Arab Emirates, and lots of people online kind of laughing at, you know, influencers who are often actually apparently just prostitutes, you know, fleeing, fleeing their uh their flash apartments in Dubai. But it does. It this is what war does, is that it, I suppose, with any kind of hostile action, actually, whether on a micro level in everyday life or a macro level in war, there are ripples of destruction that are very hard to see in advance. And the price of oil now is becoming a real problem for Trump. This was something that he really tried to guarantee for Americans, which is that oil would be uh would remain cheap because Americans rely on cars much more than we do in the United Kingdom, because their country is so much fucking bigger, really. Also, perhaps their public transport system is even worse than ours, which would be difficult, but it I think it might be true. And I think that I have to say, if I lived in Dubai as an influencer, which is uh reality I can barely imagine, but let's let's try to imagine that for a moment. I don't think I would have left because no one has actually died there, but people uh places like Dubai were sold to them as this kind of um luxury world, you know, glass houses in the desert. But of course, that kind of place wouldn't be very safe. Why would it be? It's an incredibly small country, it's rich in terms of its finance, it's not rich in terms of its um state uh in regard to its robust ability to defend itself. It's a very, very new state, and I it's directly across the water from Iran, and I feel like a lot of people that moved there perhaps didn't know geographically exactly what they were moving next to and quite what might you know living there would entail in terms of if there was a war against Iran. And now there seems to be this situation at the Strait of Hormaze, I think is how you say it, where both the US are attacking ships there and Iran, and the Iran has started laying mines there. And this is a commercial shipping channel that is really it will stop the economy, not just for Iran, but also have dramatic effects on inflation even in our own country. And all of this seems to be because Netanyahu, and I'm not just saying him individually, he really does represent, I think, a lot of the literally the Israeli government and the fact he keeps getting elected over and over again, that this is happening because of the wishes of a state that yes, Iran has bombed Israel in retaliation. But it makes you think, is this worth it for any of the actors? Is it worth it for the people in Tel Aviv that now face bombings? Is it worth it for the people in Qatar and the UAE? Even if we were to take the Americans and the Iranians out of it, uh, it just seems like a kind of race to lose a game.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Uh well, a couple things just about this phrase boots on the ground. I I the the this has become the kind of uh slogan or phrase that represents a lot, a red line that won't be crossed. Since you can I can kinda you can kind of see the the history of United States intervention in phases. What they did in Latin America in the 20th century was quite literally install fascists. Um that was obviously very unpopular and a very bad look they dis they they discovered. And then so then they started using um kind of humanitarian language that, you know, this is all about restoring democracy, and that was Iraq, and then they were still doing quote unquote boots on the ground invasion, and then it became boots on the ground invasion that people really objected to when American and British soldiers came back and kind of killed themselves on not en masse. This was, you know, became the new red line, but then they accommodated for that as well. And what they they did in Syria, which is you know, strikes, the kind of the use of technology instead of human life um or troops obviously still killing human beings. Um, but the use of technology and the use of these kinds of proxies that we're gonna fund um these kind of opposition groups, whether they be Islamists or socialists or whoever they are to achieve our ends, this looks a lot better than sending in, you know, um American and British troops to do what we need to have done. Of course, what happened in Syria was you were funding 18 different equally horrible um groups of Islamists who, and then one of whom came to power, and then I guess their um their ends were achieved after decades of this. So this is kind of the new strategy is to find existing opposition in any in any country, in any political system. There are people who object to the regime or the government and then funding them, um, arming them, that sort of thing. So that's what was happening in Syria, and I imagine that they intend to employ the same strategy. And also just to say there are other techniques that you know Iran has already been facing for decades and decades, like sanctions. I mean, and in and in Iraq, like in Iraq before um an invasion, sanctions themselves, which sounds like when it's pitched to people in the West, like some sort of lesser action, but it really is an act of war. Killed tens of tens of thousands of Iraqis died because of sanctions before um the war even began or an invasion started. So I doubt that they um are gonna do boots on the ground, but the reality is is they don't they don't need to anymore. Um, that was one of the lessons from Syria. And I'm not sure it's just like the geography of Dubai. I think people felt safe living in these micro Gulf states built by slaves and you know, posting pretty pictures on Instagram because there was like a balance of power between Iran, the Israelis, the Russians, where it was, like in a very objective way, um, quite safe. Like people, as there has been forces trying to create a regime change war in Iran for decades and decades and decades. John McCain, as an example, was one of these people whose that was part of his life mission, life's mission. And those kind of sec that that kind of section of um, you know, Milton Frieden kind of neocon people um didn't really get their way for a very long time. And as much as, you know, there was always this, oh, we're about to go to war with Iran, it never really happened because the balance of powers wouldn't have allowed how have allowed it. So it was in a in a very real way quite safe to live beside Iran in a micro Gulf state because no one actually wanted this war to happen. Now something has changed. Now Trump has been, it's I mean, it's it's it's sort of um um what's the word? Demoralizing, heartbreaking, insane beyond measure that um, you know, Trump with this kind of populist um stroke nationalist mission, um, we're not gonna get involved. America first, you know, that was the original thing. Um, and now he's done the thing that the neocons have been begging for for literal decades, decades that that, you know, that Obama managed not to do. That the forces that Obama didn't give in to. You know what I mean? And now this is happening under this guy who was elected um, you know, explicitly uh to have a non-interventionalist foreign policy. Um so I ex- I I mean, I suspect that I don't think that I think that people really underestimate how much uh power support the Iranian regime currently has. I think that they're part of part of um regime change efforts is to to go out and say the people really want this and actually we have all this popular support when really the political reality in the country is often quite um more nuanced and complicated than that. There are, you know, there are people who are full-blown Islamists who love the Ayatollah, and there are people who are like, we don't particularly approve of this, but we don't want our lives fucked up by the Americans. And, you know, there are there are all sorts of forces in that country. Many, many people in Iran do not want this war, and they certainly won't want it when they've started to feel the consequences of it with these latest bombing campaigns. Um, so I think it's gonna be another Syria. I think they're gonna fund opposition groups and militias and so on. Um, that's the that's their preferred strategy. That's what they've done in every kind of regime. And it doesn't actually, to be honest, really matter if they get the regime change per se, because they just create chaos and continue to make money and leverage that chaos for their own interest. That's what happened in Syria for a very long time. Um, and I imagine they hope to create a similar situation by use of technology and these kind of strategies of funding kind of internal opposition militias and so on.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

It's kind of funny how when Trump went to meet the son of Iran's last Shah, who lives in exile in Miami. Trump met him, I don't know if at Mar a Lago, but you know, they they met there a guy called Reza Pahlavi Reza Pallavi, I hope I'm saying that right. And he he met him and apparently afterwards was like, yeah, that's not the guy. And he just made me think, well, you don't know what a king is, because it's precisely that it is just some guy. It's not because they have any particular skills, it's not because they're particularly talented, you're just kind of nominated by the fact that you came out of a particular uh woman in a certain birth order, and then you're the guy. It just made me realize how much how much he doesn't understand what a monarchy is. And I I really think that their vision was, you know, we will get rid of the regime, that guy can be installed. And some certainly some Iranians probably would support it. I'm sure in their vision, they would have the idea that you know all Iranians would rejoice about that. But it feels I I actually am not sure that well, I don't know. I I have that meme in my head, you know, the nothing ever happens guy. I often have that, so I always just think, well, nothing more will happen now. They tried, it didn't really work. They've bumped off the uh the government rulers, they've been replaced, they've bumped them off. Perhaps this will just turn into a kind of succession of bumping off kind of people every so often. But it doesn't seem like there are huge moves. No matter how much you know they've destabilised the country, I don't see mass uprisings. Now, perhaps someone might argue, well, that's all hidden by the internet, but given the emergence of social media today and how much Iranians do put stuff on the internet, I think we would know, basically. And I'm sure that Western journalists would be loving to report on it. So I I don't feel like whatever their plan was, stage one, other than the killing of Ayatollah Khomeini, which they'd been wanting to do for a long time but never managed, other than that, kind of the the phase two that that initial stage was meant to lead to, doesn't seem to be being enacted by the people of Iran yet. And I think that it will dent Trump's popularity because a lot of people voted for him on the basis that he was anti-war. However, I don't think that it will cause a you know, uh like a definite defeat for the Republicans at the next election or anything like that. Because for a lot of Americans it's very abstract because it's happening in another part of the world. Even though six US soldiers at the last count that I'm aware of have been killed, including a 20-year-old, you know. I mean, it's just obviously even just that is horrendous. And I think that a lot of the American firsters they see that America should be dominant in its hemisphere, and it doesn't really have any competition. And if we are really moving to a kind of new epoch where things are a bit more multipolar, in terms of the Western hemisphere, there isn't another pole there that's competing. Yes, Brazil has a huge population, Mexico um is also a uh a rising economy, but there's no com competition there. I think they've come they're coming to accept that Russia finally may be another pole of power in the world, but they will not accept that Iran is going to be. And I think a lot of that is about it's about almost like taking that out. And if they had nuclear weapons, none of this would be happening. But I I think that they want to sort of like get in there and do regime change before that possibility um really comes about, and then the kind of whole thing is closed and they won't be able to.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Well, just to say that you know the the Iran's nuclear program could not really exist because of sanctions. I mean, they're not even allowed to have um nuclear materials necessary to do medical research to in in nuclear medicine. I mean, it's it's it wasn't possible um because of sanctions that the Iranian and and and deals, the the great Iran deal that Trump so um objected to and then threw out. They, you know, that that sort of limitation on um nuclear research was agreed to by the regime. So there was a the a balance of powers there. No one really wanted this on either side. And now it's kind of this um rogue action that they hope to bring, and this kind of idea that, oh, then the people will rise up. Again, how many times can we see this film like this? This is exactly the same thing as what was said in Syria and Iraq and Libya and everywhere else. Um so it's never been the case. It's just it's never happened. Um, it's a it's a fantasy um that never really arrives, and it's not because the those regimes aren't unpopular or whatever, it just doesn't in empirically has not happened. Um, I guess Egypt a little bit, but we also saw how that turned out in the end. So yeah, very, very unlikely.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Also, if you were to imagine, given the ingredients that are already there, that say there was an uprising in Qatar or the UAE or Saudi or Kuwait, who is it do you think that might be doing the uprising? Do you think it would be a bunch of liberal humanists who really admire the ideas of the West and they've read Marx and Hegel and John Log and John Stuart Mills? Do you think it would be people that are really enaboured, enamored with the idea of classical liberalism? And do you think the West right now is a thriving example of how wonderful um that is when you take it to its uh to some of its uh maybe but distorted logical extents, but still no, it wouldn't be. It would be more insane Muslims than the current rulers are there now. It would be insane Islamists. It would be those people. So I feel a little bit like, you know, if you think about the Kingdom of Jordan, a place I've spent a bit of time in, it's a pretty boring, sedate place. Well, you know, the alternative is you could have a bunch of Islamists running it. The same way that like Dubai just seems completely boring to me, and it's like, well, you know, this is uh this it this is better than the alternative. I should say actually as well. I changed plane in Dubai Airport once, which seems like a very nice modern airport, and was certainly a lot cleaner than the airport that I'd just come from in India. And I was a bit peckish, and I bought an apple, and I thought, oh, that apple look, you know, it looks like the American ones are very shiny and it looks like you know, almost like a film prop. And our apples in the UK tend to look like they've just been picked off a tree because we just have more regulations about the amount of chemicals that you can uh stuff into them. So I bought this apple and I bit into it and it was really rotten. And I thought, hmm, yeah, this makes sense here. This is a bit of a metaphor, perhaps, for the place I'm at right now. And so I threw it in the bin and went to my uh to my gate. All right, well, thank you all very much for listening to this episode. And check us out on Patreon if you'd like some bonus episodes there. And we will see you next week, and hopefully perhaps we'll be able to report that wonderful things have happened in uh the world of the Middle East and Iran, though I wouldn't bet you make any money on it.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

No. Well, thanks for listening. Check us out on Patreon if you'd like. We have a back backlog of episodes that are it's over a hundred episodes long now. And otherwise, we'll catch you next week. Bye bye. Bye.