Written By: Justin K.P.
As the U.S. and Israel continue to wage war on Iran, the Guardian published an open letter signed by a number of academics- mostly U.S. and UK-based- condemning Iran’s internal policies.
The letter accused Iran of engaging in “deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain” called to “reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism” and even called on anti-imperialists in the West to focus their energy on critiquing Iran’s internal issues as Western governments wage war on Iran, writing, “We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.”
Iran, like most countries, no doubt has internal issues that need to be solved, but asking Western academics to focus on those issues as the West wages a brutal war on Iranian civilization at the behest of Israel seems badly timed, to put it mildly.
Furthermore, the letter made no mention of the open meddling that Israel and the United States has done in Iran’s internal politics and disputes, including the U.S. sanctions on Iran designed to make Iran’s “economy collapse” which is why “the people took to the streets” in January, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent boasted.
The letter did not mention the fact that Israeli media has boasted that the Mosssad was “arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed” and that Israel “set up its own poison machine” in Iran to infiltrate the protests, nor did it mention the fact that Trump boasted that “The United States sent guns to the Iranian protestors … we sent them a lot of guns, we sent them through the Kurds and … the Kurds kept them, ‘we sent guns to the protests, a lot of them”.
The intentions behind the letter seem more suspicious given that it was published in the Guardian, a pro-war propaganda outlet which has manufactured consent for the war on Iran from day one.
The Guardians “rights and freedom” section, sponsored by the CIA-linked billionaire Pierre Omidyar, published endless atrocity propaganda claims in the lead-up to the Iran war, including the widely debunked claim that Iran killed tens of thousands of peaceful protestors in a matter of days in January.
More recently, the Guardian ran a smear piece on the journalist Bushra Shaikh for her reporting on the U.S. Israeli war on Iran on the ground, including by linking to a petition set up by pro-war Zionists calling for the British security state to investigate Shaikh for her reporting.
What makes the letter in the Guardian even more questionable is the fact that it appears that many of the signatories were tricked into signing it.
The historian Robin D. G. Kelley, whose name originally appeared on the letter, took his name off, saying that “the circumstances in which we were asked to sign the letter were a bit shady” and that “what appeared in print wasn’t exactly what I had initially seen”, implying that the letter was changed after getting signatures.
Even more shady is the fact that the authors of the letter appear to have fabricated the signature of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Journalist Vijay Prashad obtained a message written from prison on a paper plate where Mumia Abu-Jamal writes, “Iran is showing the world (especially the 3rd world) how to fight against the Empire. Their drones are rewriting the rules of war. And countries across the Global South are studying this phase of the war for that use! They remind me of Vietnam, a poor country that whipped the most powerful army on earth... That’s where we are today”.
Given that this is his actual view, it makes it highly unlikely that Abu-Jamal would sign a letter which accuses Iran of “hollow anti-imperialism”.
Who is behind this shady letter is yet to be seen, but it certainly has many hallmarks of a pro-war psy-op.
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So Iran bad while the USA with the help of Israel, the UK and few others started an unprovoked bombing campaign on the nation. Nobody buying this clumsy propaganda in the West anymore.
The empire is losing and in its desperation it must hijack the anti-empire voices within to sign off on its hasbara. These cheap attempts at vilifying the resistance will only get worse.