First published in the Weekly Worker 732

Yassamine Mather demolishes the AWL leader’s falsehoods… and CS member Ben Lewis was present when the AWL set up yet another posing front group

In Iran there is a saying used when someone makes a comment based on a number of falsehoods, leading to an even sillier conclusion. It goes like this: ‘Khassan and Khossein are all three daughters of Moghaviyeh.’ The correct statement is: ‘Hassan and Hossein are both sons of Imam Ali.’ (Moaviyeh – not ‘Moghaviyeh’ – was Ali’s enemy.)

I had not thought of this for many years when I read the terrible article written by Sean Matgamna of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in last week’s paper (Solidarity July 24).

Let us start with the falsehoods.

1. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence would know that the current threats against Iran, led by the US administration and supported by Israel, have nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear capability. They have everything to do with the decline of the US empire and the economic crisis it faces, while Israel is jumping on the bandwagon to get rid of its old foe. Had there been no nuclear development in Iran, the US would find another excuse for waging war on Iran.

‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ – you don’t even need to be a Marxist to understand this. If Iran stopped its nuclear development today, the reasons why US imperialism and its allies in the world capitalist order would need a war in the forthcoming period would still be in place – Iran is currently the best target for such an adventure.

2. It is very rich of the US, Israel and their supporters in the AWL to talk about Iran’s nuclear programme when they have chosen to keep silent about Israel’s massive nuclear arsenal and that of Pakistan. Those two countries have never signed up to the non-proliferation treaty protocol.

Currently Iran’s attempts at enriching uranium are not sufficiently developed to produce nuclear weapon-grade uranium. Its own claims about the level of both enrichment and quantity of centrifuges are propaganda and US intelligence organisations clearly do not believe them.

Even if Iran did use its centrifuges to step up production, such a route would be the most expensive and the slowest way to achieve nuclear weapons capability. It would be much cheaper and faster to buy plutonium for this purpose on the black market. As yet Iran can neither produce a bomb nor deliver it – this would require reducing the size of the nuclear product into a warhead and an air force or navy capable of delivery.

On the other hand, Israel is one of the world’s major nuclear powers and the Israeli navy is currently deploying a submarine equipped with nuclear warheads in the Persian Gulf. There is little doubt that the United States is looking for excuses to bomb Iran, and Israeli warheads can be used for this purpose.

Matgamna’s conclusion, posed as a question, is disgusting: “But if Israel attacks Iran, who are we to condemn it?”

I am speechless. Iran’s nuclear installations are buried 75 feet underground in the desert. Only bunker buster bombs are capable of destroying them, causing major nuclear explosions with disastrous repercussions – not just for millions of people in Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Syria … but also for Palestinians and Israelis. How irresponsible can one be to even contemplate such a horror?

In Hands Off the People of Iran we have written extensively about the dangers posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of religious regimes such as the islamic republic of Iran, as well as Israel. Many of us are also opposed to Iran’s industrial nuclear programme. However, none of these arguments should be used to justify the policies of US imperialism or its expansionist allies. Nuclear non-proliferation is only feasible as part of a global nuclear disarmament programme. Anything less than that is gunboat diplomacy.

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Poisonous ‘solidarity’

The AWL has set up yet another front group to pose as the voice of genuine solidarity with students in Iran.

Saturday July 26 saw nine comrades assemble at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Although I was assured that it was not intended to found a new organisation, Sacha Ismail constantly talked of a “campaign with a small c” or “a pool of resources” for solidarity with students in Iran. It soon turned out, as AWLer David Broder noted, that if this “small ‘c’ campaign” was going to have a website and bulletin and engage in campaigning, then it was indeed a new organisation.

I was there to report, and to throw as many political bombs as I could. So I agreed with comrade Broder and pointed out that this new ‘non-organisation’ seems to be a crude, sectarian attempt to compete with Hands Off the People of Iran.

Comrade Ismail was of the opinion that the threat to Iranian students came from their own regime, and not at all from an imperialist attack (I am not sure that a pre-emptive nuclear strike would help to organise students), although, of course, his new campaign would be anti-war and anti-sanctions, he said. Apparently hardly anyone in Iran talks about the threat of war very much – obviously they have not yet caught up with Sean Matgamna’s latest pronouncement.

But they are not the only ones. Comrade Ismail claimed he had not yet read Matgamna’s Solidarity article. New AWL wonderboy Tom Unterrainer, however, was prepared to admit that he had, and insisted that it merely raised “questions” for the workers’ movement. However, despite Matgamna’s statement that “unless work on an Iranian bomb has definitively ended, Israel will bomb Iran” (my emphasis), Unterrainer said that by arguing that the main threat to Iranian students was a potential nuking, we were “whitewashing” the Iranian regime.

I said that Matgamna’s filthy apologia should have no place in the workers’ movement. We must be completely opposed to any strike on Iran. But Ismail parroted the usual nonsense: it is all well and good to talk about opposition to Israel, but what about Russian or Turkish expansionism? We are opposed to that too, comrade, but, as far as I know, neither Russia nor Turkey are threatening to nuke Iran (and the AWL patriarch might even condemn them if they did).

In view of Matgamna’s latest piece of pro-imperialist scabbing, it is impossible to take any AWL call for solidarity seriously. Students should shun this new campaign and join Hopi – no to imperialist war, no to the theocratic regime!

Ben Lewis