Weekly Worker 675 Thursday May 31 2007 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

US-Iran talks

After weeks of anticipation and with the expected media hype, the first official meeting between Iran’s islamic republic and the United States in nearly 30 years took place in Baghdad this week. Yassamine Mather reports

The ambassadors of the two countries that have brought nothing but destruction and misery to the peoples of Iraq blamed each other for the disaster in this imperialist-occupied country before claiming once more their “commitment” to support “stability” and agreeing that a secure and stable Iraq was in their interests, before declaring the meeting “a success”.

Of course, Iran and US officials have held many secret meetings over the last 28 years - most notably during the Irangate scandal, when US officials allegedly arrived in Tehran bearing gifts form Ronald Reagan.

Miraculously the day of the meeting coincided with the reappearance of Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. Sunni groups accused the US of having made a deal with Iran guaranteeing the safety of at least one man responsible for sectarian murders.

For months speakers from Hands Off the People of Iran have been insisting that the current conflict between Iran and the US has nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear programme and everything to do with the situation in Iraq - it was the predictable yet probably unintended consequence of the US invasion that Iran now has unparalleled power in the region. However, the current rapprochement came after a week of contradictory signals from Washington.

According to The Observer, “The feud over policy on Iran has seen the Central Intelligence Agency’s director, Michael Hayden, defence secretary Robert Gates, Rice’s deputy, John Negroponte, and under-secretary Nicholas Burns line up against Cheney and hawks in the Pentagon … The struggle over Iran policy has resulted in contradictory - and sometimes deeply misleading - briefings, as the Iran hawks have tried to shape the debate towards a more overtly military policy” (May 27).

One example of this propaganda by more hawkish elements of the US administration concerned the so-called ‘summer offensive’ in Iraq, which managed to derail many reports in the English-speaking media, even in the anti-war broadsheets. Dick Cheney’s allies in the Pentagon tried to manipulate intelligence to further their strategic goals by giving a number of ‘briefings’ about Iran’s links with Al Qa’eda planning a joint ‘summer offensive’. In a way that is reminiscent of the alleged Saddam-al Qa’eda link before the Iraq invasion, a “senior US official in Baghdad” is quoted, without a shred of evidence to back up his claims, as saying: “Iran is secretly forging ties with al Qa’eda elements and sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces, intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say” (The Guardian May 22).

For its part, Iran’s islamic regime spent the week before the ‘historic bilateral talks’ discovering CIA spy networks in the remote corners of Iran. Clearly both sides were attempting to outdo each other as far as conspiracy theories were concerned.

The meeting on Monday and the subsequent statements are proof once more that, for all their differences, the US imperialists and Iran’s islamic regime have more in common than what many analysts and reporters make out. Most importantly they are both desperate to save the shia occupation government in Iraq. For the US the collapse of that regime would indicate the total failure of the occupation, while for Iran it would mean the loss of the only other major shia state in the region.

At least for the time being, the shared reactionary objectives in Iraq have averted the threat of US military intervention against Iran. However, in both countries the state vacillates between two positions: war and compromise. For ordinary people in Iran the arrival of more US warships this week was a reminder that the threat of military attack is as real today as it was before the ‘historic’ meeting.

Hands Off the People of Iran

Rabbi and punk poet

More elected politicians have this week declared their support for the Hands Off the People of Iran campaign (Hopi), including Plaid Cymru MEP Jill Evans and Scottish National Party MSPs Sandra White and Dr Bill Wilson. In local government, councillor Fozol Miah has joined the three other Respect representatives from Tower Hamlets who have already signed up to Hopi.

Among the political organisations endorsing the campaign, the Democratic Socialist Alliance announced its affiliation to Hopi this week.

Leading human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield QC has confirmed his support for Hopi’s founding statement, as have historian Mark Curtis and journalist/blogger Sunny Hundal.

Punk poet and songwriter Attila the Stockbroker also signed up, declaring: “I most certainly will support you. I loathe the Bush/Blair axis and clerical fascism with equal vigour.”

And a wide range of academics have endorsed the campaign too, including philosophy professors Adrian Moore (University of Oxford), Colin McGinn (Miami), Udo Schuklenk (Glasgow Caledonian) and Steve Fuller (Warwick).

They have been joined by prominent theologians Dr Johannes Hoff and rabbi professor Dan Cohn-Sherbok (both University of Wales, Lampeter), leading criminologist professor David Wilson (University of Central England) and Middle East specialists professor Avi Shlaim (Oxford) and Dr Nadje Al-Ali (Exeter).

Steve Cooke

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