Weekly Worker 695 Thursday November 1 2007 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

‘Lie number five: Iran is undemocratic’

This is the full transcript of Somaye Zadeh’s speech, moving the main motion on Iran on behalf of Campaign Iran

I like to start with a quote. This is George Bush: “Our intelligent sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high strength aluminium tubes suitable for nuclear weapon production.” You’d be forgiven for thinking that he was taking about Iran, but in fact this was in the run up to the war on Iraq. This proves to us that just as they were lying about Iraq, they are now lying about Iran.

Lie no 1: Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

There is absolutely no evidence of this. IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] has carried out 2,000 hours of intrusive inspections and found absolutely no evidence and [UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammad] Al Baradaei has confirmed that the Iranian programme is for peaceful purposes. The US’ own intelligence has put Iran at least 5 to 10 years away from producing a nuclear bomb. The truth is: Iran is developing nuclear energy and it is well within its right as part of the non-proliferation treaty.

Lie no 2: Iran is the world’s no 1 state sponsor of terrorism.

This one is primarily based on the allegations that Iran is supporting terrorists in Iraq. Again, here is absolutely no evidence. Even a senior US defence analyst at one of America’s secret briefings said that there is no smoking gun linking Teheran and Iraqi militants. The truth is that most foreign insurgents found in Iraq are Jordanian, Egyptian and Saudi-Arabian. Funny how they’re not declaring war on those countries.  The few Iranians that have been arrested were either diplomats or engineers who were invited there by the Iraqi and Kurdish governments.

Iran’s closest links are with the Iraqi government. Since the fall of Saddam, Iran and Iraq have signed 65 different agreements and the Iraqi PM has made a friendly visit to Teheran. We’ve seen allegations that Iran is supporting the Taliban. This is laughable for anybody who knows the history between the Iranian regime and the Taliban. The Iranian regime has opposed the Taliban from the start and have helped the US to overthrow them. For them to change tactics would be completely bizarre. Again, Iran’s strongest links are with the Afghan government and they have given aid to the Afghan government for £125 million for three projects: a water research centre, a dental college and for equipping Kabul’s medical university. And even [Afghanistan’s president] Hamid Karzai has praised Iran’s role in Afghanistan because of this.

Lie no 3: Iran has threatened to wipe Israel off the map.

What Ahmadinejad actually said was: “This occupying regime of Jerusalem should vanish from the pages of time.” He was speaking at a historical conference and he was quoting the former supreme leader of Iran, ayatollah Khomeini and he was comparing the fall of the Zionist regime to the fall of the USSR. So he was actually talking about internal regime change and not an attack. A few days the current supreme leader ayatollah Khomeini – who is actually the person who is responsible for Iran’s foreign policy - said, “Iran never has and never will attack another country”. And there is some truth in that, because Iran has not attacked another country in over 200 years. So it’s hardly a threat.

And one more thing you have to remember: this kind of rhetoric has been quite common since the Iranian revolution. It is meant for domestic consumption, it is meant to huddle support for the government. It is in no way a threat to Israel.

Lie no 4: Iran is an anti-semitic country.

They say this on the basis of what Ahmadinejad said about the holocaust. The fact is that Iran has 25,000 Jews, the largest [community] in the middle east outside of Israel. These Jews are very proud of their Iranian identity. They are recognised in Iran’s constitution as one of three religious minority groups who are free to pursue their religious practices. And you have to compare that to a group like the Baha'is who do not even get recognition as a religion. 

Iranian Jews also have a Jewish MP and are free to travel to and from Israel to visit their relatives. Iran also has one of four Jewish hospitals worldwide that gets funding from the Jewish diaspora - and is allowed to, which is quite extraordinary. Any aid organisation that tries to get money from abroad is automatically accused of being a foreign agent. In this case, Iranian Jews are actually quite privileged. And it is interesting to note that Ahmadinejad’s own office gave money to this hospital.

And proof of the Iranian Jews being proud of their identity came in July when Israel offered each Iranian Jew $5,000 to emigrate to Israel - on top of the usual incentives they give to Jews worldwide to emigrate to Israel. They were hoping to get mass migration, but this did not happen. Not only did this not happen, Iranian Jewish leaders roundly condemned the move. This is the Society of Iranian Jews: “The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradable for any amount of money. Iranian Jews are amongst the most ancient Iranians. Iran’s Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture. This threat and immature enticement will not achieve their aim in wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews.”

Lie no 5: Iran is an undemocratic and repressive country.

It is true that there are restrictions on who can stand in elections in Iran and parliament has been dropped by the unelected guardian council. But despite that, both the current president Ahmadinejad and his predecessor Khatami were voted in with overwhelming popular support.

[In reply to heckles:] I’m an Iranian refugee, thank you very much. Khatami was voted in with 82% of the vote, this is the kind of vote that George Bush can only dream of. Any problems in Iran can be and have been dealt with its own thriving democracy movement. We have seen evidence in the films that have flourished in recent years that have won awards around the world. There has also been a flourishing of magazines, newspapers, theatres, books, music arts and websites. And in the case of websites, this is a real testimony for the democracy movement, because the fact that only in 60 people in the world speak Persian, Persian is the third most used language on the internet. And most of these websites are political.

Other aspects of Iranian society are not so black and white either. We’ve all heard Ahmadinejad talking about homosexuals, but at the same time as homosexuality is not allowed, Iran does allow sex changes and in fact the average number of sex changes in Iran is seven times that than in the whole of Europe.

[In reply to heckles:] I am an Iranian, I have not been able to travel to Iran for over 25 years, my parents are human rights activists. The fact is, Iran is being demonised, because they want to attack it. Iran is not the dark dinghy place that it is being portrayed as in the media. [Lots of clapping by the SWP majority]

In the case of the women, the situation is not so black and white either. Whilst there are restrictions of women and nobody is denying that, the literacy rate amongst women is 98%. And 64% of university students are women. This is unparalleled in the Middle East and beyond. [Lots of clapping from SWPers] Female life expectancy is 104% - that’s equivalent to the west. Iran has the only squad of female fire fighters anywhere in the Middle East. It has had a female champion race car driver. There are female lawyers, MPs and judges.

If you want to compare some figures in the countries in the region:  Women MPs hold 4% of the seats in parliament - this is almost equivalent to Turkey’s 4.4%. And female professional and technical workers are 32.9% of the total – in South Korea this is 33.7%. These are the figures that we are not told in the media.

Most of it is down to the Iranian women’s ability to fight and the democracy movement that they are a part of. Women in Iran are to the democracy movement what the Muslims are to the anti-war movement here: the most militant and the most discriminated again. It is no coincidence that the only Muslim woman to win a Nobel Peace price is Iranian: Shirin Ebadi.

We inside Campaign Iran have made links with the democracy movement, because this is the best way of publicising that not all Iranians are hardliners like Ahmadinejad. Also, if they want to talk about regime change – Iranian people can deliver their own regime change through the democracy movement.

We inside Campaign Iran have had people from Iran come and speak at anti-war events, including the former MP Elaheh Koolaee and Shirin Ebadi last year. And we are planning to bring somebody from Iran to speak at the ‘World against War’ event on December 1.

I want to give the last word for Shirin Ebadi: “As a Muslim Iranian I state here that I do criticise the government of Iran. But that does not mean that America has the right to invade Iran. If America has not learnt its lesson from Iraq and thinks of invading Iran, notwithstanding all criticisms that we have of our government, we will defend our country to the last blood of our drop. We will not alien soldiers set foot on Iran.” Thank you.

‘People are confused already’

Extracts from Abbas Edalat’s speech, speaking against the CPGB’s motion (no 20)

We have to stay united and focussed in a disciplined way. This motion is divisive. Seamus Milne in his excellent speech has referred to Iran as an anti-imperialist state and he reflects the position of the British Labour movement and the protest movement. To say that the Iranian republic is not anti-imperialist is divisive. [lots of clapping].

We should not take any position on the nature of the Iranian government or internal matters in Iran. This will exclude a prominent figure like Seamus Milne. The best support we can give the people in Iran is what we are doing now: to remove the threat against Iran.

Let us not forget that the democracy movement after two landslide victories by Khatami was making gigantic advances. And see what happens: George W Bush declared Iran a part of the axis of evil.

We must stay completely focussed. The problem with saying both ‘Don’t attack Iran’ and ‘Oppose the Islamic republic’ is that it waters down our main message. Put yourself into the shoes of an ordinary member of the public. If you tell him ‘Don’t attack Iran, but it is a vicious repressive regime’, he gets confused. He’s already confused by the massive demonisation of Iran. By saying that it is vicious, repressive government you are playing into the hands of the warmongers.

When I speak to Iranian people, for example on Iranian TV, I clearly say, support the democracy movement. But this works only in Iran, not to the western media.

Read on: Hands Off the People of Iran Weekly Worker archive

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