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13/07/06
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What Do the Iranians Want?
by Yoshie Furuhashi The priority of the Iranian people, according to the Zogby poll released on 13 July 2006,
1 is economy: 41% say economy should be Iran's top priority, a far larger proportion than those who regard nuclear capability (27%) or freedom (23%) as the most important. The correct priority if you ask me, as the Supreme Leader of Iran -- wishing to check the growing popularity of the
President of Iran2 by allying more with the Shark (aka Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani) -- plots the country's entry into the World Trade Organization and hopes for a grand bargain with the United States a la Nixon in China.
3 In reality, the economically disenfranchised in Iran face struggles on two fronts: to defend Iran's sovereignty against Western imperialism (first economic sanctions and then war and "regime change") and to fight for an economy that serves their needs, rather than the interests of what Tariq Ali called the mullah-bazaari nexus.
4
To be more precise, struggles over Iran's economy and sovereignty are inseparable. It is no secret that the West's ire against
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad originates in part in his economic program: among others, wage increases, lower interests for the poor, investment in education, subsidies for the newly wed, and redistribution that favors rural areas: "In recent weeks, he has proposed a $4 billion national school-renovation program and has raised not only salaries for workers in Iran's vast, government-controlled industrial sector but also the minimum wage for everyone else. He doubled government grants for newlyweds and forced banks to lower interest rates by several percentage points";
5 and "expenditures in rural areas increased by as much as 180 percent in his first year as president."
6 Above all, his opposition to privatization has irked the rulers of the multinational empire: "'I have ordered the economy and industry ministers to stop all privatisations, where people's rights have been trampled,' Ahmadinejad said on June 8. 'This government does not allow some people to plunder public property.'"
7 Ali Khamenei's aforementioned gambits
8 are designed to kill two birds at the same time, placating the bazaari interests spooked by the expansive fiscal and monetary policy that favors the poor
9 and making overtures to the West, whose rulers covet Iran's assets and no doubt want to put the Iranians on a diet of austerity.
How does gender figure in this two-front struggle? More men (43%) than women (33%) prioritize economy, and "[w]omen were more likely than men to say they wanted a more liberal, secular society."
10 What's the implication of Iranian men and women's opinions about economy and freedom? A movement that seeks to advance women's rights
11 strictly on the liberal grounds of equal rights, divorced from the struggle for economic justice for both men and women, is likely to appeal to only a minority of Iranians who can afford to prioritize freedom over economy (which is why voters rejected neoliberal reformists in the last presidential election in Iran
12), thus doing a disservice to women who need and want equality.
Here, the twin success of liberal feminism (prevailing over working-class feminism envisioned by socialist women) -- whose goal is the equal right to exploit or get exploited -- and economic neoliberalism -- which restored profitability by busting unions and eliminating union jobs in the male-dominated manufacturing sector, exploiting women and undocumented immigrants in the low-wage service sector, and getting rid of or radically contracting social welfare programs -- in the United States should serve as a cautionary tale for Iranian women. The feminism that is in the interest of
all Iranian women (rather than benefiting rich women at the expense of poor women)
13 is not the kind that fits into the ethos of economic neoliberalism, whose results are the feminization of poverty and the criminalization of the poorest working-class men in the United States, but the kind that empowers women as equal partners to men in their joint struggle for political and economic democracy and republicanism,
14 i.e. the vision of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.
What else do we learn from the Zobgy poll? The poll also deflates the wishful thinking that has the Western media portray Iran as divided between the youth who love America and yearn for freedom and older conservatives who hate both, between a largely secular civil society and the religious power elite. In terms of age-divided public opinion, Iran is far more complex than the West imagines: "[o]lder Iranians were much more likely to admire the American people and society than younger Iranians"; and "[y]ounger and older Iranians would favor a more conservative, religious society, while those aged 30-49 said they would favor a more liberal, secular culture."
15 About religion, 36% of Iranians want their country to be "more religious and conservative," and 31% of them, "more secular and liberal." The country, in short, is more or less evenly divided on the matter, though the religious still outnumber the secular liberals.
What will Iranians do if they come under economic sanctions? Will they blame the Iranian government and fight for a "regime change" of the sort that neo-conservatives salivate for (i.e., a "regime change" that installs a thoroughly neoliberal and unabashedly pro-Tel Aviv government)? Most won't: "A majority said they would be willing to suffer through a bad economy if that were the price the country had to pay to develop its nuclear program. . . . Only one in six would blame Iran’s own government," whereas 25% would blame Washington and the rest are not sure whom to blame.
16 The only potential allies of Washington in Iran are those who are rich enough to have access to the Internet and satellite TV:
Iranians with access to the Internet or satellite TV were significantly more likely than their 'unconnected' compatriots to identify the United States as the country they admire the most. They were also significantly less likely to pick the U.S. government as the one they admire the least: one in three Iranians without Internet access (34%) chose the United States as least admired, compared with fewer than one in five Iranians with Internet access (18%).
17
The problem for Washington is that its Iranian supporters are only a tiny elite: "Even in cities, a minority of Iranians are wired. Only 2 million out of Iran's 70 million people -- about 3 percent -- have Internet access."
18
Besides, the Iranian people aren't a passive target of Washington's geopolitical maneuvers. 56% of Iranians say Iran ought to be a regional leader "diplomatically and militarily," whereas 12% say it shouldn't. And contrary to what the Western media said, which suggested that most Iranians, unlike Ahmadinejad, didn't care about the Palestinians, "On one question, Iranians showed almost total agreement, regardless of age or gender. When asked if the state of Israel is illegitimate and should not exist, 67% agreed and only 9% disagreed."
19 That is good news -- and not just for the Palestinians. To live in freedom and democracy, the peoples of the Middle East -- Arabs, Jews, and others -- need to replace the corrupt pro-Washington regimes -- especially in Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states, as well as in Israel, the cornerstones of American hegemony -- that oppress them by democratic ones that promote their wellbeing, and the region must be integrated on a basis other than neoliberal capitalism. Venezuela has taken the leading role in the struggle to integrate Latin America -- resuming the unfinished project of Simón Bolívar -- on the basis of popular democracy; Iran ought to play the same role in the Middle East.
20 History demands a Bolívar in Tehran,
21 and the Iranians are ready for a leader who, like Bolívar and Hugo Chávez, has an ambition to remake not just their country but the whole region
IN LABOR'S CORNER
