It's A Mad World

Iran once again stands on the edge of the world. The iniquitous threads of indecency, lying perversions, and apocalyptical insinuations have made the world catch up – and the regime has been cornered with its crimson hands held low. A case for dialogue has slowly detonated. What remains is the need for tighter sanctions – and western fervency to get the job done. The political crisis has sprouted into a global furore – western sanctions are mounting with deadlines becoming intractable, insecurities are wailing from across Israel and military talk is being catapulted like a boomerang between both nations, and shattered dreams are protruding to melting point throughout the nation’s rebellious youth. Iranian intentions have already been predetermined – they want that nuclear bomb, and they want to upgrade the messianic war between the parties of god to an unlimited subscription. The theocratic mullahs are prepared to desolate the crackpot Israeli settlers, and vice versa. President Obama bolstered to the cause of nuclear disarmament – but his vision cannot correlate with the status quo of reactionary theocrats. And their vision is indifferent to human life.

Negotiations, it’s fair to say, have failed. Washington’s honeymoon of good will has ended, and western patience has become fatigued. The European Union has tried negotiating – its results harboured flagrant lies from Tehran. The Islamic Republic – a crude name reveals the biggest problem, as well as confirming why they cannot be akin to the family of nations – did not waver in spinning more centrifuges, and this unbound progress has brought them closer to the surface of nukes. Negotiations should, despite their abject failure, continue – backed up by fierce penalties. The West’s backers for sanctions now have a stronger remit – President Obama’s decision to scrap the missile defence shield has befriended Russia, (a country that always opposes sanctions) and isolated China within the belly of the UN Security Council. This was a smart move. Moscow’s relief at the missile decision should be translated into United Nations votes for absolutely essential sanctions. The international community should compliment this with forbidding authenticity to a fraudulent leader – a thug who calls the Holocaust, the pretext for the creation of Israel, “a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim.”

Don’t call Iran a democracy. Their most recent attempt was a crude circus – exorbitantly managed from within the shadows followed by a frantic sprint to blame foreign whipping boys – that was abusively insulting to everyone. It was humiliating for western traditions – our inaction only served as a detrimental agent to the radical electorate. The event – it wasn’t an election, sorry – has passed but unpredictable circumstance cannot be deterred. Confusion in the Middle East has been intensified by mystery, and inaction, from western democrats – and this has left disorder to breed from the interior. Most international experts, if not all, are united in saying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cannot have won. Yet no international government can bear to stand the consequences of a domestic political crisis, and the ramifications of oil crises that become inextricably linked to these rogue regions. But crisis is exactly what proceeds through the thin skin and empty heart of the Iranian nervous system right now.

The event produced a choice between the reactionary and the radical. President Ahmadinejad, a gangster with no legitimacy and zero credibility, is vehemently against western values. The Obama Administration persists for cooperation – Ahmadinejad seeks to strain tolerance through his own risible virtue. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the challenger who was denied an inevitable victory, has made it his passion to end isolation and embrace dialogue. His eager activity contrasted highly with the shocking passivity of his opponent. Mousavi, who was the last Prime Minister of Iran before the post was abolished via constitutional change, was immensely popular. His push to defeat the autocratic president was supported by the trade unions, various labour associations, grassroots on both sides of the political spectrum, and working class folks. Mousavi wanted to institutionalise social justice, promote fairness and equality, liberate freedom of expression, highlight corruption of the past, and increase privatisation – his leadership was best remembered from a time when Saddam Hussein’s conquering armies came charging over the Iranian horizon with chemical weapons primed in a war the west picked the wrong ally for.

Of course, none of this takes into account the complex factors that Iran’s wild cards have already played. They ascended into the membership of the nuclear club more than three years ago, and speculative suspicion has now finally been revealed by arrogant guilt – the mullahs and nuclear weapons want to become whole. The aftermath of these events refuses to twinkle a glimmer of honesty. Ahmadinejad has reverted to type by instigating his nauseating repression, attempting to ban foreign media, and collapsing all opposition rallies. Dissent is futile as the realms of communication cannot be blocked, despite the blockade of a foreign media invasion. The rebellious youth, who are prepared to die for reform, are quietly benefiting from a multimedia revolution – they have satellites, communication with the western world is made possible through email exchanges, and they get their news through global television. The situation as it is is in disequilibrium. Iran has led the world into a maze of uncertainty – the danger is concentrated externally though.

Tick, tock. There are two clocks ticking in competition with each other – a democracy clock and the nuclear clock. It’s easy to not recognise the former and be fearfully gripped by the latter. Both require equal attention – the nuclear clock is ticking faster than democrats could have forecast, yet the democracy clock is warping at unprecedented speeds. The nuclear clock could be smashed into oblivion by the green movement’s “refolution”, yet pessimists believe these pragmatic reformists will be every bit as warring on the thermonuclear quandary. The only relief to this are the words of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a spokesman for the democratic green movement, who was clear and unequivocal – “the Iranian green movement does not want a nuclear bomb.” That seems pretty specific.

President Obama’s misunderstood silence over the fake election was understandable – the theocrats won’t resist to draw the foreign conspiratorial card if western support is exorbitantly concentrated at the green movement. In his first address as president to the UN, Obama, as usual, was silver-tongued about “the rights of people everywhere to determine their own destiny.” The Iranian people have the determination to naturally unlock their destinies. And the democracy clock, meanwhile, continues its slow, but progressive, countdown. Iran is youthful and agitated by upheaval. This is natural in adolescence. The one thing our own wisdom tells us to do is stop the evil faction from prevailing – and this means no inside interference.

This term, “democracy clock”, shouldn’t be overestimated. Iran is netted under the desperation of a theocratic regime who seek to conjoin a messianic ideology with apocalyptic weaponry. The country will not transmutate into a realistic liberal democracy tomorrow.

Iran may be haunted by shattering dreams, but its excruciating reformers, embraced by the nation’s rebellious youth, are proudly progressive. And these are the real people who will fundamentally change the country – western rhetoric can only harbour illusions in pale correlation. Eloquence from presidents and prime ministers have produced constant deadlock. Stringent sanctions within the confines of Brussels have been destroyed by superior laughter in Tehran. The hypothetical entrails that lead to Israeli air strikes bombing nuclear installations will provide the prelude to messianic conflagration – and making war between the parties of god, estranged mullahs brawling with insane settlers, infect the world with a sting of secure persistence. The saviours of Iran are the Iranians themselves. This is what they’re doing – millions march through the streets, enveloped with their fellow comrades in a hurricane of mass demonstrations, bellowing mutual rejections on the theocratic disease that warps their punctured society. This collective dissent – wholly tangible, unlike the artificial sideshow who masquerade as ruling reformists – strides for political development while staring down the jaws of painful death – torture and rape are the natural stabilisers to control peoples who refuse to be incarcerated as the personal belongings for the anointed mullahs.

The West should admire this selfless radicalism. We should support these people, encourage them in their tireless struggle, and continue our diplomatic flourishes to expose the guilt that this regime can no longer refute. Yet the democrats must concede there are severe boundaries we dare not cross. Democracy has a lucid obligation – do no damage. Democracy is the external factor. It is also what the people want. So, if nothing else, western virtues must not impair the capacity for freedom from within, or objurgate strife to the long haul. The Iranian leadership has been complicit in deceit – it’s now doubled. The election was stolen and society has buckled with the consequences. The existence of suspected nuclear facilities has been speculated on western radars for some time, as has the central purpose of enriching uranium despite the regime’s horrendous deception peddled to a multitude of international bodies. Do not underestimate the motive: Iran is seeking the capability for nuclear weapons. This may be vexatious verity, but truth is truth – and it could soon be honoured by reality. Anyone who thinks democracy can live with a theocratic state bloated with apocalyptic weapons is championing dangerous fantasy. A Nuclear Iran would be incompatible with civilisation.

The Iranian regime has been discomposed by a dilemma of legitimacy. Iran has stolen an election; it exports violence and weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, and has repeatedly lied to every international body about its meticulous compulsion to nuclear weapons and its dream for thermonuclear power – lies that have now been exposed, and caught the regime red-handed. This theocracy has made the blunder that is a staple of all totalitarian systems – absolute control of the entire population. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tries to command every aspect of people’s lives by treating them as infantiles in a baseless and insulting manner. But his autocracy has now imploded – there is a stampede of young reformists who want real elections.

The Revolution of 1979 – it fits the more accurate definition of a counter-revolution actually – saw every stratum of society invade the streets, topple the ruling shah royalism, exile the royal regime, vote by national referendum for the establishment of a theocratic constitution, and transition the radically infant country from monarchy into a republic. The Revolution was distinct for the incredulity it tremored throughout the world. It lacked the customs one would associate with traditional blueprints for revolution – defeat in a major war, an economic crisis, or peasant discontent – but its results served as a catalyst for profound change. The Revolution should have been an epoch for heroism and sacrifice – “a perfect model of splendid, humane and divine life… for all the peoples of the world.” But revolution was taken from the people – “for a few years we all lost our minds” – and its kidnapping by the clerical status “promised us heaven, but… created a hell on earth.”

Revolution was abducted by a theocratic hereditary who exercised fury against those who had assisted them. The mullahs then established a dictatorship of their own. Iranian threads of totalitarianism have a religious prescription, unlike Ba'athist ideology in Saddam’s Iraq, called veleyat-e-faqih – guardianship of the cleric. All children, and lost people, and others too vulnerable to defend themselves were cared for by units of the state. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordained for this to include everyone – everybody in Iran is now regarded as an immature and immobile child. Citizens of Iran are children for which it – the veleyat-e-faqih – is fatherly amenable. The rebellious youth are growing up though – they can no longer be fooled by this theocratic incubus. And it’s a tremendous asset to freedom that so many brave the streets and risk, particularly if their women, having acid sprayed in their faces – or becoming dead and rotting corpses. These people should know we are on their side – our allegiance with the people and their goals is a matter of pride and duty for us.

The fight for freedom is slowly ripening the fruits of a revolutionary juncture. Vladimir Lenin described the revolutionary scenario – when the old order cannot go on in the old way, and the people don’t wish to go on in the old way. Both of these requisites have been consummated. We’re all getting there.

Robert King is a Contributing Editor to WDC.