R.A.P.: We can’t begin a discussion about the U.S. and Iran without going back at least to 1953 and the coup there. What should people in the U.S. understand about what happened at that time? Azadeh: I can tell you my life for sure and I think the lives of probably every single Iranian have been affected in a very negative way by U.S. imperialism. Just going back to 1953, the U.S. and the UK engineered a coup to topple the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. He wanted to nationalize Iranian oil, which is obviously considered a crime by the world powers, because they think they should have control over the resources of the global South. So they got rid of him in that coup and brought the Shah back. That definitely changed the course of recent Iranian history in a way that really impacted all of our lives. And then that wasn’t the only instance of U.S. intervention in Iran unfortunately. Shortly after the revolution, Iran got dragged into the 8-year Iran/Iraq War. Saddam Hussein, the dictator who was ruling over Iraq at the time, invaded Iran thinking that he could probably get rid of the Iranian government very quickly and take over. Of course, that was a very long and bloody war and a combined million people on both sides lost their lives. And the U.S. at that time was actively supporting Saddam. Again, all of us who lived in Iran at that time were deeply affected by that war. From the age of 1 until the age of 9 that was my life. And yet I wasn’t living in the south. The people who lived in the south of Iran were made refugees or internally displaced people. They had to move up north because their entire towns were destroyed thanks to Saddam. And even those of us living in Tehran, the capitol, had to deal with Tehran being missile bombed on a daily basis during the last year of war. I remember that very clearly. We had to move out of Tehran. So of course later on Saddam became the evil guy because he wasn’t towing the U.S. line anymore and so then the U.S. planned an invasion of Iraq in 2003 which devastated Iraq. In 1988 a U.S. warship targeted a civilian Iranian plane, and that led to the death of everyone on that plane, including 66 children. And of course the following year the U.S. government awarded the guy who was leading the charge and never really acknowledged and apologized for this crime. So that’s a quick snapshot of the history. Of course in more recent times we have had sanctions which are currently having a big impact, effecting people’s lives in a horrible way to the point that people are being deprived access to basic medicine and as a result there have been deaths. The Trump regime very recently threatened to bomb Iran and its cultural sites on a daily basis. Trump, Pompeo, and the allied regimes of Saudi Arabia and Israel are trying to interfere in Iran destabilize the situation even further. People in the U.S. should step back and ask ourselves the question, “why should the U.S. have military bases all over the world?” What are the connections between U.S. imperialism, 6
By Any Means Necessary