Why Iran, Syria and Sudan Will Not Fall

February 16, 2011

This explains why the ruling systems in Iran, Syria and Sudan will not fall through public anger.

There are two important points about the American role in Arab and Muslim countries in particular: The vast majority of the people feel that the primary objectives of American policy in the region are to control oil and protect Israel—not to advance democracy. Anger with the United States is only partly about American support for repressive regimes, as it is at the core based on important policy issues, particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iraq–as I have found consistently in the public-opinion polls I have conducted at the University of Maryland in conjunction with Zogby International.

In addition, the U.S. pursuit of priority national interests, such as protecting the American military presence in the Middle East, fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, confronting al-Qaeda and its allies, and minimizing threats to Israel, have not only trumped all else but have inadvertently contributed to the prevalence of repression: Rulers are externally rewarded for supporting American policies that are highly resented by their publics, which in the process makes the rulers more insecure and more inclined toward repression to prevent revolts.

Like every other country Syria, Sudan and Iran have their problems and they have some people who hate the ruling regimes and want to change them. But those people do not have enough support within the society to be able to successfully attempt a revolution.

All the other Middle Eastern regimes are now in danger of revolution attempts. What makes the situation in those Arab regimes different is the support of their rulers for Israel and other colonial U.S. projects.

Deep down this goes back to the dignity of the common people. Economic hardship is difficult, but survivable. To have no say in politics isn't liked, but most are not interested anyway. But being suppressed for even attempting to help fellow Arabs and Muslims, Iraqis and Palestinians, hurts deeply. It is indignient.

This is the secret ingredient that creates the revolutionary storm which now rages over pro-U.S. regimes in the Middle East. Regimes in countries where this ingredient does not exits will be safe.

It is also the reason why the U.S. will in the end find no way to protect its subordinate rulers in these countries.

Posted by b on February 16, 2011 at 19:16 UTC | Permalink

Comments

it’s interesting that even if your entire thesis was true, you have a habit of excluding Germany, France, Britain for their historic support of the “empire’s” favored tyrants.
you’ve demonstrated nothing to show that the revolutions are Iran 1979 redux. the Egyptian revolution vanguard is comprised of educated but largely unemployed urbanites, in a country by the way whose rural population has actually increased over the past decade.
What does that even mean that the people react against US domination, if that were true, which it doesn’t seem to be? It appears that most people are concerned about jobs — that is the unifying factor driving the revolutions.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 16 2011 19:35 utc | 1

excellent excellent post b.
i think you mean indignant indignient.

Posted by: annie | Feb 16 2011 20:27 utc | 2

argh, indignant instead of…

Posted by: annie | Feb 16 2011 20:28 utc | 3

It appears that most people are concerned about jobs
since the majority are poor? perhaps you are correct but the educated but largely unemployed urbanites are going to ask why? why i it their country is bereft of opportunity. in tunisia for example. it’s not as if there’s no money, it’s that they have no access to it.
i agree w/the author and b about dignity although if you make someone comfortable enough they might not care about that.

Posted by: annie | Feb 16 2011 20:35 utc | 4

more on dignity by Issa Khalaf

It is true that the socio-economic strains of rapid population growth, a bulging youthful population, unemployment, unavailable jobs, stagnant wages, and hopelessness are causes of great frustration and discontent. Poverty provides the context for regime opposition, especially among youthful segments and including Islamists. However, these broad socio-economic processes affecting unsettled politics in the region are contributory factors. Their realization will not quench, in fact heighten, the people’s need for “humanity, dignity, liberty,” as an Egyptian protestor’s sign had written on it. Ideas, values, visions, and political participation galvanize people, whose beliefs and aspirations require open political expression and representation. If Egyptians and Arabs had all the good things, these do not replace the need for freedom of thought, the sustaining impulse to unleash (brutally censored and quashed) creative energy. The more Egyptians became educated, urbanized and electronically connected, the more they, and all Arabs, despised the corrupt, unelected, authoritarian or autocratic regime(s) that rule them. Especially for youth but also for all other members of society, matters of democratic voice and expression, social justice, and identity constitute the core of restlessness among all segments, classes, and groups in Egyptian society. It is this suppression of voice, in fact, that has given rise to the few violent Islamists. This is at the heart of the Egyptian “revolution,” and the Tunisian one before it, and of the brewing disaffection everywhere in the region.

Posted by: annie | Feb 16 2011 21:22 utc | 5

re.Tunisia and Egypt /
While this thesis maybe true for Egypt,i dont see the tunisians revolting because of Ben ali’s obedience to america.there is 0 influence of the US there.(rather France,but not so much,no real strategic interest there) .

Posted by: Nabil from Morocco. | Feb 16 2011 21:58 utc | 6

Posted by: Nabil from Morocco. | Feb 16 2011 21:58 utc | 7

Part of the US’ outrage at Iran stems from Iran’s ability to exploit the illegitimacy of Arab regimes–tyrants who repress their own people to support the interests of the US and Israel. Ben Ali was America’s best friend in North Africa. By avidly supporting GWOT he also clamped down excessively at home. Mubarak was Israel’s best friend and willing partner in turning Gaza into a vast open air prison. Again the price of illegitimacy was excessive security domestically.
Now Bahrain is in the vortex. And the stakes are even higher–a big US base, lots of refining, and a repressed Shi’a minority.
Because of extreme political sensitivity to Israel, the “defense” establishment, and oil supplying tyrants, the US is caught in a trap of its own making. It cannot forswear these interests, so it can never convincingly champion democracy.
And so, the US allied tyrants will hold on as long as they can, fully back by the US. Popular rage will continue to grow. And Iran will continue to exploit the soft underbelly of US imperialism. And there is really nothing the US can do. Military adventurism in the Middle East is over. War now carries the credible risk of creating widespread unrest, toppling more tyrants, and radicalizing the populations of countries where US allied tyrants have already been expelled.
Any sensible US policy would result in a deal with Iran, shutting down overt Iranian criticism of Arab tyrants in return for US recognition of Iranian sovereignty. But the US has too much invested in demonizing Iran, so it looks like the US is just going to have to suffer a defiant Iran as well as the independent examples set by Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia.

Posted by: JohnH | Feb 17 2011 4:33 utc | 8

I guess it all depends on what the definition of “fall” is. If fall means the destabilization of the country by means of scattering their current leaders to the four winds, then I would say it is naive to conclude that this is not a strong possibility.
Also, and I’m guilty of this, as well, we often say the U.S. when what is really meant is the U.S. as representative of the “West,” in general, i.e. NATO. As the supply of oil continues to dwindle and demand increases, the stakes become precipitously higher, and as the stakes get higher and higher, the responses to threats, perceived or otherwise, escalate in direct proportion. I am convinced that Nukes will eventually be used by this quickly coalescing, loosely constructed gang of Plutocratic Oligarchs to secure the last vestiges of the “spice.” It is that valuable in every way……and that value includes more than just dollars.
We are quickly approaching that time, when quite literally, to take a line from the movie Dune, he who controls the spice, controls the world. Whatever it will take to gain control, and keep it, will be utilized, and Nukes are part of that equation.
The End Game is fast approaching. The days of proxy battles and wars are now a thing of the past. The Emperor is practically naked, and there’s almost nothing left to hide. People herald that as a positive thing, but a naked Emperor can be very dangerous, indeed, for now, in all its glory, the Emperor can finally be blunt about its true intentions, and blunt can, and will be, horribly ugly.

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Feb 17 2011 12:28 utc | 9

The US is the current centre of the European/Creole Empire, founded in the fifteenth century, and based upon the looting of the “New World.”
This centre has been around: first Spain, then Holland, France and finally Britain dominated the world through its exploitation of American resources. Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century London’s power has shifted to the US. Since 1945 the US has unquestionably been the centre of the Empire.
There was never a struggle: the capitalist class was very relieved to be able to shift its protection to the US. Britain had been behaving irrationally in many respects. The transfer was effortless and unopposed. The US Empire is not new it just has a new address, and a more modern, cruder?, more efficient?, style of rule.
In the middle east Britain’s washing its hands of Palestine, and surrender of the Palestinians to zionism’s mercy, was a significant indication of what was happening. By the time of the Suez crisis it was all over, even though there were many reactionaries in Britain who refused to believe it. As we see, in the US, it is liberals who have been unable to wrap their heads around the reality that their country is now so clearly the state engine driving the empire that denial can no longer co-exist with sanity.

Posted by: bevin | Feb 17 2011 15:50 utc | 10

I should clarify that, when I say the Empire is “based upon the looting of the New World”, I mean only, to put it very crudely, that the New World provided the capital or stake money for the Empire to conquer Asia and Africa too. For example Andean silver via Manila to China.

Posted by: bevin | Feb 17 2011 15:56 utc | 11

as noam chomsky led off the talk on modern imperialism that r’giap linked to the other day, the united states stands alone as the only nation “that was founded as an empire explicitly”

Posted by: b real | Feb 17 2011 16:01 utc | 12

& while for some time white skin privilege might have been protective of the western working class, that is self evidently not true – the massive underclass, working poor & even middle class have little quantitative difference from their brothers & sisters in the rest of the world. what they possess is only an illusion. their ‘things’ have little value & their bodies too, abandoned

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 17 2011 16:28 utc | 13

given that my hatred for u s imperialism is so profound perhaps at moments i wished victories of the movements of national liberation o be more rapid, a more patient mind would have shown me that one way or other the u s was already defeated & it was really only a question of time
i celebrate the courage of those that fought & fight u s imperialism directly in their struggle for self determination – faced with the overwhelming force pitted against them – in iraq & afghanistan as in vietnam – us power is only capable of ‘destroying the country to save it’ – so we have witnessed in repeat, ‘pacification’, ‘vietnamization’ & forms of the phoenix program which have wiped out aa great deal of the intellectual strata. what the nazis did in poland in liquidating that formation of people, u s imperialism has done in every country it had sought to control but as usual it says more about the poverty of imperial power than the shock & awe it revealed like some bloody burlesque
what is happening in the middle east is in direct co-relation to the contempt that has been expressed by the united states in its illegal & immoral wars & practices

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 17 2011 16:45 utc | 14

Hey guys.
I’ve never posted here nor did I ever post at Billmon’s old place. I did however read his posts on a daily basis.
Reading this article about how “Curveball” now publicly acknowledges his lies….
http://www.athenstalks.com/node/131373
…got me to thinking about Billmon because I seem to remember that it is from him that I first became aware of “Curveball”.
Can someone possible direct me towards some of his initial posts back in the day regarding “Curveball”?
Thanks….and sorry for the OT.
Wile E.

Posted by: Wile E. | Feb 17 2011 16:46 utc | 15

@Wile E.
Billmon posted first about “curveball” on April 03, 2004 – a bunch of quotes from the warmongers. The complete archive isn’t online. If you need something specific, please let me know.

Posted by: b | Feb 17 2011 18:07 utc | 16

“that was founded as an empire explicitly”
Really, so what? This is what is frustrating about Chomsky, as much as I admire the man. When intellectually unprepared or deranged leftists (no need to name names) listen to Chomsky are likely to have confirmed the exciting belief that the US is the seat of domination of power in late modernity so that if it were not for the US, the rest of Europe would be picking daisies out of their asses and eating aged cheeses and drinking wine.
of course, Chomsky talks a lot about global economics. The problem is it’s always connected to his criticism of the Washington consensus. That’s all necessary, but it doesn’t really go any further. I’m really not sure why. He is a structuralist linguist, but not a structuralist political thinker at all. He never critiques global capitalism qua a system of domination that often exceeds the management of individual capitalists. I think this is really a failure because it promotes the kind of stupidity on the left in which the world-historical agency of this or that ephemeral power is all that matters so that history is only a series of revolutions against dominant nationstates. If we know anything with any certainty, the structures of capitalist accumulation don’t really care about nationstates.
If the empire visas was actually true, we will be able to say that China is playing a great capitalist global game in order to bury the US and Europe. But this is incredibly stupid. China plays the game because that’s how China accumulates capital. China needs Europe and America, because China is every bit as much determined by the structures of capitalist accumulation as any other country in the past 150 years.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 17 2011 18:53 utc | 17

i wish we were faced by slothrop’s naiveté or the work of an unfinished mind but in fact , as i have stated, slothrop has pursued a line, his own form of ‘marxis’ perhaps that is completely parallel to the lines pursued & elaborated at the american enterprise institute – go to there ‘thinkers’ & you will note they are little different to what slothrop proposes as a thesis – which in this case is just another word for intellectual laziness
u s imperialism is the single threat to humanity in every possible way – to ignore that reality is in its own way, a form of complicity
you will note that in his discourse ‘capital accumulation’ has no political context, none at all – it is in the end claptrap & little else – nice for the sophomores but of little use to anyone else

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 17 2011 19:15 utc | 18

chomsky has made it very clear throughout the years that he focuses his critique on that which he is most directly affected by and able to elicit change upon – the foreign policies of the united states. there should be no mystery there as to why he doesn’t pursue more rigorously the abstract and, essentially meaningless, theories or critiques of some entity or entities that exist outside of national borders, laws or accountability. we’ve had a few rows over these more fallacious depictions of transnational capitalism before. in the end, these companies are rooted in very real physical territories and rely on those for all things staffing, resources, legal & regulatory, etc.. it is on the ground nearest to you where real work can be done.

Posted by: b real | Feb 17 2011 19:33 utc | 19

over the years b real i think we have expended a great deal of effort in making clear in ever possible way – the routes, contingencies & targets of empire but i think slothrop is pointedly deaf on this question
what grated in his analysis years ago – was the slaughter of the other, no matter what continent – was of no concern. their absence in his texts are telling, horrifyingly telling

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 17 2011 19:43 utc | 20

@ b….who said “Billmon posted first about “curveball” on April 03, 2004 – a bunch of quotes from the warmongers. The complete archive isn’t online. If you need something specific, please let me know.”
Yes, I seem to remember a list of quotes attributable to a host of usual suspects from the…ahem….”Cheney Administration” that were based on bad “Curveball” info but yet paraded out as truths. You have that? Or anything else that might be particularly interesting regarding this matter? How might I be able to get it.
Thanks.
Wile E.

Posted by: Wile E. | Feb 17 2011 20:03 utc | 21

@Wile E. – If you want just one or two Billmon postings I can email them to you. My email address in on the “About” page. Otherwise check here.

Posted by: b | Feb 17 2011 20:18 utc | 22

the Empire thesis doesn’t explain the financial crisis. The financial crisis occurred as primarily a result of inflating the price of assets, primarily mortgage values. The crisis is global implicating Deutsche Bank, the American and British banking systems, Swiss banking, etc. And whole domestic economies like Greece, Ireland, Iceland, were subsequently required to pay the price of the fraudulent distribution of risk by these investment banks.
The crisis has very little to do with foreign-policy issues.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 17 2011 20:23 utc | 23

or also consider the local motivations of the recent revolutions. The revolution in Tunisia was largely economic, as was the revolution in Egypt.
This is important to keep in mind because Eurocentric leftists , as usual, will condescend the importance of the causes of these revolutions in order to make a cheap point that the revolutions were just anti-American, anti-empire. It’s good to see that people like Roy in France, Samir Amin, and others are correcting these false impressions.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 17 2011 20:31 utc | 24

Thanks also to rmemberinggiap for the link to a Google video of Manufacturing Consent, which I had never seen before.
A Canadian production, rich in archive footage and quite humorous as well. Chomsky explains his background in a Jewish intellectual family in the 30s, and his youth working for a Zionist group. His revolutionary theory of innate language ability and structure shared by all human beings, his clear and articulate arguments about the invisible coercion by the media in support of empire and the corporations who run it.
But my favorite clip is of a youngish William F. Buckley interviewing Noam Chomsky on television, they are discussing Vietnam and other US war crimes, as Chomsky calls them, and Chomsky’s own mixed feelings about his former lack of conviction.
Chomsky goes on to say something to the effect that he sometimes loses his temper but probably won’t during the current interview, and Buckley smiles intensely back and mutters, “Maybe not tonight … ah, because if you would I’d smash you in your Goddamn face.”
Here’s a link to that 1969 interview on Buckley’s program Firing Line. The quote above is at 8:30.
Chomsky ignores this and continues his statement. Quite amazing live elevision!

Posted by: jonku | Feb 17 2011 20:44 utc | 25

not at all strange the s. uses ‘financial crisis’ (a term that sits happily at either aei or wsj) instead of what it really is a depression, a collapse of capital – perhaps he has not read any of marx’s economic work for all his bluffing, or for that matter even economists of a more liberal hue
this collapse in his own words has little to do with “foreign-policy issues. what extraordinary nonsense – now we have economics which transcends bot ideology & politics. i cannot even be bothered to rebut such nonsense
everything appears context-less whether it is the illegal invasion of sovereign countries, the destabilization of others or the revolutionary impulses of people. alll without context, none of which have anything to do with u s imperialism in the least
its a kind of sgt schultz form of thinking “i dont know nothing, i don’t know aanything”
really

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 17 2011 20:51 utc | 26

I’ll add one more crisis that seems to me poorly explained by the empire thesis. A number of writers including Chomsky and Escobar explain at great length the Asian energy security grid and ‘pipelinestan.’ the idea here is that geopolitical strategic regions will cooperate over the supply & consumption of mostly oil and natural gas.
These ideas really depend on one outcome of the global economic configuration, namely, economic delinking/decoupling. Long story short, it doesn’t appear that regional autochthony is likely given the obstacles to the compound growth of such gargantuan amounts of idle capital. Put another way, the symbiosis of regional economies by the global capitalist system aching for investment opportunities will accommodate the fungibility of energy resources globally indefinitely.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 18 2011 3:27 utc | 27

b’s list,
plus Turkey, “Palestine” and Israel
Note that all the countries are ‘partial’ or as NYT would put it ‘flawed’, or ‘true’ democracies, except Syria, anti-Isr.
plus Iraq, Afgh. under occupation.

Posted by: Noirette | Feb 18 2011 7:58 utc | 28

I guess it is about hegemony, really,
The US has lost its soft power: the attraction it had as a “free” country, supposedly and in reality full of opportunities. Opportunities suddenly lie elsewhere. And the “war on terror” killed freedom and human rights.
The US has lost its hard power being overstreched and bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US has lost internal cohesion, having outsourced and privatised vital services like secret service, military …, education, health, public service.
The US has lost financial power, it is probably half owned by the Chinese now … When it tries to get out of that debt by printing money it accelerates the loss of world wide financial power.
All that means that the empire has had to rely more and more on corrupt people, internally and externally, as they are the only ones willing to act against the interest of their people or core groups.
I guess what is happening in the Middle East now is very much carried by middle class disgust with disfunctionality and sell out. Corruption is bad for business.
The fun part of it is that the Empire internally has to cater for that same middle class, which results in hilarious double speak in election times.

Posted by: somebody | Feb 18 2011 9:58 utc | 29

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