Letter Against US Imperialism
PDF-Version: Letter Against US Imperialism
As anti-imperialist activists, scholars, artists and lawyers located in the United States, we stand in solidarity with the peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia in their calls to end imperialism, sectarianism and neoliberalism, and we view the recent protests in Iran within this broader international context of resistance.
The global turn to the right has led to the increasing liberalization of the international economy and worsening political repression in countries throughout the world. From Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Haiti to Guinea, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, people have put their lives on the line to confront the twin evils of monopoly capital and U.S. imperial domination, manifesting in different forms including coup governments, war mongering, and sanctions regimes.
As part of the current U.S. imperial project, President Trump has imposed the most severe sanctions regime in world history on Iran, seeking to choke the economy of the Islamic Republic out of existence. But it is the people of Iran who suffer. They no longer have proper access to medical supplies, industrial equipment and basic food staples. The air quality has hit an all-time low, resulting in high levels of illness, and inflation is worse than it has ever been.
In 2018, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) developed a restructuring plan to address the economic shortfalls created by the sanctions regime. In this plan, the IMF recommended “mobilizing tax revenue, removing exemptions, reducing fuel subsidies, and reforming the pension system”, alongside a “medium-term debt management strategy.”1 The IMF claimed these policies should be pursued “despite the challenging domestic and geopolitical environment” that the nation faces, with the overall objective of supporting Iran as it “transition[s] to a market-based monetary policy framework.”2
Just weeks ago, the Islamic Republic succumbed to one of the most severe proposals in the IMF plan, announcing a more than 100 percent increase in the cost of fuel on the first 60 liters purchased, and a 300 percent increase on anything above 60 liters. This reduction in subsidies has led to massive protests throughout the country because Iranians recognize that it would lead to a dramatic and sudden decline in their standard of living.
In essence, the United States’ imperial sanctions regime has opened the space for neoliberal economic institutions such as the IMF to facilitate the ravaging of the Iranian economy.
This project is not without its Iranian native informants and cheerleaders, who serve as functionaries of U.S. imperialism. These functionaries seek regime change no matter the cost, even though Iran has only recently stabilized after the horrors of the Iran-Iraq War. If Iran loses its sovereignty and descends into civil war like its immediate neighbors Iraq and Afghanistan, or proxy war like Syria and Libya, it is worth the cost because these functionaries stand to profit and benefit from war, reconstruction, and the exploitation of the nation’s resources.
Such functionaries are supported in their cause by Iranian native informants, so-called intellectuals who opportunistically appropriate the protests under the guise of supporting human rights and liberal democracy, when in fact what they seek is a return to neocolonial governance in the form of a U.S.-backed regime, not unlike that of the deposed monarchy, or a regime led by the National Council of Iran, a front organization for the U.S.-backed fringe group Mojaheddin-e Khalq, also trained by the CIA to execute the demands of the U.S.
We believe that if the Islamic Republic falls under the weight of the U.S. sanctions regime or as a result of Israeli and American aggression, not only will the Iranian nation suffer catastrophic losses, but whatever form of government that follows will be far more violent and destructive, considering all the external pressures on Iran.
The people of Iran are resisting the economic, political and militaristic violence imposed on them both by international and domestic elites. The majority of the Iranian people do not seek regime change because they have already lived through two monumental events that destabilized their lives – the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq War that lasted from 1980 until 1988. The elder generations can still recount the horrors that followed the toppling of Prime Minister Mossadegh during the U.S. and British-backed coup of 1953.
Iranians seek economic and political stability, and above all, they seek to maintain their national and individual dignity. We stand by them and their calls for domestic reform, and as people in the United States, we demand the end of the sanctions regime and U.S. and Israeli interference in the lives of the Iranian people.
1 International Monetary Fund Country Reports, Islamic Republic of Iran, p. 11. 2 Id. at 3.
Hamid Dabashi
Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature
Columbia University
Nasrin Rahimieh
Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities
Professor of Comparative Literature
Director of Humanities Core Program
University of California Irvine
Angela Y. Davis
Distinguished Professor Emerita
History of Consciousness, Humanities Division, Feminist Studies
University of California, Santa Cruz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Professor Emerita
Ethnic Studies
California State University, Hayward
Robin D. G. Kelley
Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair
History
University of California, Los Angeles
Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi
Professor and Director
Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies
San Francisco State University
Moustafa Bayoumi
Professor
Brooklyn College
City University of New York
Sunaina Maira
Professor
Asian American Studies
University of California, Davis
Asad Abukhalil
Professor
Political Science
California State University, Stanislaus
Bill Mullen
Professor
American Studies
Purdue University
Member, Organizing Collective
U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
Alex Lubin
Professor
African American Studies
Penn State University
Joshua Clover
Professor
University of California Davis
University of Copenhagen
Nada Elia
Professor
Arab American Studies
Western Washington University
Elliott Colla
Associate Professor
Arabic and Islamic Studies
Georgetown University
Baki Tezcan
Associate Professor
History
University of California, Davis
Junaid Rana
Associate Professor
Department of Asian American Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Devra A Weber
Professor Emerita
History
University of California, Riverside
Flagg Miller
Professor
Religious Studies
University of California, Davis
Immanuel Ness
Professor and Interim Department Chair
Political Science
Brooklyn College
City University of New York
Lennox S. Hinds
Professor Emeritus
Program in Criminal Justice
Rutgers University
Marjorie Cohn
Professor Emerita
Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Maryam Kashani
Assistant Professor
Gender & Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lead Coordinator, Believers Bail Out
Nick Estes
Assistant Professor
American Studies
University of New Mexico
Josh Stacher
Assistant Professor
Political Science
Kent State University
Suzanne Adely
National Lawyers Guild
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
Ujju Aggarwal
The New School
Mara Ahmed
Adjunct Professor
St John Fisher College
Max Ajl Jadaliyya
Kali Akuno
Audrey Bomse
National Lawyers Guild
Robert Buzzanco
Professor of History
University of Houston
William Camacaro
Venezuelan Activist
New York City
Joe Catron
Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat
Berna Ellorin
International League of People’s Struggle
Yoshie Furuhashi
Community Organizing Center
Greg Grandin
Yale
Doug Henwood
Writer/broadcaster
Brooklyn, NY USA
Tim Horras
Co-Founder
Philly Socialists
Julia Kassem
USPCN-Detroit
Writer
Graduate Student
Charlotte Kates
Samidoun
Rania Khalek
Journalist
Lucas Koerner
Venezuela Analysis
Brian Mier
Writer
Jeanne Mirer
President
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
Corinna Mullin
Adjunct Professor
John Jay College and the New School
Ben Norton
Journalist
Sina Rahmani
Host
The East is a Podcast
Devyn Springer
Walter Rodney Foundation
Journalist, Groundings Podcast
Jay Watts
Coordinator
Toronto Association for Peace & Solidarity
Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt
Associate Professor of History
California State University Stanislaus
Mansoor Shah
Rania Masri
Delshad Emami
M. Jahi Chappell
Food First
Sanyika Bryant
Owen R. Broadhurst
Activist
Marcy Newman
Independent Scholar
Goudarz Eghtedari
Paul Gottinger
Journalist
Amani Barakat
Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Assem Debian
Undergraduate Economics enthusiast
Mahmud Ahmad
Greg Shupak
Author and Lecturer at the University of Guelph-Humber
Byron Hunter
Doug Norberg
Ben Mable
Verso Books
Ali Abutalebi
Executive Director
Mazmoon Books
Huseyin Yilmaz
Associate Professor
Department of History and Art History
George Mason University
Hadje C. Sadje
Foundation Academy of Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Korkut Vata
Entrepreneur
Hadraj Saïd
Jeb Sprague
Research Associate
University of California, Riverside
Robert D. Weide
Assistant Professor
California State University, Los Angeles
Gary W. Potter
Associate Dean and Professor
College of Justice and Safety
EKU
William I. Robinson
Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara
Matteo Capasso
Research Associate
European University Institute
Maryam Rahmani
Iranian Women’s Rights Activist
ORGANIZATIONAL SIGNATORIES
National Lawyers Guild (NLG)
Arab Resource Organizing Center (AROC)
BAYAN – USA
Catalyst Project
Ecumenical Peace Institute/Clergy and Laity Concerned
Haiti Action Committee
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Resistance Now
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORTERS
Asociación Americana de Juristas (AAJ)
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
National Union of People’s Lawyers
Philippines
Vijay Prashad
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Khaled Barakat
Palestinian Writer
Ray Bush
Leeds University
Liliana Cordova Kaczerginski
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
Fatima Demirer
Lawyer, Izmir/Turkey
Osamu Niikura
Professor Emerita
Aoyama Gakuin Japan University
Former Secretary General and Current Board Member
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
Vice President, Japanese Lawyers for International Solidarity Association (JALISA)
Samah Idriss
Writer
Ali Kadri
Economist
London School of Economics
Fabio Marchelli
Italy
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
Boaventura Monjane
Centre for Social Studies
University of Coimbra, Portugal
Jana Yasmin Nakhal
Lebanese Communist Party
Vanessa Ramos
President
Asociación Americana de Juristas (AAJ)
Micol Savia
Italy
Secretary General Elect
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
Ajit Singh
Lawyer, Graduate Student
Paris Yeros
Professor
International Economics
Federal University of ABC, Brazil
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As of December 6, 2019
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Amir Mortasawi (alias Afsane Bahar) (امیر مرتضوی (افسانه بهار 