June was a busy month for two of Washington’s real “axis of evil.”
Venezuela’s Chavez completed his nationalization of oil and Iran’s Ahmadinejad stemmed a Western-backed color revolution, leaving both in place. What drives US foreign policy? Is it primarily the domestic economy, as it logically
should be, or, as many argue, the powerful Israel lobby, or as others argue, the need to secure energy sources? Of course, the answer is all three, in varying degrees depending on the geopolitical importance of the country in question. And woe to any country that threatens any of the above.
Russia is perhaps a special case, as US politics was dependent for so long on the anti-communist Cold War that ideologues found it impossible to dispense with this useful bugaboo even after the collapse of communism. But it was not only Sovietologists like Condoleezza Rice that perversely prospered from this obsession, but the US domestic economy itself, which was transformed into what is best described as the military-industrial complex (MIC). It would take very little to placate today’s Russia — pull in NATO’s horns and stop pandering to the Russophobes in Eastern Europe — but that would hurt the MIC and would hamper the US plans for empire and oil. So it remains an enemy of choice, though not part of the Axis of Evil. This crude characterization by Bush/Cheney lumped North Korea, Iraq and Iran together as the worst of the worst. With the US invasion of Iraq, the current score is one down, two to go. But North Korea is a red herring. It is merely a very useful Cold War foil, beloved of the MIC, justifying its many useless, lethal weapons programs. A popular whipping boy, a bit of innocent ideological entertainment.
Having knocked out Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and ignoring Korea, we are left with Iran. But Bush could easily have added Venezuela to his list, as it is these two countries that pose the greatest real threat to the US empire. Both have charismatic leaders who not openly denounce US and Israeli empire but do something about it. And both have large, nationalized oil sectors. Chavez’s successful defiance of the US has directly inspired Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to elect socialist leaders and given Cuba a new lease on life. Ahmadinejad has defied the many Israel-imposed bans on supporting the Palestinian resistance and even publicly questioned the legitimacy of Israel itself. These bold and principled men are thereby pariahs, albeit useful ones for the MIC, along with their Cold War ghost Kim Jong Il. That is the catch. While the empire officially frets, the US military-based economy thrives on its official enemies. It would collapse without them. This is the supreme irony to be noted by observers of what can only be described as the bizarre and contradictory world of US foreign policy.
Venezuela and Iran are indeed threats to the US empire. President Hugo Chavez not only thoroughly nationalized the oil sector after the crippling strike led by oil executives in 2002-03, but proceeded to use the revenues to transform his country, putting it on the albeit bumpy road to socialism — subsidized basic goods, mass literacy and free health care. He has even been providing poor Americans with discount gas. “The oil belongs to all Venezuelans,” Chavez emphasized recently to reporters last month in Argentina, after the government announced it was taking over oil service companies along with US-owned gas compression units, adding to the heavy oil projects Venezuela took over in 2007. Natural gas looks like it will be next. The point of this is to “regain full petroleum sovereignty,” that is, full political sovereignty. No more attempted color revolutions for Venezuela.
What brings us to Iran. When Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, with the backing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he tried to wrest control of key ministries, especially oil, and the government’s National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) from the Rafsanjani/Mousavi capitalist elite, replacing officials with his own choices — primarily from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It was not till 2007 that he was able to install his candidate for oil minister, head of the NIOC Gholamhossein Nozari. Like Chavez, he proceeded to use state oil revenues to consolidate his base among the poor, something which the so-called reformists under his predecessor Mohammad Khatami or earlier nonreformists under Rafsanjani/Mousavi were not noted for.
While Rafsanjani was parliamentary speaker with Mousavi his prime minister in the 1980s, younger Iranians, including Ahmadinejad, were fighting in the IRGC (many martyring themselves) in the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Rafsanjani became Iran’s first president in 1989 and added to his family’s vast fortune, much of it connected with oil, during his privatization program when he opened the oil industry to private Iranian contractors. This continued under the “reformist” Khatami, who took over the presidency in 1997.
Ahmadinejad’s ascendancy in 2005 on a platform to fight and eliminate the “oil mafia,” confirmed the IRGC as the underlying force confronting Rafsanjani and the reformists. Throughout the 2009 electoral campaign, Ahmadinejad attacked his opponents as leaders of the corrupt elite, now trying to claw back control.
The elite had had enough, and the election ruckus last month was their last stand against the clearly populist, essentially leftist Ahmadinejad. Some call Ahmadinejad’s decisive win a coup d’état by the IRGC, but the recent demonstrations in Tehran look eerily similar to those in Caracas in 2002-03 when Venezuelan society was paralyzed by its economic elite, mobilizing its own Gucci crowd, strongly backed by the US, protesting a populist president’s determination to use oil revenues to help the common people. Chavez risked his life in the process, but his careful planning foiled the plotters and he survived to carry out his agenda. Whether Ahmadinejad can do the same, and to what extent the IRGC is a vehicle for promoting social welfare is a drama which is only now unfolding.
Both the Venezuelan and Iranian thorns have incensed Washington for daring to use their oil revenues to redistribute wealth in their societies and then organize resistance to US hegemony in their respective neighborhoods. They are examples, which continue to inspire and which pose a threat to US imperial policy, both international and domestic. For what better way to solve all the ills of US society — lack of secure health care, poverty, violence — than dismantling the MIC and initiating a foreign policy based on peace rather than war?
The big difference between these two thorns, of course, is Islam and Iran’s interference with the US-Israeli agenda. Now that the oil companies have resigned themselves to Venezuela’s new assertiveness, they and their government spokesmen are not so concerned with trying to overthrow Chavez. However, the extra weight of the Israel lobby in Washington makes sure that another Iranian revolution remains at the top of the list of Obama’s things-to-do.
Another curious difference is that US attempts to turn Venezuela’s neighbors against it backfired, as they came to Chavez’s defense and followed his example, while similar efforts to conspire against Iran have had considerable success.
The schism in both Venezuelan and Iranian societies is very real and is being taken advantage of by the US and friends, who are doing their “best” to engineer a collapse of the populist governments to make room for more US- friendly color revolutions. But there is too much Yankee baggage for this to work anymore. It is time for a color revolution at home.
