The imperialist establishment, through the state and various
capitalist entities, is working on all fronts to minimize the
dissemination, as well as the effectiveness, of the Wikileaks
revelations. The most effective ruling-class tool for damage control is
the corporate media – the mouthpiece of the establishment. The media
selectively highlight leaked documents and insert their own spin,
reflecting the class interests they represent.
A clear example of this was provided when the New York Times, the
Washington Post and other major media outlets put out the line that,
based on Wikileaks documents, Arab leaders have been urging the United
States to launch a massive military attack on Iran. This spin was based
on a comment reported in a cable by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah,
reportedly asking the United States to “cut off the head of the snake,”
referring to Iran.
The day after this story was disseminated,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on the offensive,
claiming that Arab states shared Israel’s view on Iran: “More and more
states, governments and leaders in the Middle East and the wider region
and the world believe this (Iran) is the fundamental threat.”
(Washington Post, Nov. 30)
As documented thoroughly by several
articles, including one by Gareth Porter and Jim Lobe posted on
Counterpunch, many of the already leaked documents contradict the notion
that Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states on the Persian/Arabian Gulf,
are urging a U.S. attack on Iran. Far from cheering for the United
States to attack, these states are quite worried about this possibility,
and this has been widely known for a long time. As much as U.S. client
states on the Gulf would like the Islamic Republic to be toppled, they
are worried about the capability of Iran to retaliate against them.
But
aside from the sentiments of the regimes, an important factor not often
talked about in Western media is the people of these U.S. client
states: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman and others. These regimes are immensely
unpopular among their people, who resent their rulers for being U.S.
puppets and admire the Iranian regime for standing up to the United
States and Israel. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example,
is seen as a hero in much of the Arab world, as was evident when
millions of people greeted him when he visited Lebanon in October 2010.
So what a possible U.S./Israeli attack on Iran might do to the stability
of these potentially unstable regimes is of serious concern, as nobody
can predict how the Arab masses might react to yet another unprovoked
U.S. aggression in the Middle East.
As for why King Abdullah and
other clients at times make such bellicose statements, which run counter
to the general policies and sentiments of their states, Thomas Lippman,
Middle East Institute scholar explains: The Saudis were “telling the
Americans what they wanted to hear. … They wanted to be assured that
they would be under the protection of the U.S.”
Wikileaks reveals State Department cable on the Green opposition
One
of the interesting leaked documents is a January 2010 cable by a State
Department analyst from the U.S. Consulate in Dubai assessing the
opposition Green Movement in Iran. Following the 2009 elections and the
large protests against the re-election of Ahmadinejad, the Western
media’s narrative was that the elections had been stolen and that the
“people of Iran” were uniformly opposed to the regime. At the time, the
Party for Socialism and Liberation wrote that the Green Movement was a
right-wing political force attempting a color revolution, supported by
imperialist forces (click here).
Rather
than representing all or the majority of the people, the Green Movement
was primarily composed of, and represented, the privileged sectors of
society while the majority of working-class people actually supported
Ahmadinejad.
Voice of America, the official U.S. State Department
channel, broadcast into Iran on satellite TV 24/7, has played a key
organizing role for the Green Movement. VoA also has effectively put out
a grossly exaggerated evaluation of the Green Movement as representing
all the people and being on the verge of overthrowing the Islamic
Republic.
But the State Department’s own internal analysis,
released by Wikileaks, reflects a realistic assessment of the
capabilities of the Green Movement and its primary social base. “Outside
of the active GPO core group there is a larger, relatively passive
group, whose support now mostly manifests in the anonymous shouts of
‘God is Great’ from night-time North Tehran rooftops.”
Northern
Tehran is where the most privileged sectors of Iranian society live. The
Green Movement “has yet to adopt any sort of an economic agenda or set
of grievances as part of a core opposition message, and perhaps the
absence of one partially underscores the relative ‘bourgeois’ leanings
of the GPO.” Of course, it is these “bourgeois leanings” that have
prompted the United States and other imperialist states to throw their
full weight behind the Green Movement.
Only a few days after the
June 2009 elections, when not just imperialist powers but a majority of
progressive and “left” forces in the United States had enthusiastically
signed up to support the Green Movement, the PSL wrote: “the central
political thrust of the protests has a rightward trajectory, in regard
to both domestic and international issues.” http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12383&news_iv_ctrl=1261.
The Wikileaks cable confirms that this was also the analysis of the
imperialist establishment, which would not have supported and helped
organize a genuine revolutionary movement.
Understanding the
nature of imperialism, the goals it pursues and the methods it utilizes
to achieve those goals is the pre-requisite to understanding today’s
world. Having access to classified documents is not a pre-requisite to a
revolutionary analysis, on which revolutionary activism should be
based. When classified documents are leaked, however, analyses based on
the false notion that U.S. foreign policy is motivated by benign
intentions—democracy, human rights, protecting the world from weapons,
and so on—have their very foundation shaken. Hence, false consciousness
can be rapidly replaced by true consciousness, which lays the basis for
struggle here and internationally. To that end, the Wikileaks documents
are likely to contribute to more struggles against the imperialist
system—the enemy of humanity.
