CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Forty-seven years ago, after a millennium of monarchical rule, Iran reinvented its political system. The Islamic Republic was birthed by the Revolution of 1979; considered one of the most consequential historical events of modern times.

The Iranian Revolution profoundly altered the geopolitical landscape of West Asia. By removing the Shah, Iranians severed one pillar of U.S. regional hegemony.  In addition, the Revolution transformed Iran from a close ally of Israel into one of its primary adversaries.  It also shifted the Palestinian cause from a largely secular national liberation struggle against settler-colonialism into a more Islamist-oriented resistance; an Islamic and political imperative.  The liberation of al-Quds (Jerusalem) became a central pillar of the government’s anti-imperialist Islamic identity.

In August 1979, Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, initiated Al-Quds Day to solidify Palestine as a unifying principle.  The international day, held annually, is commemorated on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan. It features large rallies intended to express solidarity with Palestinians, and to oppose Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and all of Palestine.  It has since served as a symbol of resistance.

In addition, to counter US and Israeli hegemony, Iran established a network of allies that has linked Palestinian freedom to a regional strategy. Tehran has never wavered in providing material support (estimated in the billions) to Palestinian resistance groups; support that has enabled them to continue their struggle for liberation and self-determination.

For the past 47 years, Iran, a non-Arab country, has maintained its commitment to Palestine as a core pillar of its anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist foreign policy.  No Arab country or any Muslim nation can say the same.  For that, Iran has been terrorized economically and militarily by Israel, the U.S. and its Western allies, and punished for a nuclear weapons program that does not exist.

Revolutionary Iran has been central in making Palestine a litmus test for freedom and justice in West Asia and beyond.  In the words of Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister: “It [Palestine] is the strategic and moral compass of our region.  It is a test of whether international law has meaning, whether human rights have universal value and whether global institutions exist to protect the weak or merely to rationalize the power of the strong.”

For its refusal to assent to injustice and to yield its national sovereignty, the United States, since the 1950s, has inflicted systematic suffering on Iran.  For rejecting its dictates, Washington has adopted policies and measures that include:

overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected government in........

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