John, this exchange began when I questioned why you had acknowledged that Iran was assisting the Assad regime in “its resistance to insurrectionary and interventionist forces” without criticizing that support for Assad. Now, in response to my prodding, you offer an explanation, arguing in effect that the insurrectionary anti-Assad popular movements are definitively defeated and that any movements that remain are “different.” In support, you reference simply a study that is critical of the popular councils formed at the outset of the popular uprising, and especially of their leaderships.

True, the Syrian popular opposition movements have been terribly weakened by the regime’s brutal assault — reinforced and facilitated by, among other powers, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The article you reference makes no argument in defense of Iran’s intervention, still less of Assad.

It does, however, exaggerate when it claims that the councils’ leadership was “nothing but a pawn for the Gulf States and Turkey.” I could cite you any number of first-hand accounts that say otherwise. They “begged for a western intervention”? Most were seeking access to weapons (e.g. anti-aircraft rockets) that would help them defend against the fighter-jet terror bombing and barrel bombs that were destroying their entire communities. It has been amply documented that they were largely denied such access and the results were visible in the physical destruction of defenseless East Aleppo, more recently Ghouta, and many other cities and towns.

Here is a recent article by a very well-informed source that presents a much different account of what has happened, and the forces involved, in the Syrian civil war: http://tinyurl.com/y7ubs2lk. The author, Michael Karadjis, argues that “a powerful civil side to the revolution continues to exist, a Free Syrian Army also continues to exist alongside better-known Islamist brigades, and even the most odious of the Islamist brigades has been unable to completely dominate over the organs of the revolution, including the democratic local councils.”

You acknowledge that your January article “does not condemn Iran’s support of the Syrian government….” Yet you say “this question must be assessed within the broader context of the ongoing imperialist wars in the region….” But how does Iran’s support of Assad contribute to an anti-imperialist stance — unless you are inferring that such a stance must include defense of the Assad regime?

Iran’s intervention to shore up Assad (which was not inconsistent with US and other imperialist objectives in the war) undermines any defense it may offer to imperialist threats against Iran. And it has alienated progressive forces worldwide.

The popular uprising in Iran produced demands that the regime stop sending troops to Syria. In your January article you said their demands instead should have been “fused with resistance to imperialist attacks on Iran and the entire region.” I see no inconsistency between the demand for Iranian withdrawal from Syria and opposition to imperialist attacks on the region. On the contrary. The defense of Assad is hardly opposition to imperialism.

You call your approach “analytic” as opposed to “one of unconditional support.” But by arguing that any position on Iran’s role is subordinate to “the urgent danger of armed attack on the country” from the U.S., Canada, EU and their local satellites — irrespective of just how urgent that danger really is — your approach, it seems to me, smacks of the selective solidarity that is unfortunately all too common among a certain left today. Here is an article on this topic that your readers might find relevant: http://salvage.zone/online-exclusive/syria-and-the-problem-of-left-solidarity/.

You refer to the “class and popular roots” of the 2011 uprising against Assad, a point on which we seem to agree, and ask if that does not imply a need to condemn Iran’s present role in supporting the Assad regime. In my view, the character of the anti-Assad movements today is different from that at the outset. This is widely acknowledged including by those sympathetic to the anti-Assad forces; see for example https://bit.ly/2GWIiZm.

You ask why my recent article, “Protests in Iran, the International dimension” (https://bit.ly/2BtWyEu) does not condemn Iran’s support of the Syrian government against insurgency and hostile intervention. I believe that this question must be assessed within the broader context of the ongoing imperialist wars in the region; the hostile imperialist campaign against Iran; and the urgent danger of armed attack on the country, propelled by an alliance of the U.S., Canada, the European Union, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and local satellites. That is the point that my article was trying to make.

You also criticize me for failing to recognize the progressive character of the recent anti-regime protests in Iran. Actually, my article suggested only that imperialist hostility was an issue in Iran’s internal politics and that progressive opposition forces should defend Iran’s sovereignty against imperialism. Such a stand does not imply support for the regime or its foreign policy. But it does suggest that our approach to protest actions in Iran (and elsewhere) should be analytic rather than one of unconditional support.

The need for such an analytic approach is evident in the articles supporting the protests that were reviewed in my article. Writers of these articles said that there was a very real danger of rightist forces taking over the protest movement. They made suggestions on how to avert that outcome. What I added was the suggestion that anti-imperialism would necessarily be part of such a progressive program. I truly do not see how there can be any disagreement among socialists on this point.

“Syria’s capitalist rulers redoubled the effects of drought by neo-liberal measures to seize land and resources from poor farmers, Malm states. The ensuing social crisis and uprising was rooted in the combination of social stress and hunger with the inequities of the regime.”

Yes, indeed. So you acknowledge the class and popular roots of the anti-Assad uprising in Syria. Good. Could this modify your previous defense of the Iranian regime’s role in Syria? In “Protests in Iran: The international dimension,” published on this blog on January 19, 2018, you defended that regime:

“Iran gives assistance to the internationally recognized government [sic] of Syria in its resistance to insurrectionary [sic] and interventionist forces.”

True, you added a caveat: “This deserves discussion.” But without more.

Speaking of Iran, consider how the same climate change effects that helped to spark the Syrian insurrectionary uprising also played a major role in the recent mass demonstrations in that country – a popular anti-regime protest, the progressive nature of which you seemed to doubt in your January article.

Warming, Water Crisis, Then Unrest: How Iran Fits an Alarming Pattern
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/climate/water-iran.html