Given the continued anti-Saddam rhetoric from US and British leaders it is easy to see the current threats against Iran as a new departure.

Yet, in many ways, it was the war against Iraq that obscured a central aspect of US policy since 1979 – hostility to the Iranian revolution. Geoff Ryan reports.

Continued resistance to US and British attempts to impose their rule on Iraq has brought Tehran once more into the sights of imperialism.

The victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential elections in Iran was a blow for the western powers. For the western media Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, their favoured candidate, was a moderate reformer – forgetting that less than 10 years previously the US had (such delicious irony) denounced him for trying to develop chemical weapons!

Ahmadinejad, mayor of Tehran, was given no chance by those who assumed most Iranians would embrace Rafsanjani. Their own prejudices meant they were totally out of step with developments in Iran.

For many Iranians former president Rafsanjani was not seen as the reformer portrayed by the west but was identified with corruption and brutality and the dominance of the clerical and bazaar merchant elite.

While vast numbers lived in appalling poverty Rafsanjani was able to lavish huge sums of money on his election campaign. He was tied to foreign investors and privatisation.

Ahmadinejad, by contrast, was seen as ‘clean’. He came from a working class background and had fought as a soldier in the war against Iraq. His election programme demanded ‘put the oil money on the table of the poor’, while his modest personal lifestyle and donation of much of his salary to the poor, won him support amongst the Iranian dispossessed.

Of course a defeat for imperialism is not necessarily a victory for the working class. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales. He remains entirely committed to the dominant role of clerics in Iranian society and is well known for his viciously anti-Semitic outbursts and holocaust denial.

Of course Ahmadinejad may well undertake concrete measures that improve the daily life of working class people. But any attempts to deal with the housing, social and unemployment crises will meet with resistance from the politically and socially conservative centres of power with which the presidency has to compete for dominance in Iranian politics. His attempt to clean up the notoriously corrupt Oil Ministry has already been blocked by Rafsanjani’s supporters in the mosques and bazaars.

In a sense Ahmadinejad remains useful for the west and vice versa. His rhetoric allows Bush and Blair to portray him as a crazed demagogue who needs to be replaced, thereby justifying western military policy. In return, denunciations from Downing Street and the White House increase Ahmadinejad’s credibility in Iran.

But Ahmadinejad also represents a trend that is taking place throughout the Middle East. He is part of the same process that has brought Hamas to office in Palestine and includes Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq and, to a certain extent, Hizbollah in Lebanon.

All these forces have grown by organising among the urban poor, trying to meet the basic material needs of people as far as possible and generally adopting very modest, even austere, life styles. They provide a clear contrast to the wealthy, frequently corrupt figures favoured by western leaders.

Ahmadinejad and the other forces all speak in the name of Islam and this has proved a powerful rallying point. It would be very foolish to dismiss the role of religion in building their support but it would be equally foolish to ignore the very real work they have done in the slums of the region to improve the material lives of the poor, work which ultimately has allowed them to consolidate and increase their influence among the urban poor.

Charitable concern for the plight of the dispossessed is perfectly compatible with Islam. Indeed Islam demands such charity from its adherents. However, to go beyond alleviating suffering requires a challenge to the structure of society, at both national and international levels.

Ahmadinejad, Hamas and the others have not shown an ability to go beyond radical Islam and develop a programme to challenge international capitalism. They risk ending up in the same mire of corruption and brutality as Rafsanjani, Fatah, Talabani and co. Launching repressive campaigns around social or moral issues is a more likely choice than developing an alternative to global capitalism.

And just as, in a certain sense, the US and Ahmadinejad government need each other to justify themselves, this is true of the other movements – in particular the relationship between the Israeli government and Hamas.

Nevertheless all these movements have been subjected to vitriolic attacks by western governments and media. Their fear that radical developments in one state may affect others is certainly real. Ties between Iran and Hizbollah are long standing but new developments are taking place. Ahmadinejad’s election has already had an impact in parts of southern Iraq where Shia authorities are refusing to cooperate with the British occupying forces and pro-Iranian sentiments are growing.

It is this fear of the spread of organised radical currents among the urban poor that most alarms Washington and London. Militarily both are severely overstretched to contemplate an invasion of Iran. For the moment, therefore, they continue to ratchet up the invective over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Socialists are opposed to nuclear weapons and nuclear power. We are for immediate unilateral disarmament, for a complete halt to building any further nuclear power stations and for the development of renewable energy sources. Therefore we cannot support Tehran’s desire to develop a nuclear industry, whether for power or weapons.

However, we oppose the campaign demanding sanctions against Iran. This campaign is breathtaking in its hypocrisy.

Tony Blair is widely believed to be in favour of a massive expansion of the British nuclear industry. He also believes that Britain should retain nuclear weapons. But Iran, which is encircled by nuclear-armed states, should not be allowed nuclear technology because it might use it to develop weapons.

The Iranian government is doing nothing illegal in attempting to develop nuclear power. There is absolutely no evidence that Iran is anywhere near being able to produce nuclear weapons. Western intelligence agencies will, no doubt, some day come up with ‘proof’ and Bush and Blair, arrogant as ever, will expect us all to forget that their ‘proof’ of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction turned out to be a pack of lies.

In essence Blair’s view is that Britain, the US and a few other ‘reliable’ powers have a right to nuclear power and weapons while denying others any such right. We should denounce this attitude for what it is – racist, imperialist arrogance.

Iran has as much right to develop nuclear power and nuclear weapons as Britain, the US, Russia or Israel (whose nuclear capabilities are never called into question in western capitals.). We do not and cannot support Iran (or any state) exercising that right but, while the major imperialist powers have nuclear capability, then we will have no truck with the hypocrisy that the west can decide who will or won’t be allowed to develop technologies.

Until Bush and Blair give up their nuclear weapons and start to dismantle their nuclear power stations then they have no right whatsoever to demand Tehran abandons its nuclear programme.

(This article is indebted to the excellent ‘Mid-point in the Middle East?’ by Tariq Ali in New Left Review 38, March-April 2006).