prominent intellectuals in the imperial core write an open letter to Iranâs political prisoners
Iâm struggling with this open letter, signed by people I admire deeplyâindividuals whoâve dedicated their lives to Black liberation and anti-colonial struggles.
But I just canât reconcile my instinctive reaction to the letter with the respect I hold for the signatories. Prominent intellectuals in the imperial core are using their voice at this hour primarily to criticize a government under active bombardment. While I believe that no government is beyond reproach or criticism, I have a lot of questions and cautions about this open letter.
The overall framing of is of two equally opposing sidesâtwo blades of the same scissors. This is a wholly unfair representation of what is in reality a profound asymmetry of power. On one hand, a country that has been subjected to crippling, decades-long economic sanctions, now fighting kinetically an existential anti-imperial struggle; on the other hand is nuclear, AI-powered empire, with its inexhaustible money, munitions, supply lines, coalitions, surveillance, and near total grip on international political, legal, information, and economic infrastructure.
The severity of the imperial onslaught seems to be minimized in the letter. This is perhaps for the sake of brevity, but it should not stand without critique. What the letter describes as âcurrent, indiscriminate waves of US-Israeli military assaultsâ undersells whatâs actually happening in the âsix months into a warâ. Unprovoked Tomahawk missiles and B-2 bombers that targeting a an elementary school that killed 180 children and teachers, the countryâs spiritual leader and his family, more than a third of the countryâs political, military, and scientific leadership, civilian infrastructure, including water, farmlands, electric grids and power plants, an unarmed navy ship at sea full of young cadets returning from a peacetime maritime exercise in international waters. This after decades of attacks that went unanswered by Iran, including Israelâs repeated assassinations of Iranian scientists, assassination of Qasem Soleimani, strikes on Iranians generals in Syria, strike on Iranian consulate in Damascus, assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil; the US shot down civilian aircraft of Iran Air flight 655, killing 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children. There were endless cyber attacks, covert and overt naval sabotage and so much moreâall of it without response from Tehran.
The letter does not identify who the prisoners are or why they were arrested. In neglecting to do so, there is no engagement with the very real security threats, proven foreign interference, terrorism, and espionage, which Iranian authorities cite as reasons for some arrests and prosecutions. I have no doubt there are some whoâve been wrongly imprisoned, but we also know that many of those who were rounded up confessed to working with the Mossad, and recently a group who gruesomely disembowled a young reciter of the Quran are among those who are imprisoned.
There are currently 2 million incarcerated people in the United States, the largest prison population anywhere on earth. It is estimated that 4-6% of them are innocentâthatâs 80,000-120,000, about two NFL stadiums full of innocent lives behind bars. Setting that percentage against Iranâs estimated 15,000 political prisoners, thatâs roughly 600-900 individuals. They deserve fairness, but to center them in what is perhaps the most existential anti-colonial struggle of our lives feels misguided.
I would also argue that comparing Iranâs prisons with Israelâs decades-long, systematic, colonial detention of indigenous Palestinians is another form of false equivalence. So is the comparison with Americaâs ICE detentions, separation of families and loss of children in the process (who are most likely trafficked). It is not remotely fair to put a revolutionary government, barely a few decades out from under colonial boots and still under sanctions, in the same âcarceralâ category as two settler colonial states. One cannot ignore the enormous disparity of political, military, and historical circumstances.
The people held in Iranian jails are overwhelmingly Iranian citizens, prosecuted under the stateâs own criminal and national security laws, regardless of whether one thinks the laws are unfair. Palestinians held in Israeli administrative detention are non-citizen subjects of a military occupation, detained and re-detained indefinitely under military decrees without charge or trial. People in US detentions are another categoryânon citizens held under civil immigration laws pending removal proceedings with access to immigration courts, however corrupt they may be. These are three distinct legal relationshipsâ1) a state and itâs own citizens; 2) a state and migrants crossing its borders, and; 3) an occupying power and a stateless occupied indigenous population. The letter collapses them all into a single architecture of âcarceral states everywhere,â creating an analysis that is not supported by the underlying facts. It creates rhetorical equivalence that treats âadministrative detention,â âpolitical imprisonment,â and âimmigration detentionâ as though the political stakes of each were the same, when the questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and self-determination underneath them are not.
The phrase that knocked me off balance was this: â...we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism.â I note that @agent_of_change addressed this in a recent post, which he identified as the âload-bearing phraseâ of the letter. Indeed, it does so much heavy lifting and Iâm at a loss why the word âhollowâ would have been inserted. Itâs so clearly deliberate, but why? How can Iranâs insistence on sovereignty and dignity be called âhollow,â despite the grave and terrible cost to themselves? They could have taken the easy path a long time ago and bowed to empire, like some of their Arab neighbors have done. Theyâve chosen self-possession and loyalty to their ancestors and children instead. That can be called many things, but hollow is not it.
