Shora Esmailian refuses to abandon hope for freedom and self-determination in Iran

Shora Esmailian is a journalist, author and lecturer based in Sweden. Her latest book is entitled Gaza: Att Spranga Ett Getto (2024). She is also the co-author, with Andreas Malm, of Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War (2007, Pluto Press) and Explosive Power in Iran: Workers’ Fight and War Threat (2005).In the wake of the United States and Israel illegally attacking Iran and sparking a regional conflagration that is dragging the world deeper into ecocidal warfare, Esmailian describes a liberatory alternative. From her position in the Iranian diaspora and her perspective as a journalist and social critic, Shora opens up a conversation about the irreducible complexity of the struggle. In Iran, there are groups on the left that occupy a diverse array of anti-imperialist positions; should they converge in the aftermath of this bombing campaign, they might emerge as a force that can reclaim the country from both the repression of the Islamic Republic and the violence of Western regimes who continue to seek control over the region.Esmailian makes it clear, too, that Israel is committed to destroying Iran because it sees it as the last remaining force that can counter the normalization of its settler colonial occupation of Palestine. The "Axis of Resistance," as it is known, may not be a purely liberatory force, in the sense that Iran's Islamic Republic, in fact, has its own imperialist ambitions, but it remains the primary barrier to Israel's military domination. Shora also shares the important insight that, while the Islamic Republic has come to the defense of Palestine to a limited extent--courting the ire of Tel Aviv in the process--it never fully committed to halting the genocidal campaign of annihilation that continues in Gaza and spreads now into the West Bank. If there is hope now, it is for a grassroots democratic movement to rise up in defiance of imperialism and defect from oligarchic control and state repression.#FreeIran #WomanLifeFreedom #Geopolitics #USMilitary #GulfRegion #USIranConflict #IranIsraelWar #MiddleEastConflict #IranIsraelConflict #MiddleEastCrisis