Some months ago I had a discussion with a progressive Kurdish activist. We started the discussion looking at what was happening in Iraq, and specifically the matter of the alliance that the Kurds had consummated with the US in opposition to the regime of Saddam Hussein. We then started discussing Iran and the Kurdish question. Specifically, how might or might not the Kurds situate themselves in the midst of the tension/confrontation between the US and the Iranian theocratic regime?

This Kurdish activist said that he thought that the Iranian Kurds had no choice but to ally with the US. The Kurds, he said, had been oppressed for years by the Iranian theocrats and before that the Shah of Iran. What else could the Iranian Kurds do but ally?

This discussion was a challenge because it forced me to think about international politics on a multi-dimensional level. Do I think that the Iranian Kurds should ally with the USA? Hell no, but that, I realized, was an insufficient answer. The reality of the Kurdish experience has been one of systematic ethnic oppression in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and most especially Turkey (the latter being a key US ally that has benefited from complete silence by the US on the Kurdish question). I was being asked if no one else will support their struggle for national rights, what choice did they have?

I realized at that moment that I had no complete answer, but only some partial thoughts, and I wanted to share them with you in the hopes of a dialogue.

The USA is moving toward a confrontation with Iran. Is such a military confrontation inevitable? I do not think so. I may be naïve in suggesting this, but I think that there are several reasons that it could be blocked, not the least of which is the overextension of the US military. In either case, it might happen. We in the USA must adamantly oppose any military assault on Iran irrespective of the pretext.

The second point is that in opposing US aggression, this should not mean that we automatically jump to the defense of the Iranian theocratic regime. The Iranian clerical ruling class oversaw the annihilation of much of the Iranian Left (one of the strongest Lefts -- religious and secular -- in the Middle East and Central Asia ) within the first few years of the Iranian Revolution. The regime is fundamentally misogynistic in its outlook and practice. It has cracked down on the rights of workers to organize. And it has engaged in lunacy, the most recent example being the suggestion that the Jewish Holocaust never happened. This regime is not made up of very nice people.

I wish to belabor this point for a moment. The Iranian ruling class is not carrying out a revolution in the interests of the workers and farmers of Iran, but instead is carrying out a peculiar and objectively right-wing anti-imperialist revolution against the West. Thus, the internal character of the regime is not something that we on the Left should be supporting. This does not mean, however, that we provide any support, including in the name of human rights, to US or European Union threats to Iranian sovereignty. The character of the Iranian struggle will need to be settled by Iranians.

This, then, returns us to the original question about the Iranian Kurds, which is actually part of a larger question: what relationship should we in the USA (and Europe for that matter) have with Iranian social movements struggling for justice? For some on the Left the question is answered by not answering it. In other words, the attitude seems to be that as long as the US is threatening Iran, and as long as Hugo Chavez can sit down with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, then we should remain silent. In the worst case, some would even go so far as to suggest supporting the Iranian regime. I think that such a course of action is unacceptable.

As difficult as it may be, we on the Left—and within the broader progressive movement—must find means to support progressive forces in Iran. This may mean educating people in the USA to understand the nature of specific struggles, or it may mean providing material aid to those struggling against both imperialism and right-wing Islamism. It may mean joining hands with national minorities who are being persecuted if they go to certain international bodies or seek media attention. And certainly, if there are progressive governments in power in various nation-states, to encourage them to pressure the theocrats on some of these political questions, or at the least, to not embrace the theocrats as friends of legitimate anti-imperialism.

In raising all of this, I realize that we are on a difficult slope. Under the guise of "human rights" imperialist interventions have been undertaken, e.g., Kosovo. This has led many people of good will to hold back from any commentary on deeply oppressive situations where a regime is, however, also being attacked by the imperialists. We have seen this in the Sudan, for instance, where some very honest forces, and some not-so-honest, have withheld commentary on the genocide being undertaken by the Sudanese government of Al-Bashir against the non-Arab population of Darfur. The silence, in that instance, is allegedly justified by the danger that imperialism holds for the Sudan. Such an argument does not work very well when over 400,000 people have been massacred.

What is demanded of the US Left is a level of sophistication that does not mean a form of critical support for imperialism in the name of human rights. It really means figuring out what proletarian internationalism equates to in a post-Cold War world.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a long time left labor and international activist and writer.