The US helping to create and then utterly destroying the Iranian reformist movement is a fascinatingly bizarre and counterproductive historical event, honestly. I have trouble even wrapping my head around it. I think I mused last year, or maybe in 2022, that Trump taking down the JCPOA would be perhaps the single most impactful part of his legacy and his single greatest mistake - and recent events only reinforce this now that Zionism is the closest it has ever been to collapse, while Iran appears ascendant. Imagine what the Middle East would look like right now if Trump had never done that. I suppose this does in fact mean that we aren't living in the worst possible reality, because there's always that one.

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The Reformist-Moderate faction, more commonly referred to as just Reformists, generally aligns themselves with the interests of big business, major capitalists, and the Chamber of Commerce in Iran [17, 18]. The Rafsanjani family themselves are one of the richest in the country and hold large plots of land in Kerman Province [19]. From 1989 till today Iran has seen the implementation of strong neoliberal policies spearheaded by the Reformist movement, leading to the expansion of the power of oligarchs [17, 18]. After the Obama administration implemented so-called crippling sanctions on Iran in the early 2010s, the economic interests of this oligarchy were threatened [19].

Hmm this is interesting.

I have read Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism by Ramin Mazaheri and he argues that even for the “reformist” faction, the nature of the “privatisations” were more inline with Chinese Socialism than it is of the neoliberal austerity found in the West.

“So, by the end of his (Rafsanjani’s) presidency, 86 per cent of the country’s GDP still came from the state-controlled sector and the remaining 14% also included the share of the powerful foundations which worked closely with the state.” So the allegedly-rabid capitalist Rafsanjani (which is inaccurate, because he was also an Iranian revolutionary and thus against unfettered capitalism), who is the godfather of the neoliberal Reformist Party (also inaccurate – he had many ties with Principlists), successfully privatised much of the gains of the Revolution (another inaccuracy, he actually increased it), and thus privatisation has destroyed Iran, made a joke of their Revolution, and shows why “Iranian Islamic Socialism is a sham” (to quote the WSWS).”

…“Western-style privatisation simply cannot be tolerated in Iran – no political group could pay that price and survive. This is obviously because of the decades of modern political anti-capitalist discourse both before and after 1979 which is ingrained in Iran’s unique and revolutionary culture and among the populace. Iranian culture is definitely unique in this sense.”

…“If I am being precise, it is impossible for Iran to pursue neoliberal policies, which are based on reduced government spending, private over public ownership, pre-socialism ideas of deregulation, a free market domestically and free trade abroad regardless of ideology (even Zionism). This chapter has shown just how repugnant all of these ideas are, in a democratic way, to a huge mass of Iranians. “Neoliberal”, after all, is the extreme-right form of capitalism, and I would imagine the number of adherents in Iran to this form – which clearly violates multiple key tenets of Islam – to be a tiny minority.”

I don’t speak the language and I can’t verify if these claims are particularly factual or not, but I guess what I can is that there is a debate ongoing among Iranians in Iran itself regarding their own affairs, and clearly Westerners have a heavily distorted image of Iran at large.

Trump destroying JPCOA and assassinating Soleimani actually was extremely stupid and short sighted from an imperialist perspective. They had Iran hooked and were reeling them in, and Trump cut the line