Iran, Zionism, and the Defeat of the Imperialist Narrative

Editorial Note: In July 2024, AISC member Louis Allday was interviewed on the Iranian TV channel Ofogh. What follows is a slightly amended transcript of that interview.

Ofogh: Let’s begin with your field of expertise: suppressed histories and silenced texts.

How has this dynamic—of erasing or distorting historical narratives—contributed to the catastrophe and ongoing genocide in Palestine?

Dr. Allday: This dynamic has of course had a major role and that continues up to the present moment.

From the very beginning of the zionist movement’s propaganda campaign to justify their racist colonial venture , it both erased and distorted history in multiple ways, perhaps best exemplified by the well-known zionist phrase “a land without a people for a people without a land” which among other things deliberately erased the existence of the Palestinian people and their very long-standing connection to the land.

This idea was propagated in multiple different ways, including in literature as analysed by Ghassan Kanafani in his 1967 work On Zionist Literature . I mention Kanafani specifically as it was the 53rd anniversary of his murder by Israel yesterday. Anyway, tragically these zionist propaganda efforts had a lot of success and at least in the West, for the first few decades after the Nakba in 1948, the Palestinians were frequently either genuinely unknown or ignored and when they were acknowledged often actually considered the aggressors - supposedly backwards Arabs motivated by antisemitism and opposition to the ostensibly progressive forces of modernity as represented by Jewish, primarily European, settlers. This was true even among many on the Western left who largely accepted Israel’s self-mythologising narrative as a brave little state surrounded by hostile Arabs.

Things began to change for the better in the late 1960s and early 1970s in part because of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's (PFLP’s) activities in that period, including plane hijackings, that were intended specifically to bring the plight of the Palestinian people to global attention and raise awareness of their cause.

Generally speaking, the zionist narrative is ever-shifting and deeply cynical because it has no purpose or principles beyond justifying the unjustifiable and perpetuating the zionist project. So it shamelessly moves from, for example, denying the Nakba ever took place one minute, to the next, saying it was justified, and then threatening to commit another, which of course it is now actually doing today in front of our eyes.

So there are many crude, offensive and obvious zionist insults and lies but there are also more nuanced erasures and distortions that are also very damaging as they are often accepted by people who consider themselves allies of the Palestinians, these include the idea that the occupation began only in 1967, not 1948, that Israel became a racist, apartheid entity at some point not long ago rather than being one inherently, and the commonly repeated notion that someone like Netanyahu is an “extremist” who does not represent the state he leads, rather than being the perfect embodiment of it as he actually is in reality.

Another frequent and damaging erasure is the very important role that Israel plays in the U.S.-led imperialist system and how it serves U.S. interests, not manipulates or uses the U.S. Israel’s aggressions are sanctioned because they serve the U.S. agenda ultimately, not the other way around.

Yes, zionism is inherently violent and expansionist but it is only able to act on those instincts habitually without red lines or consequences because of the function it performs for the U.S. as its attack dog and battering ram in West Asia. I think it is extremely important for that point to be understood everywhere, but especially in those places subject to U.S. aggression such as Iran.

Related to this point, is the deliberate removal in much Western coverage of the Palestinian cause from the broader regional, and global, struggle against U.S. imperialism, a situation which results in many supporters of the Palestinians in the West simultaneously believing and often spreading imperialist lies and demonisation campaigns against the very movements and states that support the Palestinian cause, such as the Syrian Arab Republic up until December last year, and notably, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ofogh: Now let’s turn to Iran. How has the general unfamiliarity of Western public opinion with Iran’s history—particularly its experience with colonialism and its complex relationship with the United States—contributed to the success of Zionist propaganda and the promotion of militaristic narratives?

Dr. Allday: This is an important question and major issue. As with virtually all important topics that it reports on, in Western media there is generally a kind of enforced historical amnesia when discussing Iran which is routinely portrayed in a very simplistic and deliberately ominous way that plays into broader Islamophobic ideas and Orientalist notions of non-Europeans, especially Muslims, being irrationally violent and aggressive and wanting to harm the West and its people.

In the UK recently, there has actually been a campaign in the media by its intelligence services intended to portray Iran and the IRGC in particular as a threat to Britain and the British people. Unsurprisingly, the modern history of U.S. and UK violence, sabotage and interference in Iran is frequently not mentioned at all and when it is, it is often downplayed or even subtly justified in some way. Likewise for Israel’s aggressions against Iran.

This point is related to what I already mentioned about divorcing the Palestinian struggle from the broader regional struggle against zionism and imperialism, which means that some who support Palestine in the West saw the recent war on Iran as being a “distraction” from the genocide in Gaza, rather than being a continuation and extension of the same fight and struggle.

When Iran’s support for Palestine is acknowledged, it is often dismissed as cynical and it is accused of using the Palestinians as pawns to serve its own interests. As a result, the deep intertwined history of revolutionary Iran and the Palestinian cause, as well as the anti-zionist and anti-imperialist cause more generally, is typically overlooked and misunderstood.

A simplistic sectarian frame is also sometimes utilised by the West in this context, and used to explain, for example, previous periods of tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia in a way that is misleading and deliberately obscures the role of U.S. imperialism and the countries fundamentally different relationships to it after the revolution in Iran in 1979. Instead a crude Shia-Sunni lens is imposed as though that explains everything.

What all of this means is that – though there are signs of change – generally speaking Iran is often seen by much of the Western public as an extremist and irrational aggressor and its legitimate aspirations and well-founded fears are not understood or acknowledged. Similarly as Dr. Max Ajl wrote about recently on the Lebanese website, Al Akhbar English, a false distinction is frequently drawn between the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people, as though no Iranians actually support their government and state, which is of course absurd.

Ofogh: Let’s talk about the recent wave of awareness among younger generations in the West regarding Palestine and Gaza, particularly after October 7. In light of university protests, cultural events like concerts, public opinion polls, and generational divides—do you think we are witnessing the signs of a cultural or social revolution?

Do you believe the future of Western public opinion is shifting in favor of Palestine? Or will Zionist forces, through media and financial power, manage to manipulate public discourse once again?

Dr. Allday: I think the last eighteen months or so have demonstrated very clearly the stark and growing disconnect between vast swathes of public opinion across the West and the stances of their governments that supposedly rule on their behalf. I think this attitude is especially true of younger generations, but not unique to them. Zionists and their supporters routinely try to dismiss the Palestine solidarity movement as antisemitic or use other false and insulting labels, and they also dismiss artists and musicians who speak out as cynically jumping on a trend. The reality is that the ongoing protests and expressions of support for Palestine in the cultural sphere are the result of a genuine, heartfelt and organic movement that is outraged, heartbroken and shocked by the genocide and their governments’ unremitting support for it.

The various forms of suppression, censorship and intimidation that we have seen in the West – perhaps above all in the U.S., the UK and Germany – are only deemed necessary from the perspective of these states because of the size of the disconnect between government policy and public opinion, and the fear they feel as a result of that. They are clearly worried they are losing or have lost control of the narrative and are seeking to regain control through whatever means they have at their disposal, whether it's the police beating people in the street as we see in Germany especially often but also elsewhere, or officially classifying direct action protest groups as “terrorist” organisations as the UK state has just done. This has meant casting aside many of their own state norms and brutalising their own people regularly, even in supposedly liberal bastions like the Netherlands, whose police have repeatedly attacked peaceful student protestors for example.

What has been revealed once again is that Western democracies are perfectly happy to jettison what they claim are their defining traits - freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, human rights etc - whenever the status quo feels threatened. Where this is all going to lead and how successfully these governments will be able to reassert their control and their narrative is an open and ongoing question.

My personal feeling is that something has shifted permanently and though even before October 7, Israel was already unpopular on a popular level generally in many Western countries, that has now shifted to a whole new level of disgust and outrage, and it is going to be very very hard for the zionist-imperialist narrative to regain common acceptance. That does not mean they won’t try of course, and I think we will see all sorts of deception and propaganda campaigns to try and shift things back and imply that there is a redeemable and non-genocidal Israel. This could involve the removal from power of Netanyahu and others at some point.

But for now, I would say that the public image of Israel has been majorly hit, if not entirely demolished, and more and more people are seeing it as the violent colonial entity that it is. I do not imagine that it will ever have a meaningful tourist industry ever again for example.

A key question is to what extent these Western publics will be able to accept or comprehend that their governments’ support for the genocide accurately reflects their role more broadly in the imperialist system, rather than simply being a result of zionist manipulation or interference.

Ofogh: Finally, how do you analyze the global consequences of the recent war? Given the scale of protests against Israel and the U.S., and the growing expressions of support for Iran, what are the long-term implications of this war on international politics and public sentiment?

Dr. Allday: I think in many ways it is too soon to say anything with certainty, and we must also be honest that the war is not over and most likely is only paused temporarily while the U.S. and Israel re-arm, re-group and re-strategise.

Militarily, it is now clear that even with assistance from all of its regional allies, and the U.S. and the UK militaries, the zionist state cannot adequately intercept Iran’s ballistic missiles, especially for any sustained period of time, and the significance of that cannot be overstated. It is a huge development and despite how they have tried to portray it, it is clear that Israel and the U.S. did not win the recent war. It is clear that the damage caused by Iran in only twelve days has been significantly downplayed and covered up by Israel and the Western media. That of course has enormous political implications.

But how exactly this will play out and what role public opposition to war and support for Iran in the West could play in any future conflict, or avoiding one, is an ongoing question.

In the UK context specifically, where I am, it is possible, maybe even likely, that the IRGC will be listed as a terrorist organisation and that will then be used to clamp down on expressions of support for Iran as a whole. I hope to be wrong but I am sad to say that I think the UK state, especially the current government under Keir Starmer, is willing to enter into a conflict with Iran in an even more direct way than it already has, even if it has little or no public support for such an action. They have demonstrated very clearly their disdain for transparency and democratic accountability.

What I think can already be said for sure is that Iran’s conflict with the U.S., Israel and the West is one of the key fronts in an ongoing global struggle in which the U.S. is desperately trying to hold on to its global hegemony and break any movement or state that stands in its way.

As such, a victory for Iran in that struggle would be a victory for the overwhelming majority of humanity, and especially for the peoples of the region who are suffering so much in manifold ways because of the imperalist-zionist dominance of it.