On July 19-20, the latest negotiations over Iran's uranium enrichment program were held in Geneva between the five UN Security Council members (the US, Britain, France China and Russia) and Germany on one side and Iran on the other.
The outcome was similar to previous talks: the six powers gave Iran two weeks to halt expansion of the enrichment program — which the West alleges is to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran maintains it is for power generation — or economic sanctions would be tightened.
Western opposition to Iran's nuclear program, which meets International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and is not contrary to international law, stands in contrast to its endorsement of Israel's illegal arsenal of nuclear weapons, developed in secret with Western assistance.
Shift in position
However, the presence of senior US state department official William Burns at the negotiations represents a shift in US policy. Previously, the US had refused to deal directly with Iran in the uranium enrichment negotiations.
Furthermore, there has been a change in US rhetoric, with US officials discussing the possibility of a US diplomatic presence in Iran, while previously it was the possibility of military action that was mooted. There has been no US diplomatic presence in Iran since the occupation of the US embassy by students following the 1979 revolution against the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah.
On July 22, British foreign minister David Miliband ruled out a military attack on Iran, contradicting the impression created by British PM Gordon Brown a week earlier when he told the Israeli parliament that Britain would not stand by while Iran acquired nuclear weapons.
This followed Israeli military exercises in early June that simulated an attack on Iran. The Iranian response was a very public test firing of medium-range ballistic missiles on July 9 and 10.
The US initially used this missile test to justify the "son of star wars" missile defence system that it is imposing on Europe, with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telling a press conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, "I see it as evidence that the missile threat is not an imaginary one".
However, the Western media has since been dismissive of the Iranian tests, saying that the Iranian claims of the missiles range was exaggerated and the photographs released doctored. "The net increase in the threat to U.S. interests in the region, including Israel, is approximately zero", the July 11 Los Angeles Times quoted a Harvard security expert as saying.
Western hostility
Western hostility to Iran stems from the 1979 overthrow of the monarchical dictatorship of the Shah, who was a close Western ally in the region and whose armed forces had acted as a proxy for the West in putting down regional insurgencies.
However, while the Shah's overthrow was the result of a mass anti-imperialist revolution, driven by workers, peasants and students, the establishment of the Islamic Republic by the religious hierarchy was a political counter-revolution that included the imprisonment and murder of thousands of leftist and worker activists.
The new regime represented broader layers of the Iranian ruling class than the CIA-installed Shah.
The Islamic Republic's bellicose anti-imperialist rhetoric is both an appeal to popular sentiment and legitimacy from the overthrow of the Shah, and a reflection of the regional ambitions of the Iranian ruling class. Unlike the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, however, the Iranian regime has not rejected the neoliberal economic policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Western aggression against Iran following the overthrow of the Shah included tacit support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion and assistance to Iraq in the eight-year war that followed. This war was devastating for both Iran and Iraq, with a death toll exceeding a million.
However, the external threat helped the religious regime in Iran consolidate. It also left the Iraqi dictatorship militarily strengthened but with serious economic problems, leading to the clash between Hussein and the West that ended with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the US bogged down in an unpopular war of occupation.
The change in Western rhetoric toward Iran reflects the failure of the Bush administration's project to impose direct military control over the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that invading a country and overthrowing its government does not automatically translate into actual control.
In both countries the ongoing US-led military presence has only fuelled chaos and instability. With undiminished occupation force casualties in both wars, the dreams of Bush administration hawks that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq would be the first in a series of militarily imposed regime changes in the region have proved unrealistic.
Furthermore, the US and Iran share many of the same enemies. Like Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan before the 2001 invasion were hostile to Iran. While the US has consistently accused Iran of arming the anti-occupation resistance in both countries, the Sunni Muslim fundamentalists — who form the core of the Afghan resistance and one section of the resistance in Iraq — have violent sectarian antipathy to the Shia Islam that predominates in Iran.
Also, the Iranian dictatorship is wary of the mass-based, popular Shia anti-occupation forces led by Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Iraqi groups with the closest links to Iran are the Shia parties in the US-installed Iraqi government.
With both major US presidential candidates recognising that the occupation of Iraq cannot continue indefinitely but are unwilling for occupation troops to leave without a stable, friendly regime in place, the possibility of seeking Iranian cooperation in establishing a post-occupation order in Iraq is becoming more attractive to US imperialism.
Similar factors exist in Afghanistan.
Sanctions
However, the US is unlikely to accept the strategic strengthening of Iran as the main outcome of its Afghanistan and Iraq adventures. The tightening of economic sanctions simultaneously with talk of resuming diplomatic ties suggests that rapprochement will depend on Iran making concessions.
And, while a full-scale US-led invasion of Iran to achieve regime change is highly unlikely in the immediate future, US and Israeli politicians have not ruled out a bombing strike, despite the cooling in rhetoric. The July 30 Los Angeles Times reported that US officials had reassured visiting Israeli PM Ehud Barak that military aggression against Iran was still a possibility.
One concession that the West is likely to demand is an end to Iranian support for the anti-imperialist movements in Lebanon and Palestine, Hezbollah and Hamas. However, Iran agreeing to this concession would not significantly alter the situation in Lebanon or Palestine. Despite Western portrayal of Hezbollah and Hamas as Iranian puppets, they are both independent, popular movements deeply rooted in their own countries' resistance to Israel.
Despite having vast reserves of oil and natural gas, Iran's ability to benefit from rising fuel prices is dependent on its ability to refine its own fossil fuel output, something that sanctions are impeding. Iran is currently importing natural gas from Turkmenistan.
The sanctions, combined with the global food and fuel crises, are having a devastating effect on Iran's economy. For example, there is a 238% inflation rate for rice. This comes against a background of an upsurge in workers' struggle in Iran that began with the imposition of IMF and World Bank-pushed neoliberal economic policies in 2001.
Furthermore, while the European Union has implemented less harsh sanctions than the US, with European oil corporations taking advantage of the absence of US competitors, the July 10 announcement by French oil giant Total that it was disinvesting from Iran indicates that European policy is moving in line with the US.
The BBC reported on July 23 that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was insisting that Iran's nuclear energy program was not negotiatiable, saying Iran "will not retreat one iota in the face of oppressing powers". However, while its military potential has been exaggerated by the West, the benefit to Iran of a nuclear energy program is doubtful.