The War on Iran and "Purity of Morality"

There are not many arguments I need to make about the current US imperialist assault on Iran, in alliance with Israel's colonial expansionism, that have not already been made by others. The descriptions of its brutality, following the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the simultaneous war upon Lebanon, have already been described and dissected. The notion that the left must always oppose imperialism, and not be pulled in by any bad faith appeal to "humanitarian intervention", should already be an established fact learned from the anti-war movement of the early 2000s when "the War on Terror" targeted Afghanistan and then Iraq. Hence, this post is merely one of reflection on the theme of the "purity of morality" that one often encounters in such monstrous situations.

Last week I started reading Reza Negarestani's baroque Intelligence and Spirit. My thoughts on that book are neither here nor there (I'm not even 100 pages into it), but I wondered if the author––being an Iranian leftist––had written anything about the current war on his homeland. Although I could not find such an article, I did find an article he had written in January about the uprisings in Iran entitled Iran, The Greatest Inconvenience: On The Eternal Silence of the Left. Although the title filled me with a bit of trepidation ("oh no, is he going to argue for imperialist intervention as a 'left' solution?") it was, thankfully, not what I expected and, all things being equal, a thoughtful piece by an Iranian leftist.

To summarize, Negarestani's article (while also providing a history of struggle in Iran) basically takes the position that the theocracy in Iran is bad, that leftists in Iran must struggle against it, but that anyone who thinks imperialist intervention is the solution is just as bad as those who support the theocracy. He also attacks the counter-revolutionary fantasies generated by that faction of the Iranian diaspora that is still in love with the Shah, and recognizes the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as a "planetary rupture" with both positive and negative attributes. What he is arguing, however, is that the supposed "silence of the left" (meaning the Western left) in January 2026 about the uprisings in Iran––that is, the failure to support them in any meaningful way––demonstrate's this left's embrace of a purity politics. Like Hegel's "beautiful soul", Western leftists don't want to support an uprising against the theocracy (despite the fact that this theocracy has imprisoned and killed leftists) because they feared it was a false flag operation, a Mossad led initiative, and not at all possessing autonomous factions of people who possess more radical, leftist agendas. He notes that this fear of impurity also stems from the wake of the Gazan genocide, but even still points out that revolutions are often impure––which is why he also points out the importance of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

In some ways I think that this is a useful intervention. As a long time organizer and internationalist, I have worked with a variety of Iranian communists who have been both opposed to western imperialist intervention and opposed to the Iranian theocracy. One of my thesis advisors, the late Amir Hassanpour, was an Iranian communist who was involved in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and then targeted by the new regime, who watched many of his comrades jailed and murdered. Communists must necessarily see, all things being equal, any theocracy as anathema to emancipation. Plus, it is always important to note the ways in which communist movements function in states that are targeted by imperialism, what they say about their state of affairs, and listen to them rather than simply treating everything as some kind of global Risk Game between great powers. (For example, I learned a lot from the communist insurgents in Afghanistan who despised the Taliban, but despised the imperialist intervention and resulting occupation even more.) As Mao said, "it is right to rebel"––and we can of course recognize this right, the impurity Negarestani spoke of, but also attempt to figure out the balance of forces involved in a rebellion based on what politics are in command. 

BUT, the situation has changed since Negarestani wrote that article and it is now a matter of imperialist war. And in that light, as part of this reflection, I want to ask what his notion of purity/impurity even meant to begin with and whether it was that accurate.

First of all, in early January when there were these uprisings in Iran, what would it even mean for the Western left to support the liberatory elements in these uprisings? The Western left is weak and disunited; what would they even affect? I actually don't know many of these pure "beautiful souls" he was speaking of since the leftists I know have a nuanced perspective, some of them are Iranian leftists, and were very aware in January that Iran was a theocratic regime that murdered and imprisoned leftists while at the same time aware of the imperialist discourse surrounding Iran. This left had the same abstract analysis of Negarestani regarding Iran, and because of this did not see themselves as having any way to intervene in that situation. Let's be clear: the rallies being held in "support" of Iran at the time were rallies organized by the Shah-supporting diaspora and Zionists. These were rallies where the main message was imperialist intervention (the prevalent posters were often of Trump and Netanyahu) and Israeli and US flags were being waved. They were not protests but in fact legal marches, endorsed by the imperialist states in which they were happening, where the organizers were begging for war. Would it be an act of political "purity" to abstain from attending rallies where most of those attending wanted any left elements present to also be murdered, even genocided? The average organizer and participant of this protest believed Iran's version of the Great Replacement Theory, another view of purity politics that Negarestani disavowed in his article. These were not spaces where any left intervention would be practically useful. What would the bodies of the left, added to these rallies, even do?

Secondly, and most importantly, now that the situation has transformed into a brutal war of imperialist aggression, the left's response is precisely one that abjures the "purity" Negarestani claimed was its identity. To support Iran against US intervention is essentially a leftist rejection of political purism because it is the support of a nation-state that is in opposition to progressive ideals against the much greater evil of US (and Israeli) imperialism. In this sense, the left is abjuring purity politics as it always should in the name of anti-imperialism. As it did with Afghanistan and Iraq, where in both cases its opposition to imperialism and support of resistance did not mean it was in ethical support of the Taliban or the Ba'athist regimes. While there are probably those elements of the broad left who think the Iranian regime is liberatory, and not merely the ethical agent in its defense against the prime evil US/Israeli assault, they have always been a minority. The truth is the broad anti-imperialist left in the West has always made choices of support based on an impurity governed by a hatred of imperialism. Indeed, maybe the unwillingness to openly demonstrate alongside the uprisings in January had to do with this impurity rather than the purism Negarestani imputes: not because of a fear that their politics would be diluted, but because they realized that rebellion within an imperialist-determined structure demanded an impure ethical response.

When it comes to the notion that politics in the real world is often impure, Mao is perhaps the greatest practical theorist of this impurity. Indeed, he saw revolutionary politics as possessing various levels of contradictions at different conjunctural moments wherein a principal contradiction would become acute. For example, in the context of WW2, in the war against Japanese occupation, Mao argued that a pursuit of abstract class politics would in fact be against the proletarian revolution since unity against Japanese imperialism was paramount, and any failure to pursue that war would spell the doom for class revolution. Maybe Negarestani didn't get the memo that the ambiguity regarding Iran by the left was not about some purity of politics, but about the fear that the purity of traditional class politics in the context of a nation-state that was being slated by the imperialists for obliteration would court reactionism.

Still, upon reflection, I look forward to what Negarestani will write now that the vicious war on Iran is in full swing. Because anyone supporting this war right now on ethical principles is precisely the pure, Hegelian "beautiful soul" he has warned against.