The United States cannot be secure until the total international environment is ideologically safe.–US Secretary of State Dean Rusk*
July 26, 2019
By Stephen Gowans
I was interviewed on the July 26 episode of Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh’s new show, Nader’s Show.
Talebzadeh was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department on 13 February for organizing conferences Washington alleges were used as a platform “to recruit and collect intelligence from foreign attendees, including U.S. persons.”
The conferences were organized by New Horizon, a group which, according to its website, brings together “academics, political and military figures, media analysts, writers, activists, singers, actors, movie critics & filmmakers” to explore anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist themes. Talebzadeh is the organization’s founder and chairman.
Treasury complained that the conferences were “anti-Western” and used to “propagate anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories,” labels regularly used to discredit critiques of Israeli settler colonialism and US-empire building.
It’s doubtful that Washington sanctioned the Iranian filmmaker over intelligence concerns, and more likely it did so to disrupt his efforts to build solidarity and cooperation among people with a shared hostility to the anti-democratic character of US foreign policy.
That intelligence concerns were a ruse is evidenced by the reality that the chances were vanishingly small that ‘anti-Western’ attendees at Talebzadeh’s conferences would have been employed by Western states, let alone had security clearances from them, that would have afforded them access to classified information they could share with Iranian intelligence. I very much doubt that attendees Medea Benjamin, Caleb Maupin, David Barsamian, and Gareth Porter had any state secrets they could pass along to the Iranian government. As for US political and military figures, the only such figures I could identify from the list of attendees were former US Representative Cynthia McKinney who was last in office 12 years ago, and 89 year old former Senator Mike Gravel, who last served in the Senate in 1981. If Tehran was looking to recruit and collect intelligence, Talebzadeh invited the wrong people.
If we were to assume the US government wouldn’t try to intimidate a foreign person from organizing conferences at which views inimical to US foreign policy are expressed, simply because the views are critical of the United States, the opinions of the conference attendees could hardly be grounds for sanctions against the conference organizer. But the Treasury Department did cite these views in its decision to designate the New Horizon founder as a sanctions target. The views expressed at his conferences were, then, material to the Treasury Department decision; otherwise, why cite them?
Of course, the intention may have been simply to demonize Talebzadeh for Western audiences by calling him anti-Western and anti-Semitic. But, then, this brings us back to the question of why he was sanctioned, since the ostensible claim that he was running a front for gathering intelligence (from people who didn’t have any) is an obvious pretext.
It would seem, then, that Treasury’s likely motivation in sanctioning the film-maker was to disrupt his efforts to bring together people who hold views the US government doesn’t like. Better to keep them atomized.
If Washington objects to US persons joining together with others to oppose US imperialism–that is, if it objects to meaningful opposition to its practices and behavior on the world stage–perhaps it should consider its policies, and examine whether they live up to the professed values of the United States. A majority of US citizens, if freely allowed to choose, would very likely endorse the following policies, very different from the ones followed by Washington today.
- Adherence to international law.
- An end to support for dictatorships, both royal and military, in the Middle East.
- Support for a state in historic Palestine in which all people, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, have the same rights.
- Respect for the right of other nations to develop their economies in accordance with the preferences of their people.
- Renunciation of the view that US corporations and investors have a right to dominate the markets and resources of other countries, regardless of the wishes of the citizens of those countries.
Were the US government to adhere to these democratic principles, it wouldn’t have to resort to the draconian measure of sanctions to disrupt the expression of democratic values by its own citizens. If Washington abjured illegal, undemocratic, and imperialist policies, there would be no opposition to disrupt.
Talebzadeh says, “Many of us are sanctioned, some by the Treasury Department, some by corporate media. They think sanctions limit people.”
Last month he launched Nader’s Show to demonstrate “that voices can’t be silenced.”
*Quoted in Kenneth M. Waltz, “Structural realism after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 5-41.