[…] When the stage of super-imperialism began, national-bourgeois states at first sought not to resist the super-empire, but to join it—on their own terms, rather than as subservient compradors. Khomeini’s successors attempted not only to privatize state-owned enterprises and infrastructure but to attract investment from the West. In 1995, the Iranian government signed a contract with a French company to develop oil fields in the Persian Gulf. The Tehran Stock Exchange was revived. Under President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran first applied to join the World Trade Organization. In 1999, President Mohammad Khatami went even further, proposing a “total restructuring” of the economy, and spoke of the importance of making Iran safe for foreign capital. […]

[…] Despite its desire for reconciliation and development, the Islamic Republic has continually experienced rejection and aggression. In 1996, the United States blocked its application to the WTO, and the one time (more recently) that it applied for a loan from the IMF, it was also denied due to U.S. influence. Even during Rafsanjani’s relatively reform-minded presidency, in which the Islamic Republic pursued integration into the global economy, new sanctions on Iran were imposed both by President Clinton’s executive orders and by the U.S. Congress. In 2002, President George W. Bush declared Iran to be part of an “Axis of Evil.” When the United States and the Islamic Republic finally agreed upon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 to ease sanctions in exchange for guarantees regarding the Iranian nuclear program, the U.S. reneged almost immediately. In 2020, on orders from President Trump, the U.S. military assassinated the Islamic Republic’s most celebrated military leader, General Qasem Soleimani. Just as it had with regard to Gaddafi’s Libya, the super-empire designated the Islamic Republic to be its enemy, and nothing less than its destruction could ever suffice.

The super-empire, continually driven to increase profits by the Western financial oligarchy, cannot permit the loss of a profitable neocolony. When a national bourgeoisie develops to the point of attaining sole control of state power, and moves to end foreign dispossessive accumulation within its own country, this means less super-profits for the imperialists; and if this national bourgeoisie were to join the group of exploiters, there would be more imperialists among which to divide even less loot. To sustain its rate of profit, the super-empire must therefore remain an exclusive club, and finds it preferable to annihilate, rather than embrace, any potential new partner […]

[…] The Islamic Republic had on a similar basis become the leading exporter of armed revolution against the super-empire’s hegemony. By the early 2000s, the super-empire had fully encircled Iran. To the east and west, the United States’ military had invaded and occupied Iran’s closest neighbors. To the north and south lay willing collaborators (Turkey and Saudi Arabia). The U.S. government had openly announced to the world that Iran was its enemy, and perhaps the next to be invaded. Lacking a nuclear deterrent, the Islamic Republic, out of self-defense, had to heavily invest in anti-imperialism, by arming and bankrolling national liberation movements throughout the Arab world.

Deterrence, of course, only works if an aggressor believes in its target’s commitment to carrying out a threat; therefore the Iranian national bourgeoisie tied itself as closely as possible with the “Axis of Resistance,” both materially and ideologically. […] Under the conditions of super-imperialism, these national bourgeoisies are essentially stuck—perpetually unable to develop into imperialists, and frequently threatened with either annihilation or de-development. This is both a boon and a curse for the global proletariat. The workers and peasants in the neocolonies find national-bourgeois states to be their strongest allies in the struggle for liberation, yet within these countries, they are similarly stuck.