Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 2.0
THE DEEP POLARIZATION of many leftist takes on Iran has been telling. The usual suspects–those often known as campists or tankies–have been quick to romanticize assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as having been a noble fighter against US imperialism.
Nowhere is the theocratic regime that Khamenei maintained during his lifetime mentioned. If tens of thousands were thought to have been killed in a matter of days earlier this year, these are dismissed as US-fomented color revolutions.
Indeed, it should be clear that the US is attempting a new script for foreign intervention here. Instead of launching a costly ground invasion that would result in high American casualties, the Trump administration has tended toward decapitation strikes targeting a political leader. Such decapitation strikes are then followed by attempting to position a different successor. This is what occurred earlier this year with the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
In the case of Iran, however, this also involves attempting to create the space for popular uprisings. Positioning Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the deposed Shah of Iran, as a successor leader seems to be the US strategy here in backing Iranian monarchists.
Consequently, campists have come to limit the space fo nuanced discussions on Iran, in attempting to force conversation into easy binaries in which any enemy of US empire is to be valuated–even if they are in themselves autocratic, theocratic, and totalitarian regimes. Perhaps undergirding this is the simplification of the messy dynamics of a polity, in which a variety of people may be out there in the streets protesting for all sorts of reasons, to the view that they are all agents of US empire and, in that way, illegitimate.
There has been relatively little nuance in discussions of Iran in Taiwan either. Most narratives on international events are sourced from Western media, with Taiwanese news reporting largely repeating content from Western outlets–Taiwanese media generally lacks the reach to cover entire regions of the world, including the Middle East.
As such, one has seen the glorification of US empire, as well as Israel, in much news coverage to date. The US attack on Iran is seen as reassuring for Taiwan, in that this illustrates US military might and is thought to deter China from attacking. The US attack on Iran is framed as a proportionate response to Iranian aggression, or it is suggested that the attack benefits Taiwan as a slap in the face to China.
For its part, the Lai administration has been quick to align itself with the US and Israel. Iran has been framed as “indiscriminate” in aggression against other countries, while the Lai administration also announced 180,000 USD in donations to humanitarian aid in Israel.
Still, one expects to see shortcomings in responses from the domestic Left as well. As many leftist academics, intellectuals, and opinion-makers in Taiwan are individuals who have studied abroad in Western contexts, one often sees the critique of Western imperialism transplanted to Taiwan, without localizing for domestic conditions.
From the pro-independence left, one may see attempts to link this with the cause of Taiwanese independence through the argument that China’s own designs on Taiwan are a form of imperialism. By contrast, for the pro-unification left, one will see simply the assumption of all blame to US empire and the romanticization of the Iranian regime that one has seen elsewhere.
It remains to be seen how to develop a culture of internationalism in Taiwan capable of articulating nuanced positions on Iran. This does not still seem to be present in Taiwan, with instead the effort to relegate world events into political frameworks and conditions more recognizable in Taiwan. The reductionist view of the world outside of Taiwan continues to be pervasive.