"Iran: We Cannot Remain and Watch Indifferently"

[markie]

my daughter sent me this insightful essay.... worth the read

Dear Family, Friends, Colleagues, and Loved Ones,

I’m a bit discombobulated and frightened. There is war in lands where I have lived, in lands I love, and I feel a need to share my thoughts with you.

I’m having trouble focusing at the moment, but I want you to have my thoughts now, however random and disordered they might appear.

The news that the Trump administration, allied with the genocidal regime of Bibi Netanyahu, together have launched an illegal war of choice against Iran - advocating for regime change, among other issues - should come as no surprise, but it’s still frightening.
The news that the Trump administration, allied with the genocidal regime of Bibi Netanyahu, together have launched an illegal war of choice against Iran - advocating for regime change, among other issues - should come as no surprise, but it’s still frightening.

Condemnation and criticism of the brutal 47-year reign of the Ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards is necessary and justified. Since 1979 the regime has brutalized and terrorized its people, its neighbors, and much of the world.

Regime change may be desirable but imposing it upon another nation is not only illegal and unacceptable but, from my POV, in this case is an excuse for the reimposition of colonial domination over yet more brown and black people - or on olive-skinned people like me.

That is what I see, and amidst the violence and horror we are witnessing we are pummeled by mostly meaningless commentatary by politicians, barbarians, pundits, and demagogues all full of sound and fury yet signifying nothing.

That’s not for me.

There is much more to be said, and much being ignored.

Being ignored is a war launched against a major Islamic state during the Holy Month of Ramadan; being ignored is the reported bombing of an Iranian school for girls, killing over 150 teenagers; being ignored are the feverish wet-dreams of many of the war-mongers to install Reza Pahlavi (eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran) as Iran’s ruler.

Tonight, I just want to share some of my history, share what informs me as together we witness the barbarity being unleashed upon the Iranian people.

Iran: We Cannot Remain and Watch Indifferently …
“I cannot remain and watch indifferently the sufferings of a people fighting for their right,” Howard Baskerville once told an American consul who was demanding Baskerville stand down. “I am an American citizen and am proud of it, but I am also a human being and cannot help feeling deep sympathy with the people of this [Tabriz] … The only difference between me and these people is my place of birth, and this is not a big difference.”

That was 1909.

Howard Baskerville, 24, was a Princeton graduate who had travelled to Persia as a Christian missionary. In 1909 he joined about a hundred volunteer fighters - including some of his students - in support of the Persian Constitutional Revolution and against Tsarist forces, allied with the British and Russians, who were trying to maintain monarchist tyranny over the Persian peoples.

On April 19, 1909, in the village of Tabriz, he was martyred by a pro-monarchist sniper.

Baskerville’s funeral was attended by thousands of Persians and he was buried in Tabriz’s Assyrian Cemetery. To this day, it is reported, visitors to his gravesite often find fresh yellow flowers, left by anonymous mourners, decorating his tomb.

While I know of no roadside historical marker for Baskerville, I know that some schools and roads still bear Baskerville’s name.

I know, too, that in 2005, despite hostilities between Iran and America, that a bronze bust of Baskerville was unveiled at Constitutional House of Tabriz, Iran, by then-President of the Islamic Republic Mohammad Khatami. Below the bust, a sentence, inscribed in Persian, reads: Howard C. Baskerville. He was a patriot, a history maker.

Baskerville’s Tabriz was bombed by the barbarians this week,

I have traveled segments of the Silk Road. I’ve read the poetry of Jalâluddîn Rumi as I’ve followed in the footsteps of travelers like Ibn Battuta and al-Masudi, travelled from Turkey’s Mount Ararat into Iran and Tabriz, then into Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, taking occasional refuge from the sun in ancient caravanserai standing still in the middle of vast deserts.

Today, from Tehran’s Golestan Palace to Tabriz to the Straits of Hormuz, Iran’s 3,000-year-old cultural-patrimony - and identity - sprawls across roads that once connected China to Europe and the Levant.

Today, that land, that cultural-patrimony, is being targeted by war criminals, xenophobes, racists, and barbarians who may share passports with us but little else.

It’s being targeted by America’s Donald Trump and Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu who have joined the Mongols who burned Baghdad to the ground in the 13th century, joined the Taliban who destroyed the 6th century Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, joined ISIS terrorists who destroyed the third millennium BC Roman ruins in Palmyra, Syria.

Iran, targeted by those who today are complicit in the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

Today, in those ancient lands, Trump and Netanyahu have cast their lot – and our future – among the ignorant, among war-criminals, tyrants, and autocrats who for too long have plagued and exploited these peoples and lands.

“War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty,” Carl von Clausewitz wrote. “A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.”

At a time of crisis calling for sensitivity and discriminating judgement we have Trump and Netanyahu.

Heaven help Iran. Heaven help us and our children.

This past weekend the barbarians launched a coordinated attack against Iran, even though Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.

This week, Iran - responded - and today we are all at risk.

Trump, an unreconstructed bigot without regard for truth or decency, is today driving us through a region where memories are long, where America once overthrew a democratically-elected Prime Minister and installed a tyrannically and autocratic Shah; where the memories of how we broke Afghanistan and Iraq are still fresh.

Trump doesn’t know about Howard Baskerville.

He doesn’t know - or doesn’t care - that in 1953, under the direction of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt successfully launched a coup against Iran’s democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadagh and installed a tyrannical and corrupt shah who ruled Iran, with America’s support, until overthrown by Iran’s Islamic Revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iranians know, and remember, that America once armed the Afghan resistance, then abandoned Afghanistan; they know that America supported - with chemical weapons - Saddam Hussein in an eight-year war against Iran that cost over a million lives

They know and remember, that in July, 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down, within Iran’s territorial waters, Iran Air Flight 655, a passenger flight from Tehran destined for Dubai via Bandar Abbas. All 290 passengers, including 66 children, were killed and America ended up paying out over $60 million to families of the Iranian victims.

I remember, too, after 9/11 when hundreds of Iranians gathered in downtown Tehran and held a candlelit-vigil chanting, “We are all Americans.”

In a part of the world where memories are long, Iranians know - and will remember - that this past weekend America and Israel launched a war of choice. I do know that these attacks may threaten the security of Iran’s 10,000 Jews - Jews who have chosen to stay in Iran - and 1,000,000 Iranian Christians.

But Donald and Bibi don’t care.

I care - and you should as well.

Their aggression threatens American troops, diplomats, and travelers who travel and live throughout the region, threaten Iranians and Iranian-Americans living in America who are today being profiled - some by ICE and DHS and others, some even by some of their neighbors.

Today, speaking as an American, I know that Trump threatens us all.

We must all care.

Trump threatens us all because he is the most powerful, most ignorant, most impetuous of authoritarians, a person totally bereft of any notion of diplomacy, decency, or humanity.

Surrounded by sycophants, chickenhawks and evangelical Islamophobes, a jealous, petty, narcissistic Trump lives in a delusional world obsessed with undoing the accomplishments of President Barack Obama while at the same time trying to elevate himself as a world leader.

Today, most significantly, we are paying the price for Trump’s precipitous withdrawal from the hallmark nuclear accord with Iran – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – without consultation or considering any alternative options.

It was in 2019, I remember, after a U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton high-altitude drone was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile over the Strait of Hormuz, that Trump acted against Iran by attacking and lying about former President Obama:

“President Obama made a desperate and terrible deal [JCPOA] with Iran – Gave them 150 Billion Dollars plus 1.8 Billion Dollars in CASH! Iran was in big trouble and he bailed them out. Gave them a free path to Nuclear Weapons, and SOON. Instead of saying thank you, Iran yelled … Death to America. I terminated deal, which was not even ratified by Congress, and imposed strong sanctions. They are a much weakened nation today than at the beginning of my Presidency, when they were causing major problems throughout the Middle East. Now they are Bust ...”

The JCPOA was a detailed agreement reached by Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) on July 14, 2015, and endorsed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 on July 20, 2015.

It was working.

Trump never gave it a chance - and today we are paying the price.

“I cannot remain and watch indifferently the sufferings of a people fighting for their right …”

Howard Baskerville didn’t stand down - Neither must we.

Resist.

Stay strong my loved ones.
Keep your Keffiyeh close.
RESIST

Salamaat,
Robert

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended

Thanks for the thread markie

[TygrBright]

2. I, too, am grieving... this is a crime against humanity. n/t

[RussBLib]

3. and a comment from an Iranian...

An Iranian man left this comment on a YouTube channel recently. It breaks my heart.

"As an Iranian, I can tell you the situation is no longer just political—it's existential. We are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s unelected institutions.

Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore—because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed. But here's the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse—because we've watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation.

So no, we don't trust the U.S. or Israel. Not because we support our regime—but because we know how imperial powers treat ‘liberated’ nations in the Middle East.

Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation—they’re collapse.

A bad government is survivable. No government is not. We are not silent because we agree. We are cautious because we’ve learned—too well—what happens when superpowers decide to "help." In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbors. We are stuck in a house we hate, surrounded by fires we fear more."

https://russblib.blogspot.com

[calimary]

4. The agony of this moment. Of this TIME.

It’s difficult to deal with. My heart hurts just reading through it. While wishing our leaders had more wisdom…

[niyad]

5. KNR and bookmarking.

[electric_blue68]

6. TY. It is horrifying, and infuriating!