Last night I had a quick browse on the internet on RIM and Iran, including reading your commentary on a salute to a fake Maoists CPIran(Marxist-Leninist-Maoist).
The message on the "founding " of this organisation was joyously greeted by the RIM as "important and exiting news." Clearly this was indeed very exciting to the CIA.
June 24 2001
Why so?
Under the ayatollahs it is true not only was the working class and peasantry attacked but the CIA organisations in Iran had also been "oppressed," mostly wiped out and it had taken them that long to set up a replacement left "workers" pro- imperialist CIA front in Iran.
So in their founding statement that this organisation CPIran(M-L-M), terror imposed by the ayotollahs "made the repression of the Shah pale by comparison."
The CIA trained secret police of the shah etc were apparently in comparison very benevolent, indeed a past golden age.
Clearly if this was so, then it would be progressive to go back to an open pro -imperialism of the shah type. So overthrow the mullahs and back to imperialist puppetry.
This was a call right from their foundation document. To serve imperialist restoration--no wonder this was considered such a matter for excitement in RIM CIA circles. A matter indeed for great joy and celebration for the CIA.
I have sent articles, which in my rambling way attempt to show that the expansive nature of imperialist war rests on the accumulation of capital and the need to valorise that capital ( Lenin's export of capital ETC.)
That is to say, imperialism is the necessary development of capitalist system competition, etc., not just some clever "idea" for expansion, not simply a mad seeking of profit by a "stupid" Bush.
In their system, capital, expanding capital must seek valorisation including in the end even by competitive war between the imperialisms. But they are attempting to cut their costs and ease out the competitors by overthrowing their middlemen through by among other methods including regime change in Iran.
In this way we get a strange phenomenon Mao described: make trouble fail, make trouble again fail again until their doom that is the nature of imperialism.
Why do they do this?
Even things that are clearly militarily unwise.
They have no choice, the need to expand capital drives them on, so they insist on doing stupid things, picking up rocks only to drop them on their own feet even squeezing out their competing Euro-partners.
They are thus being driven to attack Iran. That is the threat to Iran is real.
Now MIM recognises the reality of this, as not just empty threats. Spotter troops, the mobilising of public opinion for support by such left Trotskyite/CIA/partnerships organisations as by RIM.
Thus the reality of the real threat by imperialism to Iran disappears. Why bother organising against that fake threat?
Imperialist nature, its necessary drive to expansionist war disappears into simply bluster and CIA distractions.
So the dividing line question boils down to is imperialism real.
Who are the friends and who are the enemies in the struggle of the Third World peoples against imperialism--the anti-imperialist president of Iran or the pro- imperialist RIM or the CPIran(M-L-M) who would prefer shahist resoration as better than the mullahs. There is a pro-imperialist Trotskyite line and a Maoist line.
See a background article on this subject