Solidarity Scotland

The ongoing diplomatic stand-off between the Iranian and British governments over the capture of 15 British marines and sailors, operating either in or close to Iranian waters, has served to reveal the extent of the imperial arrogance that runs right through the British establishment. The assumption, implied in the raft of bellicose statement issued from Downing Street and the Foreign Office, that Britain possesses an intrinsic right to send its military forces to any far flung corner of the globe it so decides, regardless of international law, is one that all right-thinking people, interested in a world set up under the principle of universal human rights, must reject outright.

Whether or not these British servicemen and women were operating in Iraqi or Iranian waters, what we know with certainty is that they weren't operating in British waters, and that if they were in Iraqi waters their presence there was no less illegal than if they were in Iranian waters when they were captured.

Sharing a border with Iraq, the Iranian people have witnessed the carnage in Iraq these past four years, have felt the instability that has resulted in the region, and are no less exercised than the rest of the Muslim world over the deep hypocrisy that exists with regard to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Further, conveniently lost in this diplomatic furore has been any kind of an historical context. The resentment of the British state that exists at all levels of Iranian society - referred to in Iran as 'Little Satan' for its role as a willing Hessian force in support of US foreign policy in the Middle East - should not be underestimated. The Iranians have not forgotten the part that a previous British government played in ousting the democractically-elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in a joint operation with the CIA back in 1953.

This operation, known as Operation Ajax, was carried out in response to Mossadegh's decision to nationalise Iran's oil for the benefit of the Iranian people. Up to then they had seen hardly a penny of the obscene profits siphoned out of the country by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now British Petroleum), formed specifically for the task of plundering their oil. The subversion of Iran's democracy which removed Mossadegh from power ushered in 25 years of one of the most repressive and savage regimes of the 20th century under the Shah. Tens of thousands of Iranian men and women were imprisoned and tortured by the Shah's notorious secret police, and his regime has left scars in that country that have yet to heal.

The Iranians are a highly educated and deeply politicised people, and the militancy of Iran's universities and colleges has traditionally been at the root of the country's militancy vis-a-vis the West. Iranian students were the motor force behind the 1979 revolution which finally toppled the Shah, a revolution that contained within it a strong social component which might well have brought to power a progressive secular regime in place of the Islamic Republic that was formed under the Ayatollah.

Backed and encouraged by Britain and the US, Saddam launched an invasion of Iran in 1980 that embroiled both countries in a war lasting eight years at a cost of 2 million lives. Again, Britain's role in this war, in helping to arm Saddam's regime in an attempt to derail a popular revolution, has not been forgotten by the Iranians.

In a society in which tension between secularists and supporters of Political Islam has existed ever since, the antipathy felt towards Britain and the US is the one thing which unites the Iranian people, uniting them against what they view as the common enemy of human progress - US imperialism.

At time of writing events in the Middle East have never been at such a critical stage. Make no mistake: Iran is not Iraq. It is a country of 70 million people with a highly motivated and well equipped military, an infrastructure that is intact, a nation in which the well of resentment for Britain and the United States runs as deep as the Earth's core.

The world is now poised at the brink of a cataclysm that has the potential to go nuclear. Imperialism - the drive to feed an economic system that operates like a cancer on the body of the world - has brought us to this point. As such the admonition of Rosa Luxembourg, one of history's finest socialists, made back in 1915 at the height of the First World War, has never been more accurate.

The choice facing humanity is one of socialism or barbarism.