Guerrilla History - The History & Impact of Sanctions on Iraq w/ Nima Nakhaei

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

This episode of Guerrilla History is a continuation of our Sanctions As War miniseries.  In this important episode, we bring on Nima Nakhaei to discuss the history and impact of sanctions on Iraq, the repercussions of which we continue to see today!  Get the word out and share this with comrades involved in the anti-sanctions movement. Nima Nakhaei is a faculty member in the Department of Politics at York University. His research sits at the nexus of Marxist political economy, Poulantzasian state theory and Gramscian discourse analysis. Within this approach, he explores the ways in which the political economy, state formations and identity discourses in the Middle East have been structured by the interiorization of imperialist relations and their crises. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Dinn-Vin-Bin-Bin-Boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the

lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined as usual by my two co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing? I'm doing well, Henry. It's great to be with you. Yeah, always nice to see you. I actually feel kind of lucky because I've seen you and our other co-host, Brett O'Shea, who is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Surviving a blizzard out here, but I'm doing well. I mean, I'm at the 56th parallel. It's always a blizzard here. In any case, as I was saying, I've seen the two of you,

this is the third time this week. And, you know, I haven't gotten tired of you yet. Let's just put it this way. No, I really do appreciate all the times that we're able to come together. In any case, today we're going to be continuing our sanctions as war series. So for listeners who haven't been tuned into that series yet. We've been basing a mini series around the work, Sanctions as War, which is a collected edition by our friends Emmanuel Ness and Stuart Davis. We had an introductory episode to this text, which looks at sanctions from a more theoretical lens with the two editors of the book.

And we have been doing case studies since then. This is the latest case study that we will be taking a look at by our guest, Comrade Nima Nakhai. Did I get the pronunciation close to? correct. Absolutely. Okay. Hello, Comrade. Nice to have you on the show. Great to be with you, Henry. Thank you so much. Oh, absolutely. It's a pleasure to have you on. So Nima is a faculty member at the Department of Politics at York University, and he is the author of the chapter in sanctions war titled Iraq, Understanding the Sanctions Warfare Regime. So it was a great section.

I really enjoyed reading it. And of course, you know, while I, was aware of the sanctions regime that was in place, you know, the intricacies of it were really only laid bare when I read the chapter that you did. So I appreciate that. But before we get into the conversation about the sanctions themselves and your section itself, your section really only picks up in 1990. For the listeners who are interested in Iraq, we have an episode with Brandon Wolf Honeycutt on his excellent book, The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy. It was was like almost a three hour long episode, which really focused on the period 1953 to 1978, with some chat of what happened before then.

But if we just pick up this conversation in 1990, where your chapter does, we have a missing, like, long decade between 1978 and 1990. So I'm wondering if you can orient us in terms of what was going on domestically and internationally, you know, in terms of foreign affairs with Iraq during this period. I know people will know of the Iran-Iraq War, but really what were the conditions like in this period between where we left off in that previous episode, which I recommend people check out, and where your essay is going to pick up and where this episode is really going to focus.

Right. Well, you see, when we think about 1978 to 1990, really, the most important question there, which decides the form of development, and also, by the way, explains the Bath regime's decision to invade Kuwait in 1990, is the war of it. Iran, which was the longest classical warfare of the 20th century. And to understand that, I think we have to look at the end of 1970s, regionally and internationally as well, and we'll see something quite interesting in the sense that if you look at, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, you look at the end of 1970s, you see that all these

post-colonial development projects, import substitutions, relative degree of contradiction with imperialism, cooperation with Soviet Union, incorporation of the popular classes into the domestic market and whatnot, and of course, varieties of post-colonial nationalism, promotion of pan-Arabism or pan-Islamic identities. You see that at the end of 70s, these post-colonial projects came to their limits. At the same time, at the end of 70s, you have a constellation where the United States decides to roll back Soviet Union's increasing influence in the region since 50s and 60s to militarization.

And of course, you have the new liberal offensive being initiated from the end of 70s. Now, if you look at the region and surrounding Iraq at the end of 1970s, you'll see that you have a constellation of right-wing coups. You have in Pakistan, you have in Turkey against a period of social upheaval. In general, there is also a shift towards what they call political Islam, but it's better to call it Islamisms. of various kinds. Now, if you look at Iran and Iran, two countries that are now going to war with each other after the revolution, you don't see a clear shift to the right. Quite the contrary, you have the revolution, 1979 revolution in Iran, which topples the monarchy, which was a relaying belt for American imperialist strategy in the region. In Iraq, you have, you can say,

not quite a right shift but a shift in the sense of distancing themselves from close cooperation with the Communist Party of Iraq at the same time there is a it can say a palace coup when Saddam comes to power

so there is a little bit of a shift to the right you can stay in Iraq with Saddam coming to power now nonetheless when you look at the war it's a bit surprising in the sense that the two countries still had a relative degree of contradiction

with the U.S. imperialist project in the region. Yet these two countries go to war with each other for eight years, which has horrific effects, not just domestically in terms of, you know, people lost, the damage on infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera. But also, quite a blow to the horizons of possibilities. Imagine if Iraq and Iran didn't go to war in 1980, actually, you would have had a completely different trajectory in the region, which also affects the Palestine-Israel questions, which also affect the ways in which the United States

managed to further embed itself in the region, and so on. So I think from an international and regional perspective, that is what is decisive to know about, and 978 onwards and the decade that decides also many things for Iraq later on. Yeah, I think that's crucial to the rest of this conversation. But bringing us up into the 1990s, early 90s, two major things happen. And you can unpack this however you want or focus on one over the other. But you have the Operation Desert Storm and you also have the collapse of the USSR.

Can you talk about these two things, how they played off each other, what the impact on Iraq was. Okay, let's start with the domestic dynamic first, because I think that is important. I think by the end of the war, the domestic situation in Iraq was such that the only way that the Ba'ath regime could, in a sense, manage the crisis was by creating another crisis, which was the invasion of Kuwait. Nonetheless, what is crucial to understand here is that the United States and not only didn't, in a sense, prevent the escalation of this conflict to a military one, but also encourage it. Now, if you look back at the diplomatic files, et cetera, et cetera, you see clearly that the United States was provoking both Kuwait and Iraq to escalate a country which, a conflict which could have, you know, by intervention.

through Arab League or even Soviet Union at its dying days could have remained a diplomatic conflict or could be solved in a non-military way. Which brings us to a question of why the United States decided to begin this process of the desert shield, which was the undishing of a genocide violence. Let me just take you through some statistics. See, in the first six of the war, six weeks of the war, the United States and coalition forces draw off the equivalent of,

if I recall correctly, nine atomic bombs, if I'm not mistaken, yes, seven Hiroshima size bombs. It's 88,000 of tons of bombs which was dropped in Iraq. This is unparalleled in the history of warfare in the region for sure and possibly in the world as well. And most of this violence had actually nothing to do with the liberation of Kuwait. It consciously was directed at Iraq's civilian infrastructure, which was, in a sense, the result of years of struggles of popular classes through anti-colonialism, national development, etc., etc., such that by the end of six weeks, Iraq was literally thrown back to the colonial era. That's clear in terms of statistics, for instance. You can think about Iraq's ability.

in terms of producing electricity. After this four months of war, the national power generation was only about 20% of its pre-war period, which is equal to the colonial period. So that's the scope of the violence. And Iraq at the time was clearly in opposition to attack the United States or act as, I don't know, what they call a Rube state.

So the question is why the United States decide to attack Iraq in the sense that it did it. I think it has really nothing to do with the liberation of Kuwait. Rather, there are three things which are of crucial importance. Number one, as you pointed out correctly, we are dealing with the terminal crisis of the Soviet Union, which was pretty clear. It's going to end to the collapse of the Soviet Union. at the time. Think about it for 50 years, not just the diplomatic thinking, strategic thinking, et cetera, of the United States policymakers was shaped by this bipolar Cold War mentality,

but also what is most important is that the Soviet Union acted as an existential threat to American allies, particularly Western Europe. After all, the Soviet Union, Union had the Red Army. Now, from the American perspective, this was actually not so bad because the existence of Soviet Union persuaded in real material terms that Western European countries abide by U.S. hegemony. Now, if you think about the collapse of the Soviet Union, it actually, to me, presents a threat to this American hegemony, because now you don't have the Red Army anymore, You don't have the Soviet Union anymore. As such, within this constellation, you expect that contradictions between intra-imperialist

contradictions intensifying. So I think the decision to invade Iraq was one which was aimed at creating a fate accomplice, a situation of war impermanence, which would replace the threat of the Soviet Union. and, in a sense, convince European allies to abide by, let's say, this U.S. hegemony in the post-Cold War era. I think if you look at it from the perspective of intra-imperialist contradictions, that's a crucial moment, which is often overlooked. Number two, the decision to occupy Iran is also not a coincidence, because after all, you are not quite occupying, but anyhow, establishing military bases, et cetera, et cetera, throughout the region through this desert shield storm and then the sanctions and whatnot.

You are positioning yourself decidedly in a military sense in a region which has the world's most hydrocarbon reserves and also is the most strategic trade sort of route linking Asia to Europe, Russia to Europe, et cetera, et cetera. So the United States, by launching this desert shield storm, got the opportunity to establish military bases, permanent military bases in the region. This is something that it had not been able to do even with its closest allies. allies in the region, which were the Gulf countries. So in a sense, the decision to occupy, I look at it as a way of pacifying contradictions, intra-imperialist contradictions between United States and Europe. But of course, later on, if you look at it from a long-durray perspective, particularly when you come to 2003, the occupation, you can also look at it as a way to prevent

future challenges from Asia, China, Russia, even India, right? Yeah, that's really interesting, and I really appreciate that point about the inter-imperialist war and trying to soothe that through these sorts of actions. And of course, if anybody looks at a map, every other variable aside, we understand why Iraq

is such a geostrategic position. It's the crossroads of three major continents. But one thing I just wanted to say before I handed off to Adnan to ask the next question is just this idea that the U.S. when I Iraq and Iran were going at is sort of driving both to war for its own purposes. And I think we see a similar strategy being employed in Ukraine today, where ever since the U.S.-backed coup in 2014,

the U.S. has been driving Ukraine to war with Russia, specifically for its own geopolitical and geostrategic needs and desires. And so using other people as a proxy for what the U.S. wants to do to maintain its empire and to destroy its enemies is something that is still with us today, of course. But yeah, really fascinating breakdown of that history, and I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that does segue nicely to what I wanted to ask a little bit about, which is you characterize the putting in place as a result of various UN resolutions and strategy for the next decade, something called. sanctions warfare regime. And I like the way this constellation allows us to see that active periods of military intervention, bombardment as you talk about the Operation Desert Storm

seamlessly fits and connects with the larger strategy of the economic blockade and sanctions regime. And so the importance of imperial war as a strategy for U.S. domination in the region is very closely typified by this period. So perhaps you could elaborate a little bit further on that sanctions warfare regime and the relationship between war and sanctions and the way the two go together in your analysis in the Iraq case. But also picking up on this point that Brett asked you about and you've been discussing quite cogently here about the collapse of the Soviet Union and its role regionally. and it's opening up then now for the opportunities for the U.S. to be much more assertive and direct in its goals of de-development and so on of, you know, powers in the Middle East is the way in which, unlike some of the other sanctions that are discussed in this book and that we know historically which are unilateral U.S. impositions, what's different in some ways, is the use of the U.N.

ways that it hasn't been possible subsequently and earlier to, to, you know, create this new sanctions warfare kind of regime sanctioned by UN Security Council resolution. So that's another component that would be interesting for you to reflect a little bit further on geostrategically. Beautiful. So let's start with the so-called sanction, what I term sanctions warfare regime. because usually in the, let's say, anti-imperialist discourse and whatnot, they look at sanctions as an alternative to war. In the case of Iraq, you cannot really separate the two. The two are intertwined.

And for us to understand that, again, we have to go back to the Desert Shield Storm and the economic blockade. So what happens here is that ever since Iraq occupied Kuwait, you have a total economic blockade being imposed on Iraq, which is conditional to withdrawal from Kuwait. Of course, it had nothing to do with that because the United States was building its campaign, building up its campaign, preparing for its military intervention. So on the second stage of the economic blockade is when, Kuwait is so-called, in quotation mark, liberated.

And then now the lifting of the economic blockade becomes conditional on Iraq accepting the terms of surrender, which again has nothing to do with the occupation of the Kuwait, because some of the terms are repayments of Iraq's foreign debt. It has nothing to do with the occupation. of Kuwait, or demands which in a sense build a structure of sanctions at infinitum. For instance, making sure that Iraq cannot develop weapons of mass destruction. This is really difficult to quantify and qualify. So then you have whole structure of sanctions being developed in and through the United Nations.

So Iraq is being put under Chapter 7 of United Nations, which essentially means that economic sovereignty of the country is done with. And then on the third stage of the economic blockade, you have the institutionalization of the oil for food program, which allows Iraq to sell in three different stages up to certain quantity of oil. And then the revenues are again administered by the United Nations. So some of it has to go to reparation sort of war damages to Kuwait. Some of it has to do with administering the United Nations sort of cause for stealing Iraq's sovereignty, basically, and whatnot. Now, and by the way, the third stage of the sanctions continues all the way to 2003. So you have this on the one hand, and on the other hand, you have. of the effects of the six weeks of war, which destroys the infrastructure of the country,

it makes it literally impossible to rebuild the infrastructural capacity of the country in terms of electricity, health gear, clean water, sanitation, et cetera, et cetera. But it doesn't stop there because after the United States and the coalition allows Saddam Hussein to suppress the uprisings in the south and north of Iraq, they impose a no-fly zone, which even by the standard of United Nations at the time was illegal. And not only they make it impossible for Iraq to have any kind of security control, security intelligence control over the country, but also they re-accentuate the effects of the sanctions by constantly targeting Iraq's civilian infrastructure.

So in a sense, you cannot separate the two from each other. Now, what this does is create a post-war leverage for United States, when you can see it in 2003 later on, and at the same time makes Iraq economy into a peripheral one. So that it is even dependent on semi-peripheral countries like Iran or Turkey in terms of running day-to-day sort of affairs of the country. So the two are absolutely inseparable. That's number one. What was the second question? Just the way in which the UN becomes, I mean, you just mentioned that, of course, even the UN as part of its oil for food program.

administers and takes a cut, you know, 3% for its own administration of the sale and distribution of Iraq oil revenues and so on. But I guess broadly speaking, just the fact that the post-Cold War situation with the collapse of the Soviet Union creates the conditions for the U.S. to develop through the U.N. a whole package of this sanctions warfare regime, Right. You know, subsequently, there have been occasions where it's been unable to, you know, have the full cooperation of the UN Security Council. But this was a moment in which it could really pioneer using the UN to, you know, kind of put in place sanctions that a kind of very full sanctions regime. And you've been describing. And you do describe also in the article, I think, in really great detail. the way in which there's a whole structure that's created, you know, that imposes upon Iraq's sovereignty so that it can't control any aspect of its, you know, finances, its development, it can't reconstruct.

So I just was interested in the way in which this is uniquely kind of suborning the U.N., partly because there's no longer any other voices in this post-90, you know, 90-91 era. there's no organized resistance to the U.S. or check on it in the U.N. So it's a special kind of condition that you don't find with other sanctions regimes where the U.S. has unilaterally had to impose these, yeah. I also just want to hop in and add a little bit to Adnan's question because talking about sovereignty does feed into what I was going to ask as a follow-up, so I might as well just put it here.

You know, you've both mentioned the oil for food program. mentioning that several oil for food programs had been proposed for years before one was actually accepted. And you know, you're framing this as a question of Iraqi sovereignty. And this is why I want to put it in as a kind of piggyback on what Adnan was asking is just simply, can you elaborate a little bit more in the process of answering Adnan's question about what the oil for food program was and why it was a question or, you know, why it was undermining Iraqi sovereignty, why it had been a process for several years of them rejecting these proposals before eventually what was accepted. So just to add that into what Adnan was asking. Well, absolutely. So let's start

with the whole, the way in which United Nations was really subsumed to United States. And I think if you look at the United Nations up until 1990, you'll see that for the most part, it's a cold war creation. So it is only logical that this sudden and really unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union, the United Nations then would be utilized by United States, which now has enormous diplomatic, economic, military space in the world to push for this violent form of new liberalization. And this is reflected in the sanctions committees as well, which Most of its members are either American or allied with the United States. This is reflected in the ways in which on the committees which had to deal with, let's say, Iraq's military programs.

A lot of them were American spies, Israeli spies, and that's why there was a lot of resistance from Iraqi states, not the Sicily regime, by the way, to sort of highlight that this is not the United Nations that we were used to. Because after all, Iraq was dealing with the United Nations for a resolution of the war with Iran. So you're absolutely right. You can see that the United Nations is completely subsumed to United States' wishes. And you had, by the way, I don't recall the names, but a couple of really these. bureaucrats within the United Nations, which resigned precisely because of the ways in which the United Nations was utilized as the basically arm of American foreign policymaking.

So I definitely agree with that. And in terms of the second question was about the Oil for Food Program, right? oil for food program. So they were talks about some kind of an oil for food program all the way from 1995, but Iraq opposed because it saw it as a clear violation of its sovereignty,

particularly economic sovereignty, because the United Nations, essentially the United States, with being charged of Iraq's revenues. And this becomes all the more significant when you consider that a majority of Iraq's foreign exchange was earned in and through oil revenues. So essentially, all of your foreign transactions, revenues, et cetera, is being controlled by United Nations, i.e. United States. But because of the devastating effects of this, what I call war impermanence, you know, six weeks of warfare and then no-fly zones, etc., etc., this situation in Iraq had become rather out of control by the end of mid-1990s. The DNR was experiencing a crisis.

You had outbreaks of pandemics such as malaria, et cetera. So really, there was no other way for this state in Iraq but to accept this oil for food program. And as you know, within the sort of first stage, it allowed Iraq to export two billions of dollars for every six months. And now I'll give you a sort of breakdown to see that even this oil for food program would not generate enough revenue to meet the basic needs of the population at the time. So of this $2 billion, let's say, every six months, 25% was,

transfer to the UN Compensation Commission to pay for Iraq's war reparations to Kuwait, etc., etc. 3% was UN's administrative costs, and 59% was humanitarian aid in areas under the control of the central government, and 13% for the three now semi-autonomous provinces, Kurdish provinces. So you can see with $2 billion, particularly a country which most of its infrastructure has been destroyed, is not enough to meet even the basic needs of the population. That's why you can see that the Iraqi state was resisting this. Nonetheless, by 1996, it had no option but to accept this. Well, before I know Brett wants to take us into more.

talking about theoretical things and strategic analysis, I want to just stick with the history for a little bit longer and shift us from this 1990s period up to 2003. And for very obvious reasons, we're narrowing in on 2003 specifically here. So can you just talk about what changed and, you know, what was the impact of the sanctions in 2003 specifically?

Right. Well, you see, particularly after 1999 when the cap on the oil for food program was removed so Iraq could sell the quantity of oil that it wanted, although it couldn't, because after all, the oil industry was devastated after years of sanctions, no fly zones, which was really attack on these installations, oil facilities, but also eight years of war with Iran. But you can see from 1999 onwards the effects of sanctions, although they were decidedly in place, but they were diluted a bit. Now, something becomes very important here because towards the end of the sanctions regime, as we're approaching the 2003 occupation, you have the signing of important ideals between Iraq and France and Russia. if I'm not mistaken. That's very important because, again, it signals something which not necessarily concerns Iraq. It concerns the broader picture, again. I think what happens by 2003 is that the United States project of pacifying these contradictions between its old allies in Europe,

but also new challenges to United States hegemony is not at all successful. That's precisely why we see that despite the sanctions regime, France and Russia and even Germany are collaborating with Iran. If you look at Iran, you'll see the same thing because we also had a sanctions regime there, and we still do. You see that Germany actually becomes the major investor in Iran despite or maybe because of U.S. sanctions.

So again, I think just like a part of an important justification or reason for the inauguration of this sanctions war regime was the United States attempt in pacifying, maintaining and controlling its hegemony over other metropolis in a sense, 2003 occupation should also be looked at in the same light. That is, again, we're witnessing intensification of intra-imperialist contradictions, and you have now this new comp project of occupation, outright occupation. So I think that's, again, what explained in a sense the Gulf War and the sanctions regime to a large extent also explained in this 2003 decision to occupy. Just quickly, you know, following from that, before we talk about 2003 and beyond, it's interesting to me that in, well, I wonder actually how much was there analysis or at least how much was their discourse about regime change in the

discussion of the sanctions war regime that we've been talking about? My sense is from the history that you talk about is that at so many phases, the sanctions regime and the sanctions regime and oil for food program in many ways, kind of kept Saddam Hussein in position, right? Because, of course, there were these uprisings that the U.S. allowed him to suppress and then put in these, you know, no-fly zones. But it created a dependency where the regime, although it didn't have sovereignty in the sense that it could make its own decisions, it was constrained by the oil for food program. Nonetheless, the state institutions and the regime was a pillar of how you distribute, you know, kind of the resources through this program. And so it keeps Saddam sort of in

power against other revolutionary possibilities, alternative social movements and political resistance. And, you know, this is also something that's so much a part of sanctions regime is that they use it as justification that this is to put pressure on a rogue regime and to accomplish regime change. But in fact, actually, it seems to create dependencies and repression within the domestic context. It has devastating consequences. And of course, we haven't talked so much about, you know, how terrible, you know, you've mentioned some things, but of course, half a million children, you know, suffering premature death. I mean, so many horrible devastating consequences, but they just are frozen in place with this regime. It doesn't

lead to, you know, kind of political ferment. It just creates this dependence. So I'm wondering if maybe you can reflect a little bit on that. And I think what you're saying is quite important to talk about because usually in the mainstream discourse, as you correctly point out, sanctions regimes are justified in a sense of putting pressure on oppressive regimes, maybe regime change, about democracy, etc. But what we see in the case of Iraq is clearly the opposite. Because, A, there was actually a revolutionary possibility in 1990, which was suppressed in coordination with the United States and the Allies action. So that revolutionary possibility was suppressed. And B, the regime was sustained, again, despite or maybe because of the structure

of the oil for food program, particularly you see that the absolute majority of the population in Iraq becomes absolutely dependent on food rations, et cetera, et cetera. But now I think it's important to look at it is clear that the United States at that time wanted to sustain a weakened Iraqi state nonetheless. But I think to understand why the decision was made to sustain Iraq as a weak state. state, we have to look at things regionally. And for that, we have to go back a bit to 1980. We see that the United States had this policy of dual content.

So to a revolutionary Iran on the one hand, which could pose important challenges, not just to the United States, but most significantly Israel at the time, and Iraq. They had this policy of prolonging the war, as much. much as they could. So you had a kind of dual weakening or dual containment of Iraq and Iran. But now what happens after in 1990 is that we'll see the gradual transformation of this dual containment to what I call asymmetric containment, which means that Iran is also facing sanctions of various kinds and diplomatic and even military pressures, but it's not comparable to what is happening in Iran.

I think the reason for that has to do with the question of Israel, because towards the end of 1990s, Iran, the power block in Iran which was facing a hegemonic crisis, because the war had done it on the one hand, the leader of the revolution, Khomeini had died, and now you have the collapse of Soviet Union. So you have, in a sense, a structural crisis on the domestic level. So the power block in Iran at that time was trying to become a part of post-war security arrangements in the Middle East and beyond, yet the United States couldn't quite facilitate that. This goes against the mainstream understanding of Iran where Iran in a sense was directly fighting with Israel, et cetera, et cetera, not quite the reverse actually.

they were even behind the scenes. They wanted to become a part of this Oslo peace process and whatnot. Now, the question becomes now, it becomes clear in a sense that Iran still had to be maintained as a weak state, but Iraq more so because Iraq, historically speaking, presented more of a threat to Israel than in Iran. which wanted to become a part of post-war security arrangements. I think that explains to a large part why the nature of dual containment gradually shifted to asymmetric containment. Yeah, that's really important. I just want to do a quick plug in the Rev. Left family really quick because it's relevant to what we're discussing here. Last year, I did an interview over at Rev. Left with Hakeem.

It's titled, The Spectre still haunts, breaking the imperialist chain, but it's largely about the Iraq War and, you know, Hakeem and his family and his community lived through it. So he talks about that a lot. So if anybody's interested in that sort of first-person narrative, definitely go check out that episode. But I want to drill down on something you've alluded to. You've alluded to rogue states. You just talked at length about asymmetric containment. And that's all in part and parcel of this, what you call a three-layered strategy on the part of the U.S. So you argue that, quote, the sanctions warfare regime materialized through the relatively successful. implementation of a three-layered American imperialist strategy. Can you talk more about this and what the three layers of this strategy are? Yeah, absolutely. So I refer to one of them, actually two of them, but I will recap again. So I think this American imperialist strategy, particularly towards Iran, specifically towards Iran, at three layers.

One is the war on Rook states, which, in a sense, is a creation of a fate-accomplice situation of war and permanence, which would replace the threat of communism, in a sense, vis-à-vis America's allies in the region, in Europe, particularly. At the same time, it would give the United States to finally establish military bases in the region, and, in a sense, prepare itself for future challenges, which, as we clearly see now, were coming already towards the end of 1990s from Russia, China, and even India. Second one, we did talk about it, asymmetric containment, which is to keep both Iran and United Iraq weak to ensure particularly Israel's security, But as we said, in a sense, weight of the sanctions, this so-called World Continent,

was way more on Iran because of its historical links, stronger links to the question of Palestine. And don't, by the way, forget that despite the revolution in 1979 in Iran, there were still elements of this sub-imperial project, sub-imperial state under the monarchy, which remained even under the Islamic Republic. And you can see this true prevalence of Persian nationalism years after the revolution still. So Iran was safer to bet on it in essence than Iran. At in Iran, the third one now is quite important. The third layer of American imperialist strategy, which is internationalization called Cantonization.

This is an argument which was developed by Sabahal Nasseri, who teaches at York, and he's written fantastic articles on Iraq since late 1990s. So I will just quote him of his conceptualization of internationalization, quantonization, which is fracturing a formerly political constituted space, through a violent opening as a first step towards the privatization of power and economy in peripheral states which were unwilling to abide by the neoliberal offensive. You see this in the case of Iraq clearly with not just taking away of Iraq's economic sovereignty, but more importantly partitioning Iraq's national space through carving out these

autonomous regions in north of Iran. There's also a second layer of internationalization pro-cantonization, which means that once, particularly in post-colonial states, once you fracture and fragment these formerly existing political spaces, national spaces, you are automatically re-invigorating, bringing back the old social classes.

As Ajaz Ahmed, who passed away a couple of years ago, famously argued, imperialism always intervenes on behalf of the most regressive social classes and categories. So you see that in Iraq, even under the Ba'ath regime, you have a gradual shift towards the reintroduction of these old social relations. So when the post-colonial state fails to, perform its functions in terms of providing social security, in terms of education, healthcare, it is the mosque-based networks and old social classes which now fill up the vacuum

in a sense. So even in the north of Iraq, you see that within the Kurdish opposition, which has, of course, extremely progressive forces, now you can see the dominance of those forces which were allied to the landowners, semi-federal landlords, etc. So this internationalization co-accantanization, of course, prepares the ground for the 2003 occupation. So it's not a coincidence that at least in the initial stages of the 2003 occupation, we don't see. what we expected to see in a sense. That is, let's say, a Vietnam kind of opposition. What we saw in Vietnam, right, a national-based, let's say, not nationalistic, but national-based opposition to the American occupation. You can see it's an uneven development of these processes of Cantonization, internationalization, co-cantonization. So you've talked about the imperial strategy, and earlier we had talked about how the sanctions regime policy and the military policy of the United States really worked not only hand in hand, but kind of exacerbated each other, or, you know, they fed into each other in certain ways.

They overdetermined each other in a sense. Exactly. You know, you pointed out that the military policy was to devastate targets that would then make the domestic economy and, you know, production much more susceptible to sanctions, which then means that when the West wants to put sanctions on Iraq, they're going to be all the more devastating as a result of the earlier military bombings that had taken place, etc. etc. So, you know, with that in mind, with the fact that the United States and the West more generally had been. let's say, softening up Iraq to feel the consequences of any disruptions, whatever, even more acutely than they otherwise would have. And also this three-tiered strategy that we just went through, what has the impact continued to be since 2003? Because of course, the story doesn't stop in 2003. It continues up to today and it will continue even past today.

This involvement and the softening. up has primed the society, primed the country that any disruption is going to be particularly devastating both politically as well as economically. So if you could just discuss how those factors have fed into what has happened since 2003 and even in very, very recent years, you know, after we think that the ongoing U.S. involvement in the country has more or less ended. You know, this is still continuing. Well, I think the important thing first to recognize, if you think about Iraq, let's say, in a contemporary sense, is that despite troop withdrawal, the occupation has sustained.

Because the whole point about occupation is not the capacity to occupy a country, but maintain an occupation regime in a sense. This is what is still in time. Now, in terms of the effects of the sanctions war regime, and later on, occupation intensifying that, it is important to make a comparison. You see, during 1990s, despite this massive imperialist pressure, which is unparalleled in any other country in the region, with the exception of Palestine possibly, you still had a sense. state intact, which rebuild some of those infrastructure in terms of electricity, sanitation, etc., etc. So despite all the criticism against the Ba'ath regime, one has to be willing to acknowledge that the Iraqi state still performed its function as a state despite those massive pressure.

Now, what happens in 2003 onwards is that you have these Iraqi allies, which have no experiences in ruling the country whatsoever. They don't know any of the institutions. They don't know how to run the country. They're basically just like colonial ruling classes. They're just an intermediary for the absolute exploitation of the country. So we haven't seen any of the efforts to rebuild the infrastructure that we see under the bat regime. So the situation has gotten way worse than what it was in the 1990s. Because at least in the 1990s, you had some of these rights institutionalized in the Constitution, social rights, right?

You don't have that now since 2003 occupation. But now if you look at it, not just from the perspective of the devastation that it brought upon Iraqi society, but look at the extent to which the United States was successful in achieving its goal through its strategy, we see the limitations now clearly because this strategy of internationalization qua-continization actually provided spaces which was outside the control of the United States. It can only control the space so much through creating the instabilities. And this is precisely what happened in Iraq after the occupation we see that it allowed

the Islamic Republic to embed itself militarily, economically, even ideologically in Iraq, at the cost to some extent of the United States. So I think the limits of this strategy of controlling through creating instabilities has become clear even to the United States itself. So that is to say that there might be a lot of pressure on decision makers in the United States to pursue other strategies other than the one that they pursued in Iraq since 19. 90s. Not just Iraq, by the way. You can see it in Libya. You can see it in Syria all over the place. So we're kind of approaching perhaps the end of this conversation and the essay itself. And I would just like to quote at the end of the essay you talk about this. You say the essential point here is that the violent condensation of the contradictions of the New World Order in Iraq

allowed the sanctions warfare regime to persist, prepare the ground for the 2003 invasion, and delay a possible popular history. That is, without the sanctions warfare regime, there would be neither a weakened bath regime nor an occupation, but very likely a revolution. And that's how you ended. Can you talk a little bit more about those revolutionary possibilities and what the germ of them were?

We know how they were ultimately crushed. Right, exactly. First of all, I mean, historically speaking, looking at Iraq, you see that Iraq is not only important in terms of its, I don't know, let's say, oil reserves or a Jewish strategic location,

but also social history of Iraq has always presented existential threats, be it to the colonial or imperialist powers. It can see this in 1920. The extent of violence that it was used against the Iraqi Revolution of 1990 against British colonialism shows what the potentials were, actually. This is one of the first instances of carpet bombardment of the city. So that's number one. And number two, if you look at the situation not theoretically, you'll see that any space that has been what Altaxer calls condensation of contradictions, there is actually a revolutionary

potential in there as well. Al-Hu-Zer at the time was pointing to Russia in 1917, a country which was both colonialists but also colonized, a country in which you had the biggest industries is yet the majority of the country was semi-feudal still. And yet you had one of the most decisive revolutions of 20th century there. So I always say when we talk about Iraq, we have to look at it not just in a pessimistic sense that a country has been devastated for more than 40 years now, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, the occupation, sanctions, et cetera, et cetera. But you have to look at this as a condensation of contradictions.

condensation of critical knowledge, critical practice, which has been taking there in that country for such a long time. So to look at things optimistically, you see that even since 2019, you have now the reconstitution of a nationally based organized sort of form of resistance to occupation, to the occupation regime. This is something that even goes beyond nationalistic tendencies, right? But rather reconstituting a national sense in a radically new sense. So I always look at Iraq in a very optimistic sense. And I think if there is something to happen in the region, it will most likely either begin from Iraq or go through Iraq. Because it's much like the question of Palestine in a sense, yeah? Oh, okay, interestingly, yeah, well, I guess on that slightly picking up the optimistic thread, I mean, we have had an episode with Ben Norton talking about multipolarity and, you know, the causes and potential possibilities as a result of the end of pure U.S. unipolar domination, what the rise of China, India, Russia, you know, may allow for in the world.

I suppose, you know, it would be interesting to hear what you might say about, you know, whether a kind of multipolar geopolitical situation, you know, whether there will be some openings, what do you think those might be for this particular region, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, you know, for the Middle East region. You see, per definition, any structural crisis in the imperialist chain opens up spaces for semi-periparies and peripheries. This is what Frank talked about in the development of underdevelopment. However, at least in that article, he was a bit too early in saying that the crisis will resolve and then the imperialist powers will recapture those spaces. But I think now we are in such a structural crisis and I think there is a good possibility that we'll witness this as a very protracted crisis. So it's perhaps quite early to say that we'll definitely transition to, I don't know,

multipolar world again or bipolar world, just like the Cold War. I think it's a long period and period of protracted crisis, which gives semi-peripheries enormous spaces to, in a sense, redefine the ways in which they can have a say in the regional and global affairs. But nonetheless, there are here two different possibilities, at least what we have seen so far. And the one hand, we've seen that in the Middle East, particularly in the Middle East, specific political regimes have utilized the structural crisis to embed themselves in the region. let's say Turkey, even Iran, which is under sanctions, but it's become quite a regional power.

That's, let's say, one way to look at it in a sense will have a new form of ruling class, a regionalized ruling class or regionalization of hegemonic struggles. And the other hand, we can look at this as opportunities for the popular classes to go beyond what they have been in a sense subjugated to and reimagine, reconstitute a new form of polity and you see this nowadays, for instance, with the protests in Iran, protests in Iraq, they automatically assume a regional character,

which is, in a historical sense, quite strong because all of these regions still have remained, in the sense of progressive history is quite connected, despite colonization and fragmentation, et cetera, et cetera. So I think if you look at this structural crisis of the imperialist chain from the perspective of popular classes, we will have opportunities to imagine

what I years ago called a regional road to democratic socialism. If you want to be extremely optimistic about it, I think that's the way we have to imagine things. And we see the nucleus of that at embryonic stages now. Inshallah. Inshall. Yeah, a great conversation.

I think a great way to close it. Again, listeners, our guest was Nima Nakhai. Great essay in the book Sanctions as War, again titled Iraq, understanding the sanctions warfare regime. Nima, thanks for coming on the show and sharing your insights. It was really valuable. Can you let the listeners know where they can find your work and, you know, keep up to date with anything else that you're putting out?

Well, actually, I'm just going to use this opportunity to promote something. We've had a special issue on imperialism and resistance on the Middle East and North Africa, which is going to come out on March, that's through the Journal of Labor and Society, which is the editor is Emmanuel Nance. So if they just click on this portal, they will see some of the articles have already appeared, but we have a fantastic collection of articles coming up

on the special issue. We'll have actually one interview with Sabah al-Nasar, It's precisely about what we talk about. It's about American imperialist strategy towards Iraq in the 1990s and onwards, mostly focusing on the current constellation with the popular protests and whatnot. So I urge anyone who's interested in this issue of imperialism and, of course, resistance to imperialism today take a look at that issue. And I recently joined social media.

So I will share my, I guess, information with you, and that's where I write nowadays, mostly. Great. So in listeners, I also highly recommend you check out the Journal of Labor and Society. I do check it out when I have a little bit of extra time. And as you mentioned, it's edited by our friend Emmanuel Ness. And I know our listeners really appreciate Manny and his work. So he's terrific. And as we get closer to March, hopefully we can.

can perhaps bring some of the contributors to that special issue on and have maybe a bit of a roundtable or something like that about some of the topics that are covered within that issue. It would be particularly interesting, I think, for our listeners. By the way, before we finish, I just remember that it is important to remember these symbols at least when it comes to Iraq. I think it was December 14th when George Bush went to Iraq and a Iraqi journalist through his shoes at George. Bush and there was a statue made of, well, today is December 15, but anything. At any rate, I think it's quite important to remember these heroic acts of struggle. And let's hope that the shoes this time will hit the target right on. Absolutely.

And I know that that journalist is on Twitter and he's worth a follow as well. I don't have his Twitter handle at my fingertips. But if you look, you'll be able to find him. exactly all right so adnan how can the listeners find you in your other podcast that you run well you can follow me uh on twitter at adnan a hussein hus a i n and you can give a listen to uh my other podcast the mudglish m a y l i s deals with middle east Islamic world muslim diasporic affairs uh and in fact maybe we might need to have an episode uh with uh neema uh Nakhai and some of his compatriots from that volume on imperialism as well, especially the ones that

relate to the Middle East. So if you're interested in those topics, you can learn a little bit about these kinds of things on the MHA, LIS. Exactly. And as I periodically remind people not the muchless podcast that's hosted by Radio Free Central Asia. It's the better much list, the one from MSGPQU, as long as I got the acronym right this time at none. That's right, yeah. Muslim society's global perspectives at Queen's University. Yeah, that's the sponsor for the Mudgellis that you should listen to. And you can ignore the Central Asian, you know, the U.S. State Department, CIA podcast, the Mudgellis on Central Asia.

Radio Free, Central Intelligence Asia. Brett, how can the listeners find you and your other excellent podcasts? First off, thank you so much, Nima. I really enjoyed this work and discussing it with you. I learned a lot, so we'd love to have you back on any time in the future. But you can find everything I do at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. Excellent. Highly recommend the listeners do that as well.

And Nima, just before I read myself out, I know that we had been talking about perhaps bringing you back on with Mohamed Sahimi to talk about Iran as. the situation develops there as you're both experts in Iran. So that's something that we may be bringing you back on in the near future as things continue to develop within the country. Absolutely. Excellent. Just wanted to get that on the record so that you can't back out of it if we, you know,

when we reach out to you. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. Around the time that this episode comes out, the new translation of Domenico-Lasorto-Stalin and critique of a black legend that Salvatore Engel de Morrow and myself our co-editing should be coming out from Peace Land and Bread, so keep your eyes peeled for that. And you can

follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A underscore pod. And you can help support the show and help us expand what we're doing by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, G-O-E-R-R-I-L-A

history. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity. You know,