<nettime> Vivek Menezes: Elegy for Iran (o Herald o, Goa)

[Patrice Riemens via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Original to: https://www.heraldgoa.in/edit/elegy-for-iran-2/424201


Elegy for Iran
Vivek Menezes, o Herald o, Panjim, Goa, India
22 June 2025


If the grotesque calculus of the warmongers continues to play out as we have been seeing the past few days, America will now launch an unprecedented joint assault with Israel on Iran, in yet another iteration of the same old Iraq playbook: bogus claims of “weapons of mass destruction”, false predictions of popular support, then uninhibited war crimes tearing apart state and society. Just like that time, all pretences about “rules-based order” have been jettisoned in the exercise of primeval “might makes right.” As the sage Goa-based Admiral Arun Prakash (he was both Chief of Naval Staff and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee) tweeted a few hours ago: “Should we worry? Nuclear facilities of a sovereign state are being unlawfully attacked with impunity; endangering its people and the world, thru hazards of radiological/nuclear fallout. Regime change - the sole prerogative of a country’s own people - is being openly discussed!”

One problem, of course, is that Iran’s own people have indeed been trying to effect regime change via democratic means in recent years, only to be brutally suppressed again and again. In her 2023 Nobel Peace Prize address written “from behind the high, cold walls of a prison”, the inspirational human rights activist Narges Mohammadi made it clear “the reality is that the regime of the Islamic Republic is at its lowest level of legitimacy and popular support, situated in a position of unstable equilibrium, and the emergence of any element as a catalyst for change will mark the final form of opposition policies and the transition from religious tyranny.”

Make no mistake, Mohammadi has no illusions about the current scenario either. Earlier this week, she told Corriere Della Serra that “I spent ten years of my life in prison without seeing my children just for defending human rights and peace. Now my people and I find ourselves at the crossroads of two wars. A total war between Israel and the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Republic’s internal war against the people of Iran. I stick to the facts: in Iran, a misogynistic religious regime governs with Ali Khamenei at the top, who has brought us to hell while promising paradise. At the same time, Netanyahu is also leading us to hell while promising freedom and democracy. I am certain that war never brings anything democratic, nor human rights nor freedom. I condemn this war in the strongest possible terms.”

But even if Iran’s sternest internal critics are united against the prospect of Israel and the US attacking the regime they also seek to topple, their voices of reason do not matter to the powerful pro-war lobbies that have seized control in the governments going rogue. Here is how the fine analyst – and former Portuguese minister - Bruno Maçães summarized how we got here in The New Statesman: “As far back as last September, Netanyahu was saying that Iran would be “liberated sooner than people think”. The same month Jared Kushner remarked: “Moments like this come once in a generation, if they even come at all. The Middle East is too often a solid where little changes. Today, it is a liquid and the ability to reshape is unlimited. Do not squander this moment.” Trump hadn’t yet won the election, though. Netanyahu was forced to wait, but after Israel weakened Hezbollah in Lebanon, he became fixated on how auspicious a final confrontation with Iran looked.

His priority then became how to drag America into a war it refused to join from the start. American bunker busters are needed to wipe out Iran’s nuclear programme, and perhaps US troops will be required, too, if the Khamenei regime is to be ousted. Trump is somewhat more difficult to manage than his bumbling predecessor — he has after all built much of political appeal on a critique of foreign intervention — but how long will even Trump be able to resist the call for a final battle between good and evil? Not long, I think.”

You know the world is in deep trouble when anyone looks to Trump to save the day, and of course he will not do so. That means chaos is now about to be unleashed our veritable doorstep, as Goa and Persia – indeed India and Iran – have been inextricably interlinked for thousands of years. It is a familial relationship of great significance, writ deep in our language and identity: Konkani is full of Farsi words – “barik”, “noxib”, “bejar” – and the percentage is even higher in Marathi. Prior to the colonial depredations – and to a large extent during and afterwards too – there has been an incessant back and forth between our two locations. There were thousands of Goans living and working in Persia after oil was discovered at the end of the 19th century through to the middle of the 20th century, and many Iranians have come to study, work or visit the state in the 21st century too. Earlier this year itself, on the auspicious occasion of Nowruz, the first-ever charter flights from Iran landed in Goa to an enthusiastic welcome.

All that seems distant, almost impossible now just a few weeks later, and it is perfectly realistic to feel scared and sad about what is coming next. “I have an intangible sense of being ‘amongst my people’ with Iranians (as with North Africans from Morocco and Algeria). No further way to explain it, says Amruta Patil, the brilliant Goa-raised-and-based artist and the country’s first woman graphic novelist, whose protest painting Basté (it means “Enough”) accompanies this column. She told me her artwork is about “the mangling of popular discourse about Iran and Islam. I have done a course in Farsi and have a longstanding love affair with the land. Twice over I have enrolled at Dekhoda Language Institute in Tehran only to have one pandemic and one political catastrophe intervene. The footage of the exodus of cars, of ruined buildings – it all feels very close to home. My heart has been in a state of perma-ache.”

(Vivek Menezes is a writer and co-founder of the Goa Arts and Literature Festival)

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