On Iran, Venezuela, Greenland, and Keeping America’s Hands Off the World

The worst thing that could happen to the Iranian people right now is American “help.”

Donald Trump says the “USA stands ready to help” as protesters fill Tehran’s streets demanding an end to Khamenei’s rule, and he threatens military strikes while being briefed on “strike options” and considering cyberattacks and carrier deployments, the American empire preparing to rain freedom onto Iran in the form of Tomahawk missiles and Delta Force raids. Except no one has ever been freed by American invasion: not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not Libya, not anywhere American “democracy” has touched, because the only thing American bombs deliver is American control over resources, over politics, over the smoldering ruins of what used to be your country.

We have watched the same con repeat itself across time and countries, whether it be Saddam and Gaddafi or Assad and Maduro and now Khamenei, brutal men running brutal regimes with crimes that are real and documented, and every single time America identifies the oppressed and claims humanitarian concern and launches military intervention and installs a puppet and extracts resources and calls it freedom. Odd that America can see brutality everywhere except in the mirror, where decades of drone-striking children and arming genocide looks suspiciously like freedom.

It usually looks something like this: internal resistance emerges, American intelligence agencies amplify it, media coverage intensifies, atrocity stories circulate (some true, some exaggerated, some fabricated), liberal internationalists wring their hands about human rights, neoconservatives salivate over regime change, and suddenly there’s consensus that something must be done. That something is always bombs, and it always serves American interests.

Look at Venezuela right now, Trump’s dress rehearsal for Iran, where he claims he freed Venezuelans from Maduro’s dictatorship, but ask yourself who chose Delcy Rodríguez to run the government because it wasn’t Venezuelans.

Who controls Venezuelan oil now? Not Venezuelans. Trump seized it as tribute, millions of barrels extracted immediately with American corporations lining up for contracts to “rebuild” an industry they’re actively pillaging, and he signed an executive order titled “SAFEGUARDING VENEZUELAN OIL REVENUE FOR THE GOOD OF THE AMERICAN and VENEZUELAN PEOPLE”, Safeguarding it from whom? And why are Americans entitled to oil not theirs?

And now he wants to do the same to Iran.

Trump’s threats aren’t about helping Iranian protesters, they’re about strategic positioning and sending a message to China and Russia about American dominance, where the protests are pretext and the humanitarian concern is cover and the goal is control. American “liberation” actually means that Iranians will be killed, destruction of infrastructure people depend on to survive, economic collapse from broader war, regional conflagration pulling in Iraq and Syria and Lebanon, and eventually installation of someone like Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son, living in America for forty-five years, who hasn’t set foot in Iran since he was a teenager, who represents nothing except American-approved politics and American-managed extraction.

But, the Iranians in the streets are not asking for American intervention, they’re not begging for regime change delivered by American missiles or invaders, they’re exercising their right to hold their own government accountable for legitimate grievances like economic collapse and repression and corruption and failure to provide basic necessities. When Venezuelans organized against Maduro they weren’t requesting American occupation, when Palestinians resist we’re not asking for more American money and weapons flowing to our occupiers, when people anywhere rise up against their rulers they’re demanding accountability from the people who are supposed to serve them, not inviting empire to colonize them.

In most cases American intervention is already the reason people are suffering in the first place. Iranian protesters are hungry because sanctions, American sanctions, have destroyed their economy for decades, and yes the regime is brutal but the economic devastation driving people into the streets? That’s American policy, collective punishment designed to immiserate ordinary Iranians until they overthrow their government. Cuba’s economy collapsed partly through American sanctions that prevented the country from selling accessing international banking and importing food and medicine, or American sanctions that starved Venezuelans before Trump invaded claiming to save them from starvation, the arsonist posing as firefighter.

Palestinians suffer under Israeli occupation funded by American weapons and American money and American diplomatic cover, where most bombs dropped on Gaza is stamped “Made in USA” and every act of ethnic cleansing is underwritten by American aid, and when we resist we’re terrorists, and when we protest we’re antisemites, and when we demand accountability we’re asking for too much. The American empire creates the conditions for suffering then offers to “solve” that suffering through more intervention and more violence and more control, a protection racket at civilizational scale where they break people’s legs then charge them for crutches, starve them with sanctions then invade claiming to feed them, supply the bombs that kill them then condemn the resistance.

As a Palestinian I relate to people uprising against their leaders. However, at the end of the day, I would rather have Abbas, a corrupt, collaborationist, than American “liberation,” not because Abbas is acceptable (he’s not, he’s a weasel who coordinates with occupation forces and suppresses resistance and enriches himself while his people suffer) but because Abbas is our problem to solve and American occupation means decades of imperial subjugation. The same choice faces Venezuelans and Iranians and Cubans and anyone in the crosshairs of American “freedom,” where the framing is always brutal dictator or American intervention, Khamenei or Trump, Maduro or American occupation, Assad or American bombs.

But this is a manufactured binary. The Iranian people aren’t choosing between Khamenei and Trump, they’re fighting for something neither offers, their self-determination. They’re in the streets because they’re hungry and inflation destroyed their savings and the regime is repressive and corrupt and failing, they want change they create on their terms accountable to them. They’re not asking Trump to invade, they’re not begging for American bombs, they’re demanding their government do better, or, that they exercise their right to create a new government on their own.

Liberation doesn’t come from outside, it cannot be delivered white men from the White House who worship war, it’s not a gift bestowed by people who think they rule Heaven and Earth, but something people take for themselves or it isn’t liberation at all.

What Iranians actually need right now is American absence.

Lift the sanctions that have strangled Iran’s economy for decades making ordinary people desperate while the regime elite find workarounds, stop arming regional rivals who encircle Iran, stop occupying neighboring countries, stop assassinating Iranian scientists and generals, stop bombing Iranian infrastructure, stop claiming authority to determine which Iranian government is legitimate. Let Iranians solve Iranian problems.

America has no ideology beyond personal power and no concern beyond American dominance, America doesn’t care about Iranian freedom any more than it cares about Venezuelan freedom or Palestinian freedom or anyone’s freedom,.

I’d rather have the wolf I know than the one in sheep’s clothing, I’d rather have my own evil, corrupt, brutal, homegrown leader than American empire ruling through proxies and calling it democracy as they steal our land, lives, and resources as we are subordinated to western capital and military bases.

To the Iranian people in the streets right now, the world sees your courage facing down a regime willing to kill you to maintain power, you might win this fight or you might not because revolutions are uncertain and dangerous and costly, but one thing is certain, you will not be freed by American bombs. The peoples’ struggle for freedom is not a pretext for your colonization. Trump will use your movement to serve American interests not yours, he will destroy your infrastructure while claiming to help you, he will kill your people while pretending to save them, he will install his puppet while calling it democracy.

You deserve better than Khamenei’s repression, and you also deserve better than America’s “freedom.” The path forward is yours to forge not Washington’s to determine, your grievances are legitimate and your protests are justified and your demand for accountability from your government is your right, you’re not asking for American intervention but exercising self-determination, exactly what America claims to support while doing everything to prevent.

The Iranian people, just as most people of lands America has claimed to free while actually holding them captive, need America to get its boot off their neck. Anything else is just more imperialism.

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