Workers World, Vol. 21, No. 47
November 28 – For more than two weeks now the U.S. government has been busy trying to line up the UN Security Council behind its predatory struggle against the oppressed Iranian people.
After many days of behind-the-scenes pressure, the current Council president, Sergio Palacio Vizzio, made a statement on November 9, which he said was authorized by the Security Council, asking for the release and protection of the hostages. No member of the Security Council, which now has 15 members, has disputed his authority to make such a statement. And at this writing it is clear that the statement was made by unanimous consent of all the Council members.
If anyone objected to it, there has been ample time to make their position clear. In making what amounted to a unilateral demand upon the Iranian people, without so much as mentioning the criminal conduct of the shah, let alone calling for his deportation to Iran, the Council completely lent itself to the cunning maneuvers of U.S. imperialism in its aggressive war against the Iranian people.
But the matter was not left there. The Secretary General of the UN, Kurt Waldheim, allegedly took it upon himself to suddenly declare that “a threat to international peace exists in the world today” and immediately summoned the Security Council to meet yesterday, November 27. The U.S. applauded his supposed initiative.
The “threat to international peace” was not seen in the Pentagon’s massing of three huge naval task forces moving ever closer to the Persian Gulf: the Mideast task force, which includes a host of ships with guided missiles, the Midway task force, which included nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers, and the Kitty Hawk task force, which of course has the attack carrier Kitty Hawk as well as the guided missile cruiser Jouett, and other guided missile destroyers.
This was not interpreted by the U.S. and the rest of the imperialist countries as a “threat to peace.” The “threat to peace,” it is clearly implied, lies in the detention of the diplomatic personnel at the U.S. Embassy, which the Iranian government has unmasked as a CIA espionage nest.
The U.S. even had the arrogance to try to bar the Iranian government from present its case at the UN before obtaining the condemnation of Iran by the Security Council. It was only after long and protracted behind-the-scenes maneuvers and only after a firestorm of revolutionary protest from the oppressed masses all across the world, from the Philippines to Indonesia to Pakistan, Turkey and others against U.S. military threats made earlier by Carter, that the UN Security Council finally agreed to merely meet for procedural purposes only. This meeting was called for the purpose of setting the stage, so to speak, for the debate on December 1 when the Security Council will at last permit the Iranian delegation to present its position without any condemnatory resolution beforehand.
At the December 1 meeting Iran can take the opportunity as a member state of the UN to demand the return of the shah and all the stolen property, and that an analysis be carried out in the historical record of all the crimes committed by the shah against the Iranian people. It goes without saying that this would also constitute an indictment against the U.S. government which originally installed the shah in power and has maintained and supported him all these many years.
The U.S. even fiercely contested Iran’s request for an adjournment until December 1 so that Iran could prepare its case well, and not have to come during the Muharram (the Moslem period of mourning), although it relented later. It should be noted that President Carter made it a point to publicly boast in his nationwide TV talk this evening about the unanimous support the U.S. government has received in the UN Security Council on the question of the release of the hostages.
It could scarcely be doubted that the record of the UN Security Council’s deliberations for these many crisis-filled days has been one of backdoor deals and front-door propaganda calculated to serve the interests of U.S. imperialism and to undermine the defense of the oppressed Iranian people.
During all this time only Kurt Waldheim, the Secretary General, and Sergio Palacio Vizzio, the current president of the Council, were authorized to speak. And both of these spokesmen presented statements which clearly were favorable to the position of U.S. imperialism. No one, we repeat, no one, publicly differentiated themselves from these authorized spokesmen for the UN Security Council.
If it turns out that the Iranian government declines to attend the UN Security Council meeting, it would merely signify the reluctance of that government to permit a hostile Council to take jurisdiction over its sovereignty. The UN Security Council has been unable in its entire existence to solve any fundamental issue in favor of the oppressed peoples. At most, it has been able to ratify by agreement what has already been achieved by the struggle of oppressed people for their liberation.
The Waldheims and the Vizzios and their ilk stood aside during the entire course of the U.S. genocidal war against Viet Nam and Cambodia. They are permitting the imperialist powers to daily violate the fundamental rights of the African people. Even as the Council, at the behest of the U.S., was conniving in secret talks during these past two weeks to come up with its hostile stand against Iran, it was doing nothing about the daily bombardment by the Ian Smith-Muzorewa puppet regime against Zambia and Mozambique, not to speak of the relentless, barbarous war against the Palestinians nor the fact that Washington is still blockading Cuba and violating its territory by occupying Guantanamo.
What right has such a Council to attempt to dictate how Iran should conduct its foreign policy and internal affairs?
It therefore should not have been surprising that on November 27 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said in a broadcast: “Our nation does not agree with the made-to-order Security Council meeting whose course has been predetermined.” He condemned the UN Security Council because Iran “knows that the verdict of any council or court that sits under the direct influence of the U.S. has been dictated by the U.S. from the start and the condemnation of our oppressed nation is welcomed by the Council.”
Is Khomeini justified in making this sweeping indictment of the UN Security Council? In the light of the current situation as it has unfolded in the UN, we could not agree more.
One immediately asks, “What about the USSR and China?” Both of them sit as permanent members of the UN Security Council. Each has a veto power over any resolution passed by the Security Council. If they have such authority in the Council, why haven’t they spoken up? Why have they permitted two officials to speak for the entire Security Council unless they were authorized to do so? By their statements, Waldheim and Vizzio have made what amounted to a demand upon Iran, while letting the U.S. go scot-free on its criminal behavior towards Iran and particularly its odious conduct in unashamedly and flagrantly permitting the shah to be brought to the U.S.
It is surely in the broad historical and class interests of both China and the USSR to come out unequivocally in defense of a people oppressed by an imperialist colossus. It was not so long ago that China viewed itself as a leader of the Third World in the struggle against imperialism. The USSR to this very day stands out as a defender of the oppressed peoples who are suffering from imperialist plunder and domination.
Why hasn’t either spoken up in this very crucial situation? Silence in this case means acquiescence.
No one should demand from a socialist country that it seek out military adventures or deliberate confrontations with imperialism without provocation. If the USSR or China believed that either or both of them would be subject to U.S. retaliation merely for speaking out in defense of the just cause of the Iranian people at a world forum of which they are principal pillars by virtue of their veto power, all that was necessary was to let it be known that they were abstaining or dissenting from the agreed position that was stated and restated by Security Council President Vizzio.
Or they could have not attended any of the sessions and, while being recorded as not attending, continued in their press to give anti-imperialist support to the Iranian people by unmasking the predatory aims of U.S. imperialism in Iran as well as throughout the Gulf and exposing its war preparations. This is merely traditional, Marxist-Leninist ABCs in the anti-imperialist struggle.
By going along with the U.S., by their silence, and by letting the U.S. spokesmen speak for them, they bring discredit upon themselves and the cause of socialism before the eyes of the revolutionary masses throughout the world and especially among the oppressed masses in the besieged area.
All this does not mean that the basic class antagonism between imperialism on the one hand, and the USSR and China on the other, has in any way been materially affected. It simply means that, as a result of the Sino-Soviet internecine struggle, each of them is courting the favor of U.S. imperialism in order to gain a narrow diplomatic advantage which in the long run will not count for a roll of pins.
It is understandable that the USSR is fearful that the U.S. could turn its anti-Iranian struggle directly against the Soviet Union. And were the USSR to help Iran militarily, the U.S. would surely seek to enlist both China and NATO. Of course this should be a fundamental consideration of Soviet diplomacy.
But by accommodating itself to U.S. diplomatic needs, and thereby losing the trust and confidence of the exploited masses throughout the East, the USSR is not improving its military, political, or diplomatic position. It is once again a case of subordinating revolutionary internationalism in the interests of an illusory diplomatic advantage.
Nor will the Chinese leadership gain much from American finance capital by trying to ingratiate itself through accommodating itself to the needs of Pentagon-Carter brinkmanship in the struggle to subjugate Iran.
It is not, of course, too late to correct what is surely a clear violation of revolutionary internationalism by the two largest socialist countries. The very aggressiveness of U.S. monopoly capitalism and its insatiable appetite for expansion will surely give the leadership in both China and the Soviet Union food for rethinking this harmful policy, which is so injurious to the cause of the oppressed peoples and lends credence to the imperialist canard that both China and the USSR are either imperialist or social-imperialist regimes.
Leonid Brezhnev pointedly warned the U.S. in the early days of the Iranian crisis (Nov. 19, 1978), before the shah fell and when U.S. interventionist plans were already being hatched, that the USSR was opposed to U.S. intervention in Iran. We thought that was appropriate both from the diplomatic as well as anti-imperialist position. The recent tilt by Soviet diplomacy in the direction of accommodation with the U.S. on the Iranian situation, as is made particularly clear by the Security Council maneuvers, is a departure unworthy of a socialist state and will be counter-productive.
Perhaps this is being reassessed even at this moment. A Moscow dispatch to the New York Times dated November 27 states that Ambassador Mohammed Mokri of Iran said at a press conference at his embassy that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko had expressed “moral support” for the Iranian Revolution in a two-hour meeting with him Monday. The Ambassador added, “The Soviet Union supports our revolution and has many times declared so publicly.” This demonstrates that the Iranian government is eager to solicit Soviet support rather than spurn it or be indifferent to it by allegedly coupling the U.S. and Soviet positions.
What is required now is to make the Soviet position of “moral support,” as enunciated by Gromyko, consistent by extending diplomatic support. This could be done by rebuffing the flagrant U.S. efforts to use the UN Security Council as an instrument to cover its interventionist plot against the Iranian people, as it has in the past two weeks.
It is especially timely for the USSR to take greater cognizance of its own oft-repeated, truthful charges against the U.S. One need only look at today’s New York Times to be again reminded of it. James Reston, writing from Moscow, finds that the people in the Soviet Union believe “that somehow the U.S. is conspiring to regain its position of dominance in the world at the expense of the Soviet Union.” That belief is what should be borne in mind by the Soviet leaders when the U.S. arrogantly demands of the USSR to be “helpful” in its struggle with the Iranian people.
Last updated: 11 May 2026