The Guardian Letter: AISC Responds

The Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective (AISC) strongly condemns "To Iran's political prisoners, trapped 'between two blades of a scissors'," the open letter published on 20 August 2026 in The Guardian and signed by Western academics and cultural workers in the imperialist core. The letter distorts history, obfuscates the current geopolitical conjuncture, and provides ideological cover for the intensification of the ongoing war against Iran.[1] Similar to accusations against the Palestinian resistance that equate the zionist genocide to resistance-to-genocide, the letter creates a false and dangerous equivalence between the defensive actions of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the aggressions of the United States and Israel, the most powerful and genocidal imperialist forces in world history. The letter names multiple historical events without analysis, context, or citations. The absence of Iran's resistance to the century-long genocide of the Palestinian people is deeply troubling. Additionally, the letter does not address the past century of imperialist intervention, during which Europe, the United States and most recently, Israel, have undermined Iranian and Arab sovereignty through coup attempts, kinetic wars, mercenaries, information warfare, sanctions, economic violence, and sabotage. Instead of addressing this execrable record, the authors offer a vague reference to "the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran" and a deracinated acknowledgement of the 1953 US-backed coup. As US imperialism accelerates and the resistance against it strengthens, the battle of ideas continues to intensify. This is the time when the responsibility of the anti-imperialist intellectual is to be rigorous and vigilant. We therefore find it necessary to name the stakes and clarify the distortions and obfuscations in the Guardian letter. The claims must be challenged and the motivations for its publication unearthed, especially because, as of the writing of this response, the letter's authors remain obscured, the social media page that originally posted the letter is erased, while imperialist war drums continue apace. What follows is AISC's initial response to this alarming, pro-imperialist document."

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