Guardian, January 13 2026
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I read two pieces yesterday by men of whom I have decidedly mixed feelings. One being Owen Jones, writing in the Guardian on the attempted and I hope abortive ‘colour revolution’ in Iran. On this subject I’ve made my views plain in four posts this week, with a little help from a Caitlin Johnstone whose take mirrors mine as she damns the fake neutrality of anarchists and Leftists who “pretend they live in an imaginary world where the Iranian government can be overthrown without benefiting the US empire”.
Owen, let me say unequivocally, has been splendid on Palestine. Sure, he does what I refuse to do in condemning the Hamas breakout of October 7 but that I can overlook. Like Mehdi Hasan, of whom I also have mixed feelings, Owen takes the Palestinian fight onto enemy terrain – with tenacity and not a little panache – and, as with Mehdi, in damning October 7 he neutralises the genocide apologists’ choicest accusation. Do I like it? Nope, and for the same reason I don’t like his ‘universalist’ condemnations of Assad or Castro. I simply leave room for the possibility that keyboard warriors like yours truly aren’t best placed to dictate tactics to those with the balls to take the fight into the Zionist camp.
I spoke of ‘universalism’. Who could deny that, in principle, for human rights to be worth a bean they must apply to all? My problem is that, in practice, so noble an ideal cannot but align with empire interests against the besieged nations in its sights. As I put it eight years ago in a post whose primary focus was George Monbiot, but which also took in fellow universalist Owen …
We in the west enjoy freedom of expression and limited democracy, 1 fruits of a prosperity based on exploiting the global south. When progressive governments must fight for survival – as in Castro’s Cuba, Chavez’s Venezuela and Ba’athist Syria – those freedoms may jeopardise gains without which democracy and human rights are meaningless except as cover for their antithesis.
… and as Jonathan Cook, quoted in that same essay, put it:
Monbiot has repeatedly denied he wants a military attack on Syria. But if he weakly accepts whatever narratives are crafted by those who do – and refuses to subject them to meaningful scrutiny – he is decisively helping to promote such an attack.
No surprise then that the opening paragraph of Owen’s Guardian piece on Tuesday – in some ways a good effort 2 – showcases the bothsidesery skewered by Caitlin. I welcome his first, robustly interrogative sentence …
What does it take to shake illusions in western intervention?
… but he follows as follows:
This is not a question designed to deflect from the barbarism being unleashed by Iran’s theocratic regime. Because it severed the country’s internet connection, facts are difficult to establish, but the respected Human Rights Activists in Iran 3 has [sic] confirmed 544 have been killed and well over 10,000 arrested – those numbers are probably significant underestimates.
Such pre-emptive denial of whataboutery, and refusal to subject to meaningful scrutiny empire-serving narratives, speak to a blindness to two realities. One – an empirical and, on body count alone, quantifiable truth lost on the liberal deluded – is that no barbarism, real or alleged, by Iran’s theocrats can hold a candle to that of the US empire. As I said two days ago in the fourth of my Iran posts in as many days:
This week I wrote three posts in two days on Iran. All stress my refusal to condemn its leaders – as I’d refused to condemn Ba’athist Syria prior to Assad’s ouster by Western backed jihadists – and so side with a globe-spanning empire which slaughters by the million, ravages economies and seeds terror of Islamist, neo-Nazi or straightforwardly criminal stripe – whatever advances US oligarchic agendas – regardless of whether its nominal head is endorsed by blue segment or red of the billionaire interests whose backing is a sine qua non of holding high office.
The other is related but more mundane. Faced with attempted coup led by CIA, Mossad and in all likelihood MI6, severing the internet – which, if former UK diplomat and MI6 officer Alastair Crook is right, was a key tool of the insurrectionists – may have thwarted, absent that elusive ‘third way’ of liberal fantasy, the wet dream of Netanyahu, Trump, Lindsey Graham, John Bolton and for good measure a Clinton or Obama. I refer to the final capture of the Islamic Republic by that self-same murderous empire: a capture that would bring it closer than its triumphs in Iraq, Libya, Syria 4 and Venezuela combined to the end game of check-mating China.5
Half of China’s oil imports pass through the choke point of the Hormuz Strait at Bandar Abbas, while Iran is vital to the New Silk Road arm of Belt & Road, and to north-south routes linking Russia to the Middle East. While Owen makes several sound observations on the West’s abysmal record in Iran, such geopolitical considerations – with WW3 implications – are glaringly absent from his piece. Here, in a nutshell, is the fatal defect of humanism devoid of realpolitik.
Needless to say, my criticisms of Owen’s bothsidery are not echoed below the line, its denizens falling into two camps. In one are those who dutifully vilify the theocracy but welcome – as with all due tepidity do I – his refusal to demand overt intervention as distinct from the covert kind lost on Owen and now seemingly defeated by decisive IRGC crackdown. In the other are those who damn him from a position the mirror opposite of mine. Here the accuracy of one Dodo56 draws the ridicule of the clueless:
By ‘the clueless’, I mean of course the liberals whose name, below the line at the Guardian, is Legion. Some call them ‘libtards’ but I’m too polite for that. ‘The chronically blind to the depth and extent of empire evil’ hasn’t the same punch, but comes closer to my assessment.
I spoke of two pieces yesterday by men I have decidedly mixed feelings about. The second is not Mehdi Hasan – it’s possible I wrongfooted you there – but a pundit with a very different take which cheerfully embraces the realpolitik so lacking in Owen’s universalism. A pundit, nevertheless, who shares that self-same mix of insight with blindness to empire.
Coming soon to a screen near you – my take on Andrew Korybko and what for him is the sin of ‘Potemkinism’, with its attendant “false perceptions of Russia’s unreliability”.
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- One of several major things to have changed in the years since writing that Syria post is that I no longer think Western states merit even the ‘limited democracy’ label. Least of all their lead nation, where, as noted by Chris Hedges, election to high office requires the backing of corporate oligarchies.
- If ‘in some ways a good effort’ comes across as damning with faint praise, it’s because Owen’s piece is at every turn suffused with desire for regime change in Iran; just not by way of Western intervention. Small wonder the scorn of BTL critics with no such scruples, who rightly demand to know what he means by ‘support for the protestors’!
- I’m at a loss as to what Owen intends with this link. Instead of identifying the “respected human rights activists” he speaks of, so enabling interrogation of their provenance – an essential task, given a quarter-century of CIA use of NGO cut-outs to topple governments it dislikes – it merely takes me to a slew of Guardian articles by columnists who take it as read that the protests are entirely grass root.
- General Wesley Clark’s 2003 revelation was not lost on the empire-aware, a group by definition excluding Guardian credulati. Crown jewel in the plan to regime change seven nations, as confided to Clark on the eve of the criminal and mendaciously sold invasion of Iraq, was the ultimate goal of taking out Iran.
- For why genuine progressives vehemently oppose the ‘check-mating of China’, see An open letter: isn’t China ‘just as bad’?
Not really comprehending the complex economic and political dynamics of international politics, I often turn to more instinctive understandings. When I look at China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran whatever I see corruption, greed, stupidity and oppression. But buried under the rubble of all that abuse of power, I also see a degree of genuine human concern and care for the people, ok often distorted through religioius fantsicsm, fearful righteousness whatever – but it’s there. When I look at the U.S. I see a kind of psychopathy where the natural human dimension of caring for the people simply does not exist. I worked as a Clinical Psychologist. I came across many people distored and alienated from their natural humanity. Twice I came across true psychopathy. It took everyone involved a very long time to see through the manipulations, lies and extremely clever deceit to realise we were dealing with something very different. I think something similar is going on with the U.S. Yet now the world is gradually waking up to the reality of what we are dealing with. A truly evil empire. This is just a small offering to a very complex debate. Thank again Phil.
No, it’s the whole shebang in a nutshell. The rest is detail.
Btw, you may already know this but Caitlin J. often draws analogies from clinical psychology in reference to that evil empire.
Among the key problems of the cognitive ailment described here – which those identified suffer from – is the post-modernist disdain for evidence and over reliance on narrative.
Thus, a whole package of publicly available evidence – from armed infiltrators trained by the Americans and Israelis’s with instructions to kill civilians and police alike to the provision of Starlink communications; from open admissions from the Israeli’s and Americans of Mossad agents on site to timed attacks on the currency; from fake AI videos to the pre-movement of military assets to the region – is conveniently ignored.
And the problem is that when someone develops a public persona record of ignoring evidence to favour a narrative when it suits them they undermine their credibility on anything else they publicly pronounce upon.
Jones, among others, has an unfortunate record of such switching between the two – his flip-flopping over support for Corbyn during the AS attacks being a case in point. Which raises issues over reliability when things get tough.
It does, and I take the implicit rebuke manfully on the chin. You’ve beamed in with laser precision on my sole flaw: an excess of generosity. That said, on Palestine he does what I do not. He takes the fight to the enemy. Not a small thing.
Sorry Phil, but Owen Jones fails on so many matters of real importance and his sole aim, as far as I can tell, is to be seen and heard to voice his own elevated opinion.
In Syria, he completely ignored the fact that over 72% of the population voted for Dr. Assad and that did not include the 5 million students throughout Europe who were refused voting rights as diaspora Syrians. As a socialist who believes in democracy by the people for the people, he suddenly went blind?
When Iran had riots denouncing the cleric’s requirement for the wearing of a hijab in women(some concessions such as wearing jeans when mountain climbing, have been made) and during said riots thousands of women were dog piled on line for denouncing the riots as having anything to do with women’s rights and in one city a group of young student women wearing full hijab cycled through the city wearing full hijab in defiance of the bought and paid for mobs as a big “you don’t speak for us” message and Owen Jones does not believe that ALL women should have their rights respected, only the few that align with his thinking? Now British nurses in hospitals are being told they can’t wear yellow socks because it “might” offend an “imaginary” person – has Owen Jones come out against Benito’s dictatorship?
When the Palestinians rejected any involvement in decisions by PA in their future, did he come out then and denounce the PA for the absence of trust within the Palestinian people so utterly obvious?
Nicholas Maduro has the backing of well over 60% of the poorer voters in Venezuela who are the most affected by US sanctions – will Owen Jones defend Maduro’s popularity for his achievements; or will he fail to mention them – again.
As for Iran’s latest invasion by foreign backed armed assets and manic dissidents, has he acknowledged the fact that the Ayatollah has openly sided with the people, again, and consistently done so, over the ears, in peacefully making their concerns known?
Five Iranian cities had demonstrations demanding action in addressing the problems, but Tehran was the only city where tens of thousands turned out. The difference being that many were armed and shooting civilians. Who provided them with the AK47’s? Who organised so many to be there on the specified dates. Who organised the timing of their confluence on the city? Does Owen Jones ask such questions or does he just not do his homework?
Owen Jones has his uses, but they mainly serve as his own soapbox focus.
It takes many hours of study and reading to become informed as to what is really happening as you know, but anyone who doesn’t put in the graft is only ever going to report half the facts or totally missing the important facts. Owen Jones is thus, uninformed about far too much, or he has his own agenda and chooses only to report facts that fit neatly into that mind set of his.
I don’t have the times to comment because I’m too engaged in back stories and side elements of issues to know how firm the ground is beneath my feet and I am not very good at precis(never was) so I hope you don’t take offence. But I have researched Iran and it’s problems and IMHO Owen Jones has not or draws a line at some point he will not cross – I don’t know which.
Regards
Susan
Though I don’t give as much detail as you provide, I think I make clear my objections to Owen Jones. They are in line with yours.
I’m simply saying that over Palestine he does what few of us do, which is take the fight onto enemy terrain.
Hi Phil,
This link is for the Cradle with Alistaire Crook and Sharmine Narwani. It contains some very good information about the attacks in Iran. Well worth watching:
https://youtu.be/P1NTzriyBj0?si=xMyPv3GWGyXJCKI4
Regards, Susan
Thanks Susan – I’ll give it a viewing, this weekend if I can
I’m now 40% into this video. Had I seen it prior to the two I linked on January 12 – featuring Alastair with Col. Daniel Davis, while a BTL comment links to a third with Judge Napolitano – I’d have given it top billing. The Cradle’s Sharmine Narwani is an excellent interviewer, not overly fond of her own voice, while her restraint and the extra length – close to 90 minutes – allows Alastair to develop his themes with a fine granularity a far cry from Owen’s know-nothingly uncritical pontifications.
While it adds little substantively to those other discussions, there’s more flesh on the bones here, both in respect of CIA/Mossad involvement and in the greater detail on the significance – reversing the element of surprise enjoyed by US and Israel in June – of Iran’s unexpected ability, likely with Russian and Chinese help, to take down StarLink and thereby confound the co-ordination of the thugs on the streets.