Interview: Jello Biafra on Iran, Iraq and Mossadegh

Jello Biafra on Iran - June 2006 Interview

Jello Biafra

In an interview with alternative Virginia newspaper The Port Folio Weekly, Jello Biafra talked about the possibility of war with Iran and the 1953 coup of Mossadegh's elected government. "Biafra", a famous punk rock musician/singer who used to lead The Dead Kennedys, is also a spoken word artist and well known political activist who once ran for mayor of San Francisco. He was also a Presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2000.

A vocal opponent of the Iraq war, Biafra warns that Iran is "not a real threat" and that a war with Iran would be "10 times worse" than Iraq, adding "If we attack Iran, we're toast!" And..

It didn’t take some weasel in a think tank to predict what was actually going to go wrong in Iraq. I’m probably one of millions of people who accurately predicted it long before we invaded, based on the minimal amount of logic and common sense.

If we invade Iran, it’s gonna be 10 times worse. The Pentagon admits that 80 percent of our military is either in Iraq or recuperating from Iraq. Plus, we have to run around bullying North Korea, refusing to leave our bases in Europe, we’re putting up bases in central Africa now because we think there might be oil there…and, after all, what is the U.S. military really for except a global oil protection force...

That’s what we’ve got. Iran, on the other hand…if you think the Iraqis hated our guts from the get-go, wait until you get to Iran! I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that Iran was a real democracy, but then in the early 1950s, the CIA had the democratically-elected leader, Prime Minister Mossadegh overthrown and replaced by a brutal, dictatorial monarchy headed by the Shah, who was so vicious on his own people that he literally killed off all secular moderate opposition to the point that, when the Iranians finally got so mad they were able to overthrow him, the only people with any leadership skills left for them to follow were violent Islamic fundamentalists led by Ayatollah Khomeini. And whaddaya know? After that, Iran is our mortal enemy instead of our policeman…our puppet policeman…of the Middle East, and violent Islamic fundamentalist uprisings start catching fire all over that part of the world and beyond. I wonder how much trouble we would be having with terrorism, suicide bombings, and violence and hatred around the Persian Gulf today if we’d just left the Iranians alone in the 1950's and let them elect their own leaders.

Leaving people alone — what a concept.