In the flood of articles on the subject in the big-business media, however, little is said about the most fundamental question involved: the efforts by the people of Iran to advance the country’s economic and social development, which has been blocked by more than a century of imperialist oppression.

Iran is a semicolonial country. It is one of the vast majority of the world’s nations that remains economically dominated by a small club of the world’s imperialist states. Among semicolonial nations, Iran is relatively industrialized, yet there remains a vast gulf between the conditions faced by workers and farmers in Iran and those in the imperialist centers.

A quick comparison between Iran and France, an imperialist nation with a similar-sized population, is enough to illustrate some of the yawning disparities. France has 60 million inhabitants and Iran 68 million.

France is a major world producer of automobiles, aircraft, machine tools, pharmaceuticals, and other manufactured goods. Like other semicolonial countries, Iran’s economy relies heavily on producing natural resources—oil—and agricultural products. France annually exports nearly $350 billion in goods, more than 10 times that of Iran.

France produces four times as much electrical power as Iran. France relies on 59 nuclear reactors to generate 75 percent of its power. (It is also a nuclear-armed power.)

At less than a third of the size of Iran, France has nearly 10 times more miles of paved roads and four times more railroads. It has four times more telephone connections.

Social indicators also show glaring disparities. Infant mortality in Iran—41 deaths per 1,000 live births—is nearly 10 times higher than in France. One-fifth of Iran’s population remains illiterate. Outside the urban areas the gap grows wider. In the 30,000 smallest villages, two-thirds of households lack electricity.

Iran’s history has been marked by the struggle to break free from imperialist domination, which perpetuates this underdevelopment and profits from it. At the heart of this battle has been control of the country’s national resources. The oil industry, long controlled by British imperialism, was nationalized in 1951 after a deep-going popular struggle. Even today, however, world oil trade and distribution is dominated by the imperialist oil monopolies.

Iran’s efforts to develop its nuclear power industry is widely viewed by the Iranian people as a needed step in the struggle for economic development and independence from imperialist domination. Iran began developing a nuclear industry in the 1950s. The efforts by the government at the time, the U.S.-backed dictatorship of the shah, were encouraged by Washington.

After the shah’s regime was toppled through a popular revolution in 1979, Washington and its imperialist allies responded with policies aimed at weakening or destroying what the Iranian masses had accomplished. The U.S. government imposed economic sanctions on Iran.

After the revolution, social conditions—such as rural electrification—improved somewhat for workers and farmers, whose self-confidence and expectations increased. In the meantime, Iran’s population has more than doubled.

An October 2003 op-ed column in the International Herald Tribune explains why the question of nuclear power has become more pressing. “With an annual growth of 6 percent to 8 percent in demand for electricity and a population estimated to reach 100 million by 2025, Iran cannot possibly rely exclusively on oil and gas,” wrote three Iranian researchers. “The aging oil industry, denied substantial foreign investment largely because of American sanctions, has not been able even to reach the pre-revolution production level of 5.5 million barrels per day…. If this trend continues, Iran will become a net oil importer by 2010, a catastrophe for a country that relies on oil for 80 percent of its foreign currency and 45 percent of its annual budget.”
 
 
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