AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring in a third Iranian, an Iranian-American, a voice from civil society here in the U.S., and a call to Stop the War on Iran. That’s the name of a petition that’s gathered more than a thousand signatures by academics based in the U.S., Europe and Iran. It reads, in part, quote, “Netanyahu and Trump are dragging the U.S. into Israel’s illegal war on Iran, which will cause more destruction and further destabilize the Middle East for the foreseeable future,” unquote.

The petition also notes, quote, “This aggression is also a calculated attempt to deflect aggression from the ongoing genocide it’s committing in Gaza and to unleash a cascade of catastrophes that aim to turn Iran into a failed state,” unquote. The petition continuing, “The Middle East is replete with tragic cases of societies descending into chaos following foreign interventions: Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan.” For more, we’re joined by one of the petition’s organizers, the Iranian-American professor, Kaveh Ehsani, Associate Professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, also Contributing Editor at MERIP and on the board of its directors, in regular communication with activists, journalists, and scholars in Iran. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Ehsani. Explain this thousand-person-signed petition and why you’re acting now.

KAVEH EHSANI: Glad to be here, thank you. The point is that I agree with most of what was said in terms of the international situation. The key point is that there’s a tendency to speak in the name of Iranians in general, represent them as if they want this regime, they don’t want the regime, they want a forceful external military intervention to replace the regime, or not. Our point was, as scholars of Iran, as people who’ve been studying it, who’ve worked there, who’ve done field work, who’ve lived and worked in Iran, is that nobody can, at this point, speak for Iranians as a whole.

Your first speaker, Mr. Marandi, pointed out that there’s a universal consensus among Iranians to support the establishment, the Islamic Republic, that Evin Prison is, in fact, full of petty criminals. Nothing is further from the truth, and this is laughable as a claim. It is full of political prisoners, many of them waiting execution for protesting the regime. But the point is that Iranians can speak, and as a diverse society of 90 million, they have multiple views. Some indeed support the current establishment, many do not. But the point is that there is a consensus against this war of aggression from outside because it’s affecting everyone, and Iran is a society that has lived already through one devastating war, the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. There is solidarity, there is horizontal mutual help.

But the fact is that sanctions and war only immiserate people, only destroy civil society and the existing organizations that people have built as ways of pushing back against repressions, against authoritarianism. So, what we see, what we support effectively here in our statement is that we should really put our belief and support behind civil society organizations in Iran. Trade unions, nurses, pensioners, feminists working in Baluchistan, and other active civil society organizations that are first opposing the war as fully realizing that what this is doing is immiserating further the lives of ordinary people, making it harder to actually organize, to actually voice their opinions, voice their positions. And secondly, it will only open the hands of the regime to accuse anybody who is objecting to the current situation as a fifth-columnist, as they are doing.

For example, the current Iranian regime has targeted Afghan refugees, the most vulnerable strata of Iranian society, as a potential fifth column, and they’re expelling them even more forcefully than they were before. If you think ISIS is doing worse awful things in the United States, the Iranian regime is doing the same thing with Afghan refugees at this point. So, the only chance that we have of actually establishing a democratic polity in Iran, whether this leads to the regime change, whether it leads to its transformation from within, through reform, through negotiation, or through more radical means, that’s up to Iranian people inside. External military interventions will only destroy the possibility of democracy. And I think the…

AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.

KAVEH EHSANI: Yeah. But this was the gist of our statement, and we really stand with civil society organizations in Iran. And I think we should condemn this war no matter what, but this is not in support of the existing Islamic Republic.

AMY GOODMAN: Kaveh Ehsani, I want to thank you so much for being with us. Associate Professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. He helped organize the Stop the War in Iran petition that already has more than 1,000 signatures. We’ll link to it at democracynow.org.

When we come back, we’ll speak with a former Israeli peace negotiator. Stay with us. Then, Mahmoud Khalil, in his own words, free. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Tomorrow’s Going to be a Better Day,” by Billy Bragg, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.