Academics Petition Against War on Iran, Highlighting Gaza Genocide

Petition Against War on Iran

• ✍️ A petition signed by over 1,000 academics in the US, Europe, and Iran calls for an end to the potential war on Iran.
• 🎯 The petition argues that current actions by Netanyahu and Trump are dragging the US into Israel's illegal war, risking further destruction and destabilization in the Middle East.
• ⚠️ It states that this aggression is a calculated attempt to deflect attention from the ongoing genocide in Gaza and could lead to Iran becoming a failed state.

Voices of Iranian Scholars

• 🗣️ Kaveh Ehsani, an Iranian American scholar and petition organizer, emphasizes that no single voice can speak for all Iranians due to their diverse society of 90 million.
• 🚫 He refutes claims that all Iranians support the Islamic Republic or that prisons are filled with petty criminals, stating they hold political prisoners protesting the regime.
• 🌍 The consensus among Iranians is against external wars of aggression, as they have already experienced the devastating Iran-Iraq War.

Impact of Sanctions and War

• 📉 Sanctions and war immiserate ordinary people, destroy civil society, and weaken existing organizations that push back against repression.
• 🤝 The statement supports civil society organizations in Iran, including trade unions, feminists, and pensioners, who are actively opposing the war.
• 📢 War makes it harder for people to organize and voice their opinions, and it empowers the regime to label dissenters as fifth columnists.

Supporting Democracy in Iran

• ⚖️ The petition highlights the regime's targeting of vulnerable groups like Afghan refugees, expelling them forcefully and accusing them of being a fifth column.
• 🌱 The only path to establishing democratic policy in Iran, whether through regime change, transformation from within, reform, or negotiation, lies with the Iranian people themselves.
• 🚫 External military interventions will only destroy the possibility of democracy in Iran.
• 📣 The organizers condemn the war unequivocally, stressing that their stance is not in support of the existing Islamic Republic.