Iran and Cuba
Cooperating revolutions with common principles
Iran and Cuba have developed political systems that are condemned as authoritarian by the Western powers. The condemnation, motivated by imperialist interests and shaped by ethnocentric assumptions, is not based in a quest to understand the logic and the reasonableness of the two systems, formed out of the history and the politics of their respective nations. In the case of Cuba, it was a matter of forging structural alternatives to the indirect control of the United States, in order to fulfill the aspirations of a people’s revolution for national sovereignty that had been launched in 1868. In the case of Iran, it was a question of developing alternatives to U.S. and Western domination through the forging of a social system based on the revelations of the Prophet, whose teachings pre-date modern European colonialism, in a nation with a population that is 99% Muslim. The two nations stand in revolutionary practice on the principle of the necessity of a pluripolar world order, proclaimed with increasing consensus today by the governments of the Global South.
From December 3 through December 5, 2023, the leaders of the two revolutions met, celebrating their parallel revolutionary persistence in the face of the aggressions of an arrogant imperialist power in full decadence, and seeking to further develop economic relations, for their mutual benefit.
The Cuban delegation, headed by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, arrived in the Islamic Republic of Iran with the intention of consolidating the ties between the two nations and elevating economic and commercial relations, according to the Cuban daily Granma, which is the official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.
On December 3, Díaz-Canel and the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Ayatollah Dr. Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi, held a private conversation, which was followed by conversations between the two delegations. Both leaders condemned unjust sanctions, blockades, and stigmatizations by the United States, from which both have suffered. At the same time, the Cuban President expressed support for the increasing role of Iran in regional and international affairs.
The Irani President affirmed the need and the correctness of the actions of resistance by the two nations in defense of their sovereignty, in the face of the illegitimate demands that they abandon their principles, made by an imperialist power seeking to maintain its hegemony. The two nations, he declared, are further developing relations on the foundation of their own capacities and potential.
Raisi was elected President of Iran in 2021 with 61.95% of the vote as a presidential candidate of the Popular Front for the Forces of the Islamic Revolution. A cleric educated in theology, he also studied law and served for many years in the Iranian judicial system, arriving to high judicial positions in the period 1989 to 2021.
On December 3, 2023, the Cuban and Iranian delegations signed seven agreements of cooperation, strengthening relations in the areas of the economy, health and medicine, science and technology, mining, and energy.
Participating in the signing ceremony on the Cuban side were the ministers of Foreign Affairs; Science, Technology, and Environment; Energy and Mines; Agriculture; and Public Health. Representing Iran were the ministers of Science, Technology, and Knowledge; Cooperatives, Work, and Social Wellbeing; Energy Cooperation and Mines; Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Fishing; Health and Medical Science; and Information and Technology. The directors of the Finlay Institute of Vaccines of Cuba and the Pasteur Institute of Iran also signed a memorandum of understanding, as did the pharmaceutical companies BioCubaFarma and Tamin Pharmaceutical Investments, of Cuba and Iran respectively.
Cuba and Iran were two of only ten countries in the world that were able to fabricate high technology vaccines against COVID. The Iranian production of a Cuban vaccine had been announced previously during the Eighteenth Session of the Cuba-Iran Intergovernmental Commission, held in Tehran on May 18, 2022. The achievement was made possible by the transfer of the Cuban vaccine Soberana 02, produced by the Cuban Finlay Institute, to the Pasteur Institute of Iran. Celebrated in the Cuban press as indicating the possibilities for liberation from the tyranny of the capitalist pharmaceutical industry, the Finlay-Pasteur cooperation illustrates the possibilities with respect to technology transfer among the nations of the Global South. Díaz-Canel expressed hope that the demonstrated benefits of cooperation in the area of health can be expanded to other areas.
The Cuban President on December 3 also met with Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. The Supreme Leader is the most powerful political authority in Iran, the head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts, which consists of eighty-eight legal scholars who are elected to eight-year terms by the people. Candidates for the Assembly of Experts are reviewed by the Council of Guardians to ensure that they have the necessary qualifications with respect to scholarship, piety, and political and social perspective. The twelve members of the Guardian Council are appointed by the previous Supreme Leader. Since 1983, five Assemblies have been constituted, each serving for eight-year terms, elected by the people.
Following his meeting with the Cuban President, Ayatollah Khamenei published in his social media X (Twitter) account his recollection of meeting Fidel twenty-two years previously. He observed that “the Cuban Revolution and the figure of Fidel Castro always had a special attraction for Iranian revolutionaries, beginning before the triumph of the Islamic Revolution. The reason was his sincerity in his revolutionary positions.” He further wrote, “One must take advantage of the existing economic and political capacities between Iran and Cuba to form a union, a coalition, between countries that share the same position before the impositions of the United States and the Western powers.” Díaz-Canel, referring to his meeting with the Supreme Leader, affirmed in his X account the Cuban will “to continue developing relations of friendship and cooperation between our countries.”
Díaz-Canel also met with Mohamad Baqer Galibaf, President of the Islamic Consultive Assembly, who declared that “our revolutions are those that struggle against injustice, imperialism, and double standards.” In addition, the Cuban delegation toured the Pasteur Institute as well as the Pavilion of Science and Technology.
The meaning of the Islamic Revolution of Iran
In the context of the current decadence of the Western-centered world-economy and the neocolonial world-system, the emergence of an Islamic Republic in one of the pre-modern centers of Islamic Civilization suggests possibilities for the future of humanity.
Islamic Civilization was forged by Arab conquests, beginning in the seventh century, of the Persian Empire and a vast territory East to India and West to Spain and Portugal. The Arab conquests were characterized by the appropriation of the advances of the conquered peoples in science, philosophy, art, and literature, thus giving rise to great advances. The conquered peoples were not compelled to accept Islam, but many did so, because of the attractiveness of its monotheism, narrative of human history, religious practices, and moral principles. The Islamic Civilization reached its zenith from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, when it incorporated the knowledge of the Arabs, Iranians, Turks, Jews, Christians, and Hindus. The decline of Islamic Civilization was caused by conquests of Islamic territories by the Mongols and the expanding European empires, which gave rise to the expansion of decadent distortions in Islamic beliefs and practices, such as the view that injustices in the world must be accepted, which to some extent had previously emerged as a result of the corruption of some rulers in the Islamic world.
By the nineteenth century, the decadence of Islamic civilization and the reality of European control gave rise to a Pan-Islamic movement, which sought the unity of Muslims as well as renewal of the historic principles of Islam, including the integration of science, politics, and the sacred; and the mandate to strive for a more just world. Responding to modern realities, the movement synthesized Western socialism and traditional Islamic principles.
In the case of Iran, the United States had installed Reza Shah Pahlavi as ruler, whose principal function was to ensure management of the nation’s extensive oil resources by an international consortium of oil corporations. The installation of the Shah gave rise to a resistance movement with two major tendencies: the first led by Dr. Ali Shariati, a French-educated socialist intellectual who envisioned a progressive socialism in the Islamic tradition; and the second led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, whose education in religious schools and universities in Iran led him to a more traditional reading of the Koran.
In 1978, a coalition of secular leftists, Islamic socialists, and pro-Khomeini Shi’i revolutionaries drove the Shah of Iran out of the country through a non-violent revolution. By 1979, the Khomeini faction, more in tune with the deepest impulses of the Iranian masses at that historic moment, was able to assume leadership in the movement and to establish the Islamic Republic of Islam, which among other characteristics, negated the Western marginalization of the sacred, and established a political structure that put ultimate authority in the hands of learned Islamic clergy, with the participation of the people. The establishment of an Islamic Republic was supported overwhelmingly by popular referendum on March 30-31, 1979.
Fundamental to the Islamic Revolution in Iran has been its self-consciousness as a Third World anti-imperialist movement for national liberation from European colonial domination, as is indicated in several ways. Ties between Iran and Cuba were established more than forty years ago by Fidel and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Alí Khamenei. Iran became active in the Non-Aligned Movement at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when the Non-Aligned Movement recovered its classic anti-imperialist Third World project. The Islamic Republic of Iran was elected president of the Non-Aligned Movement in 2013, serving in this capacity for a term of three years. In 2023, Iran was one of the six nations included in the expansion of BRICS from five to eleven members.
Consistent with the goals of the Islamic Revolution, the Fundación Cultural Oriente, a publishing house in Qom, Iran, published in 1988 a Spanish translation of a book by Muhammad Husain Beheshti and Muhammad Yauád Bahonar, Introducción a la Cosmovisión del Islam [Introduction to the Worldview of Islam]. Beheshti and Bahonar dedicated their lives to the Islamic Revolution in Iran and to the study of Islamic theology. They occupied high positions in the Islamic Republic of Iran when they were killed by explosions set off by enemies of the Revolution; Beheshti on June 28, 1981, and Bahonar on August 30, 1981.
Introduction to the Worldview of Islam explains the fundamental Islamic concepts of a just economy, including the need for sharing the divine gift of the natural resources of the earth and for using natural resources to satisfy human needs. In a just economy, the state plays an active role in the economy, ensuring that it responds to the needs of nature and the people. And the book explains the Islamic concept of a just social system, which stresses a commitment to social justice as well as faith in the future of humanity, whose ultimate purpose and destiny is to freely construct a just world.
Introduction to the Worldview of Islam makes evident the common principles and premises of the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the Third World people’s revolutions of national liberation. See “Islamic concepts of the just economy,” February 3, 2023; and “The Islamic concept of a just social system,” March 31, 2023.
In previous commentaries, I have discussed accords signed by Iran and Cuba on May 18, 2023. And I have discussed the June 2023 trip of Iranian President Raisi to Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. These developments are indications of the rapprochement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and socialist/progressive governments in Latin America.
The relation between Cuba and Iran is an indication of the turn of the Global South toward the construction of a pluripolar world order that is an alternative to the Western-centered world-economy. There are many other signs, including: the retaking of the classic Third World project of South-South cooperation by the Non-Aligned Movement; the embracing of the Third World project by G-77 and China; the rise of projects of regional integration in Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East; the economic ascent of China and its foreign policy of win-win cooperation; the emergence of BRICS and its expansion to eleven members; the sustainability and influence of nations constructing socialism in China, Cuba, and Vietnam; and relations of cooperation between Cuba and China, Vietnam, Iran, Türkiye, and Qatar. Seeking to avoid the exploitative demands of the Western imperialist nations, the nations of the Global South are constructing an alternative in practice, step-by-step, and inviting nations and corporations of the West to join on a basis of mutual respect this worldwide project of alternative construction.
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