Iran's Revolutionary Guard Wrote to American Voters. Your Union Already Agrees.

By Aaron Withe

Recently, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps did something unusual for a terrorist-designated military force. It wrote a letter to American voters.

The 25-page document, released weeks before the midterms, urges Americans to “stop their government.” It calls the White House a “factory of lies” and helpfully explains that “Death to America” is really just a prayer against the “ruling elite” in Washington. 

Its terms for peace are simple: End aid to Israel, close American bases abroad, and stop fighting Iran.

Most Americans will rightly ignore it. Teachers who pay union dues might want to read it anyway, because a good deal of it will sound familiar, and they’ve been footing the bill for those parts.

In July, the American Federation of Teachers, led by Randi Weingarten, adopted a resolution demanding “an immediate end to the war with Iran” and calling on the U.S. and Israel to halt military operations against the Islamic Republic. 

At the same convention, delegates passed a separate resolution blaming Israel for salary problems among teachers in Palestinian Authority territory.

In March, the Chicago Teachers Union sponsored a “Hands Off Iran & Lebanon” protest alongside socialist and Islamist groups. Signs at the rally denounced the “US Israeli war machine.” 

Even at the National Education Association’s assembly this summer, a proposal demanding an end to the Iran war and withdrawal of U.S. forces reached the floor before delegates declined to take it up.

Put the IRGC’s demands next to these resolutions, and it’s hard to tell where Tehran’s talking points end and the union’s begin.

Americans can disagree about this war, and plenty do. Opposing it isn’t the problem. But a union exists to bargain over wages, hours, and working conditions, and teachers union leaders are spending their members’ dues on foreign-policy positions that track a hostile regime’s demands. 

Ask whose interests that serves. It isn’t the teacher paying for it.

The same government now lecturing Americans about democracy has spent this year crushing its own teachers. Human rights monitors report that at least 60 Iranian teachers and union activists have been arrested, prosecuted or imprisoned since January. 

Just last month, two members of a local teachers’ association were arrested while traveling. Iran’s independent teachers’ unions are fighting for fair pay and free expression, and the regime treats them as national security threats.

If American union leaders cared about teachers first, that’s where their solidarity would go. Instead, their resolutions echo the regime doing the jailing.

Across the country, union leaders who once fought over class sizes and pension formulas now pour their energy into Gaza resolutions, protest sponsorships and campaigns that have nothing to do with the classroom.

Meanwhile, reading and math scores here at home keep falling.

Barry Blisten saw it up close. He teaches in Los Angeles and paid dues to United Teachers Los Angeles for years before leaving over the union's open hostility toward Jews and Israel. 

His grandparents survived the Holocaust. Even after he quit, California law still names UTLA as his exclusive representative, so he and six other Jewish teachers sued. 

That case is now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Before the next dues deduction, every teacher should ask: “Do I share the values of the IRGC?” 

Because my union’s leadership is doing a fine job of sounding like it does.

The IRGC thinks American voters can be talked into doing its bidding. It’s worth asking why so many union leaders already sound convinced. Teachers like Barry noticed.

Aaron Withe is the Chief Executive Officer of the Freedom Foundation.

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