In 1979, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran ushered in an Islamic theocracy; the face of that theocracy was the Ayatollah Khomeini but there was another group the Islamists desperately needed to help put him in power – the left. Before the revolution, socialist workers of Iran united and engaged in public demonstrations, uprisings, and strikes. The anger fed on itself and the socialists in Iran would ultimately be instrumental in the Shah’s overthrow.

The Islamists saw an opportunity to exploit an increasingly angry left, to rub raw the sores of its discontent. Throughout the 1970’s, there was a growing Islamic movement on university campuses in Iran. Many of the young Iranian socialists were attracted to and aligned with members of this movement. Once the revolution had served its purpose and the Ayatollah was in power, the young socialists who had performed much of the grunt work were disposed of – in many cases literally, in the form of executions.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is exploiting an extremely similar situation. Like Hosni Mubarak, the Shah was viewed by the left as oppressive enough to justify revolution. In 1979, leftwing American president Jimmy Carter endorsed the revolution through his inaction, which is a gracious way of putting it. In 2011, leftwing American president Barack Obama seems to be more involved in picking winners and losers. Privately, courtesy of wikileaks, it appears support for the Brotherhood on the part of the Obama administration has been at least somewhat active.

The degree to which the left aided the Iranian revolution was significant and the Muslim Brotherhood seems to be operating from the same playbook in Egypt. In the United States, its brethren has made apologists for Islamic terrorism out of the liberal leftwing media. For example, in the days after the Fort Hood shooting, the New York Times wrote an article about how the shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan just snapped. In the hours after the Tucson shootings, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman blamed the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh.

Most of the grunt work on the streets of Cairo is being done by leftwing Egyptian socialist groups. The Washington Post published a puff piece on the story of Hossam elHamalawy, a socialist who is participating in the protests. Another individual participating is none other than the Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations in Chicago, Ahmad Rehab. Like Hamalawy, Rehab is a native Egyptian. Unlike Hamalawy, he is also a member of a group that resides under the Muslim Brotherhood umbrella.

The Brotherhood may be biding its time, in much the same way the Islamists did in 1979; it would fit the template if success is measured by how completely leadership vacuums are filled by Islamic theocracies with the help of the sympathetic socialists. Courtesy of America’s Survival is a link to a statement from the Egyptian Communist Party, which says “The revolution will continue until the demands of the masses are met.”

The left in Iran paid a heavy price for aligning with the Islamists; the world is still paying one. It is very recent history which tells us it is simply not possible to be a true ally of Islamists without being either Islamist yourself or dupe. That history is something from which the Obama administration could draw great expertise in deciding how to act. Instead, it seems to be aligning with the Islamists in Egypt.

The leftwing Obama administration is one of three things: malevolent, incompetent, or malevolent because it’s incompetent.

Ben Barrack is a talk show host on KTEM 1400 in Texas and maintains a website at www.benbarrack.com