Repression and Resistance The attempt by the two wings of the Iranian regime to shelve their differences is unlikely to defuse the mass movement, writes Yassamine Mather More than two weeks after the demonstrations of December 27 2009, the political repercussions of these events, and the reaction to the anger and radicalism of …
Category archives: Articles
Iran: regime crackdown disguises weaknesses in the face of opposition
Mehdi Kia co-editor Middle East Left ForumKargar) discusses the mass movement in Iran and the weaknesses of the theocratic regime. This article is from the magazine Permanent Revolution and was written in November. The coup in Iran, that took place through the June presidential elections, gave the appearance of the regime being firmly in the …
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Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri (1922-2009)
The contradictory figure of Ayatollah Montazeri died in the early hours of Sunday, December 20. In one of his last statements, he warned that the current crisis in Iran was threatening the entire basis of the regime. Yet how did this man – originally a stalwart of the state, one of the main architects of …
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Is it the oil, stupid?
To say that oil figures prominently in the Middle East is to state the obvious. However, does this mean that the politics of imperialism in the region should be solely or mainly explained through attempts to gain control over oilfields and pipelines? That has certainly been the approach of much of the left in Britain …
Yassamine Mather: Workers organise against the regime
Workers organise against the regime first published in the Weekly Worker November 19 2009 More than 300 workers in the Abadan oil refinery gathered on Thursday November 12 to protest against non-payment of wages and bonuses, saying they had not been paid for more than three months. Hopi chair Yassamine Mather reports: The refinery authorities …
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Green road to nowhere
The sham presidential election of June 2009 has unleashed a rainbow of political forces, writes Yassamine Mather, including an increasingly strong red component. The task of the left is to support and strengthen the red component of this rainbow, the Iranian working class, as the only force capable of bringing about democracy, and the only …
The Iranian coup four months on
Mehdi Kia examines the state of the movement against the clerical regime It is now four months since the coup in Iran, thinly disguised as presidential elections. Even though the victors of the coup appear to have succeeded in consolidating themselves and the opposition forces have apparently been pushed back into defensive positions, the massive …
Threats over uranium enrichment aid regime
Ahmadinejad uses the ‘enemy without’ to justify increased repression, arrests and the torture of the ‘enemy within’, writes Yassamine Mather The dramatic statements by Obama, Brown and Sarkozy about Iran’s undisclosed nuclear enrichment plant, made in a ‘breaking news’-style press conference on the first day of the G20 gathering in Pittsburgh, were clearly intended to …
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Mass protests re-ignite
Yassamine Mather calls for support and solidarity for workers in Iran If anyone was in any doubt about the continuation of the political crisis in Iran, demonstrations on Friday September 18 in Tehran, Tabriz, Mashad, Shiraz, Isfahan and elsewhere put an end to that. Tens of thousands of Iranians, ignoring repeated warnings by the security …
Misogynist torturers cling to power
Workers are growing in confidence, reports Yassamine Mather Over the last few weeks, following the show trials of ‘reformist’ personalities and the imposition of even more severe forms of repression in Iran, the nature of protests has changed considerably. However, demonstrations continue on a daily basis in Tehran and most other Iranian cities, with numbers …