Video: Yassamine Mather on Rowhani in Davos, Iran sanctions, and HOPI Conference

The uneasy agreement between the 5+1 powers and Iran over the country’s nuclear programme has provoked controversy in both countries and an almost hysterically hostile campaign from Israel. In the confusion, some clear facts emerge.

HOPI

University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY

Registration: 10am

10.30-12.45
1) Imperialism, nuclear negotiations and US -Iran relations: Mike Macnair.
Israel and the need for war: Moshe Machover

13.30-15.00
2) Workers’ struggles before and after 1979: Torab Saleth
The Rouhani government, sanctions and workers’ struggles: Yassamine Mather

15.15-16.15
3) Iran’s national minorities: Nasrollah Ghazi

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This event will be broadcast on Livestream

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A region in flux

Yassamine Mather of Hands off the People of Iran examines the failure of political Islam and imperialism’s attempts to adjust its alliances

John Kerry: Behind the scenes maneuvering
John Kerry: Behind the scenes maneuvering

Irrespective of what happens in 2014, the year 2013 will be remembered as a year of historic changes in Iran-US relations. For the first time in 34 years, a US president has spoken to his Iranian equivalent, and the two countries’ foreign ministers have held face-to-face negotiations as well as a number of phone conversations. Contrary to what the supporters of the reformist movement in Iran claim, the dramatic changes in Iran-US relations are not simply a consequence of the June 2013 elections and the coming to office of a ‘moderate’ president in Iran. We now know that secret meetings between US and Iranian officials took place in Oman last year, during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency. According to a senior US official quoted by Associated Press, US foreign secretary John Kerry visited Oman in May 2013, “ostensibly to push a military deal with the sultanate but secretly focused on maintaining that country’s key mediation role”.

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Hands off the People of Iran Day School , January 25 2014 (فارسی)

10am University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY

HOPI

Registration: 10am

10.30am – 12.30

Israel and the need for war: Moshe Machover, Israeli socialist and founder of Matzpen.
Imperialism, nuclear negotiations and US -Iran relations: Mike Macnair, CPGB.

1 – 3pm

Repression – Iran’s political prisoners: speaker TBC
Sanctions, job losses and workers struggles: Yassamine Mather

3 – 5pm

Workers’ struggles before and after 1979: Torab Saleth
Iran’s national minorities: Nasrollah Ghazi

The uneasy agreement between the 5+1 powers and Iran over the country’s nuclear programme has provoked controversy in both countries and an almost hysterically hostile campaign from Israel. In the confusion, some clear facts emerge.

Sanctions have destroyed Iran’s economy, creating intense hardship for the majority of Iranians. However, they have done little or nothing to dent their declared targets: Iran’s nuclear programme and the private wealth of senior clerics. This was the conscious aim of the west, confirmed by recent comments from Obama, who made clear that the strategy of sanctions was to impoverish and drive to desperation the ordinary people of Iran and facilitate regime change from above. Therefore this has been a partial, but important, success for imperialism. It now poses new tasks for the anti-war and solidarity movement in a fluid new situation in the Middle East which is full of both dangers and possibilities for the working class and its allies.

This is why Hands Off the People of Iran is convening an important day school in central London to discuss the issues and map a way forward. The draft agenda is below, but check back regularly for updates and additions.

سمینار  یک روزه  کارزار  دست‌ها از مردم ایران کوتاه

شنبه  ۲۵ ژنویه ۲۰۱۴

ساعت ۱۰ صبح تا ۵ بعد از ظهر

سخنرانان : مشه ماخور، مایک مکنر، یاسمین میظر

،  تراب ثالث، نصرلله قاضی

محل برگزاری

University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY

Solidarity with political prisoners

prisonerThe thawing of the relations between the Iran and the west has resulted in an intensification on the repression bearing down on activists domestically and a flurry of executions of prisoners, some of them long term. Urgent solidarity is required in particular with the following activists

  • Behnam Ebrahimzadeh, a member of the Committee for the Establishment of Workers’ Organisations in Iran (CEWO), who has served three years of a six-year sentence.
  • Reza Shahabi, member of the coordinating committee of Vahed bus workers, still in jail for his part in the 2006 strike and for organising workers in this sector. We note that Shahabi is very ill and his condition is deteriorating daily.
  • Shahrokh Zamani, a Painters Union militant and another CEWO member. He is currently serving an 11-year sentence and has been tortured on a number of occasions. Zamani is held in Rajaei Shahr prison, one of the worst detention centres in Iran, because he is accused of “insulting the leader”, a charge that was added six months into his sentence.
  • CEWO member Mohammad Jarahi, who was arrested in January 2012. He, like fellow-prisoners, has had a number of serious health issues, but has been refused release on health grounds.
  • Worker activists Pedram Nasrollahi, Mohammad Mohammadi and Abdolreza Ghanbari are also in prison and their lives are in danger.
  • In Kurdistan province, in addition to nationalist prisoners, worker activists Vafa Ghaderi, Khaled Hosseini and Ghader Hosseini all face jail sentences and on November 4, hours after the execution of the Kurdish prisoners, Vafa Ghaderi was arrested.