Hands Off the People of Iran – Page 42 – No to imperialist war, no to the theocratic regime!

Against imperialist war, against theocratic rule

Mike Macnair explains why it is now more urgent than ever to fight on two fronts

(first published in the Weekly Worker- source)

In last week’s issue James Turley charted the responses of the British left to the mass mobilisations in Iran against Ahmadinejad’s ‘re-election’ and to the repression unleashed by the regime. In the main comrade Turley celebrated the fact that the majority of the organised left had chosen the right side, though towards the end of the article he warned against the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s uncritical support for the social-imperialist International Trade Union Confederation’s June 26 solidarity protest (‘Litmus test for the soul’, June 25).

In the event, this sort of uncritical support turned out to affect wider parts of the left who attended that protest. It is therefore necessary to re-emphasise a very fundamental point. Solidarity with the mass movement in Iran has to be placed together with opposition to the US imperialist state’s (and its British side-kick’s) threats against Tehran, to the sanctions and to US plans for the Middle East.

Hands off the People of Iran has been arguing since its formation for the converse. That is, that opposition to US imperialism’s threats to Iran has to be placed together with solidarity with workers’ and democratic movements in Iran. Clearly it is one and the same point, simply seen from different angles. An independent working class policy in this context starts from fighting positively for the interests of the working class. It therefore involves fighting on two fronts: both against the big criminals (the central imperialist powers) and against the little criminals (the local capitalist states – in Iran, the clerical regime).

The victory of the working class can only come through ‘winning the battle of democracy’. This implies radical democracy in the government of particular states – and therefore, in Iran, the overthrow of the clerical regime; and therefore, immediately, support for the mass movement against Ahmadinejad’s ballot-rigging. But radical democracy also requires an end to the subordination of one nation to another – and therefore, opposition to an imperialist military attack on Iran, to the current regime of sanctions blockade and to any extension of sanctions. This also means opposition to the sort of regime change from above or stage-managed ‘colour revolution’ which would put in place a government more immediately dependent on the US.

US imperialism

The replacement of Bush by Obama has altered the tone and the rhetoric of US policy. But the same underlying structural dynamics are still in place which have led to the continuing war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, US support for the Israeli war in Lebanon in 2006 and air strike against Syria in 2007, and the war threats and sanctions against Iran.

US productive dominance in the world economy is in (relative) decline, just as the productive dominance of British capital was in (relative) decline in the later 19th century. The result is a necessity for the US to shift – as Britain shifted in the later 19th century – towards increased exploitation both of the central role in finance and of military-political resources, in order to maintain its dominance or at least slow its decline.

In this context, the US has an objective interest in control of the Persian Gulf region. This was stated as a formal foreign policy principle – the ‘Carter doctrine’ – in 1980. The underlying ground for this interest is military, and not an interest in ‘cheap oil’.

It is true that cheap petrol and other energy resources support the American suburb, the mechanised agriculture of the Midwest, access to the wilderness resorts in the mountains, and the cities in the deserts like Las Vegas and Los Angeles. In doing so, cheap petrol supports the domestic political-economic regime in the US which provides consent for its regime and its imperialist role from the US ‘middle class’ (in US terms, mainly the upper part of the working class). But until the 1960s US oil producers dominated a cartelised oil market, and since then oil markets have become globalised. So political arrangements in the Middle East are almost completely irrelevant to the availability of cheap fuel – Cyrus Bina, in The economics of the oil crisis (New York 1985), provides a systematic treatment of the issue.

More fundamental is the fact that the military regime which has continued to operate since the US victory in World War II runs, almost entirely, on oil. Except for a few nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, the navy runs on diesel, the air force on aviation fuel, and the army on petrol and diesel. Not only does oil fuel the direct weapons of war (fighting ships and aircraft, tanks, etc), but also the logistical underpinning which keeps troops in the field and these weapons running and supplied with munitions.

The problem this poses is not that of US access to oil (or to cheap oil) to run its military. Again, oil resources are global and the oil market is globalised. The problem is, rather, of US capacity to interdict access to oil by potential state competitors under hypothesised conditions of open great-power war (when the globalised oil market would disappear). The potential state competitors are all on the Eurasian ‘supercontinent’: the USSR before its fall, Europe if it can overcome its political subordination to the US, China if it can manage the transition from Stalinism to imperialism successfully. Hence, given US air and naval dominance, oil reserves in the Americas and Africa are strategically secondary. Military-political control of the Gulf region is strategically dominant.

The other side of this coin is that the cold war system allowed the local states of the Middle East some room for manoeuvre between the US and the USSR. Thus Iran was – until the revolution of 1979 – a US client, while Ba’athist Iraq was – between the late 1960s and Saddam Hussein’s coup in the same year – a Soviet client. In 1979 the US lost a client in Iran and gained one in Iraq, until changing US needs led to the Gulf War of 1990-91 and all that has followed.

The fall of the USSR immediately seemed to create a ‘unipolar world’ round the US, and the 1991 Gulf War – a display of US military power for its own sake, and of US leadership in the ‘international community’ through the UN – seemed to emphasise the point. But the underlying relative decline of the US has meant that there was still room for manoeuvre for local states, albeit on a smaller scale than was possible with the USSR. Thus both the Iraqi regime under sanctions and the Iranian clerical regime have been able to manoeuvre to some extent with European countries and with China.

The Carter doctrine provides the context for continued US support for Israel, and for America’s successive wars and manoeuvres in the Middle East since 1979. What the US seeks in the region is the sort of degree of political control of the local states which the US had, in the high period of its dominance, in Latin America.

There is a sense in which the project of maintaining US global dominance through military-political control of the Persian Gulf region is a utopian delusion. All dominant powers sooner or later decline, and the US is most unlikely to be an exception. Moreover, there is some evidence in recent wars of a tendency towards exhaustion of the US oil-based military model as a means of imposing order (as opposed to its capacity to merely inflict destruction). An actual failure of the US military model would, in turn, imply that control of the Middle East would lose its geopolitical significance.

There is also a considerably stronger sense in which the invasion and occupation of Iraq was an irrational means of pursuing US interests in the region. This irrationality is an indirect effect of the deepening destabilisation of global capitalism, which tends to bring to the fore irrational trends in politics – and also strengthens the direct capitalist interest in war spending as a form of economic stimulus.

None of this, however, means that the US does not have an objective interest in control of the Middle East and in particular of the Persian Gulf region. This implies an interest in (preferably) obtaining a political regime in Iran which is directly politically subordinate to the US state. Or, if this is not feasible, an interest in destroying Iran’s capacity to act in the wider region through massive destruction of its infrastructure and military capability.

If anything, the Iraqi fiasco strengthens the US interest in ‘dealing with’ Iran. Having invaded Iraq, the US attempted to impose the sort of political order the neocons believed could be created – and failed. It fell back on the traditional method of imperialism: backing whichever local group was willing to take US support. In Iraq, that has meant mainly the Shia Islamist parties, who are clients of the Iranian regime. The overall effect was therefore to strengthen the regional position and autonomy of the Iranian regime.

Iranian election

Paradoxical as it may seem, the withdrawal of US troops from urban bases and routine patrolling in Iraq (June 30) actually strengthens the US military position in the case of an attack on Iran. Instead of troops spread thinly over wide areas, vulnerable to guerrilla attack or a sudden change of sides by the ‘Iraqi security forces’, there are a relatively small number of large fortified bases, backed by air power.

The Iranian presidential election took place in this context. The mass movement which erupted as the fraud became apparent was not a ‘colour revolution’ orchestrated by mass media and backed by a powerful US NGO/diplomatic/media presence and by a section of the local state apparatus, like Ukraine, Georgia or Lebanon. It was a real mass movement of outrage at the electoral fraud, backed by a section of the elite of the clerical regime who saw the fraud – correctly – as a coup by the Revolutionary Guard and associated factions.

The US and British political leaderships and media struck a studied pose of ‘neutrality’ until the immediate outcome – the repression of the movement – had become clear. This in itself is evidence that the US and British states did hope for a ‘colour revolution’, but merely lacked the means to create one. Once the outcome was clear, the US and British leaderships and media turned at once to condemning the repression.

The ITUC is part of this state operation. It came out of a merger in 2006 of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which originated in the cold war as a CIA-sponsored operation in the labour movement (funny how the US is so keen on free trade unions outside its own borders, while within they are subject to elaborate legal controls), with the Catholic – Christian Democrat-sponsored – World Confederation of Labour. The ICFTU’s policy for the 47 years of its life has dutifully tracked US foreign policy.

In terms of politics outside Iran, the outcome is win-win for US imperialism and its British sidekick. If the mass movement had led to the fall of the regime or even to a ‘reformist’ incumbency, the US could have offered the new Iranian administration deals on sanctions, etc, which could bring it into closer subordination to the US. The electoral fraud and the repression of the movement, on the other hand, will inevitably strengthen the hand of advocates of ‘tougher sanctions’ and – from Tel Aviv and from sections of the US state – of military action against Iran in the short term.

We should therefore expect to see at the very least new proposals for sanctions, and an increasing amount of Ahmadinejad = Hitler rhetoric in the mass media. The advocates of an attack on Iran will attempt to exploit the political advantage in ‘western’ opinion which they can expect to gain – at least for a time – as a result of the election fraud, the mass movement and the repression. It is therefore not impossible (though it is hard to assess the likelihood) that there will be a rapid escalation of tensions round the nuclear issue preparatory to air strikes in the short term.

Anti-war and solidarity movement

The danger in this situation is that the imperialist powers will move towards – at least – more sanctions, and – at most – war in the short term; yet the anti-war movement will be unable to respond effectively because it has committed itself to prettifying the Iranian regime in ways which cut it off from broad masses. Meanwhile, the advocates of solidarity with the Iranian masses against the regime are seriously at risk of simply becoming a tail for US and British foreign policy.

We need to fight on two fronts, as Hopi has argued: both against the imperialist sanctions and war threats and for solidarity with workers’ and democratic movements in Iran. This is not just a matter of moral principle.

In order to oppose the sanctions and war threats effectively, we need to do so with eyes fully open to the tyrannical and corrupt character of the Iranian regime and the fact that its ‘anti-imperialism’ is no more than rhetoric. Otherwise, we will cut ourselves off from broad masses who do recognise the character of the Iranian regime and are tempted – in spite of Iraq! – to imagine that ‘the international community’ or our own state can play some sort of progressive role by getting rid of it.

But equally, in order to build real solidarity with workers’ and democratic movements in Iran, we need to oppose the sanctions and war threats. In the case of the sanctions, the point is obvious. The sanctions at the end of the day penalise the Iranian working class and the poor, and provide opportunities for lucrative money-laundering and smuggling operations for sections of the Iranian elite. If they fall, the bombs, too, would inevitably fall not only on the hardened target of Iranian nuclear operations, but – as they fell in Serbia and in Iraq – on any part of the Iranian infrastructure which could be claimed in some way to have ‘military value’.

The elections, the fraud and the mass movement all make this struggle more urgent. The majority of the organised British left took a step forward by being on the side of the mass movement against the regime. It now needs to take the next step further forward: to recognise the need to fight on two fronts continuously, not merely episodically.

Solidarity protests

Anne Mc Shane reports from the Hopi Ireland demo in the capital

More than 40 people joined the Hands Off the People of Iran protest in central Dublin on June 27. We brought the struggle in Iran to Central Bank Plaza with striking images of the demonstrations in Tehran on prominent display.

The Gay Pride march streamed past our demo and we leafleted the marchers, receiving a very warm response. The situation for gay people in Iran is a very serious and often life-threatening one. Many marchers identified with their plight and were glad to show their support.

Speakers at our rally included Cillian Gillespie from the Socialist Party and Fariba, an Iranian political activist. Comrade Gillespie made clear his organisation’s commitment to the working class in Iran. He stressed the need for organisation against the Islamic state and also his total opposition to any intervention from imperialism.

A statement from independent left councillor Cieran Perry, who had to leave early, was read out. It pointed out that the Iranian state is supported by the International Monetary Fund, which also props up the Irish state – itself hell-bent on attacking the working class. His loyalties lay with the working class struggling in both Iran and Ireland. He believed that the protests in Iran had gone beyond a simple reaction to a rigged election and now the very foundations of the state are being questioned.

Fariba spoke of the bravery and tenacity of the demonstrators. She called for the immediate unconditional release of all prisoners and for a stop to the arrests and killings. She wanted people to be aware of how important even small acts of solidarity are.

We finished our protest by chanting slogans in support of the striking workers and the struggle for mass democracy. We shouted, “Down with the Islamic regime” and “Solidarity with the movement”. We also made clear our absolute opposition to imperialist intervention – we do not want another Iraq. We want solidarity from the working class in Ireland, not from the Irish government.

A large number of people signed up to get involved in the campaign. In particular a number of Iranians came forward. This has given a great boost to the Dublin branch of Hopi. We now plan to organise other meetings and stalls in the capital as well as in Cork, where we have a launch meeting on July 2. We hope that people in other parts of the country will come forward to help, especially as we have had very good coverage on local radio stations.

Hopi Ireland: 086 23 43 238; anne@hopoi.info; www.hopi-Ireland.org

Iran 2009: Society in Rebellion – Meeting this Saturday!

No War - No Santions - Down With the Islamic Regime

Solidarity meeting hosted by Hands Off the People of Iran
Saturday July 4, 17.10
Room 3B University of London Union, Malet Street
Speakers:
John McDonnell MP
Yassamine Mather (HOPI Chair)
Socialist Workers’ Party (invited)
Socialist Party (invited)

Iranian society is convulsed by a political crisis on a scale not seen for over a decade. Masses of Iranian people have taken to the streets since the results of the rigged elections. Their outrage is justified. The levels of blatant vote-rigging on show was crazy even by the standards of Iran’s Islamic Republic regime. The masses are continuing to defy the crackdown and to come out onto the streets and urgently need our material and ideological solidarity.

If the left can come together on this question then we can win hegemony over the solidarity movement, which is currently dominated either by Moussavi supporters and/or groupings which are silent on the role of imperialism in the Middle East.

With this in mind, Hopi is hosting this meeting and has invited speakers from the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party. We are urging the SWP to incorporate the event into its Marxism event, and if not then to send along a speaker to try and discuss the way forward for solidarity action on this crucial question.

Video of protest at Swedish Embassy

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Ars7kbgNM&hl=en&fs=1]

HOPI Cork Meeting – 2nd July

HOPI Cork Meeting
Thursday 2 July
Victoria Hotel Patrick Street 8pm

Solidarity with the struggle in Iran. Down with the Islamic Regime! Release all the prisoners now!

Speakers:
Mick Barry Socialist Party Councillor
Fariba Talebi, Iranian political activist

Contact Anne on 086 23 43 238 Anne@hopoi.info

Protests continue in Iran – Free All Political Prisoners

Bazaari’s in Tehran struck on Saturday (June 27) against the continued post-election repression, the carpet Bazaar was closed down down and trading was almost non existent.

Over the last couple of days actions against the regime have continued across Iran. Further repression and killings have taken place with some families having no idea whether or not their relatives are alive or dead. In clashes on Saturday at least three people were wounded in the city centre as security forces attacked people who were moving towards Laleh Park to attend a rally called by the mothers of the dead. Plain clothes police officers and members of the Basij were waiting for protesters and attacked the demonstrators who were shouting “Marg Bar Diktator” (Death to the Dictator). On Friday (June 26) hundreds of residents of Janat-Abad district in western Tehran fought running battles with security forces as well as chanting “Marg Bar Khamenei” and “Marg Bar Diktator” there were several injuries and over a dozen arrests.

On Thursday (June 25) thousands of people came out and demonstrated in various parts of Tehran, security forces were heavily concentrated in Enghelab, Karegar, Jamazadeh and Vali-Asr streets. Protesters chanted slogans against the supreme leader and the Islamic Republic.

Free Bita Samimizad – Free All Political Prisoners!

We have received requests from student comrades in Iran to raise the plight of political prisoners in Iran and to call for their release. At the moment they are very worried about a student called Bita Samimizad. Bita was born in October 1986, and and is studying Physics at Amirkabir Polytechnic university. She is a leftist activist and a translator, she has recently co-translated the book: ‘France – The struggle goes on’ by Tony Cliff (1968). She was also arrested in 2007 and spent 40 days in the notorious Evin, last Saturday she was arrested about 5 o’clock at 16th Azar street (Shanzdahe Azar street) which is very close to Enghelab sq. She was arrested by plain clothes members of the Sepah and is in Evin prison now, she has been able to call her mom once and let her know she is in Evin. We call on all supporters to send us messages of support that we can pass on but also to send messages demanding the immediate release of Bita and all political prisoners to the Iranian consulate:

Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran
16 Prince’s Gate
London SW7 1PT
Tel: 0207 225 3000

Videos from the last three days

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyq4CUmqk2k&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiq4JgFEFhY&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34XJ7tt0dqc&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

Leaflet for the June 26 ‘Justice for Iranian Workers’ Demonstration

This is the leaflet that Hopi activists gave out at today’s demonstration called by the the International Trade Union Confederation, International Transport Workers Federation, Education International, and the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations.

june26protests

Iran: first round to Ahmadinejad?

Permanent Revolution and HOPI Steering Committee member Stuart King on the largest period of social unrest in Iran since 1979.

Following the announcement of “an overwhelming victory” for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 12 June Presidential election and the defeat of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, up to a million people poured onto the streets in a series of protest demonstrations. For almost a week the capital and the regime was paralysed as masses of people marched against what they saw as a stolen election.

The demonstrations, which centred on Tehran but also took place in some other major cities, united the many opposition forces in Iran. Students and women played a prominent role but they were joined by workers, the unemployed, small traders and even some clerics. The demonstrations continued for several days and were subject to increasing repression.

On Monday 15 June seven people were killed by the Basij militia, an auxiliary of the Revolutionary Guards and a power base of President Ahmadinejad. Student dormitories and universities were attacked and students beaten without mercy. Hundreds of leading oppositionists and academics were arrested, often in the middle of the night, and held for short periods.

Despite this repression the mass movement developed its own means of organisation and defence. The use of SMS, blogging and twitter helped to organise the demonstrations against a powerful dictatorship. Indeed, so scared was the regime that the night of the election announcement the government had the entire mobile phone system in Iran closed down in an attempt to prevent mobilizations against the regime.

Continue reading “Iran: first round to Ahmadinejad?”

A Different Regime

Through his election coup Ahmadinejad has initiated a military-style government, argues Mehdi Kia

The Islamic regime in Iran has entered an irreversible turning point. In the first instance, on the morning of June 13 2009 it was fundamentally different from what existed before. At the same time the events of the last two weeks have freed the opposition from much of its illusions in the possibility of reform within the regime. The way is now open for moving toward new horizons. Let me explain.

The regime that rose out of the revolution of 1979, after the bloody suppression of any democratic content, was essentially a government by a particular section of the Shia clergy who believed in the concept of velayate faghih – put simply, the absolute rule of a supreme leader as a “just and knowledgeable religious jurist”. The mullahs who refused to accept this interpretation of Islam were marginalised and excluded from the corridors of power. The constitution of the Islamic regime gave the faghih supreme and absolute power over every decision-making apparatus of the state. The mantle of this all-powerful supreme leader was naturally taken up by ayatollah Khomeini.

It must be remembered, however, that this regime rose out of a revolution which indisputably incorporated virtually the entire population of the country. Hence a parallel structure was created where the executive president, the majles (parliament) and later the municipal councils were chosen by elections.

But the elected organs could not make any decisions that were not acceptable to the leadership. The council of guardians, a body appointed by the supreme leader, was set above them to vet all candidates for elective office, and all the laws passed by the majles. The prime role of elections was to provide legitimacy for the non-elected power structures. Hence the frantic efforts at every election to get the people out to vote.

Thus elections in Iran are not free in any accepted sense of the word, since no candidate, nor any legislation, can pass the hurdle of the unelected council of guardians that is not acceptable to the leader. But elections for such organs as the majles and the presidency had an important subsidiary role. An understanding of this role is important if we are to understand the meaning of the coup d’etat orchestrated by Ahmadinejad, in alliance with a handful of clergy.

The Shia clergy is by its very essence a fragmented entity. This arises from the concept of taqlid (emulation) – which, simply put, means that any Shia believer can follow whichever mullah that takes his or her fancy. In essence the Shia clerical establishment is not hierarchical, but multifocal. It has multiple, and potentially infinite, centres of taqlid, each with its own unique collection of followers. Add to this the complexity of adapting the laws of a religion laid down over a millennium ago to a modern industrial state, and you can see the setting for the constant splitting of the ruling ayatollahs into factions, at almost every major decision-making juncture.

Elections allowed the different factions of the clergy believing in the rule of the faqih to test out the legitimacy of their solutions, and by inference their position in the ruling hierarchy, by reverting to the popular vote. Thus the factions would fight over the popular vote and would use this to manoeuvre in the corridors of power. Hence the regime that Khomeini bestowed on the country was in no way democratic for the population of Iran, but allowed a large amount of freedom, indeed a form of internal democracy, within the ruling clergy.

Interestingly the people of Iran, deprived of any real voice in government, have used the rivalry between the factions to manoeuvre and obtain some breathing space. They did this alternatively by their vote or the boycott of that vote. One can only understand the massive turnout to elect Khatami in 1997, and the massive boycott of the majles elections in 2004 in this light.1 The same can be said of the massive turnout in the present elections. They also very astutely used the fight between various factions as a defensive shield behind which they fought for their own democratic goals.
Ahmadinejad’s coup

That it was a well planned coup and not something concocted at the spur of the moment can be seen from two observations. Firstly the chorus of Revolutionary Guard commanders who congratulated Ahmadinejad on his certain victory and gave their support for it in the weeks before the election. And, second, by the fact that the official Fars News website declared victory for Ahmadinejad two hours before the polls closed, with a percentage of votes which remained unchanged until the final count.

Ahmadinejad orchestrated his previous victory four years ago like a military operation.2 This time he announced it like a victorious Caesar, even before the results of the battle could possibly be known. That was no coincidence. He was declaring to the world, and to the Iranian people, that the rule of the ayatollahs is over. The rule of the military-security machinery has begun.

What Ahmadinejad engineered, in alliance with a large section of the security apparatus and a handful of mullahs, was to essentially deprive the clergy of their ability to use elections to increase the power base of their particular factions inside the regime. This was not a flash in the pan. The election coup had been systematically organised over the last 12-15 years. It began with mobilising and the methodical winning of all electable and non-electable organs – starting with the mayorships of major cities (Ahmadinejad is an ex-mayor of Tehran), the municipal council elections, the majles and the presidency of Ahmadinejad in 2005.

In parallel the military-security apparatus became a major economic force in the country.3 The coup on June 12 was the logical next, and last, step in a long process by which those that called themselves the osulgaran (‘principled’) have been catapulted into undisputed power. The mass protest by the clergy4 can be explained by the fact that they have been unceremoniously thrown out of the power structure of Iran.

The regime that took power last week showed its fangs early. Not only did the thugs it unleashed beat up protestors, but they smashed their way into the homes of people who had given them sanctuary. They forced their way into university dormitories across the country to wreck everything in sight and indiscriminately beat the students. The arrest of politicians, journalists, students and demonstrators is taking place daily.

The overall aim of the osulgaran faction, to which Ahmadinejad belongs, is to do away with the factional nature of the Iranian regime and have a top-down, unified, military-style government with a population which supports it unequivocally and by acclamation without being allowed to organise in any form. This is to be a united country, under an undivided, single and monolithic regime, preparing for war, with an economy that reflects those aims. The unorganised ‘people’ are to be mobilised when and if necessary to act as fodder for that war.

You can glimpse this structure in the victory speech made by Ahmadinejad a few days after the election. There he dismissed and derided political parties and appealed to the people to stay on the scene to defend the country.

A capitalist regime, using extreme nationalist populist slogans, ruling the country through thugs and being acclaimed by a public not permitted to organise in any form other than what is dictated from above, and with militaristic, adventurist ambitions! Have we not seen this before?
The people

The second consequence of the election coup is to free the Iranian people once and for all of any illusions as to the ability of the regime to reform. The final explosive demise of the election escape valve releases the people of Iran from the grip of, or hopes for, a reformist option.

They showed that understanding when they defied calls by the front runner in the election, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, to stay at home. Indeed, not for the first time we saw the spectacle of the reformists running after the people so as not to be thrown aside. Both Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi had to make an appearance in that and subsequent demonstrations, clearly desperate to regain the initiative. And at each step they have struggled to keep up with the popular anger.

The strident call of supreme leader Ali Khamenei for suppression of the demonstrations, the warning that any bloodshed would be laid at the door of the reformists and the subsequent savage attacks on street protests will further push the reformist leaders into the margins. The road is now open for the entire structure to be challenged from below.

This will be a difficult road. The reasons are not hard to discern. The regime has shown that it has no difficulty in mounting savage repression. This is an ideological regime, organised on fascist lines and fighting for its life. It has a well organised and financed body of Revolutionary Guards, as well as the voluntary bassij to do its deeds. While both of these will undoubtedly have within them large sections who are sympathetic to the popular movement, it is unwise to underestimate the power of ideology and even more the hierarchical structure of these organisations making the bassij foot-soldier far more likely to obey the orders to shoot than the conscript army of the shah.

Moreover the leaders of the regime are children of a revolution, an eight-year war with Iraq and a 30-year suppression of any popular protest. They did this efficiently in 1997, when several cities erupted; they did it again when they bloodily put down the student movement four years ago. They have been organised on a national scale with the sole purpose of keeping the population in order. They are used to repression and have had a lot of practice at imposing it.

On the other side the people are leaderless. They have been denied the right to organise in any meaningful way for over half a century, with only brief interludes of real freedom. The systematic, bloody repression of the left and all progressive forces has left its mark. Many of the exiled organisations are atrophied and are totally divorced from the country. Within Iran a new left has undoubtedly emerged, but it has yet to organise in any effective form, or even to polish its ideological understanding of the dynamics of Iranian society and the world. The working class has been in a life and death struggle with daily survival in an economy that has been in a spiral of decline.

This setting does not favour the development of working class organisations that can politically challenge the regime. Yet there are tactics that the opposition to the regime can adapt which will allow it to overcome its weakness.
Tactics

In the face of certain savage oppression, and in the process of producing organisation, the struggle has to utilise tactics that take its weaknesses into account and play on its strengths. Any tactic that paralyses the regime yet puts the people out of reach of the security apparatus is more likely to succeed. Already youth on motorcycles have been using these tactics to get news of street battles to different parts, drawing the security forces into side alleys, where they become fragmented, disappearing into people’s homes when under attack, chanting “Death to the dictator” from rooftops at night, and making intelligent use of SMS, email, twitter, Facebook, etc to communicate with each other and get their message abroad.

Among other tactics that can be used are mass strikes – or, to be more accurate, stay-at-homes: ie, unofficial strikes. This keeps protestors away from the forces of repression, but paralyses the regime by depriving it of its workforce. As we go to press, there has indeed been a call for a stayaway on June 23 and for three days of mourning between June 23-25. Despite all that has been written about the Iranian revolution, it was this tactic, and not massive street demonstrations, that broke the back of the shah’s regime. Moreover, any such act of mass civil disobedience is difficult to suppress.

The organisational deficit of the protestors can be turned into an advantage by concentrating on local neighbourhood networks that will be much less easy to destroy than a central leadership. This form of organisation has the added advantage of being excellent teaching grounds for the experience of direct democracy. The highly creative use by the youth in Iran of modern means of communication allows for coordination of protest – the aim being to paralyse the state. Finally we have the age-old Iranian tactic of sanctuary – in an avowedly Islamic regime it is very difficult to attack people taking sanctuary in a mosque or shrine. Thus one can use the weakness of the regime to strengthen the opposition.

The battle will be long and bloody. Yassamine Mather has already highlighted some of the difficulties that lie ahead.5 However, we are on the slow but upward spiral to an Iran where different groups can gather and organise around their specific needs. And where we can have the kind of democracy that allows the working people of the country, those not owning the means of production, to organise towards a truly democratic socialism.
Notes

1. See Middle East Left Forum: www.iran-bulletin.org/IBMEF_1_word%206%20files/Election%20to%207th%20majles_with%20pict.htm
2. See A Mehrdad and M Kia, ‘Regime crisis and the new conservatives’ Weekly Worker September 8 2005; and Middle East Left Forum: www.iran-bulletin.org/IB-MEF-3/presidentialelections_edited.htm
3. See A Mehrdad and M Kia op cit for a detailed discussion of the rise of the neo-conservatives.
4. The majma johaniune mobarez (Association of Combatant Clerics) was one of the first organs to protest at the coup. On June 22 it published an announcement that challenged the supreme leader outright – a totally unprecedented phenomenon.
5. Yassamine Mather, ‘Death to the Islamic republic’ Weekly Worker June 18; and also on www.iran-bulletin.org

Beginning of the End by Yassamine Mather

Ayatollah Khamenei’s June 19 speech reminded many Iranians of some of the utterances of the shah in the last months of his rule: former president and current chairman of the ‘assembly of experts’ Ali Akbar Rafsanjani cannot be corrupt – he has been the supreme leader’s friend for over 50 years! Everyone in Iran had accepted the results of the elections: it was all the fault of foreign powers and foreign media that some people are now doubting them! Conspiracies are all around us and, just as in colonial times, the British are behind it.
The problem with most dictators is that, even in their dying days, they believe they can stop the movement by simply passing orders or blaming ‘foreign powers’. Some supporters of the shah are still under the illusion that he was not overthrown by the 1979 Iranian revolution, but was deposed thanks to a plot by Britain and the US. In fact, as he went on speaking, attributing strange comments to Obama (the US president has apparently admitted in public that he had been looking forward to the demonstrations that have rocked Iran), one wondered if Khamenei, well known for using opium as a painkiller for his injured arm, had taken a double dose that morning.
He said that he liked Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and agreed with most of his statements (one assumes that includes denial of the holocaust, the claim that Ahmadinejad had introduced Venezuela to Islam, that inflation is going up in all European and western countries, that Iran’s economic problems have nothing to do with government policy, but are solely the consequences of the world economic crisis … ).
Yet the supreme leader did rebuke his president on one issue: he was wrong to accuse Rafsanjani and his own adviser, Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri, and their relatives of corruption. Both families were his friends, pillars of the Islamic state and he did not want to hear such “baseless accusations”. This, it seems, is the only comment made by Ahmadinejad in his four years as president which is a lie or an exaggeration.
However, if Khamenei and his advisers had thought this speech would put a stop to the protests, they were mistaken. In the absence of a clear lead by Mir-Hossein Moussavi or fellow ‘reformist’ candidate Mehdi Karroubi (neither of whom persevered with their previous calls for further demonstrations) Saturday’s protests were far more radical, challenging the very existence of the Islamic state. For the first time since 1979, crowds shouted “Death to the vali faghih” (supreme religious leader) and “Death to Khamenei”. By Monday the slogans were aimed against the whole order: “Death to the Islamic regime”, “Death to the Bassiji” and, in another flashback to 1979, the taunting of the security forces with “Be scared of the day we are armed”.
It is now clear that the attempt to impose Ahmadinejad on the Iranian people for another term has thrown the entire regime into terminal crisis, as calls for a general strike are gaining support. On Sunday June 21, Karroubi, still dreaming of a compromise, commented that the regime could yet save “the Islamic order” by annulling the elections. But the failure to do so, combined with the hesitation and dithering of the ‘reformists’, means we are seeing the beginning of the end. No doubt the process could be drawn out and its outcome unpredictable, but it has begun and no-one can stop it.
Of course, the expulsion of foreign reporters and banning of many newspapers have reduced media coverage of the protests, including the new slogans and changing nature of the demonstrations, but most bourgeois journalists still in Tehran could see that by June 23 the very existence of the Islamic republic regime was being challenged by demonstrators. In central districts of Tehran, youths were attacking banks as well as government offices and military barracks.
The calls for a general strike, sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience are gaining momentum and the protests have now clearly spread to many provincial cities and even some smaller towns, despite the regime’s resort to increasingly repressive methods. Contrary to the claims of apologists for the Iranian regime and some reporters, the demonstrations were not and are not dominated by the middle classes. In fact Iran does not possess such a huge middle class and those who did turn out took courage by the presence on the streets in the first week of large sections of poorer classes.
Those of us who can identify the class composition of demonstrators from their clothes and accents have not had the slightest doubt about the predominance of workers and wage-earners (including teachers, nurses and public employees) on recent protests, but for the benefit of those who have no knowledge of Iran and who keep telling us the demonstrators are ‘middle class’ let me explain some basic facts.
If you live in a country where the ministry of labour claims that over 80% of the workforce are employed on limited contracts and reassures capitalists that by 2010 the figure will have reached 100%, who do you think will join protest demonstrations?
If you live in a country where in the year ending March 2009 despite the repression there were over 4,000 workers’ actions against privatisation and job losses (unemployment stands at 30%, while inflation has reached 25%), including sit-ins, the kidnap of managers, as well as strikes, who do you think will join protest demonstrations?
If you live in a country that has been praised by the International Monetary Fund for its firm pursuit of neoliberal economic policies, all under a certain Mr Ahmadinejad, who do you think will join protest demonstrations?
If you live in a country where teachers and nurses have waged at least four major strikes in the last two years against their government’s economic and political stance, who do you think will join protest demonstrations?
Let us stop talking of the ‘middle class’ nature of these specific protests. However, a number of points have to be considered. Contrary to comments by people such as George Galloway, the Iranian revolution of 1979 was not started by the working class. Students, many of them children of middle class families, initiated the anti-shah protests, which were confined at first to university campuses, and the same students were later in the forefront of the first major demonstrations. It is no secret that the actions of a minority of middle strata can sometimes spark a mass movement.
In 2009, however, the working class has not been slow off the mark – as early as last week the idea of a general political strike has been in the air. It is the left and its activists who have been slow to respond to such calls.
On June 18 Iran Khodro car workers issued the following statement: “We declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran. Autoworkers, fellow workers, what we witness today is an insult to the intelligence of the people, and disregard for their votes, the trampling of the principles of the constitution by the government. It is our duty to join this people’s movement.
“We, the workers of Iran Khodro, … will stop working for half an hour on every shift to protest against the suppression of students, workers and women and declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran.”
Similarly, the union of Vahed bus workers declared on June 19: “In recent days, we continue witnessing the magnificent demonstration of millions of people from all ages, genders and national and religious minorities in Iran. They request that their basic human rights, particularly the right to freedom and to choose independently and without deception, be recognised. These rights are not only constitutional in most countries, but also have been protected against all odds.”
The statement went on to condemn the “threats, arrests, murders and brutal suppression” and called for support for the protests, which “demand a response from each and every responsible individual and institution”. It continued: “… since the Vahed Syndicate does not view any of the candidates as supporting the activities of workers’ organisations in Iran, it would not endorse any presidential candidate in the election. Vahed members nevertheless have the right to participate or not to participate in the elections and vote for their individually selected candidate.
“Moreover, the fact remains that demands of almost an absolute majority of the Iranians go far beyond the demands of a particular group … [We] fully support this movement of Iranian people to build a free and independent civil society …”
Oil workers have also used well established channels of communication to discuss the possibility of a strike. Meanwhile a general strike has affected the whole of the Kurdish province, with most cities and towns practically closed down. Calls for a nationwide general strike are growing by the day.