The Tehran regime is not<\/i> anti-imperialist. Whatever episodic conflicts arise between it and the US-led west, its essence is anti-working class, anti-democratic and capitalist.<\/b><\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n1. Sanctions are a form of war, a demobilising siege on the working people of Iran<\/b><\/h3>\n
While the wealthy and powerful of Iran have been mostly untouched by sanctions \u2013 indeed many have used the dislocation to become even richer \u2013 the ordinary people of Iran have been bogged down in an endless struggle for the basic necessities of life. The working class is exhausted and impoverished. Our brothers and sisters have to work three or four jobs to survive, wasting hours queuing for the basic necessities of life, unable to access adequate medical care even for the simplest of ailments. Faced with all of this, organising trade unions, political groups and other working class bodies in Iran becomes next to impossible.<\/p>\n
In contrast, a Reuters investigation has discovered that a major foundation controlled by ayatollah Khamenei (Iran\u2019s Supreme leader), Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam (literally the Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam), despite running a $95 billion empire, has escaped the effects of sanctions scot free. The $95 billion is accounted for by official holdings of real estate, corporate stakes and official assets, but in fact the recent revelations do not show all of Setad\u2019s assets and it largely remains a clandestine financial organisation.<\/p>\n
The foundation was created in the aftermath of 1979 revolution. Its more recent wealth comes from the privatisations carried out under former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, making it one of the richest financial groups in the Middle East. It is amazing that Setad, with major interests in Iran\u2019s industrial and financial sector, in petrochemicals, oil and telecommunications, has not been hit by sanctions \u2013 despite the fact that western governments are well aware that it controls whole swathes of the Iranian economy and is directly run by the supreme leader.<\/p>\n
For instance, in July 2010 the European Union included Mohammad Mokhber, president of Setad, in a list of individuals and organisations sanctioned for alleged involvement in \u201cnuclear or ballistic missiles activities\u201d. But two years later, it mysteriously removed him.<\/p>\n
This summer, as another 37 companies were added to the list of companies facing sanctions, and treasury officials reminded the US Senate committee overseeing them that Setad was under the direct control of the supreme leader \u2013 yet the US decided to exempt it from sanctions. During recent revelations, when Reuters asked officials to explain the rationale behind this decision, they replied that they did not want to be accused of \u201cattempts to topple the government\u201d!<\/p>\n
The Reuters expos\u00e9 confirms what we in Hands Off the People of Iran and other opponents of sanctions have always said: the Iranian people\u00a0<\/i>are the real victims. Sanctions, heralded as \u2018targeted\u2019 and \u2018intelligent\u2019, have had little effect on the nuclear programme – and certainly not on the accumulation of wealth by Islamic foundations controlled or owned by senior clerics.<\/p>\n
Despite the agreement reached in Geneva, most of the existing sanctions will remain in place. Iranians will still die as a result, but the multi-billion dollar institutions under the patronage of the supreme leader will continue to flourish.<\/p>\n
This underlines that the west\u2019s priorities are not \u2018democracy\u2019 in Iran. Ideally, it would like to see a stage-managed regime change from above and the installation of a pro-western government of some sort. For this scenario to work, a troublesome social \u2018wildcard\u2019 that could ruin things \u2013 the Iranian working class and its potential allies \u2013 have to be removed from the political stage by the effect of sanctions<\/i>.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Hopi says: End all sanctions now!<\/b><\/p>\n
\n<\/b>2. \u2018The Iranian regime is not a consistent anti-imperialist force \u2013 it is an anti-working class, reactionary force in the region\u2019<\/b><\/h3>\n
Hopi has always been clear that the main enemy of the world\u2019s working class and the biggest threat to peace is US-led imperialism. For us, however, this has never implied a softening on our attitude on the Iranian theocracy. It also is an enemy, albeit a far weaker force.<\/p>\n
We have maintained this stance despite the farcical suggestions from some in the anti-war movement that any criticism of the Tehran regime is effectively pro<\/i>-imperialist. (Hopi has been consistently denied the right to affiliate to the Stop the War Coalition, for instance).<\/p>\n
The true nature of the theocratic regime is exposed by the recent talks. While it accommodates to imperialism abroad, it is dramatically turning up the repression on working class activists and opponents at home. Exiled Iranian observers tell us that the oppression is as bad as the worst periods of the rule of the last president, the west\u2019s bogey-man Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.<\/p>\n
In the last week of October alone, Iran\u2019s judicial system ordered the execution by hanging of at least 20 political opponents, all from national minorities (16 Baluchis and four Kurds). In West Azerbaijan province two Kurds who had been sentenced to death following brief trials were executed. Two other Kurdish political prisoners, both serving 30- year prison sentences for opposition to the regime and membership of an illegal organisation, suffered the same fate.<\/p>\n
These brutal hangings were a clear message to all the regime\u2019s opponents. Supreme leader Ali Khamenei might have \u2018drunk the poison\u2019 when he made his U-turn as far as international negotiations on Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities are concerned, but he has no intention of tolerating any internal opposition or dissent.<\/p>\n
There is a direct \u2013 and chilling \u2013 parallel here. Opposition groups have warned that last week\u2019s terror reprisals bear all the hallmarks of the type of repression the regime imposed immediately after the end of Iran-Iraq war in 1987. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini\u2019s version of \u2018drinking the poison\u2019 (peace with Iraq) was followed by the execution of tens of thousands of political prisoners, some nearing the end of their jail sentences. Such measures are intended to demonstrate that, although the Islamic republic may have been forced to make foreign policy concessions, there will be no softening of its attitude to its internal opponents. Quite the opposite.<\/p>\n
We should not forget that while in New York Rowhani spent a considerable amount of time discussing Iran\u2019s economy with the International Monetary Fund \u2013 the \u2018anti-imperialist\u2019 Iranian regime has been an IMF poster-boy for its vicious attacks on working class livings standards and organising rights. As the latest \u2018economic restructuring programme\u2019 takes shape, tight control of the working class, of the ability of its movement\u2019s leaders to fight austerity and of the population more generally remains a high priority of the government. Terror and judicial murders play their role in this.<\/p>\n
For us in Hands Off the People of Iran the urgent task is to save the lives of political prisoners – incarcerated labour activists; national and religious minority activists. We also need to publicise and support the struggles of thousands of workers who have had the courage to protest outside their factories, outside the Islamic majles<\/i> (parliament) or in front of provincial offices, demanding payment of their withheld wages; workers at the Qazvin car manufacturing plant, workers in the petro-chemical industries, workers who have demonstrated in their tens of thousands against the drying up of the river Karoun in Khuzestan province.<\/p>\n
It should be no surprise that Iran\u2019s new-found allies in the \u2018international community\u2019 are not condemning this wave of repression. Last year they were queuing up to support women\u2019s rights, and to try leaders of the Islamic regime for crimes committed in the past (the farcical Iran Tribunal). Today they pursue their interests through different means and show no interest in the recent executions.<\/p>\n
This underlines that in the west \u2013 as in Iran itself \u2013 the consistent anti-imperialists, the consistent democrats and the consistent anti-war activists are to be found in the workers\u2019 movement and amongst those allies it can pull to its side. This means that our efforts cannot be tarnished by association with organisations such as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the American Federation of Labor\/Congress of Industrial Organizations, etc which have a history of collaboration with (and funding by) successive US administrations. Independent working class politics \u2013 in the west as in Iran \u2013 must mean independent working class finances and agendas.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Hopi demands: Immediate, unconditional release of all labour and democratic activists held in prison!
\n<\/b>(Click here<\/a> for info on some of our comrades in prison)<\/p>\n*<\/b><\/p>\n
The Saudis and Israel are fighting the settlement with Iran.\u00a0Israel, in particular, is renowned for its almost pathological opposition to moves that \u2013 even from the point of view of the Israeli state \u2013 would seem to be in its interests. (Its adamant rejection of any form of Palestinian sovereign state, no matter how Bantustan-like; the easing of tensions with a relatively strong and influential potential rival for regional hegemony, Iran, etc).<\/p>\n
The Obama administration has already had worrying moments with Netanyahu and his bellicose defence minister, Ehud Barak. The US \u2013 Israel\u2019s main ally and major sponsor – do not wish to be dragged into a war by their Israeli junior partner. Israel has a ticking bomb, however: demographics. Since no large-scale Jewish immigration is now expected, and since the natural rate of increase of the Palestinian population is higher than that of the Hebrew population, the former will considerably outnumber the latter within a few decades. Surely, the Palestinian majority cannot indefinitely be denied equal rights; but equal rights would lead to the demise of the Jewish state. For Zionism this \u2018demographic peril\u2019 is worse even than a sovereign Palestinian mini-state.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, quite a long time ago, on November 16 1989, a junior minister in the Shamir government made precisely this point in a speech delivered at Bar-Ilan University, a hotbed of clerical ultra-chauvinist Zionism.<\/p>\n
The Jerusalem Post<\/i>\u00a0of November 19 1989, quoting a tape recording of the speech, reported that the deputy foreign minister (roughly equivalent to parliamentary under-secretary of state in Westminster) \u201chas called for Israel to exploit political opportunities in order to expel large numbers of Palestinians from the [occupied] territories\u201d. He told students in a speech at Bar-Ilan University that \u201cthe government had failed to exploit politically favourable situations in order to carry out \u2018large-scale\u2019 expulsions at times when \u2018the damage would have been relatively small. I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
A \u201cpolitically favourable\u201d opportunity like\u2026 a war with Iran, perhaps?<\/p>\n
The name of that junior minister was Binyamin Netanyahu, today\u2019s Israeli prime minister. This underlines the urgency of anti-war activists to increase their efforts and give all our support to that part of Iranian society that is our consistent ally in the fight against any more imperialist adventures in the Middle West.<\/p>\n
Hopi is convening a conference in January 2014 to discussion these ideas and the implications they have for the future work of anti-war and anti-imperialist activists. Be there!<\/i> <\/b>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hopi Briefing on the background to the Geneva talks, November 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-statements-positions","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}