Hands Off the People of Iran - Ireland.

'Islamic feminism' and women's emancipation

2011-03-12T08:17:00.000-08:00

'Islamic feminism' and women's emancipation

Yassamine Mather examines the reality of the continuing struggle against the regime's oppression

On March 8, for the second time in a week, demonstrators gathered in the streets of Tehran and other major cities in Iran to protest against the regime - despite its attempts at suppression, its armed security forces, its tear gas and its arrests.

Thirty-two years ago, on March 8 1979, tens of thousands of Iranian women took part in the first major demonstration against the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran, following the forced imposition of the hijab. The women’s slogans were: “I say it every moment, I say it under torture: either death or freedom!” “Freedom is neither eastern nor western: it is universal!” “Death to censorship!” “In the dawn of freedom, the place of women is empty: revolution is meaningless without women’s freedom - we do not want the hijab!”

Since that day and for over 30 years hard-line fundamentalists have tried to impose their rules on Iranian women and youth. However, even these clerics agree that they face a cultural crisis. The majority of the youth and the women’s movement openly reject fundamentalist Islam, and the generation born after the Islamic regime came to power is amongst the most secular sections of Middle Eastern society, campaigning for the separation of religion from the state.

A lot has been written on the unprecedented increase in the political and academic activities of Iranian women over the last two decades, but it should be emphasised that the overwhelming majority of these activities have taken place despite the clerical regime, and often against it. The women’s movement is independent of the factional fighting inside the Islamic Republic and independent of the Islamic ideology which is the basis of the state. This movement has also been an anti-war movement, adamant in its opposition to US-style ‘women’s emancipation’, as witnessed in occupied Iraq and ‘liberated’ Afghanistan. Most of the women who have taken an active part in this struggle do not consider themselves Islamist; quite the contrary.

Second class

There is no doubt that, with the exception of a minority of the middle and upper classes, Iranian women have traditionally suffered from patriarchal laws and practices both within the family and at work.

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, however, the plight of Iranian women has worsened, the rigid imposition of the veil (hijab) has reinforced discrimination and prejudice against women. Many families refuse to send their daughters to high school. In higher education girls are discouraged or prevented by the state from studying or working in fields and activities considered ‘masculine’, such as engineering, mining, the judiciary ... It is in opposition to the state that many women pursue such studies.

There is discrimination against women in sport and recreation. Participation in some sports is discouraged, and in recreation most facilities are rigidly segregated and rarely available to women. Many have called this a system of apartheid against women. The ministry of education in the Iranian government recently reported that 94% of schoolgirls were unfit, as they did not participate in sport or physical education.

The combination of enforced hijab wearing and segregation is used to limit women’s access to state education, sports and other facilities. In other words, the system is geared to institutionalise women’s confinement to the home. These policies facilitate the objective of turning women into second-class citizens.

As they become teenagers, girls are driven more and more into a world dominated and manipulated by their male relatives. They can be given away in legal marriage without their knowledge or consent while still in their childhood. The legal age of marriage for girls is nine.

Discriminatory Islamic laws govern the private and public life of women: they have to follow a very specific and restrictive set of dress codes - a full veil or complete headscarf and long overcoat are the only accepted forms of dress. The law discriminates against women in inheritance, giving them at most half of the share of their male counterparts. According to the laws of Hodud and Qessas (talion^[1]and punishment) the life of a woman is worth half that of a man, with the implication that a man killing a woman and sentenced to death may only be executed if the victim’s family pays the murderer half of his death dues. Article 6 of this law states that the bereaved family has to pay the murderer’s family to get “Islamic justice” (a life for a life). Article 33 of the Hodud and Qessas states that women’s testimony is not valid in homicide cases unless it is supported by at least one male witness. According to Iran’s Islamic laws, women are considered generally unfit to be witnesses; their power of observation is considered half that of a man. And women have officially been considered too emotional and irrational to be judges.

Of course, in other religions equally anti-women rules and regulations are to be found. What differentiates Iran or US-occupied Iraq from other Islamic states, however, is that the Qur’an dictates civil and judicial law. In other words the basic democratic demand of separation of state and religion does not apply - quite the opposite.

Unequal marriage

Islamic marriage laws as applied in Iran are amongst the most repressive in the world in terms of discrimination against women. While men are allowed to marry up to four wives at a time in permanent marriage, plus an unlimited number of women in what is known as “temporary marriage” (siqeh), women who do not adhere to strict monogamy are considered criminal and may be brutally and savagely stoned to death in public. This legal Islamic punishment for extra-marital affairs is carried out regularly in Iran.

Men control the lives of their wives, their daughters and their unmarried sisters. In Islamic societies women need a male guardian throughout their lives, to give them legal permission to travel, to study, to marry, etc ... As no consent is required for sexual relations inside marriage, wife-rape is common and even wife-beating is tolerated in the process (with a Qur’anic verse that legitimises wife-beating in the case of “disobedient women”). Abortion is illegal, but the rising number of terminations is testimony to its use as a form of contraception.

Until 1996, as far as divorce was concerned, the man had almost a free hand to divorce his wife, while the woman had only a limited recourse to the legal system. Even after reform of the laws regulating separation, a woman can only file for divorce in exceptional circumstances. The extent of this discrimination was best exemplified by reports recorded by the Iran Human Rights Working Group^[2]: a court had taken 14 years to approve a divorce request from a woman who complained she was tortured by her husband. She was reporting new incidents of abuse every year. She had agreed to drop all financial demands against her husband, and finally had to contact Iran’s prosecutor-general directly (who reported that she “shivered violently” whenever her husband was mentioned) to get her divorce. In another case, the process took eight years.

The divorce law is also designed to punish recalcitrant women, bringing them poverty and destitution, and leading them to resort to unusual tactics in order to obtain minimum maintenance for their children. In most cases women have to forfeit financial claims in order to obtain divorce, even if the proceedings were initiated by the man. Iranian law states that a male child above the age of two and a female child over the age of seven must live with their father. Even the father’s father is given priority over the mother in custody matters.

In marriage, discrimination against women goes still further. A virgin woman (whatever her age) has no right to marry without her father’s consent (or her paternal grandfather’s, in the absence of the former). A Muslim woman has no right to marry a non-Muslim (a right her male counterparts have - with some limitations). And a divorced woman has to wait for a set period before remarriage (but there is no waiting period for a divorced male). These Islamic practices and laws have created a suitable environment for widespread abuses and atrocities against women.

Most women do not report incidents of rape outside marriage because the victim has more to lose. First she will be accused of bringing dishonour to her own family and in some cases might even be killed by family members. Second, she fears prosecution under the morality laws: the punishment for “unIslamic” behaviour is to be flogged or stoned to death, especially if a woman is judged by the court as being a willing partner.

While the laws of Hodud and Qessas prescribe “equal” punishments for men and women, it is women who suffer from these barbaric measures. A married man having an affair with an unmarried women can always claim they were “temporarily married”. But a woman in a parallel position has no such defence and would face the horror of death by stoning.

The discriminatory laws regarding women’s rights cover a wide range of areas in marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance, in addition to the anti-women labour laws and social policies. These have had devastating results, causing economic deprivation and the social isolation of women and their children. Iranian women have been fighting hard against these injustices, but have had very limited success in the face of the overwhelming power of the religious state and its many institutions.

Whatever interpretation of Islam we take, the Qur’an is quite specific that women who disobey their men may be beaten. Should we accept this on the pretext of respecting Islamic values, and in order to combat racism? To do so would be to ignore what has been done to secular women in Islamic societies - to women who choose not to obey the rules. In Tehran teenagers who do not abide by the full Islamic dress code (showing a fringe under their headscarf, for example) are regularly arrested, flogged and made to sign a statement saying they will cease to “behave as a prostitute”.

Secular resistance

Women have never forgotten that in the 1960s one of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s main objections to the shah’s regime was that voting rights were given to women. While it is true that during that dictatorship the right to vote was meaningless, Khomeini objected in principle to a woman’s right to be elected or to elect.

One of the first demonstrations against the Islamic regime was the women’s demonstration of March 8 1979. Khomeini’s decree that women should cover their hair rallied women of many classes and backgrounds in a major show of opposition against the new regime. Since then women have constantly opposed the erosion of their social and political rights.

In return the Islamic clergy and its government have consistently used medieval morality laws to suppress women. Especially in urban areas, women have fought back in an ongoing struggle that is only now beginning to bear fruit, very often despite the array of Islamic women’s magazines and organisations. Inevitably some of the tolerated women’s journals, publications and institutions have tried to catch up with this movement. However, they are at best tailing it, doing too little, too late.

The history of women’s struggles in Iran goes back to the early years of the 20th century. Iranian women participated in the constitutional revolution (1906-11), they were active in the nationalist movement of the 1950s and throughout the shah’s repression, when they formed a large part of leftwing underground organisations, as well as the Mujahedin-e Khalgh resistance. Hundreds of thousands of women participated in the demonstrations against the shah’s dictatorship and no-one could have forced them back into the middle ages. Economic factors, the role of women in production and the development of productive forces have all played a part.

In the early years of the Islamic regime, Iranian women fought expulsion from the workplace through enforced redundancy, and they refused to adhere to the strict Islamic dress code. It took over 18 years for the more enlightened members of the regime to realise that it was impossible to keep the clock turned back. It is an insult to the courage and perseverance of Iranian women to label this long and complex struggle an Islamist movement, as the officially tolerated women’s magazines do.

Apologists

In Shia Islam the most revered woman is the daughter of Mohammed, who died at the age of 18, having already given birth to three sons. Her short life symbolises the ideal woman. As a result, in Iran secular, Christian, Jewish, Baha’i and Zoroastrian women are all forced to wear the veil against their will. Their basic right to dress as they please is taken away because some Muslim men find it insulting to see non-veiled women.

Islamists claim that the veil, far from restricting women’s social activities plays a liberating role, as it maintains a woman’s ‘purity’. But most women know that the primary role of the hijab is to subjugate them, segregate them and classify non-veiled women as evil temptresses whose sole role on earth is to corrupt men. It is also argued that the veil, like a uniform, hides class differences. Anyone who has seen the elaborate veils in the affluent suburbs of Iranian cities, as opposed to the hijabs worn by working class women, can see how absurd such statements are.

Hammed Shahidian asserts: “Defenders of ‘Islamic feminism’ in the west have founded their arguments in cultural relativism - a dangerous precedent both for feminists and human rights activists.”^[3]Indeed it is claimed that any attack on the veil is a form of western racism. One has to point out that combating racism has nothing to do with accepting double standards - women’s rights for white/western women; Islamic ‘rights’ for Muslim/eastern women.

The main problem for Islamist women and Islamist moderates is that the reinterpretation of Islamic ideas regarding women to show them in a progressive light is impossible within the framework of the Islamic state. Mohammed is the final prophet in the long line of prophets, his book is the most complete message from god. The Qur’an’s clear and explicit anti-women message cannot be changed. The current bitter struggle between the moderate and the conservative Islamists in Iran can either lead to the overthrow of the Islamic state or to a compromise with the conservatives at the expense of any ‘moderation’.

Islamists, however, have by no means a monopoly on Iranian culture. Twentieth century Iran was dominated by a strong secular/progressive, non-Islamic culture. Iranian women’s limited achievements against Islamic law, both under the rule of this regime and in the past, has its roots in this tradition. Yet defenders of ‘Islamic feminism’ write extensively on the relative freedom and status of women in Iran compared to women in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, as part of their defence of moderate, progressive Islam.

Here it is important to remind ourselves that in Iran’s contemporary history the level of development of the productive forces has played a far more significant role than ‘moderate’ Islam. Traditions of secular politics have also had a far more significant role to play. Islamist women in Iran, as part of the ‘reformist’ faction of a brutal dictatorship, will try to give some women better opportunities in education and government. They will try to improve family legislation, but within the limits of sharia law in all its anti-women facets.

Iran’s so-called ‘Islamic feminists’ are middle and upper class professional women in stable, traditional, family relationships. Many are immediate relatives of the highest-ranking clerics. They have no intention of challenging the religious state. As long as the basic demand for the separation of state and religion remains unfulfilled, as long as non-Muslim, Sunni and non-religious Iranians are considered second-class citizens, there can be no improvement in the plight of the majority of Iranian women.

Over the last few years, a minority of these Islamist women have taken up in a limited way some of the issues concerning women’s rights. Many have advocated minor reforms - too little, too late. These women are identified as political supporters of one of the factions of the Islamic regime (that of ex-presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani). They do not represent an independent women’s movement, but, on the contrary, form part of the ruling establishment and are considerably annoyed when western academics refer to them as feminists. The ‘reformist’ faction they belong to has not even challenged the medieval laws of Hodud and Qessas or the supreme rule of the religious guardian of the nation, the velaayat-e faghih. By contrast, the newspaper Zan, which dared to question the stoning to death of women, has faced enforced closure and bans. In other words, Islamist women are not feminist and feminist women are not Islamist. The term ‘Islamist feminist’, created by western academics, remains an abstract idea, as far as Iran is concerned.

Of course, arguments within Islam on issues regarding women’s rights are not new. For decades reformist Islamists have tried to present more moderate interpretations of Islamic laws and teaching. And, although it is true that over the last few years urban Iranian women have succeeded in asserting themselves and influencing aspects of their lives and the country’s politics, any improvement in their plight is due mainly to their perseverance and courage, and the tradition of struggle against dictatorship - despite the majority of Islamic clerics.

The defenders of so-called ‘Islamic feminism’ occasionally challenge us to define what we mean by progress, if we say it has not taken place in Iran thanks to their efforts. How about an end to the stoning of women for adultery, to the flogging of teenage girls for daring to show a fringe, to the Hezbollah’s practice of throwing paint at women who wear colourful scarves, to the segregation in hospitals, buses, schools and universities?

It is ironic that political correctness has discouraged many western liberals from challenging ‘Islamic feminism’. Iranian women, who are amongst the worst victims of Islamic fundamentalism, have no intention of following this trend and indeed over the last couple of years have stepped up the fight against the forced wearing of the hijab, for freedom and equality.

March 8 2011 saw a new generation taking up the same slogans.

yassamine.mather@weeklyworker.org.uk

Notes

Talion: law that criminals should receive as punishment precisely those injuries and damages they had inflicted upon their victims.
www.ihrwg.org
H Shahidian Islamic feminism and feminist politics in IranSpringfield 2009.

2011-03-04T06:02:00.001-08:00

Iran Film Showing & 'Free Panahi! Free all political prisoners!' Discussion.

Hands off the People of Iran (HOPI) will host a film & discussion night on Thursday 10th March at 7.pm in the Teacher’s Club, Parnell Square, Dublin 1.

The Circle (information below), a film directed by Jafar Panahi will be shown and the 'Free Panahi! Free all political prisoners!' campaign will be launched. Jafar Panahi has had a savage six-year jail sentence imposed on him, plus a 20-year ban on making films and travelling abroad, for the 'crime' of planning to make a film about the mass movement for democracy that spilled onto the streets of major iranian cities in 2009.

Following the film there will be a discussion on how to build solidarity with the Iranian People who are struggling against a dictatorial regime. The Iranian regime has used its militias to murder protesters who have come out in solidarity with the people of Egypt. The Iranian people are just as entitled to democracy as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Libya.

The film, ‘The Circle’, is a hard-hitting and critical stance against the Iranian regime and its brutal treatment of women. ‘The Circle’ is a weaving of women’s stories whose lives intermingle for one day around each of their difficult and personal stories. On its release in 2000 it was denounced from the state authorities for it’s protrayal of life in Iran but won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Since then Jafar Panahi has been targetted for his work and was imprisoned in March 2010 but due to a worldwide public protest he was released in May. However on 20 December 2010, Jafar Panahi was charged again but with a harsher sentence of six years imprisonment. He has also been given a 20-year ban for the following: making or directing any movies; banned from communicating with Iranian or foreign journalists and the state authorities have also banned him from leaving the country. His other works include: Offside, Crimson Gold & the White Balloon.

The recent protests in Iran highlight the inhumane force and ferocious brutality that the dictactor Ahmajinedad has inflicted on his people. On February 14th one protestor was killed by riot police while hundreds of peace activists have been jailed. State Militias again attacked protesters on February 21st and another demonstrator was murdered by state forces. Since the overthrow of corrupt Egyptian ruler Mubarak, Iranian authorities have been in preparation for further protests especially with the upcoming two-year anniversary of the presidential election in June 2009 where hundreds were killed]. HOPI are highlighting their support for those suffering under the regime and for those protesting for their basic human rights.

Hopi has recently launched the 'Free Panahi! Free all political prisoners!' campaign that fights for:

Freedom for all political prisoners and an end to all executions.
Stop the medieval prison sentences imposed against political opponents of the regime.
No sanctions or military threats against Iran and for radical change from below.

For further information and how to get involved please contact:

Dublinhopi@gmail.com

http://www.hopi-ireland.org

Further reading on Jafar Panahi: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/98898

Release all political prisoners

2011-03-04T05:59:00.001-08:00

Release all political prisoners

John McDonnell MP launched the new campaign, 'Free Jafar Panahi and all political prisoners in Iran', at the February 12 annual conference of Hands Off the People of Iran

This campaign is at the heart of Hopi’s work for the coming year. We formed Hopi at a time when there was a real danger of imminent attack on Iran, right after the war on Iraq. While opposing any imperialist attacks, we positioned ourselves in clear, active solidarity with the people of Iran who are fighting against their theocratic regime. That also led us to clearly oppose all sanctions on the country, because in our view that is just another form of imperialism attacking the people of Iran. I think we have successfully engaged others in that discussion.

It is clear that threat of a military attack and an invasion has still not gone. For example, you will have heard Tony Blair’s speech before the Chilcot enquiry. With his last words he effectively called on the imperialist powers to invade Iran. And, of course, we have seen the recent cyber-attacks on the country. The threat continues and the imperialists will not give up.

However, at the moment there is a certain quietude. Partially this has to do with other activities in their spheres of influence that the imperialists are anxious about, for example in Afghanistan. And there is an acceptance that, as long as the Iranian regime is quiet, ‘maybe we can turn a blind eye’. And that is why we have not had any major political leader in the west take on the question of Iranian political prisoners in a serious way. We have not heard any British politician in government raise the issue of Jafar Panahi, for example.

There is a certain acquiescence that the barbarity will go on and, as long as this barbarity in Iran does not affect the rest of the Middle East or the rest of the world, it is almost acceptable - very much in line with what goes on in other barbaric countries in that region. There is a real vacuum on the question of human rights in Iran, whereby those who look can easily discover the brutality of the executions, the hangings, the tortures, the arrests, the denials of human rights. But the media and mainstream politicians are not interested.

Just as Hopi had to stand up and put forward a principled position against war and against the theocratic regime, we now have to stand up and fight for the freedom of all political prisoners. The responsibility falls on our shoulders, because nobody else is doing it.

We are focusing on Jafar Panahi, because campaigns like this need a symbolic figure - in the same way that in the anti-apartheid campaigns we focused on Nelson Mandela, but, of course, we fought for the freedom of all political prisoners. By focusing on a well-known name like Jafar Panahi, we will be able to raise the campaign to a higher level.

We all have to set time and resources aside for this campaign and approach it in a systematic manner. Just like when we launched Hopi, we again have to focus on the union and labour movement, get articles in their journals and websites, organise for resolutions and fringe meetings at union conferences, and conduct discussions with MPs and political parties.

The parliamentary wing of Hopi, which includes myself, Jeremy Corbyn and a few others, will put forward early day motions and will try to lobby other MPs, including those who are now in government. We are also trying to organise some activities in parliament - for example, show some of Panahi’s films and get along intellectuals and artists to discuss the campaign and the issues. In other words, we will also run a parliamentary campaign.

Of course, we also need to mobilise artists and film makers to act in solidarity with Panahi. In addition to that, we also want to reach wider civil society and in that respect I think last year’s film showing in the Soho Theatre was a breakthrough, which attracted a whole new audience. We should also not shy away from engaging with religious groups, for example, who are working on human rights matters.

All the way through we have to discuss with these forces on how the theocratic regime can be got rid of. Clearly, this can only be achieved through the actions of the working people of Iran themselves. The only consistent force that can bring about long-term stability in a secular society is the workers’ movement.

That is a fairly extensive range of work. But we have done it before and I think we can do it again.

The situation in Egypt provides an ideal opportunity to raise these issues. I attended a demonstration in Trafalgar Square and, although the organisers had printed their placards only 24 hours earlier, they were already out of date and still contained the call for Mubarak to go. But this shows what is possible, how quickly things change and that this can also be achieved in Iran.

Only the people of Iran can bring down this regime. Our task is to assist them as best as we can. If our campaign brings just one release for one political prisoner, if just one prisoner can get some hope from a clipping about our activities smuggled into prison, then I think our campaign is already successful.

Renewing solidarity

2011-02-21T11:38:00.000-08:00

Renewing solidarity

James Turley reports on the annual conference of Hands Off the People of Iran

The recent revolts in Egypt, Tunisia and many other parts of the Arab world have had a profound effect on global politics. Given the enormous strategic importance of the region, all manner of political forces will try to turn events to their advantage. The need for principled anti-war and solidarity work has never been greater.

It was thus a good time for Hands Off the People of Iran to hold its annual general meeting - there is the possibility of the ‘north African contagion’ reaching Iran, with the explosive popular movement against Ahmadinejad that sprung up in 2009 standing as a portent.

Discussions on the day were wide-ranging. Hopi secretary Mark Fischer started proceedings with a report on our work over the last year. Comrade Fischer pointed out that we had not been the only ones to salute the 2009 protests - we welcomed the apparent overnight conversions of Campaign Iran, the Socialist Workers Party and others from slavish support for the regime to some degree of solidarity. Nonetheless, we had warned against tailing the ‘reformist’ leaders of the green movement; a perspective confirmed by the “dissipation and betrayals” of 2010. With the regime divided, the US and its allies have pounced, imposing ever tougher sanctions - and open warfare, perhaps waged by the US’s Israeli proxy, should not be ruled out.

Hopi has responded to these developments. Comrade Fischer noted that, in the past year, the focus of our solidarity work has shifted from student protestors to workers. The working class in Iran is increasingly militant, and economic demands have begun to interweave with political ones. All this confirmed our basic perspectives of opposing war, opposing the theocracy and supporting the working class and its allies as the only consistently anti-imperialist force in society.

Comrade Fischer noted the increasing desperation of the Stop the War Coalition in its efforts to prevent Hopi affiliating, and suggested we draw up a “balance sheet” of our involvement with it. He noted the impact made by our solidarity campaign with the imprisoned film-maker, Jafar Panahi, stating that we should make him into a symbol for all political prisoners in Iran.

Much discussion from the floor focused on the question of Stop the War. Charlie Pottins said that we had tended to identify the politics of the coalition with that of the SWP - but now it was more dominated by the Communist Party of Britain. However, Andrew Coates noted that the latter had been affected to an extent by the Iranian protest movement.

Another comrade suggested that we should try to see things from Stop the War’s point of view - since its aim was to build broad opposition to the war, open criticisms of the Iranian regime may not be appropriate. Moshé Machover replied to this, saying that we have not attempted to commit the STWC to any such position - it was the fact that Hopi was openly critical of the regime which seemed to animate their hostility. John Bridge went further - the fact that we had been turned down for affiliation gave the lie to the coalition’s claims of inclusiveness. He noted that the rejection of our application had been filmed by Press TV, the English-language channel owned by the Iranian state.

International context

The second session of the day was on ‘Wikileaks, whistleblowers, revolution and war’. Comrade Machover opened the session by talking about the recent series of leaks relating to the Middle East - most prominently, the Wikileaks-released batch of American diplomatic cables, but also the work of whistleblowers in both the Israeli military and the Palestinian Authority. He claimed that these revelations were a case of “the dog that didn’t bark” - they merely clarified what we already knew.

Crucially, these leaks confirmed that Israel has been involved in a sustained, guerrilla-style campaign against Iran, encompassing espionage, sabotage and outright assassinations. Several scientists working on Iran’s nuclear programme have been killed - so, possibly, has former deputy defence minister Ali-Reza Asgari, who disappeared in Turkey under mysterious circumstances.

An equally significant feature of the Wikileaks cables was what was not revealed - most importantly, there is no more evidence that Iran actually plans to produce nuclear weapons. Comrade Machover considered it more likely that Iran was aiming for nuclear capability - ie, the infrastructure required to produce weapons at some later date - than an arms programme proper.

Moving on to the question of revolution, comrade Machover indicated the momentous significance of the upheavals in Egypt and elsewhere, placing them in the context of the decline of the US, which is already losing control in Latin America. The Middle East is a critically important region in the world, due to its oil reserves and shipping routes. Egypt has been the key country in the Arab world in recent history - not only is it the most populous country in the region, but it controls the Suez Canal. Not for nothing was the 1956 Suez crisis a key turning point in relations between the major imperialist powers.

The US has been caught off guard, and can hope to recoup some of its control, but not the overwhelming influence it enjoyed with Mubarak in the top job. For Israel, meanwhile, Mubarak’s overthrow is a very dangerous proposition. It has already lost a key ally in Turkey, which was finally confirmed by the Mavi Marmara massacre last year. Now Egypt may go too - and Egyptian acquiescence has been critically important for maintaining the siege on the Gaza Strip. The Israel Defence Force has benefited from troop redeployments away from the Egyptian border; should Egypt present a less friendly face in the future, even the already bloated military budget will prove insufficient.

Comrade Machover concluded by pointing out that the losers in international reconfigurations can behave in unpredictable ways, and that we should not rule out even the most counterproductive and irrational of military adventures on Israel’s part. We must remain vigilant.

The second speaker in this session, the CPGB’s Mike Macnair, focused more on the American angle. The events in Egypt and Tunisia are best characterised as a “revolutionary crisis” rather than a revolution - though the dictators have fallen, the general feeling is that “this is just the start”. The US therefore still has some room for manoeuvre. It has gone into this crisis underprepared, rather than unprepared - it is not like the fall of the shah in 1979, which by all accounts came as a complete surprise to the US.

The US has some reason to suppose that it will succeed in restoring its influence in these countries. Under Jimmy Carter, it successfully dropped most of the military dictators it supported in Latin America, with the result that the new ‘democracies’ were even more reliant on international capital than the tyrants they replaced - the state department simply bought off those parties that had a chance of power.

This is why, despite the lack of smoking-gun revelations, it was the release of diplomatic cables that provoked the US into its full-scale attacks on Wikileaks. In order for bourgeois democracy to function in this way, it is necessary for governments to lie - and to lie, it is necessary to maintain secrecy.

Comrade Macnair argued that the policy of the United States towards Israel has always been irrational. The US relies on Iran to provide any workable regime in Iraq; more generally, the disruption caused by constant sabre-rattling and sanctions is much greater than the disruption which would be caused by a deal with the Islamic regime. Taking into account the inherent irrationality of a superpower in decline, there were “irrational reasons” for us to expect war - but revolutionary crisis in the Middle East has at least had the effect of throwing all these tendencies temporarily up in the air.

After some debate, the conference passed - with minor amendments - a resolution reaffirming our opposition to imperialist intervention in Iran and support for the democratic struggles of the Iranian people.

Workers in Iran

The next session was centred on workers’ struggles in Iran. Ruben Markarian of the Iranian group, Rahe Kargar, began his contribution by pointing out two anniversaries - the overthrow of the shah on February 11 1979, and the formation of the Fedayeen guerrilla organisation in early 1971. The 1979 revolution had ultimately been a loss for the left, and the protestors in Egypt must learn the lessons of that defeat.

The protests in 2009 had ushered in a new era in the Iranian revolution, but it has not reduced the Iranian state’s repression. In particular, there is an execution every eight hours in Iran - some resulting from openly political charges, some for ‘crimes against Islam’, and others simple frame-ups. The regime’s desperation is heightened by the crippling effects of sanctions, and the popular unrest at its own policies, such as the end of ‘targeted subsidies’ and mass lay-offs.

Street demonstrations, he argued, cannot win alone. Demonstrators must be backed up by the workers’ movement, which can organise strikes against the regime - crucially, a general strike. Strikes can materially disrupt the repressive actions of the state, as well as causing the security forces to overreach in attempting to respond to all threats. Creating such a movement is easier said than done, but it is necessary. The job of the Iranian left is to organise the mass of workers on a socialist and internationalist basis. The comrade was confident that the Egyptian masses would learn from the Iranians - and vice versa.

Hopi chair Yassamine Mather highlighted the similarities between the Egyptian unrest and the protests in Iran two years ago. Both had been preceded by significant outbursts of labour unrest. Prior to 2009, however, Iranian workers had concentrated on narrower economic issues, concerning working conditions at particular factories. The organised working class was late to the party in 2009 - and this, combined with the misleadership of the green ‘reformists’ and organised battalions of counterrevolutionary thugs, emboldened by religious ideology, meant that the protests ended in defeat.

Since then, however, the workers have been raising more political demands, including the issue of political prisoners, and even organising the first political strikes since 1979-81. Workers at the Iran Khodro car manufacturing concern, as well as the traditionally militant oil workers, had been engaging in serious discussion about the value of strikes, the nature of the green movement and the shora (workers’ councils). Comrade Mather concluded by echoing Markarian’s point on the significance of the Fedayeen - it was the first time in the Middle East that a section of the left had rejected the peaceful road to socialism, as well as highlighting the importance of internationalism.

Debate was largely centred on the international response to the 2009 protest movement, with comrades commenting on the support offered to Ahmadinejad by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, British anti-war figurehead George Galloway and the American leftist journal, Monthly Review. The importance of Islam in the protest movement was also highlighted. Summing up, comrade Mather noted that Chávez’s support had led to splits on the left, notably in the International Marxist Tendency, whose Iranian section had departed over the issue. Comrade Markarian also criticised Chávez for his support for the Islamic Republic. The meeting then unanimously passed a motion calling for solidarity with Iranian workers.

Political prisoners

Then followed the launch of Hopi’s campaign in defence of political prisoners. Lisa Goldman introduced the session by talking about her experience in Iran, and her contact during the visit with Panahi, concluding by reading from a letter he sent to the Berlin International Film Festival - an eloquent plea for an end to tyranny and testimony to the power of artistic imagination in opposing it.

Leftwing Labour MP John McDonnell launched the campaign formally, applauding the success of Hopi in engaging people on its basic message. The threat to Iran continues - sanctions and the Stuxnet cyber-attack being the most visible manifestations of it at the moment - though the imperialist world has been less forthcoming in bellicose rhetoric. Acts of barbarity, it seems, are fine, as long as the west is unthreatened.

He echoed Mark Fischer’s call to make Panahi a symbol for all political prisoners, and argued that we should canvass for support in every sphere of life - in parliament, of course, but also in the trade unions (where Hopi has already had some success, with unions like PCS and Aslef affiliating). The stature of Panahi allows us also to reach out to wider civil society, and argue for its greater involvement with the workers’ movement. The upsurge in Egypt symbolises what is possible in Iran - meanwhile, if our campaign secures even one release of one political prisoner, comrade McDonnell argued, it will be worth it.

In the following discussion, Victoria Thompson argued that we should add a call for an end to executions to the statement, which was accepted by the meeting. We also resolved to challenge Jeremy Corbyn to end his involvement with Press TV.

Though relatively small, the meeting was high-spirited. We left optimistic that our work can be stepped up, and that more people can be engaged in support of our message.

Revolution spreads to Iran

2011-02-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

Revolution spreads to Iran

Yassamine Mather reports on the effects of the Egyptian upsurge

As early as Sunday February 13 riot police and the bassiji militia took up positions in the main streets of Tehran in preparation for the demonstration called for the following day. ‘Reformist’ leaders Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi were put under house arrest and internet connection to many sites was blocked.

Then, as darkness fell, all over Tehran people went onto their rooftops, shouting, “Allah-o-akbar” (God is great) and “Marg bar dictator” (Down with the dictator).

Videos of the night-time demonstration appeared quickly online and by the morning of Monday February 14 many Iranian were aware that anti-government protests were taking place. Tehran residents were surprised to find that mobile phones were working (they had been blocked at around 4pm the previous day) and protestors could organise routes, points of assembly …

However, even taking into account all these positive signs, no-one could have predicted the size and extent of the demonstrations - the most significant anti-government protest since security forces cracked down on a series of massive events in 2009. Indeed, a leaked document from the pro-Khamenei Islamic parliament security committee puts the number of Monday’s protestors in Tehran at one million.

Revolutionary guards used tear gas, wielded batons and opened fire to disperse protestors, yet large numbers gathered, particularly in central and poorer districts of Tehran. The majority of the demonstrators were young working class men and women. There were clashes between police and demonstrators, and dozens of arrests, in Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz, Mashad and Rasht.

Iranians had been frustrated for weeks, as they witnessed demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Young Iranians were convinced their protests of summer of 2009 had inspired these demonstrations. Many were arguing why, in comparison with Egypt, their own larger demonstrations then (three million in Tehran alone) had failed to overthrow the regime, when smaller protests led to Hosni Mubarak’s departure. There had been an element of despair, although the events in Tunisia and Egypt had certainly put to rest claims made throughout 2009 and early 2010 by leaders of the green movement, as well as by the reformists of the ‘official communist’ Tudeh Party and Fedayeen Majority, that the ‘era of revolutions is over’, that one should be realistic and demand the ‘possible’: ie, reform within the regime.

Other apologists for the Iranian regime, such as the Socialist Workers Party’s Elaheh Rostami-Povey, must also feel embarrassed by recent events in Arab capitals, as well as in Tehran. Her recent book, entitled Iran’s influence across the Middle East and the world, is described by her SWP comrade, Alex Callinicos, as a “fascinating study of the evolution of the Islamic Republican regime in Iran, of its complex and increasingly conflictual relationship with popular and social movements, and of its impact on the wider Middle East. This fine product of Elaheh Rostami-Povey’s critical scholarship is essential reading for anyone who refuses to settle for mythological and demonising representations of post-revolutionary Iran.” The author claimed that Iran’s clerical regime and its president has considerable support in the “Arab street”.

Amongst the many protests in Egypt and Tunisia not only were there no signs of support for the Islamic Republic, but protestors in Tahrir Square called on Iranians to follow their example and continue their protests for democracy. Indeed every time Iran’s rulers tried to imply that Arab protestors were following in the traditions of the revolution led by ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, secular and religious protestors united to denounce such comparisons. The reaction of Iran’s Islamic rulers was predictable: they jammed Al Jazeera TV’s broadcasts to avoid ‘revolutionary contamination’.

Last week Iran’s Islamist hardliners’ desperate efforts to downplay the democratic thrust of the Egyptian revolution and present it as an Islamic, Iran-inspired uprising backfired, when even the Muslim Brotherhood protested at this falsification. By February 14 worse was to follow (for the regime). Tens of thousands of Iranians were shouting: “Mubarak, Ben Ali - Seyed Ali - it’s your turn” (referring, of course, to supreme leader Seyed Ali Khamenei alongside the departed rulers of Egypt and Tunisia). Other prominent slogans were “Khamenei - buy a one-way ticket out of Iran”; and “Poor Seyed Ali - the movement is still alive” (referring to Khamenei’s claims that the opposition had now gone away).

In central Tehran large posters of Khomeini and Khamenei were torn down and set on fire. As night fell, youths gathered in many neighbourhoods and set fire to bins. Despite the fears of the days preceding February 14, the protests were a huge success. According to eyewitness Hamid Farokhnia, a staff writer at Iran Labour Report, “People were smiling with joy for the first time in a long while. Likewise, many bassiji and [police] officers looked positively confused and crestfallen.”

A day after the street protests members of the Iranian parliament called for opposition leaders Karroubi and Moussavi to be prosecuted and sentenced to death for stirring unrest. Despite this, Moussavi’s spokesperson called the protests a major success and did not condemn the anti-Khamenei slogans, as was the case on previous occasions. While the ‘reformists’ have evidently not joined the revolution, this shows just how far the movement has been radicalised. Unlike in 2009, there is now a clear and unambiguous call for the overthrow of the entire regime.

After months of despondency, optimism has returned. Students and workers we contacted were enthused by this week’s events, even though some opposition groups believe up to 1,500 people have been arrested during the protests. In fact two were killed and in a Kafkaesque attempt at falsification the regime claimed 26-year-old Sane Jaleh, killed on February 14, was a member of the bassiji. Sane’s friends have posted photos of him alongside the dissident ayatollah, Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who died in 2009, to prove that he was in fact a Moussavi supporter.

Acting police commander general Ahmad Reza Radan said dozens of people, including nine members of the security forces, had been injured. It is true that in a show of confidence protestors attacked a number of bassiji - Radan might yet regret exaggerating the protestors’ success in confronting security forces.

Egyptian success inspires protesters

2011-02-14T14:01:00.000-08:00

Iranian opposition leader Mousavai and his wife were stopped today and their car keys taken from them as they tried to join protestors today in Tehran city centre. The state authorities have unleashed the riot police and tried to shut down people’s access to the outside world in the hope of hiding the growing fever for protest.

It was rumoured that the Iranian state authorities had taken the former prime minister of Iran and placed him under house arrest alongside Mehdi Karroubi.There have been attempts to quickly and quietly pull the two opposition leaders from public view in light of the upcoming anniversary of street protests in Iran after the disputed re-election of Ahmadinhad in 2009. Many people were killed and a media blackout resulted to hide the turmoil from the rest of the world. The President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now has a lot to fear after seeing Egyptian dictator Mubarack dramatically pulled from power by the people. The success of the Egyptian people has inspired people to take to the streets in other countries creating fear in their governments.

In 2009 thousands took to the streets at the re-election of Ahmadinejad with the encouragement of Mousavei and those in the Green Movement. Ahmadinejad won the presidential election even though his rival Moussavei had proved to be more popular with the voters and many commentators doubting the results because of the incredible speed of the ballot slips returned. However the strength of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard quickly crushed the protestors and since then the lack of dissent has been visible but with an increase of imprisonment for those who speak out.

Ahmadinejad a clever leader of media spin and with his grip on the national media stated that the fall of Mubarack was similar to the fall of the Shah in 1979 and with no sense of irony has previously compared the opposition leaders to Adolf Hitler. He is unlikely to comment about the imprisonment in his own regime of trade union leaders, women lawyers and activists being tortured, beaten and killed. Even the Egyptians have stated that they are baffled by his comparison with the Egyptian foreign minister stating that Ahmadininejad was ‘distracting the Iranian people's attention by hiding behind what is happening in Egypt.’

Even at this point with one eye on the streets of Tehran Ahmadinejad has the other on the new Egyptian State in the hope of cementing relations with the new authorities. Recently a trade agreement between Iran and Turkey was announced increasing political and business ties as the continuation of US sanctions is hurts the state. The fallout of the Egyptian’s dictatorship will leave Ahmadinejad and his followers ready to crush similar action and looking for allies. Ahmadinejad is aware that it’s not just the American vultures ready to criticise and attack the country in an Iraqi-style swoop taking its resources but concerned protestors are ready including exiled Iranians declaring the right to protest. All eyes will be on the opposition in the coming weeks fighting for freedom. Today one person has been killed, three injured and hundreds of protestors arrested by the riot police. Let the ripples of the Egyptian revolution spread but without the creeping hands of imperial powers stealing from Iran and its people.

Amadinejad slapped as factions turn on each other

2011-01-29T07:48:00.000-08:00

Amadinejad slapped as factions turn on each other

Yassamine Mather looks at the growing tensions in the Islamic regime

Last week's stalemate in nuclear talks between Iran and the so-called 'five plus one' countries (US, China, France, Russia, Britain and Germany) came at a time when a number of events had already promised a turbulent start to the new year for Iranians: a plane crash for which sanctions must have been partly responsible; the execution of 53 prisoners, including four political prisoners, in less than three weeks; accusations by the 'principlist' faction of the regime that president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's closest ally, chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, is an "agent of foreign powers" (Israel); that vice-president Rahimi is corrupt; stories that Ahmadinejad was slapped in the face by a revolutionary guard commander; confirmation that Israel and US jointly sponsored the Stuxnet computer worm; the escalation of US sanctions against Iranian shipping companies; Afghan protests over Iran's month-long near blockade of cross-border fuel shipments; the passing of harsh sentences against film maker Jafar Panahi, 'human rights' lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and journalist Shiva Nazar Ahari; and a wave of workers' strikes demanding the release of all political prisoners ...

Seventy-five people were killed on January 9 when an Iran Air flight with 105 passengers and crew aboard crashed near Orumiyeh in north-western Iran. The US-made Boeing 727 plane, bought 37 years ago, broke into pieces when it attempted to make an emergency landing in a snowstorm near Orumiyeh in Iranian Azerbaijan. The incident led to a spontaneous anti-sanctions campaign when a Facebook page got the support of 25,000 Iranians - US sanctions prevent Iran from purchasing new aircraft and spare parts. Iran's ageing civilian air fleet (and, one assumes, military aircrafts) use spare parts bought on the black market or taken from older aircraft. In 2005 the International Civil Aviation Organisation warned that sanctions on Iran were "placing civilian lives in danger" by denying Iranian aviation the necessary spare parts and aircraft repair, and the situation has inevitably become worse in the last few years.

Following the accident, transport minister Hamid Behbehani, still in denial about the effect of sanctions, said that the number of aviation accidents in Iran was low compared to the world average. The Iranian press and media derided Behbehani's statement. Farda, a website associated with one of the conservative blocs, claimed that the minister's remarks showed complete disregard for public concern over the unacceptable number of aviation accidents. The website said that Iranians killed in plane crashes in the past 30 years made up nearly 30% of the world's total aviation accident fatalities (1,610 out of 5,416 people killed) - 795 people had been killed in the past seven years alone, about 23% of the global total in the same period.

Corruption

Throughout the Middle East and North Africa, where corruption is characteristic of secular, pro-western governments, Islamists claim to lead the battle against it (and overconsumption), at times pointing to Ahmadinejad as their champion. However Iranians are well aware that, for all his election promises of combating corruption, Ahmadinejad presides over one of the most rotten governments Iran has experienced - and this is quite an achievement, given the depth and spread of corruption during the Rafsanjani/Khatami presidencies, not to mention the pre-1979 Pahlavi era.

Allegations of corruption against first vice-president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi were first published by the conservative 'principlists' in April 2010. They claimed to possess evidence proving Rahimi was the ringleader of a corruption band known as the 'Fatemi circle'. Eleven people implicated in a government-linked embezzlement case are already in jail awaiting trial. A number of prominent conservative MPs have called for Rahimi be put on trial as well. Last week, in an open letter to chief justice Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, Ahmad Tavakoli wrote: "Is it fair that a low-ranking defendant in the Iran Insurance Company case ... should be jailed … when [Rahimi] is not even indicted?"

There are also allegations that the first vice-president spent large sums of government money bribing legislators to vote for a government bill when he was the parliamentary liaison deputy. Had it not been for the fierce internal battles between various factions of the Islamic regime, all this would have been forgotten, like many similar allegations. However, last month, the prosecutor general, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, confirmed that Rahimi faced charges of corruption that needed to be investigated and, of course, if he is put to trial this would indicate a major shift in policy. According to journalists inside Iran, it would signify that the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has finally decided to stop giving his entire support to the president and ignore the complaints of the principlists.

Clearly the infighting between the Ahmadinejad and conservative camps has risen to a new level in recent months. They disagree on every subject from foreign policy to nuclear development and economic policies, from the never-ending issue of women's headscarves to cultural freedoms. However, the conservatives have chosen Ahmadinejad's seemingly unconditional support for Rahimi and Mashaie as the battleground.

'Liberal' Ahmadinejad?

According to Wikileaks documents released on December 31, at a meeting of Iran's supreme national security council (SNSC) held in early 2010 to discuss steps in dealing with protests, Ahmadinejad surprised other SNSC members by taking up a liberal posture. According to sources quoted by Wikileaks, Ahmadinejad claimed that "people feel suffocated" and argued that in order to defuse the situation it may be necessary to allow more personal and social freedoms, including more freedom of the press. The source claimed Ahmadinejad's statements infuriated Revolutionary Guard chief of staff Mohammed Jafari, who said: "You are wrong! It is you who created this mess and now you say, give more freedom to the press?!" Allegedly Jafari then slapped Ahmadinejad in the face, causing an uproar.

Of course Iran's Revolutionary Guards have subsequently denied the report. However, even if one doubts the veracity of the slapping incident it is certainly true that the conflict within the state has now engulfed various factions of Iran's militia and, like members of the majles (Islamic parliament), they are expressing their disapproval of Ahmadinejad's new-found liberal and nationalist (as opposed to Islamic) posturing in the open.

Perhaps it was inevitable that, faced with major demonstrations and envious of the apparent popularity of the nationalist reformists, Ahmadinejad would try and steal their policies. In this he has relied heavily on the controversial opinions of chief of staff Mashaei (to whom he happens to be related).

Mashaei was first vice-president of Iran for one week in July 2009. His appointment was heavily criticised by the hard-line conservatives and he resigned following the direct intervention of Khamenei. Today Mashaie is still under attack for his unorthodox religious views and for allegedly influencing the president's decisions in other matters, including the appointment and firing of cabinet members.

Mashaie belongs to a group that believe the return of the 12th Shia Imam is imminent, while senior Shia clerics are opposed to such views, as 'nobody knows when the imam will return'. Mashaei has also expressed controversial views about an 'Iranian school of thought', as opposed to an 'Islamic school of thought', about the hijab, the religious ban on music and more recently about cultural freedom.

In fact on most of these issues, in particular the emphasis on Iranian nationalism, he and Ahmadinejad echo the views of the 'reformist' leaders, Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mohammad Khatami. All this because Ahmadinejad is apparently grooming Mashaie to be his successor in the 2013 presidential elections - alarming news for conservative hardliner and senior ayatollahs.

Mashaei controversies

Over the last few years Mashaie has been blamed for a number of comments and incidents considered unacceptable by Ahmadinejad's enemies, who have been busy compiling them:

July 2008: Mashaei is quoted as saying: "Today, Iran is a friend of the United States and Israeli nations. No nation in the world is our enemy. This is an honour." For the first time since the 1979 revolution, an Iranian regime politician acknowledged the Israelis as a nation. In response 200 MPs released a statement calling for Mashaei to be "dealt with seriously" and ayatollah Khamenei denounced his remarks in Friday prayers. The day before, Ahmadinejad had said that Mashaei's opinions were also those of the government.
November 2008: In Iran, opening ceremonies for public events almost always begin with the recitation of a few verses of the Qur'an by a qari (reciter). The reciter of the international conference on investment in Iran's tourism industry had to wait for the Qur'an to be delivered to him by women dressed in Kurdish traditional clothes playing frame drums (dafs). Two senior clerics from Qom were outraged at the incident, but Mashaei blamed his deputy, who was subsequently sacked.
September 2009: At the inauguration of the minister for higher education, Mashaei told the audience: "God ... created the human ... if the human were removed, there is no need to remove god." While it is not clear exactly what this meant, it was considered blasphemous by senior clerics.
November 2009: The hard-line newspaper, Kayhan, quoted Mashaei as saying: "God cannot be the fulcrum of unity for humankind". The paper commented that his remarks were "unjustifiable" and paved the way for malicious propaganda.
January 2010: Following Mashaei's presence at a photo exhibition with actress Hedieh Tehrani, there were rumours that she was his mistress (as opposed to his sigheh - a Shia 'temporary wife') and that the Organisation of Cultural Heritage had loaned her $200,000 for the event. Mashaei claimed that the picture taken of him sitting side by side with Tehrani had been doctored to make the two appear intimate. The actress denied rumours that Mashaei had bought one of her most expensive photo works. However, the incident prompted some bloggers to compare the "scandal" with the "decadence" of the last years of the shah's rule.
July 2010: Mashaei invited a number of Los Angeles-based Iranian singers - most of them from the pre-Islamic Republic era - back to Iran. Supporters of the supreme leader slammed Mashaei, claiming that he wanted to "invert the situation" (favour supporters of the monarchy). Mashaei had said that expatriate Iranian singers would have no problem returning to the country if their activities were legal.
August 2010: In a speech at the Razi Medical Research Festival, Mashaei said that the 'god-sent prophet' Noah failed to undertake a "comprehensive management style" since he did not establish justice. He reiterated similar remarks regarding other prophets in his subsequent speeches.
August 2010: In the closing ceremony of a conference of expatriate Iranians, Mashaei made what was perhaps his most controversial remark to date: "Some criticise me for refusing to talk of the school of Islam and instead preferring the school of Iran. There are diverse interpretations of Islam, but our perception of the essence of Islam is the school of Iran, which we should promote to the world." Former head of the judiciary ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi accused Mashaei of parroting the words of monarchists, while general Hassan Firouzabadi, joint chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, went further, claiming the remarks were an act against national security, and an attack on the tenets of the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Revolution. Yazdi threatened: "If someone turns away from Islam, we warn him, and then, if that does not work, we beat him."

Conservative cleric Ebrahim Nikoonam referred to the "possibility that the 'incitement' created by the presidential chief of staff might be rooted in foreign agendas". Previously, some high-ranking officials had insinuated that Ahmadinejad's office had been infiltrated by a foreign state (this is usually taken to mean Israel). Nikoonam said: "Such words might be said by those who are not part of the government, but when they are said by those who are they cause serious concern." Yazdi called on Ahmadinejad to "beware of letting anyone infiltrate the government who might later turn out to be an agent of foreigners".

Pure theatre

On January 11 theatregoers queuing outside Tehran's City Theatre to watch Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler were informed by police that the play, which had been running for a week, had been suspended.

One of the play's characters is a former alcoholic, but in the Tehran production there was no mention of alcoholism, and male and female characters were kept away from each other on stage. However, the Fars News Agency reported that conservative papers had claimed the theatre was promoting "nihilism, licentiousness and vulgarism as the main points of the play", which has "nothing to do with national and Islamic ideas and is based on western nihilistic philosophy".

All artistic activities in Iran are controlled and regulated by the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance, and the Iranian version of Hedda Gabler had apparently passed its vetting procedures following changes to the original script imposed by the censor. The subsequent news that a new body to regulate cultural affairs was to be created came amid a very public row between the ministry of culture and the regime's more conservative elements. Culture minister Mohammad Hosseini said there was "no moral issue" with the play and accused its critics of "exaggeration", while Mashaei himself used the incident to reassert Ahmadinejad's new-found 'reformist' credentials.

Mashaei also commented that Ahmadinejad was not in favour of the jailing of renowned filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Panahi was handed a six-year prison sentence and a 20-year work ban for making propaganda against the Islamic establishment. The work ban covers writing scripts, film-making and travel abroad, as well as giving interviews to local and foreign media. Mashaei added: "The sentence was issued by the judiciary and reflects neither my opinion nor that of the president."

Crisis? What crisis?

The history of Iran's Islamic regime has been one of permanent crises and constant conflict between various factions of the regime. However, over the last 30 years they have agreed to share power in accordance with their respective votes in elections (the choice being limited, of course, to factions of the Islamic Republic) and subsequent negotiations. Last year's rigged presidential elections broke this pattern and for the first time since 1979 there is no precedence for resolving the current conflict. Hence the paralysis that has overtaken decision-making and the total uncertainty regarding the forthcoming majles poll. In December, former president Mohammad Khatami warned that 'reformist' parties would not take part in future elections "unless prisoners are freed and the elections are clean".

The battle lines for 2011 have already been drawn, with unprecedented animosity not just between conservatives and 'reformists', but more significantly within both groups. It is important to emphasise that these divisions are expressions of the inability of the religious state in its entirety to rule the country. The current crisis of government - mainly between the president, his advisers and ministers, on the one hand, and the conservative principlists in the majles and revolutionary guards, on the other - has brought the state to a standstill and it is unlikely that this crisis, coinciding as it does with the escalation of sanctions, will be resolved as easily as previous ones.

For example, the appointment of the governor of Iran's central bank has become a battleground between the warring factions. The majles voted in November in favour of a bill authorising a change in the composition of the bank's board to block government "interference" and ensure its "independence". The bill effectively removed the president's executive control over the central bank, highlighting the intensity of the infighting between parliament and government at a time of discontent over price rises, the ending of subsidies and mass unemployment. Parliament, strengthened in recent months by the backlash against the crippling impact of the latest round of UN sanctions, seemed to have wrested day-to-day control of monetary policy from the government, but Ahmadinejad simply refused to accept the bill, creating deadlock.

In another development, the ministry of foreign affairs has barred Tehran's mayor, Mohammad Qalibaf, from attending an awards ceremony in Washington in an attempt to prevent a rival to the Iranian president from gaining international publicity. The inability of the regime to agree on peaceful coexistence between its factions has led to renewed speculation about regime change through military intervention by one section of the Revolutionary Guards against another or through the US escalation of sanctions combined with cyber war and armed insurrection amongst national minorities.

Iranians have been looking at events in Tunisia with envy and websites have compared the success of the protests in overthrowing Ben Ali's government with the failure of larger, more militant protests last year in Iran to achieve similar results. Answering the question, "Why Tunis, not Iran?", one cartoonist sums up the feelings of frustration and anger amongst young Iranians: "Moussavi talks about the 'golden years' under Khomeini, Karroubi is nostalgic for the 'dear imam', Khatami supports velayate faghih [religious guardianship of the nation], Rafsanjani addresses Khamenei as the 'dear leader' ... Now do you get why Ben Ali fled and Seyyed Ali [Khamenei] is still in power?"

In the words of Mohammad Reza Shalgouni, a leading comrade of Rahe Kargar, the Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran, "The situation in Iran is such that even the resolution of a most modest demand, that of the position of a headscarf a few millimetres above or below the woman's eyebrow, cannot be resolved by 'reform'. Such a simple demand requires a revolution."

At a time when leaders of the green movement have reached a dead end, their failure is also that of their leftwing supporters. A recent battle between Farrokh Negahdar, a leading figure of the Fedayeen Majority, and other members of that organisation's central committee shows the bankruptcy of both sides. Negahdar was criticised for the content of his open letter to Khamenei, which could have been written, word for word, by Hashemi Rafsanjani or any other leading 'reformist' supporter of the supreme leader. It warns Khamenei that he will lose power unless he listens to the calls for reform!

Although the letter is an appalling text, it is difficult to understand the anger of other members of Majority Fedayeen central committee. After all, what Negahdar has written is the inevitable consequence of the policy advocated by that organisation for more than a decade of tailing Islamist 'reformists'. No doubt Negahdar's text is shameful, but so are the policies of all those who advocate accommodation with a wing of this brutal religious dictatorship.

Sanctions take their toll

2010-11-12T08:28:00.000-08:00

Sanctions take their toll

Yassamine Mather calls for international solidarity with Iranian workers

Over the last two weeks the number of strikes in Iranian factories and workplaces has risen considerably. Workers have taken action in major plants such as South Pars Gasfields, Alborz Lastic Sazi, Ghaem Shahr textiles, Safa Louleh (pipe manufacturers), as have city council workers in Abadan. Demands have also been raised by nurses and other hospital workers, teachers and civil servants.

Some of the most important oil and gas plants have been hit, as well as key manufacturing industries. In other words, both the traditional and modern sectors. In addition to these strikes, we have also seen the first protests by retired workers opposed to a reduction in price concessions for pensioners, reduced from 15% to 9%. Retired employees demonstrated outside the majles (Islamic parliament). In some ways this was as important as the strikes by workers in employment.

How should we analyse the fact that so many workers’ protests have occurred simultaneously? Is it just a coincidence? Of course, it is impossible to predict how things will evolve, but, given the level of repression against workers and the left, these events mark a significant development in the current stage of economic and political struggles inside Iran. So what are the factors behind this new wave of labour unrest?

There is no doubt that sanctions are creating widespread economic devastation, to a degree that is unprecedented over the last 30 years. The drop in the price of oil on the world market, the reduction of production levels for both oil and gas (itself a result of the failure to renew productive capacity), the fall in non-oil exports, bankruptcies and closures in production and manufacturing, the rise in the rate of inflation in housing and essential goods, the plunder of the country’s economic resources through the expropriation of privatised industries and services by factions of the regime, the colossal rise in the price of medical services and drugs - all this points to an escalation of the economic and social crisis.

By November 9, long queues were forming at petrol stations, as motorists expecting a 400% price rise were trying to fill up their tanks. But low-paid workers are the main victims of the current situation. According to an employee of Ghaem Shahr Textile Industries, many of his colleagues have been forced to remove their children from education (both high school and university) so that they can feed their families on the meagre income from their temporary jobs.

Many small and medium-sized firms have already been bankrupted. However, what we are witnessing now is the effects of the crisis on some of the country’s major industrial units, exposing the extent of the problems facing the whole economy. In the past the Islamic regime could rely on oil income and unbridled imports to deal with the demand for basic consumption goods. But now the ruling elite is faced with two important problems: a fall in the price of oil and a regime of suffocating sanctions.

The new round of sanctions has not only made it difficult to import many items, leading to spiralling price rises for most goods: it has also become a serious political weapon threatening the survival of the regime. The regime cannot ignore the problems of production in major industries and this has given the workers in such plants an opportunity to raise demands regarding wages and working conditions.

All this has occurred at a time when the government has been pushing through the abolition of price subsidies - or promoting ‘targeted subsidies’, as it prefers to say. Despite threats to punish shopkeepers who increase prices charged for essential goods, such as bread, meat, sugar, cooking oil and dairy produce, prices for these items are rising daily. Compared to last year, the cost of bread is likely to have increased five or six times by the end of this Iranian month, while cooking oil will have more than doubled and cuts of lamb tripled.

This week, after months of denial, Iran’s Central Bank admitted the true extent of the rise in the rate of inflation. Statistics issued by the bank and other government organisations, including for the cost of living, are given in dollars, even though Iranian workers are paid in tomans (1,000 tomans = one dollar). Last week the price of imported meat in Tehran supermarkets was $30 a kilo - more than in most stores in London or New York. The average wage is $400 a month.

We should not forget that the removal of subsidies on essential food items was part of a $100 billion cuts programme; an integral component of the regime’s adherence to neoliberal economic policies under the terms of its five-year plan. However, uncertainty over the changes was one of the factors behind a $6 billion slide in the value of Tehran’s stock exchange two weeks ago, with trade volume plummeting 63% and share prices dropping by 43% in just one week.

All this will inevitably lead to increased unemployment. Official figures put Iran’s jobless rate at 14.6%. However, this is far below the true figure. The government of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has revised the definition of what constitutes unemployment a number of times. Currently someone doing just one hour of paid work per week is not considered unemployed. But no-one doubts that for many the prospect of finding a job is non-existent.

The government’s fear of food riots following the abolition of subsidies is so real that even before the deadline for full implementation it stationed special military units in poor districts to ‘maintain security’ - in other words, prepare for potential confrontation with the masses. The police presence in Tehran and other cities was also increased and many were deployed on major streets and outside supermarkets. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guards’ Tehran commander announced that a special task force has been formed to deal with any economic protests. On November 8, several underground rap musicians were arrested in Tehran, and last week hundreds of young men and women were detained in what the police termed a “security cleansing”. The press has been warned to steer clear of any controversial coverage of the subsidy cuts.

In working class districts, everyone is clearly worried about Ahmadinejad’s plans for ‘reforming’ the economy. Of course, a combination of workers’ protests and riots in shanty towns would be a nightmare for the Islamic regime, but the key element is the strength and organisation of the working class. Given the weakness of the left, we cannot expect the working class to be in a position to take full advantage of the current situation. However, there is no doubt that in these exceptional times the success of the shanty towns struggles, the defeat of the abolition of subsidies and the struggles of pensioners all depend on the proletariat.

As in 1979, Iranian workers are in a position to make their mark in the fight against poverty and exploitation and for democracy. In pursuing these goals they need international solidarity and it is part of the role of Hands Off the People of Iran to mobilise such support.

Sanctions siege turns into cyberwarfare

2010-10-07T05:04:00.000-07:00

The Stuxnet virus is a new form of warfare. Instead of Iran being attacked by planes and missiles it has been USBs. Yassamine Mather reports

While Israel, the US and Britain keep up their rhetoric of ultimatums and threats against Iran, and escalate the siege warfare of economic sanctions, Hands Off the People of Iran has been warning of the very real and ominous danger of a so-called pre-emptive attack. Now things have taken an unexpected and dangerous turn. Throughout the last couple of months Iran’s nuclear plants as well as a number of major industrial complexes have been targeted by a sophisticated piece of malware: Stuxnet.

According to computer experts the virus’s complexity suggests it was written by a “nation state” and it is the first known worm designed to target not software, but real-world infrastructure such as power stations, water plants and industrial units. Last week, after many denials, Iran confirmed that 30,000 computers in the country’s power stations, including the nuclear reactor in Bushehr, had been attacked by the virus, blaming Israeli or American spies for infiltrating the plant.

A total of 40,000 computers worldwide are known to be affected by the virus. According to Liam Ó Murchú, manager of operations with Symantec’s security response team, “It’s amazing, really, the resources that went into this worm”. It is suggested that the virus was introduced to Iran not through the internet but on a memory stick, possibly by one of the Russian firms helping to build the Bushehr nuclear plant. The same firm has projects in other Asian countries, including India and Indonesia, which were also attacked. But Iran is thought to have suffered 60% of the attacks.

Stuxnet has already proven itself perhaps the most sophisticated piece of known malware to date, infecting computers through USB sticks, Windows file shares and other vectors. The virus exploits four known ‘zero-day’ vulnerabilities of the Microsoft operating system that until recently were unknown and unpatched. It spreads automatically without the computers user’s knowledge.

Machinery used in automated plants and high infrastructure industries is usually controlled by computers running the more reliable Linux operating system. Engineers and some computing experts have expressed surprise that Siemens used the bug-ridden Microsoft operating system for plant control. A photograph taken inside the Russian-built Bushehr plant shows a computer screen - configured to run a Siemens operating system - infected by Stuxnet and configured wrongly, making it vulnerable to bugs.

The virus was aimed at a popular process controller - the Siemens Simatic Programmable Logic Controller - and exploited a zero-day vulnerability in WINCC SQL database.

Industrial control systems (ICS) operate using a specialised software similar to an assembly code on programmable logic controllers (PLCs). The PLCs are often programmed from computers not connected to the internet or even internal local area networks. In addition, the industrial control systems themselves should not be connected to the internet. Reports from Iran suggest some of the recommendations about PLC security were not followed. The virus is autonomous - it requires no operator to direct its actions. Once it finds its target, it writes new code into the controller to change a process.

First, the attacker needs to obtain design documents. These could have been stolen by an insider, but it is likely that an earlier version of Stuxnet or another malicious program gave that information to the hackers. Once attackers had knowledge of the computing environment in the facility, they could develop the more dangerous version of Stuxnet. Each feature of Stuxnet was implemented for a specific reason and for the final goal of sabotaging the ICS.

Mahmoud Jafari, the director of Iran’s Bushehr reactor, was among those affected by the malware.

According to Ó Murchú, “The fact that we see so many more infections in Iran than anywhere else in the world makes us think this threat was targeted at Iran and that there was something in Iran that was of very, very high value to whomever wrote it”.

An Israeli military unit responsible for cyberwarfare is accused of creating Stuxnet to cripple Iran’s state computer systems and stop work at Bushehr nuclear power station. No one knows if Natanz, where uranium is being processed and where the US, UK and Israel claim nuclear weapons are being developed, has been penetrated by Stuxnet. However the number of working centrifuges, the main enrichment devices, produced in Natanz, fell suddenly by 15 per cent - at the very time the virus was first thought to have hit Iran.

Apparently there is also a biblical reference embedded in the code of the computer worm that points to Israel as the origin of the cyber attack. The code contains the word “myrtus”, which is the Latin biological term for the myrtle tree. The Hebrew word for myrtle, Hadassah, was the birth name of Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia.

The Book of Esther tells how the queen pre-empted an attack on the country’s Jewish population and then persuaded her husband to launch a pre-emptive attack before being attacked themselves.

Ralf Langner, a German researcher, claims that Unit 8200, the signals intelligence arm of the Israeli defence forces, perpetrated the computer virus attack by infiltrating the software into the Bushehr nuclear power station. Langner said: “It would be an absolute no-brainer to leave an infected USB stick near one of these guys and there would be more than a 50 per cent chance of him picking it up and infecting his computer.” Of course no one can prove whether Israel is behind this, though huge resources have been poured into Unit 8200, its secret cyberwarfare operation. The US department of defence and national security agency, and the UK’s GCHQ have also been establishing elaborate cyberoffensive capabilities, and it is possible that they cooperated with Israel or acted alone.

This week the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that 15 companies using Siemens equipment have been affected by the virus and have subsequently informed Siemens of the incidents. The clients were power stations, chemical plants and other industrial facilities.

A major supplier of industrial automated sorting systems based in Holland has reported two attacks by the Stuxnet worm, while separately, the Dutch nuclear power plant Borssele is on high alert.

Even though the worm has not yet been found in control systems in the United States, it could be only a matter of time before similar threats show up there. Some computer experts warn that the sophisticated worm designed to infiltrate industrial control systems could be used as a blueprint to sabotage systems critical to US power plants, electrical grids and other infrastructure.

The current version used in Iran stops computer operations. However, as Ó Murchú demonstrated in a computer exhibition in Canada, the real danger is if the worm originated or accelerated a computer operation rather than stopping it. Ó Murchú set up a basic air pump, controlled by a Siemens system similar to the one used in Iran. The pump delivered a timed burst of air into a balloon, which inflated moderately. Ó Murchú then infected the system with Stuxnet, pressed a button, and the pump continued to work, but did not stop. The balloon went on inflating till it burst. No one in the lecture room was left in any doubt: if the balloon was, in fact, an Iranian nuclear power station, the consequences would be unimaginable.

According to Michael Assante, former chief security officer at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry body that sets standards to ensure the electricity supply, “A copycat may decide to emulate it, maybe to cause a pressure valve to open or close at the wrong time. You could cause damage, and the damage could be catastrophic.” Joe Weiss, an industrial control system security specialist at Applied Control Solutions in Cupertino, California said, “the really scary part” about Stuxnet is its ability to determine what “physical process it wants to blow up”. It is “essentially a cyber weapon.”

The current fiasco in Iran’s nuclear industry should come as no surprise, if we remember that the Natanz nuclear plant is built irresponsibly close to an earthquake fault line. As far as the country’s nuclear industry is concerned, the cavalier attitude of the Islamic government and the nuclear agency towards basic safety and security issues shows the correctness of Hands Off the People of Iran’s opposition to nuclear proliferation.

We are only witnessing the first stages of this cyberwar. New versions are developing and spreading from the original worm. If it is true that the Israeli state is behind this worm, irrespective of the damage it does in Iran, Israel and its supporters might live to regret the monster they have created.

Divided theocratic regime paralysed by sanctions

2010-07-22T05:07:00.000-07:00

Divided theocratic regime paralysed by sanctions

As the US steps up it efforts to provoke regime change from above, Yassamine Mather looks at the reasons for the failure of the working class to win leadership of the opposition movement

New sanctions imposed by the United States government last week were the most significant hostile moves against Iran’s Islamic Republic since 1979. They marked a period of unprecedented coordination led by the US to obtain the support of the United Nations and European Union.

After months of denying their significance, the government of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was forced to react by setting up an emergency counter-sanctions unit, whilst Iranian aviation officials accused the UK, Germany and the United Arab Emirates of refusing to supply fuel for civilian Iranian airplanes. As it turned out, this was not true. However, the EU banned most of Iran Air’s jets from flying over its territory, because of safety concerns directly related to previous sanctions. It is said that most of the national airline’s fleet, including Boeing 727s and 747s and its Airbus A320s, are unsafe because the company has not been able to replace faulty components.

The US is adamant that ‘severe’ sanctions are necessary to stop Iran’s attempts at becoming a military nuclear power. Scare stories are finding their way into the pages of the mass media. According to US defence secretary Robert Gates, Iran is developing the capacity to fire scores, or perhaps hundreds, of missiles at Europe. Ten days after making that claim, Gates alleged that Iran had enough enriched uranium to be able to build two atom bombs within two years.

However, it is difficult to believe the Obama administration’s claims that the new sanctions have anything to do with Iran’s nuclear capabilities, which is why we should consider other explanations.

Why is there such an urgency to increase the pressure on Iran? One likely possibility is that the Obama administration has observed the divisions within the current government (between neoconservatives, led by Ahmadinejad, and traditional conservatives, such as the Larijani brothers, who control Iran’s executive, parliamentary and judicial system) and sees an opportunity for regime change from above.

After weeks of infighting between Ahmadinejad and the conservatives, involving angry accusations and counter-accusations in parliament over Azad University, this week the reformist website, Rah-e-Sabz, posted an article claiming that “the supreme leader and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani had agreed a resolution of the conflict” over who controls Azad.

The university, one of the world’s largest, is part of a private chain with branches throughout the country and is considered a stronghold of Islamic ‘reformists’. Since 2004 Ahmadinejad has been trying to reorganise its board of governors in order to take back control. When the Islamic parliament opposed his moves to replace the board, the Guardian Council, which has to approve every bill, took the side of the Ahmadinejad camp, creating yet another stalemate between the two conservative groups within the ruling elite.

The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had no choice but to intervene. He did so by ordering the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution to stop Ahmadinejad’s attempts to overrule parliament (in other words, he supported Rafsanjani, who, together with members of his family, are trustees and on the board of the university), In return Rafsanjani publicly praised Khamenei.

Some see this as a clever move. For the first time since last year’s disputed presidential elections, Khamenei has been forced to take a public stance against Ahmadinejad, resulting in a retreat by the president and his allies in the revolutionary guards. Azad University remains under the control of Rafsanjani and his family. No doubt if the rift between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad continues, the balance of power could shift in favour of the former president.

Meanwhile, Tehran’s bazaar was on strike for most of last week, in protest at a decision by Iran’s government to raise bazaar taxes by up to 70%. The government declared July 11 and 12 public holidays in 19 Iranian provinces, citing hot weather and dust, but there were rumours that the real reason was to conceal the possibility of strikes on those days.

All this is a reflection of Iran’s political paralysis and the state’s inability to deal with a combination of economic crisis and growing opposition amongst the majority of the population.

Crippling effects

Successive Iranian governments have denied the effectiveness of 30 years of crippling sanctions, but most economists inside the country estimate that sanctions have added 35% to the price of every commodity. Iran had been forced to buy spare parts for cars, planes, manufacturing equipment, agricultural machinery, etc on the black market, and now it will be forced to buy refined oil in the same way, causing a further jump in the rate of inflation. The smuggling of refined oil from Iraq started earlier this month, but the quantity received is unlikely to be sufficient to meet demand even during the summer months.

The new financial restrictions that came with the latest sanctions have crippled Iran’s banking and insurance sector. Iran already attracted little foreign investment, but now even China is pulling out of industrial ventures, such as the South Farse oil project. The proposed policing of ships and containers travelling to Iran means shipping insurance rates in the Persian Gulf are now the equivalent of those in war zones.

Despite the absence of the large demonstrations that followed the rigged elections of a year ago, most Iranians agree that the religious state is today weaker than it was in June 2009 (at the height of mass protests) and that could explain renewed interest in the US for regime change from above. At a time when anger against Iran’s rulers and frustration with leaders of the green movement amongst youth and sections of working class is tangible, it is difficult to predict what will happen next. From bloggers to journalists, from students to the unemployed, opponents of the regime are blaming ‘reformist’ leaders Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi for the current stalemate - people’s patience is running out. Could it be that the Obama administration is planning to replace the Islamic Republic with a regime composed of selected exiles, à la Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq or Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan? After all, there is no shortage of former Islamists currently residing in the US who have converted to ‘liberal democracy’, including Iranian disciples of Karl Popper. Such people are paraded daily in the Farsi media and portrayed as the voice of reason.

In contrast to the hesitation and conciliationism of green leaders, others within the opposition have been stepping up their protests against the Islamic regime and two potentially powerful sections - the women’s movement and the workers’ movement - are conducting their own struggles. Yet here too Moussavi’s patronising attitude to both groups (he called on workers to join the green movement to safeguard their interests, while his wife claimed to support women’s rights) have backfired badly. In the words of one feminist activist, the green movement should realise it is one section of the opposition, but not the only voice of the protest movement.

Workers’ movement

Superficial analysts abroad labelled last year’s anti-dictatorship protesters in Iran as middle class. However, those present at these demonstrations were adamant that workers, students and the unemployed played a huge role. In May, the Centre to Defend Families of the Slain and Detained in Iran published the names of 10 workers who were killed in post-election street protests, and there is considerable evidence that workers, the unemployed and shanty town-dwellers were among the forces that radicalised the movement’s slogans (crossing the red lines imposed by green leaders, such as the call for an end to the entire regime, and for the complete separation of state and religion). In addition we are witnessing an increasing number of workers’ demonstrations, sit-ins and strikes against the non-payment of wages, deteriorating conditions and low pay. The workers’ protest movement has been dubbed a tsunami, and in recent months it has adopted clear political slogans against the dictatorship.

Last week was typical. Five hundred workers staged protests outside Abadan refinery against unpaid wages, blocking the road outside the refinery. Two of their comrades filming the action were arrested, but these workers are adamant they will continue the strikes and demonstrations next week. Three hundred Pars metal workers staged a separate protest against non-payment of wages and cuts in many of the workers’ benefits, such as the bus to and from work and the subsidised canteen, which managers of the privatised company intend to close. Similar protests have taken place in dozens of large and small firms throughout Iran. Most have moved on from purely economic demands to include political slogans against the regime.

However, we still see little coordination between these protests and workers have yet to make their mark as a class aware of its power and historic role. Despite much talk of mushrooming industrial action and even a general strike, so far we have not seen the Iranian working class taking its rightful place at the head of a national movement.

So how can we explain the current situation? A number of points have been raised by the left in Iran:

1. The working class and leftwing activists have faced more severe forms of repression than any other section of the opposition, even prior to June 2009. However, it is difficult to accept that fear of arrest or detention has played any part in the reluctance of workers to make their mark as a political force. Clearly repression has not deterred workers from participating in strikes, taking managers hostage or blocking highways. In fact incarcerated activists include the majority of the leaders of Vahed Bus Company, serving Tehran and its suburbs, the entire leadership of Haft Tapeh sugar cane workers and activists from the Committee to set up Independent Workers’ Organisations.

2. Workers have been misled by the leaders of the green movement. Yet throughout the presidential election debates they did not hear any substantial difference between the economic plans proposed by Moussavi and Karroubi, who, for example, defended privatisation, and those of Ahmadinejad and other conservatives. Workers are opposed to plans for the abolition of state subsidies. However, they remember that this was a plan originally proposed by the ‘reformist’, Mohammad Khatami, during his presidency, as part of the much hated policy of ‘economic readjustment’.

Workers are also well aware that the leaders of the green movement aspire to an Iranian/Islamic version of capitalism, where the bourgeoisie’s prosperity will eventually ‘benefit all’ - an illusion very few workers subscribe to. It should also be noted that the Iranian working class as a modern, urban force is primarily secular, with no allegiance to the Islamic state, and constitutes a growing wing of the protest movement that wants to go beyond adherence to legality and the reform of the current constitution. Kept at arm’s length by leaders of the green movement and yet incapable of asserting its own political line, the working class is facing a dilemma in the current crisis.

3. The opportunist left has diverted the class struggle. However, the Iranian working class is wary of claims made by leaders of the green movement, as well as sections of the opportunist left like Tudeh and the Fedayeen Majority, that the first decade of the Islamic Republic under ayatollah Khomeini constituted the golden years of the revolution. Older worker activists realise that it was the clergy and the Islamic regime that halted the revolution of 1979 and threw it into reverse. The Khomeini years coincided with the worst of the religious repression, and it was not only the radical left who were the victims (thousands were executed), but workers in general. The state was constantly calling on them to make sacrifices, to send their sons to the battle front and produce more for the war economy, while ruthlessly suppressing workers’ independent actions as the work of traitors and spies. So, contrary to the opinion of Tudeh and the Fedayeen Majority, the first decade of Khomeini’s rule - under Moussavi’s premiership, of course - were the dark years for Iranian workers and no amount of rewriting history will change this.

4. The current economic situation is so bad that the working class is unable to fight effectively for anything more than survival. Striking for unpaid wages is symptomatic of this, on top of which there is the threat of losing your job and joining the ranks of the unemployed. In other words, the defensive nature of workers’ struggles hinders their capability to mount a nationwide struggle. Of course, if this argument is correct, the situation will get worse once further sanctions bite. There will be more job losses, more despair amongst the working class.

5. Despite many efforts to create nationwide workers organisations - not only the Committee to set up Independent Workers’ Organisations, but the Network of Iranian Labour Unions (founded in response to the bus drivers’ actions and the imprisonment of their leader, Mansour Osanlou), workers have failed to coordinate protests even on a regional level.

6. The confusion of the left has had a negative impact. Workers have not forgotten how the Fedayeen Majority and Tudeh apologised for and supported the ‘anti-imperialist’ religious state. The majority of the working class was aligned with the left, and so went along with the dismantling of the workers’ shoras (councils) that played such a significant role in the overthrow of the shah’s regime. Later, during Khatami’s presidency (1997-2005), the Fedayeen Majority and Tudeh advocated collaboration with the state-run Islamic factory councils, although the majority of workers considered these anti-trade union organisations, whose main task was to spy on labour activists and support managers in both private and state-owned enterprises. The Shia state claimed to international bodies such as the International Labour Organisation that the councils were genuine trade unions, even though they were set up to destroy labour solidarity within and beyond the workplace. Despite all this the opportunist left not only refused to expose their true function: it called on Iranian workers to join them as a step towards the establishment of mass labour organisations!

Revolutionary left

Over the last few years the left has publicised workers’ demands and organised support for them. Yet there have been big problems. We have seen two distinct approaches regarding the form working class organisation should take. Some advocate the need to unite around the most basic of demands in trade union-type bodies independent of political organisation. Others argue that a struggle within such a united front between reformist and revolutionary currents over strategy and tactics will be inevitable and the revolutionaries will win over the majority of the working because of the superiority of their arguments.

Then there are those who emphasise the need for a different form of organisation altogether: underground cells of class-conscious workers capable of mobilising the most radical sections of the class. Of course, it is possible to combine both options, but proponents of both strategies imply that the two paths are mutually exclusive. Those calling for a workers’ united front label advocates of cells ‘sectarian ultra-leftists’, while the latter allege that those who want to work for the creation of mass, union-type bodies are succumbing to reformism and syndicalism.

While recent attempts amongst sections of the left to discuss these issues should be welcomed, it has to be said that the working class and the left have a long way to go before the ‘tsunami’ of workers’ protests becomes a class-conscious nationwide movement capable of overthrowing the religious state and the capitalist order it upholds.

‘Reformists’ exposed on first anniversary

2010-06-17T05:08:00.000-07:00

‘Reformists’ exposed on first anniversary

As imperialist sanctions are stepped up, leaders of Iran’s ‘opposition’ are in headlong retreat. Yassamine Mather reports on the anniversary of the 2009 rigged elections

Demonstrations were held across Iran on the June 12 anniversary of last year’s rigged presidential elections - despite a heavy security presence and the cowardly back-stabbing of the so-called ‘reformist opposition’.
Meanwhile, the much heralded United Nations resolution on further sanctions against Iran - expanding the arms embargo and barring the country from sensitive activities such as uranium mining - was voted through on June 9. The UN measures present a diluted version of what the US administration had proposed, but they still allow high-seas inspections of vessels believed to be ferrying banned items to Iran, while 40 categories have been added to the list of people and groups subject to travel restrictions and financial sanctions. The European Union has promised to impose its own extra measures, targeting the energy, trade and transport sectors.

Some in Iran, including sections of the left, have argued that this was an inevitable consequence of Ahmadinejad and the regime’s “loss at a game of poker played with the US”. ^[1] I would disagree with this interpretation of the logic underlying sanctions. The principal reason behind the US administration’

s relentless efforts to increase pressure on Iran has little to do with concern about nuclear capabilities or exaggerated claims by president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government regarding this issue. It is more a consequence of an obsession by successive US administrations to impose regime change on Iran - and indeed at a time of economic crisis the necessity of identifying ‘rogue states’ as the enemy is as strong as ever.
UN-imposed sanctions are only part of the story. The US Congress is seeking to apply additional measures against the Islamic Republic’s energy firms, including a ban on the sale of refined oil to Iran and further restrictions on Iranian banks - Russia and China refused to allow their inclusion in the resolution passed by the UN. While Iran is the fourth largest oil exporter in the world, it currently does not have the capacity to refine enough oil to meet its own needs, and thus imports 40% of its gasoline and 11% of its diesel.

Clearly a ban on refined petroleum imports would have disastrous consequences for ordinary Iranians. Existing sanctions have reduced the output of Iran’s oil industry’s by 300,000 barrels per day, according to the Financial Times, depriving the country of billions of dollars in revenue.^[2] The slow development of new oilfields and the poor condition of many existing wells in the absence of the equipment necessary for repair have caused this fall. In addition to sanctions, Iran’s oil workers report the sacking of expert technicians and engineers who oppose the government of Ahmadinejad and their replacement by his cronies with no experience and no knowledge of the industry.

The question facing the Iranian people and the Iranian working class is whether they stop protesting to avoid confrontation (as ‘reformist’ leaders Mehdi Moussavi and Mir-Hossein Karroubi advise) and allow regime change from above; or continue their fight for the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic from below. On June 10, two days before the anniversary of the fraudulent presidential elections, Karroubi and Moussavi issued a joint statement full of religious rhetoric, which announced that the protest demonstration planned for June 12 would not go ahead “for the safety of the people”.^[3]

Whose violence?

This bizarre announcement was part of a joint internet interview. Anyone who knows anything about the Islamic regime (and our two esteemed ‘green’ leaders, being members of the ruling elite, know this as well as anyone) will tell you that if you give a millimetre to the reactionary rulers of the clerical state, they will take a kilometre. When news of the statement cancelling the demonstration was circulated, many Iranians, especially youth and workers, reacted with disbelief. Others were angry that the ‘reformist’ leaders had sought permission from the dictatorship in the first place. Those who had hoped for a plan B were disappointed. Karroubi and Moussavi proposed no other action. In their press conference they told journalists that this internet event was more effective than protests that might spark violence.

The joint interview worked well for reasserting a few basic facts about the leaders of the green movement.

It showed that, as far as charisma is concerned, they have less than Gordon Brown on a bad day. The statement was disjointed, featuring appallingly poor use of the Persian language, with long, meaningless sentences. The two came over as eager to please everyone but won no-one. It made a mockery of the claim that they represent the ‘opposition in Iran’.
Even after 12 months of unprecedented repression the leaders of the green movement remain determined to save the Islamic Republic. One could argue that the two men are well aware they have no political future without the Islamic state and in many ways they had already become irrelevant to the daily struggles of ordinary Iranians. Why should anyone take seriously the opinions of two of the staunchest supporters of clerical rule in Iran over the last 30 years when the aim is to overthrow it?
The worst part of the interview was the claim by both of them that they took this conciliatory position because of a commitment to non-violence - as if the main cause of violence were the opposition, not the regime itself (even when Moussavi’s ‘reformist’ wing has fronted it). This claim is parroted by the opportunist left, including the Fedayeen Majority and the ‘official communist’ Tudeh party, not to mention ‘radicals’ such as Ziba Mirhosseini, who claimed in a BBC Persian service interview that this represented “the influence of the feminist discourse on the green movement”.

It is ironic that the man accused of complicity in the execution of at least 8,000 leftwing political prisoners in the late 1980s should reject the idea of a peaceful demonstration as incitement to violence. While the ‘reformists’ and their allies in the Fedayeen Majority and Tudeh try to take their collective amnesia still further, let us remind them of examples of violence since the overthrow of the shah:

In the first few months after the February 1979 revolution it was the religious state which summarily executed associates of the previous regime, for the single purpose of imposing terror on the revolutionary movement. Who was in power? Moussavi, Karroubi, together with future president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani. Who were their cheerleaders? The central committee of what was to become the Fedayeen Majority and their fellow pro-Soviet Stalinists in the Tudeh Party.
The history of the Islamic Republic has been one of constant repression of the Kurds and other minorities. Who was part of the state that sent tanks into Kurdish cities and helicopter gunships into the Kurdish countryside? Who was responsible for the mass killing of civilians in Arab-speaking regions? Rafsanjani, Moussavi and Karroubi. Who were their cheerleaders? The central committee of the Fedayeen Majority and the Tudeh Party.
Throughout the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war leftwing political prisoners were executed as spies, and activists were shot down as they attended peaceful meetings. The groups targeted were in the overwhelming majority of cases those that had renounced armed struggle for ideological and political reasons. However, calling on workers to fight both the foreign aggressor and the brutal dictatorship was considered ‘treachery’ and punishable by death. Again who were the cheerleaders of this violent episode in our country’s history? The Fedayeen Majority and Tudeh.
What about the violence that occurred at the end of the Iran-Iraq war? In the summer of 1988, Iran’s prisons were still full of students sentenced for protesting against ayatollah Khomeini in the early part of the decade, many of them members of various leftwing groups. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a secret instruction authorising their mass execution. They faced a three-minute ‘hearing’ - as long as it took for each one to be identified - and they were hanged six at a time in the prison auditorium. Later their bodies were doused in disinfectant and transported in meat trucks to mass graves.
Ayatollah Khomeini is dead. But three leading figures of his regime are still very much alive. The then president, Ali Khamenei, now Iran’s supreme leader, endorsed last year’s rigged election. Ali Rafsanjani, still a powerful political player, was then the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, who were ordered to carry out the killings. Then there is the man who in 1988 was Iran’s prime minister - none other than Mir-Hussein Moussavi.^[4] By this time those members of Fedayeen Majority and Tudeh who had not managed to escape were themselves amongst the victims and no-one was left to defend them.

However, nowadays it is not in the interests of those groups to remember who was responsible for past violence. Instead they express admiration for the likes of Moussavi and Karroubi - ‘reformists’ who are more scared of opposition protesters than they are of the regime they are supposed to be opposing. Far from the opposition movement bearing responsibility for the violence of the last turbulent 12 months, it is the movement’s supporters and demonstrators who have been shot down, tortured to death in the dungeons of the Islamic Republic and executed.

One cannot respond to such a state by renouncing street protests, workers’ demonstrations, student rallies and organising internet events for the press instead. In the 1980s the support of Tudeh and the Fedayeen Majority for Islamic violence was justified by their adherence to the ‘peaceful road to socialism’. Today they are following another ‘peaceful road’ with equally disastrous consequences for the Iranian people.

Tied to regime

In the interview Moussavi remained faithful to the current constitution, which was “designed to stand against dictatorship, tyranny and totalitarianism”.^[5] If the constitution is so anti-authoritarian, how come some of the worst abuses, including the execution of thousands of leftwingers, took place in what Moussavi still considers the good old days - when he was prime minister, his beloved imam, Khomeini, was the supreme leader and presumably the constitution was being followed?

Moussavi also praised the positions taken by clerics: “In the past year, we saw how they supported the people with their statements and actions. The fate of the clerical scholars is closely linked with the fate of the people ...”. It is true that, had it not been for the intervention of senior clerics, Karroubi and Moussavi might be in prison by now. However, these ayatollahs are part and parcel of the current order and the allegiance of Moussavi and Karroubi to such figures only serves to alienate youth, women and workers, who see nothing progressive or democratic in the statements of such clerics.
Moussavi and Karroubi have been strongly criticised by some supporters of the green movement. One blogger writes: “We will be side by side with the mothers of martyrs. Mr Moussavi and Mr Karroubi, you can join us too. If we do not show up on June 12 the pressure on the political prisoners will increase. The demonstration on Saturday is not an option, but an obligation.” Another wrote that the regime had lost its legitimacy. People have two options: either “live humiliated” under it or topple it.

In the event there were protests on a number of university campuses and in the central districts of many of Iran’s major cities. Protesters at Tehran University were as forceful as ever, while students at Sharif University taunted the bassij militia and Revolutionary Guards with shouts of: “Liar, liar, where is your 63%?” (referring to the majority claimed by Ahmadinejad in last year’s poll). There were clashes in Tehran and other cities, and the authorities announced they have arrested 91 protesters in Tehran alone.

Iranian workers too are continuing to protest. Victims of both the economic and political crises, they have more to lose than other sections of the population from the new sanctions. There is a long list of actions organised by workers - including in Andimeshk, where 400 council workers have not been paid since December, and at Battery Noor, where workers have not received their salaries since mid-March. A number of trade unionists have been arrested, including Vahed bus company militants Said Torabian, Alireza Akhavan and Behnam Alizadeh, who have been active in a committee launched to set up independent workers’ organisations. Most struggles are over unpaid wages or the threat to jobs, but what is very noticeable is that, as soon as the military or security forces arrive, slogans such as “Death to the dictator”, and “Down with the Islamic regime” are heard.

However, these struggles remain defensive and our class remains weak as a political force. Whether we like it or not, some sections retain illusions in the ‘reformists’, while others are still loyal to the opportunist left. After decades of being bombarded by capitalist and neoliberal propaganda - both from the religious state and the western media - the working class lacks the confidence to lead political protests.

Over the last 12 months the divisions within the religious state - both between the ‘reformists’ and Ahmadinejad’s government and between supporters of the president and the hard-line ‘principlists’ - have allowed the working class a limited space, where its economic struggles could benefit from political leadership. Such a situation cannot last forever and we are already seeing signs that the government is preparing to clamp down even more ruthlessly on workers’ protests.
It is precisely for these reasons that the left has to deal with the continued threat of war and sanctions as well as exploiting the divisions within the Islamic regime. Exposing the ‘reformists’ who act as an obstacle to anti-government protest action at such a crucial time in Iran’s history is essential. However, we must also remember than the main responsibility for the violence and terror directed against the Iranian people is borne by the government of president Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Khamenei.

Imperialist sanctions and military threats only play into their hands, allowing them to buy off the ‘reformists’ and pacify the opposition movement.

yassamine.mather@weeklyworker.org.uk

Notes

See, for example, www.rahekargar.de
‘Sanctions hit Iranianoil production’ Financial Times May 23.
See ‘Iran’s opposition leaders Moussavi and Karroubi call off June 12 protest rallies’: www.payvand.com/news/10/jun/1090.html
See ‘The UN must try Iran’s 1988 murderers’: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010
Transcript of cyber press conference: en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2010/jun/13/2066

Jafar Panahi released

2010-05-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

Jafar Panahi released

Solidarity works, says Jim Moody

On Tuesday last (May 25), the Iranian regime bowed to growing worldwide pressure over its imprisonment of film director Jafar Panahi and released him on 200 million rials (£14,000) bail. However, he still faces serious charges brought by the regime following gigantic, militant protests over last year’s rigged presidential elections. But at least Iran’s vicious clerics were forced to let Panahi out of the vile Evin prison where he has languished alongside other political prisoners since his arrest in March. Panahi’s release is an encouragement to all those campaigning for democratic rights in Iran in solidarity with its people.

Juliette Binoche took Jafar Panahi’s case to the world stage last weekend by holding his name in front of her as she received the best actress award.^[1] Previously both the Cannes film festival and the French government had condemned Panahi’s imprisonment by Iran’s regime, which had prevented him from taking up his place on the festival jury. Tim Burton, head of the Cannes jury, left Panahi’s chair empty throughout the festival in protest.

In Britain and Ireland solid campaigning work by Hands Off the People of Iran^[2] to release Panahi has been vindicated. Ever since he was detained over two months ago, Hopi has worked hard to place the issue of his imprisonment in the forefront of political life. Most recently, Hopi and the Labour Representation Committee jointly organised a well- attended solidarity screenings of his film Offside in London; further successful film events have been held in Manchester and Glasgow within the last two weeks.

Around the world, Panahi’s case has received wide support that has helped to build solidarity. On April 30 numerous Hollywood leading lights signed a petition for his release. Their petition read as follows:

“Jafar Panahi, the internationally acclaimed Iranian director of such award-winning films as The white balloon, The circle, Crimson gold and Offside, was arrested at his home on March 1 in a raid by plain-clothed security forces. He has been held since then in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

“A recent letter from Mr Panahi’s wife expressed her deep concerns about her husband’s heart condition, and about his having been moved to a smaller cell. Mr Panahi’s films have been banned from screening in Iran for the past 10 years and he has effectively been kept from working for the past four years. Last October, his passport was confiscated and he was banned from leaving the country. Upon his arrest, Islamic Republic officials initially charged Mr Panahi with ‘unspecified crimes’. They have since reversed themselves, and the charges are now specifically related to his work as a filmmaker.

“We (the undersigned) stand in solidarity with a fellow filmmaker, condemn this detention, and strongly urge the Iranian government to release Mr Panahi immediately.

“Iran’s contributions to international cinema have been rightfully heralded, and encouraged those of us outside the country to respect and cherish its people and their stories. Like artists everywhere, Iran’s filmmakers should be celebrated, not censored, repressed and imprisoned.”

Signatories were Paul Thomas Anderson, Joel and Ethan Coen, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Robert De Niro, Curtis Hanson, Jim Jarmusch, Ang Lee, Richard Linklater, Terrence Malick, Michael Moore, Robert Redford, Martin Scorsese, James Schamus, Paul Schrader, Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and Frederick Wiseman.

Subsequently, on Saturday May 22, 85 Iranian filmmakers also signed a letter calling for Panahi’s release: “In view of the existing conditions for … Jafar Panahi, we the undersigners of this letter, a group of independent film-makers, call for the freedom and speedy consideration of his conditions and his demands in prison.” The previous weekend Jafar Panahi had started a hunger strike to underline his resolve. Veteran Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami also made vehement calls for Panahi’s release while in Cannes with his film Certified copy, where he handed out an open letter he had written to the Iranian authorities demanding his colleague be freed. Kiarostami was quoted as saying at a press conference subsequent to the screening of his film: “When a filmmaker is imprisoned, it is the art which is attacked. I believe we can’t remain indifferent to the situation.”^[3]

Iran’s clerical regime had clearly been shaken by worldwide condemnation of Panahi’s incarceration. So much so that even before his release the panicked state-run Iranian media tried to allay spreading concern over his continued imprisonment that it started issuing statements about his imminent release. The official Iranian Students’ News Agency stated on Tuesday May 25: “Tehran’s public prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, said Iranian director Jafar Panahi is to be released on bail and the judicial verdict for his release has been issued.” ISNA even went so far as to admit that, “Panahi has been imprisoned since March 1 because of making a film about Iran’s post-election events.”^[4]

Of course, while Jafar Panahi’s release is an important victory for solidarity and consistent campaigning work, many political prisoners remain in Iran’s jails. This was reflected in Jafar Panahi’s own stance in refusing to be bailed previously while others were still held in prison. It also informed Hopi’s campaigning slogan: Freedom for Jafar Panahi and all political prisoners in Iran! Meanwhile executions - state murders - are continuing: earlier this month, on May 9, five political prisoners were executed in Evin prison.

And, while we celebrate what solidarity has achieved around Jafar Panahi, we also must fight hard to ensure that US, British and the UN nest of thieves and butchers abandon their plans for regime change from above. Only Iran’s people can accomplish democratic change, and it is to them that we give our support and solidarity in their struggles. Let Panahi’s release spur us on to higher levels of such solidarity.

jim.moody(at)weeklyworker.org.uk

Notes

Panahi stages hunger strike

2010-05-20T14:10:00.000-07:00

Panahi stages hunger strike

Ben Lewis reports on the campaign to free the outspoken film maker imprisoned by the Iranian regime

Activists in Hands Off the People of Iran have been informed that Jafar Panahi, the internationally acclaimed film maker who has been incarcerated for over two months, has begun a hunger strike in Evin prison.

This is the latest brave step by Panahi, who is increasingly becoming a symbol of resistance. The solidarity he can generate is of grave cause concern for the Islamic Republic, despite its jails, armed thugs and reactionary militias. Panahi fully realises this, and he is using his standing to exert as much pressure on the regime as possible. He has refused offers of bail, saying that he will only accept it when all other political prisoners are released. Like him, the overwhelming majority of these prisoners were arrested as part of the shocking wave of repression unleashed by the regime in response to the enormous protests on the streets of Iran following last June’s rigged presidential elections.

As we have reported previously, Panahi has been subjected to rigorous interrogation in jail. The Evin interrogators appear to be pursuing the tried and tested approach of bombarding him with the same questions over and over again in order to force inconsistencies in his answers, backing this up with the soul-destroying conditions and humiliating treatment for which Evin prison has become infamous.

Last Saturday the authorities kept all inmates in his wing of the prison outside their cells in the open air for the whole night. Next morning he was interrogated once more, this time being accused of secretly working on a film from his cell. He is particularly concerned about some of the new threats that have been made against his family.

There is clearly a lot of work for us in the solidarity movement. We must do what we can to publicise Jafar Panahi’s brave stance, not least using his wonderfully human films. He - and indeed all the other political prisoners in Iran - cannot be allowed to suffer without an outcry. Holywood directors Martin Scorscese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Redford have issued forthright statements demanding his release. At this week’s 63rd Cannes Film Festival there were countless expressions of solidarity. One of the nine chairs for jury members remained empty in his honour. Given Panahi’s reputation internationally, it is quite striking that his case has hitherto been subjected to what John McDonnell MP has described as a “media blackout” in Britain, and we must break through this.

Simultaneously, it is vital ensure that the brutal actions of the Iranian state and its callous treatment of dissenters and critical figures of all kinds should not in any way be misappropriated by the US or UK governments to cover their designs on Iran and the region more generally. At a time when the permanent members of the UN security council - US, UK, China, Russia and France - have agreed on new proposals for a fresh round of sanctions, and when the rightwing Israeli politicians hypocritically hark on about the danger of a “second holocaust”, this is of the utmost importance.

Indeed, given that public opinion is not exactly welcoming the prospect of the further escalation of tension in the Middle East, one of the ways in which the imperialists may attempt to respond is to disingenuously latch on to the cause of Iran’s political prisoners. So there is a danger that the political and cultural establishment in the US and UK could hijack Panahi’s courageous stance for their own nefarious purposes. So we must redouble our campaign for the immediate and unconditional release not only of Panahi, but of all political prisoners, and link this with implacable opposition to imperialist sanctions and threats of war. A fight on two fronts which Hopi has conducted since its inception.

Solidarity success

May 12 saw well over 100 people attend a solidarity screening at London’s Soho Theatre of Panahi’s best known film, Offside, jointly organised by Hopi and the Labour Representation Committee. The event was the first in a series of film showings and solidarity events across the country. The Manchester screening took place on May 18, and there will be a further one in Glasgow on May 21.

The event opened with Soho Theatre’s artistic director, Lisa Goldman, providing a moving account of her work with Panahi on artistic projects in Iran. She was followed by John McDonnell, who outlined the significance of the campaign to free Panahi. “Every movement creates a symbol,” he said. “In refusing bail until all other political prisoners are freed, Jafar is taking a courageous stance that we in Hopi wish to applaud and highlight.” He emphasised the importance of Hopi’s core principles - against war or sanctions on Iran; but no support for the theocracy and unequivocal solidarity with genuinely democratic struggles from below against its rule, especially those of the workers’ movement.

This was a theme British-Iranian comic Shappi Khorsandi took up in her opening remarks to the audience, explaining that is why she “loved” Hopi. Offside was certainly a big hit with the audience: stormy applause followed its closing credits. At the end a message of thanks was read out from Panahi’s family.

PCS welcome

Hopi activists have been present this week at the Public and Commercial Services union conference in Brighton and our stall has had a very good response from delegates. PCS has been affiliated to Hopi since 2008 and the annual conference is always a good time to meet PCS militants new and old. Gratifyingly, the response we had from the delegates this year was particularly warm. We distributed some 400 information bulletins on the Jafar Panahi campaign and have already received over 50 signed postcards, which will be sent off in a special batch to Panahi’s family in Iran. We also raised funds for our campaigning work by selling numerous ‘No to war; no to theocracy’ badges and copies of Panahi’s films.

Execution to impose terror

2010-05-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

Execution to impose terror

Our response to the judicial murder of Kurds should not be to call for the Iranian regime to be hauled before a tribunal for ‘crimes against humanity’, writes Yassamine Mather. It should be to step up our solidarity

Four of the five political prisoners executed by the Islamic government in Iran in the early hours of Sunday May 9 came from Kurdistan and were accused of membership of the left nationalist group, the PJAK (an Iranian version of the PKK). The executed prisoners - Farzad Kamangar, Ali Heydarian, Farhad Vakili, Shirin Alamhouli and Mehdi Eslamian - all denied membership of “political organisations” and the PJAK issued a statement clarifying that none of those executed had any organisational links with it. Farzad Kamangar was a teacher and trade unionist who had been accused of “endangering national security” and “enmity against god”.

Although Iran has other major Kurdish nationalist organisations, dissatisfaction with the pro-western policies of the other groups, which have collaborated with US plans for ‘regime change’, has swelled the ranks of the relatively unknown and younger PJAK.

The PJAK claims that half of its members are women and that it supports women’s rights. It has been involved in many military confrontations with Iran’s security forces in Kurdistan. It claims its guerrillas fight inside Iran, and reports suggest that in August 2007 it managed to destroy an Iranian military helicopter that was conducting a forward operation of bombardment by Iranian forces. It has adopted many of the political ideas and military strategies of the PKK.

On April 24 2009, PJAK rebels attacked a police station in Kermanshah province. According to Iranian government sources, a number of policemen and eight rebels were killed in a fierce gun battle. Iran responded a week later by attacking Kurdish villages in the border area of Panjwin inside Iraq using helicopter gunships.

In April 2006, US congressman Dennis Kucinich sent a letter to George W Bush in which he wrote that the US is likely to be supporting and coordinating the PJAK, since it operates and is based in Iraqi territory, under the control of the Kurdistan regional government. In November 2006, journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, supported this claim, stating that the US military and the Israelis are giving the group equipment, training and targeting information in order to create internal pressures in Iran. The accusations seem unlikely, given the PJAK’s membership of the PKK-led Kurdistan Democratic Confederation (KCK). However, even if the accusations are correct, members and supporters of this organisation join it precisely because of its leftwing politics and its claims of opposition to imperialist powers, rather than aligning themselves with the longer established, bourgeois nationalist parties.

The mass protests of 2009 and 2010 were all expressions of the opposition by Iran’s youth to the Islamic regime. However, in Kurdistan province that opposition is even stronger. The region known as Iranian Kurdistan includes the greater parts of the provinces of West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah and Ilam, with an estimated population of six to seven million mainly Sunnis. It has a long history of rebellion against the central government, going back to the Sassanid era.

In modern times, Kurds have rebelled on a number of occasions. During World War I, the weakness of the Qajar dynasty encouraged Kurdish tribal chiefs to take control of large sections of the province. In 1922, Reza Khan (the shah’s father and founder of the Pahlavi dynasty), sent his army to quash Kurdish rebellion. During the first years of the Pahlavi rule, Reza Shah pursued a crude policy of forcing Kurdish chiefs into exile, while confiscating their land and property.

At the start of World War II, Reza Shah showed open sympathies to Nazi Germany, prompting an invasion of Iran by Allied troops in September 1941. In the Kurdish regions, the Persian army was defeated and their ammunition seized by Kurds. With support from the Soviet Union, a Kurdish state was created in the city of Mahabad in 1946, but it lasted less than a year - the withdrawal of the occupying Soviet forces allowed the shah’s army to defeat the separatists. However, despite its short history the Mahabad republic played a significant role in radicalisation of Kurdish youth and their dream of a socialist Kurdistan.

Another wave of nationalism followed the fall of the shah in February 1979, and Iran’s first supreme religious leader, ayatollah Khomeini, declared a jihad against ‘Kurdistan’. In the spring of 1980, government forces under the command of president Bani Sadr attacked the cities of Mahabad, Sanandaj, Pawe and Marivan. Entire villages and towns were destroyed to force the Kurds into submission. Ayatollah Khalkhali, also known as the ‘hanging judge’, sentenced thousands of men to execution after summary trials while Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps fought to re-establish government control in the entire region. However, the central government did not fully succeed in the countryside and, as the Islamic state consolidated its power, arresting socialists and communists. Organisations of the Iranian left took refuge in Kurdistan, many spending most of the 1980s in that region.

In February 1999, Kurdish nationalists took to the streets in several cities against the government of president Khatami and in support of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. These protests were violently suppressed by government forces and at least 20 people were killed.

In November 2009 Iran’s Islamic Republic executed Ehsan Fattahian, a Kurdish political activist charged with being an “enemy of god” because of his political activities in support of Kurdish national rights. He was a member of Komala, one of the main political organisations active in Iranian Kurdistan since the 1960s, some of whose founding members had Maoist tendencies. When the Islamic regime took power, Komala participated in the first parliamentary elections. However, fearing Komala or leftwing victories in some of Kurdish seats, the regime cancelled the elections and sent in the military in the summer of 1979 to put down the ‘Kurdish rebellion’. Leftwing Kurdish political organisations, including Komala, were declared illegal.

In 1983, together with an Iranian socialist group, Unity of Communist Militants, Komala formed the Communist Party of Iran. In 1991, political differences with the UCM leadership led to a split, with the latter forming the Worker-communist Party of Iran. In 2004 there was a further split in the Communist Party of Iran, with the more nationalist faction led by Mohtadi deciding to relaunch Komala .

Mohatdi now considers himself a “revolutionary liberal”.^[1] He has met American officials over the last few years at the state department and other government agencies^[2] and many consider that the group has shifted to the right since the split with the CPI. Komala remains one of four major Kurdish parties organising in Kurdistan. Most activists of the organisation are unaware of the relationship of Mohtadi and other Komala leaders with the US.

Clearly Ehsan Fattahian, who had spent many years in prison, could not be held responsible for Mohtadi’s actions. In the same way Farzad Kamangar, Ali Heydarian, Farhad Vakili, Shirin Alamhouli and Mehdi Eslamian are innocent victims of an Islamic regime that uses execution as a means of imposing terror at a time when protesters are preparing themselves for demonstrations commemorating the events of last summer.

Kurdish and Iranian political groups have called for a one-day general strike in Kurdistan on Thursday May 13 in protest at the executions and students have also showed their outrage, organising a spontaneous protest when Ahmadinejad visited Shahid Beheshti University on May 10. The mild disapproval of the executions expressed by ‘reformist’ leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi, who merely expressed his concern that the Islamic state’s legal procedures may not have been followed, left everyone, including some of his supporters, bewildered. The executions of these young Kurds will only increase the hatred felt towards the central government.

Ironically, earlier this month, no doubt at the urging of a politically correct adviser, Iran’s supreme leader, ayatollah Khamenei, issued an order forbidding the mimicking by Iranians of the accent of Kurds, Turks and other peoples when they speak Persian. It is fitting for our time that the ruler of a government responsible for the death of so many innocent Kurds - victims of air raids, helicopter gunships, military attacks and executions - should claim to be concerned by the hurt they might feel if their accent is mocked.

Following these executions, another call has been made by supporters of the many splinter groups originating from Fedayeen (Minority) for a tribunal of Iran’s leaders for ‘crimes against humanity’. Although I share their outrage, the reality is, we live in a world where major western ‘democracies’ - the US, UK, France, Italy and so on - are themselves guilty of appalling crimes committed in the name of their ‘war on terror’. The execution of political opponents by Israel, the US and its occupation allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention torture, waterboarding and the rest, are the order of the day. In such circumstance any ‘human rights’ tribunal in the west directed against Iran’s Islamic leaders would be grossly hypocritical.

I cannot speak for those executed this week, but I am sure the Fedayeen comrades I knew personally who lost their lives in executions or in the dungeons of the Islamic republic would want all of us to concentrate our efforts on supporting the important struggles of the Iranian working class against the regime and against capitalism rather than calling on the west to put this or that religious politician, judge or executioner on trial. There must be no illusions in western liberal democracy. Pinning our hopes on human rights lawyers and do-gooders will only hinder our activities in support of the ideals for which so many of our comrades lost their lives in Kurdistan and the rest of Iran.

Notes

From ‘smart sanctions’ to sanctions with ‘bite’

2010-04-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

From ‘smart sanctions’ to sanctions with ‘bite’

It is the Iranian people who lose and the regime that gains from imperialist threats, writes Yassamine Mather

For the last few months, every day - and at times more than once a day - media presentation of world news has been dominated by US attempts to impose sanctions on Iran. Sometimes it is the visit of a foreign head of state to Washington that is the occasion for the latest call; at other times it is Hillary Clinton’s world tour, or a phone call from Barack Obama to a Chinese leader.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the US (the world military hegemon) is guarding against the danger posed by a hugely powerful state acquiring nuclear weapons. This could not be further from reality. Iran is a country where mass protests for over nine months have not only weakened the state, but also divided the ruling circles to such an extent that a resolution of the internal dispute is unlikely; where neoliberal policies and current levels of sanctions have created a serious economic crisis, with projections of inflation soon reaching 50% and youth unemployment now estimated at 70%. So what is the problem? Why are the US and, for that matter, the world media obsessed with the ‘threat posed by Iran’? A threat that has to be curtailed through the imposition of “severe” sanctions?

As we in Hands Off the People of Iran have stated time and again, the threat has clearly little to do with nuclear issues. Spies and physicists are unanimous that Iran is years away from achieving nuclear weapons capability. ‘Irresponsible’ countries - some with direct and clear connections to terrorist organisations, such as Pakistan, or with dangerous, trigger-happy ‘security’ forces, such as Israel - not only possess nuclear weapons, but refuse to sign up to the non-proliferation treaty, yet the US and its allies have no concern about the nuclear danger they present.

Could it be, as BBC Persian services commentators claimed last week, that the continuing conflict between the United States and Iran and the protraction of the mutual animosity has just become an aadat (habit)?^[1] Clearly this cannot be considered a serious comment.

So why is the US obsessed with Iran? There are four main reasons.

1. The revolution of February 1979 deprived the US of one of its most important allies in the region, and the world hegemon power cannot be seen to be losing control in such a strategic area. Iran’s territorial waters include the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for 40% of the world’s seaborne oil shipments and 20% of all shipments.

2. At a time of world economic crisis the US and its allies need to reassert their authority - not to mention the threat of conflict to boost military expenditure - and, with very few ‘rogue’ states left to choose from, Iran remains prominent in the foreign policy agenda.

3. One should not underestimate the humiliation the US suffered during the 1979-81 crisis, when its Tehran embassy staff were held hostage, and the need, felt by both Democrat and Republican administrations, for revenge.

4. Since the launch of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the US and its allies have inadvertently increased the influence and strength of Iran’s Islamic Republic in the region. There is no other significant power remaining. The US strategy of curbing Shia dominance and maintaining control of the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan necessitates confrontation with Iran.

As far as Iran is concerned, it clearly needs crises and foreign enemies to survive. How else could it explain its failure to achieve any of the basic demands of the February uprising after 31 years in power? The ‘external’ enemy is also essential for continued repression, and sanctions and a state of war are necessary to excuse economic hardship, low wages, unemployment and spiralling prices.

It is now clear that the US and its European allies as well as Russia have reached agreement on new sanctions. That is why recent efforts have been directed at China and, of course, the aim is to obtain a UN resolution - as a basis for a ‘legal war’ on Iran - which does require China’s vote or at least abstention on the security council. In addition China is Iran’s second biggest trading partner (after Germany) and any ‘comprehensive’ sanctions (or, according to the Obama administration, “sanctions with bite”) must include China. All the signs are that a Chinese abstention - or even a vote in favour - is now likely. According to Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, China has now officially agreed to enter talks with western powers about such a resolution.^[2]

Although trade with Iran is important for China, clearly this has limited value, compared to issues more vital to its interests, such as a nuclear deal with the US, the postponement of a decision on exchange-rate policy (last week the US treasury held back from branding China a “currency manipulator” for refusing to float the yuan) and Taiwan (especially in view of the recent US arms sales).

The latest draft proposals agreed by the US, Britain, France and Germany include restrictions on new Iranian banks established abroad and on the insurance of cargo shipments to and from Iran. Commenting on potential restrictions on Iran’s petroleum imports, Iran’s oil minister, Masoud Mir-Kazemi, said the country had sufficient refining capacity. Yet there was panic buying on previous occasions when such threats became headline news. Iranian leaders are also claiming that any sanctions which disrupt the supply of crude oil would, in the words of one Iranian official, “lead to the intensification and prolongation of the economic recession in consumer countries.”^[3]

If a UN resolution is not passed, chancellor Angela Merkel has suggested that Germany and other countries might impose their own sanctions. Obama and French president Nicolas Sarkozy discussed similar plans last week in the White House and Gordon Brown would be expected to push among European partners for measures above and beyond what is likely to be permitted by the security council. These include sanctions to deny Iran access to international banking services and capital markets, permission for Iran’s national airlines and air cargo carriers to use the airspace of the US and its allies, and restrictions on Iran’s shipping firms operating in waters controlled by them.

Sanctions legislation has now passed through both houses of Congress. The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which would penalise foreign companies helping Iran to import gasoline and other refined petroleum products by denying them access to US markets, is now law. Two bills proposing sanctions on leading officials of the Iran regime and the tightening of export controls now await action by a committee and could come into effect later this month.

We in Hopi oppose all imperialist sanctions - whether “smart” or “with bite” - not because we support the Tehran regime in any way: we most certainly do not. We oppose sanctions because they hit ordinary Iranians first and foremost. After three decades of such measures, no-one knows better how to make money out of sanctions-busting than Iran’s clerics and their bazaari allies. Some of them rightly claim to be experts in the operation of the black market, having made their fortunes during the UN embargo against Iraq.

Further sanctions will give the regime yet more excuses to increase repression, placing all the blame for the devastating situation inside Iran on the external enemy. Far from helping the anti-dictatorship movement, sanctions disable the Iranian working class, which faces unpaid wages and further unemployment. The only Iranian supporters of sanctions are, on the one side, the hard-line Islamists in the regime, who hope for an increase in nationalist feelings to save themselves from being overthrown; and, on the other side, their rightwing opponents in the royalist camp, who want to see the defeat of the mass democratic movement and are counting on ‘regime change from above’ to bring them to power. They view themselves as Iranian Chalabis or Karzais - at the head of a pro-US government that can continue Iran’s nuclear programme with the blessing of the ‘international community’.

Unlike the ‘reformists’, royalists and other bourgeois opposition forces, the Iranian working class has stated its position on nuclear development loud and clear, and we in Hopi support that position. We oppose the nuclear programme because it endangers its workforce and threatens the environment, because Iran’s nuclear plants are located in an earthquake zone, and because we believe in a non-nuclear Middle East in a non-nuclear world.

But, most of all, we oppose all measures, from sanctions to a full-blown military assault, that the imperialists threaten against Iran.

Notes

www.bbc.co.uk/persian, March 19.
The Guardian April 1.
Reuters, April 5.Free Jafar Panahi and all political prisoners in Iran

Opposition to imperialism does not mean support for Ahmadinejad

2010-04-01T05:56:00.000-07:00

Opposition to imperialism does not mean support for Ahmadinejad

Mohammad Reza Shalgouni is a founder-member of the Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran (Rahe Kargar) and has been elected as a member of its central committee on a number of occasions. He spent nine years as a political prisoner in Iran under the shah and today is an active supporter of Hands Off the People of Iran. Yassamine Mather interviewed him for the Weekly Worker

Could you explain the origins of your organisation and the space it occupies on the Iranian left?

Before answering your questions, I see it as my duty to thank your party, and especially the comrades involved with the Weekly Worker, for your coverage of issues concerning the movement of the Iranian people and working class. I hope your efforts can help eradicate the obvious misunderstandings of large sections of the western left.

Rahe Kargar started its activities in the early summer of 1979 and those who founded the organisation were mostly ex-activists of the guerrilla movement, who during their incarceration in the shah’s prisons had come to the conclusion that armed struggle had not only failed to weaken the dictatorship, but that it harmed the relationship between the left and the working class.

Rahe Kargar was one of the first organisations of the left that pointed out the reactionary nature of the Islamic Republic and more importantly deduced from this that the Iranian revolution was defeated once the clergy took power. The clergy was a force that would undoubtedly suppress the movement and independent workers’ organisations, as well as all aspects of modern culture (without which socialism would have no significance). It was with this analysis that, in the midst of widespread general optimism stemming from those who considered the ‘massive popular presence on the streets’ as a definite sign of the victory of the revolution, we drew attention to the threat of fascism and the need to confront its formation.

From our point of view, it was important to pay attention to the characteristics of the new dictatorship and to confront the forthcoming threat. Unlike a substantial section of the left, we considered the clergy and their influence and government as the main threat and, inspired by Marx’s analysis of the ruling classes in England and France in the 1850s, we said that, although the clergy in power is defending the interests of the bourgeoisie against workers and toilers, it has its own interests when it acts as a governing caste. And that this is a result of a Bonapartist equilibrium resulting from the simultaneous weakness of both the bourgeoisie and the working class, the two main classes in society, at a time when neither can take political power.

Rahe Kargar started its existence in opposition to the Islamic Republic and has continued to struggle against this regime. But we have always had clear and firm anti-imperialist positions and we categorically oppose any imperialist intervention in Iran or anywhere in the Middle East. We have always been against the dependence of opposition forces on foreign powers.

From the beginning we opposed the dominant traditional position of the Iranian left, concerning the ‘stage of the revolution’ or defence of the bourgeois democratic revolution, and we have always insisted that a durable democracy in the specific conditions of Iran is impossible without the working class coming to power. That requires independent mass organisation of the class in the political, economic and social arena and this cannot be achieved solely through party organisations. That is why non-party, mass organisations of the workers and toilers can also play an important role. In addition, party organisation might take the form of a number of socialist and workers’ parties, which can form a united workers’ front.

Two other issues that distinguish Rahe Kargar from other leftwing organisations in Iran are:

1. the attention we pay to the issue of nationalities in Iran (a multinational country); we defend the right of the country’s nationalities to self-determination, while emphasising the need for voluntary, democratic unity;

2. the destructive confrontation between tradition and modernity (a form of schizophrenia in our country) and putting an emphasis on the importance of keeping in touch with leftwing religious forces, which maintain a democratic and class understanding of religion and strive for a class alliance of workers and toilers.

In our opinion these are essential conditions for the class unity of the proletariat.

Can you give us an overview of the current situation, including the role of the reformists, the process by which sections of the movement became radicalised and the role of the working class?

In order to understand the dynamics of the current anti-dictatorship movement we must pay attention to a number of issues:

First, although this movement expressed itself in protests against rigged elections, its origins predate June 2009. In other words, in order to understand the situation we must remember that the gatherings in June in support of the reformists had nothing to do with people’s illusions about the elections or the reformists’ programme, but were mainly due to opposition to the institution of the vali faghih (Shia supreme religious leader). In fact these elections were similar to 1997, when people voted for Khatami mainly to confront that institution (the supreme leader wanted Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri to be elected at that time) and it should be said that at least during the last 10-12 years, the majority of Iranians have either participated in or boycotted elections as means of expressing opposition to the ruling dictatorship.

Second, the Islamic Republic has major differences with other dictatorships in the third world. We are dealing with a regime that came out of a mass revolution and for a while it did have considerable influence amongst the masses. The Iran-Iraq war (one of the longest of the 20th century) and political pressure by the United States and its allies throughout most of the last three decades have added to the regime’s need to mobilise its mass base.

However, the Islamic regime is also a rare entity amongst world governments in that the clergy has imposed religion as the dominant force in the state apparatus, denying people’s sovereignty even on a theoretical level and in its constitution. In addition, the Islamic Republic is a plural or multi-centred dictatorship, which so far has not succeeded in destroying its own factions and has not become a dictatorship run by a single individual.

Given the above, elections play a different and a more important role in this system compared to most third world dictatorships. Here the principal organs of power are not electable and elections are limited to the lower echelons within the power structure, which are controlled by the structures nominated by the supreme leader. Elections are above all a means to hide the absolute dictatorship foreseen in the constitution and to mobilise the masses, convincing them of a defining role in state policies. Elections are also a means by which the state organises relations between its own factions (its inner circles) and as a result of this the regime has no alternative but to take its elections seriously. So, once candidates have been screened by the Council of Guardians, there is less vote-rigging, compared with other dictatorships. That is why open electoral fraud disturbs the balance of forces in the regime, not only exposing its absolute despotism, but creating difficulties for regulating relationships between its factions.

Third, the Islamic Republic is a religious dictatorship. In this regime civil repression complements political repression. The regime considers daily and constant control over people’s lives as its raison d’être and this repression creates widespread popular resistance. Throughout the last three decades we have seen a weary, direct and indirect mass resistance to the regime’s efforts to impose sharia law and this has played an important role in the erosion of the regime’s support base. In this confrontation, middle layers of society have played an active role, especially in the major cities. That is why some foreign observers (erroneously) refer to the current protests as the revolt of the middle classes.

Fourth, although at the time of the revolution the religious leadership benefited from considerable influence and this was reflected in the support for the governments stemming from the revolution, the imposition of velayat faghih (guardianship by the supreme leader) created many contradictions, which not only forced the government into constant confrontation with society’s daily life and therefore confrontation with large sections of the population, but also created problems within the clerical hierarchy and the religious establishment.

These factors led to a situation where the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic was seriously challenged (in both the political and religious spheres) especially after Khomeini’s death and this precipitated the loss of it support base. In fact the appearance of the reformists (who mainly came from the ‘left’ faction of the regime, or the ‘imam’s line’ group in the first decade of the existence of the Islamic regime) and their victory in the 1987 presidential elections, has no other significance but a sharpening of this crisis of legitimacy. Efforts over the last 12 years by the office of the supreme leader to control the influence of government reformists were mainly attempted through the strengthening of organs under the direct control of the leader and rendering meaningless elected bodies. All this broke down the equilibrium that had previously existed, and it is no coincidence that the crises of the political and religious legitimacy of the regime have coincided.

The office of Iran’s supreme leader is not only in total confrontation with the people, but at the same time most of the Shia ayatollahs who are accepted as sources of religious guidance are trying to distance themselves from him. The truth is that the traditional Shia religious governance is a form of republic (in the way Engels refers to the Protestant church as the ‘republican church’ and the Catholic church as the ‘Royalist church’), but now vali faghih is trying to change it into a royalist system, making the independence of centres of guidance impossible.

Fifth, the vali faghih system is keeping all the real levers of power directly under the control of the supreme leader. In fact under the current constitution his absolute authority is unprecedented even in comparison to absolute kings. As far as religious matters were concerned, even the kings had to accept religious authority, whilst in Iran all the power of both religious and state authorities is concentrated in the hands of one leader. Given the needs of the revolutionary period and later the requirements of war, the first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, tried to present himself as the embodiment of popular will, but during the last two decades, as the crisis surrounding the legitimacy of the regime increased, Ali Khamenei has been forced to use levers of power under his control to neutralise the general and inevitable inclinations of the people and work actively to destroy them.

As a result of this absolute ‘royalist’ power embedded in the constitution, the regime has been recognised as a naked dictatorship by ordinary Iranians. Nowadays all its armed forces are under the direct control of the supreme leader and the president cannot even send a policeman to someone’s door without his permission. The Revolutionary Guards are not only in charge of national security: they also control many of the country’s major economic activities. Today, Iran’s economy is not just divided between the private and the public sector: there is a third, very powerful sector controlled by foundations under the direct influence of the supreme leader - even the parliamentary accounts committee has no control over it. According to some estimates, the resources under the control of these ‘foundations’ account for a quarter of the country’s internal gross production. The broadcasting authority is a state monopoly under the direct control of the vali faghih. The supreme leader is in charge of one fifth of the country’s oil income.

The coincidence of the economic crisis with the anti-dictatorship movement is a sign of the explosive potential of the current situation in Iran. During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, despite all the talk of ‘protecting the disinherited’, Iran’s economy has reached a more critical stage.

Unemployment is increasing at a frightening rate and, according to some estimates, amongst youth it has reached 70%. It should be noted that the 15-30 age group constitutes about 35% of the population. Before the elections, inflation was above 25%, according to figure released by Iran’s Central Bank (even after the manipulation of statistics), and despite the government’s denials it has gone up in recent months. In the first three months of Ahmadinejad’s presidency the cost of housing in most major Iranian cities rose by 1,500% and the cost of housing took up around 75% of the income of an average working class family.

Contrary to the illusions of some left groups outside Iran, Ahmadinejad’s so-called ‘pro-disinherited’ policies played an important role in worsening the structural crisis of Iran’s economy. The first term of the Ahmadinejad presidency coincided with an unprecedented rise in the price of oil and he spent a substantial part of the country’s oil income, as well as the country’s foreign exchange reserves, strengthening the social position of vali faghih. By injecting most of these resources into projects that had no economic value and only benefited the regime’s inner circles, the government created unprecedented inflation, the main burden of which fell on the shoulders of workers and toilers. It is enough to remember that, according to Ahmad Tavakoli (head of the research centre of the Islamic Majles, and one of the most hard-line Principlist-conservative factions of MPs), 46% of all the the ‘quick turnaround’ policies claimed by Ahmadinejad to confront unemployment never existed. In other words, all these claims were a cover for giving credit and low-interest loans (at times no-interest loans) to close associates of the vali faghih. Of course, had it been any different, it would have been surprising, because corruption is endemic in Iran’s Islamic Republic. In fact this regime has all the preconditions for relentless, institutional corruption. It is a rentier oil state and a brutal religious dictatorship, depriving non-believers of any rights.

Right now, according to figures released by the Central Bank, the country’s banking system is facing total bankruptcy, because the banks have provided 50,000 billion tomans (around $50 billion) in non-returnable credit, lost in handouts to the regime’s inner circles. Now, the banking system cannot even provide loans to small production units desperate for credit.

According to some evaluations, around 35% of the population live below the absolute poverty line. This means they face hunger and constant malnutrition. In addition to all this, as a result of the shortage of resources and considerable drop in oil income, the government has been forced to implement sudden measures to abolish subsides for all essential commodities, starting with the energy sector. The implementation of this policy will lead to a jump in the rate of inflation and increase poverty and destitution, making the lives of workers and toilers unbearable.

In view of all this, in my opinion the conditions are not suitable for reform. In general, reforms can only be achieved when the state is reasonably stable and the population is relatively calm and accepts the existing conditions. However, not only do people consider their situation unbearable, not only is there a lively protest movement, but the state is also at breaking point. In such conditions any retreat by the government will only encourage the people. That is why the reformists have little chance of gaining from the situation.

In reality, the electoral fraud, the removal of many reformists from power and the arrest of many of their leading figures was no more than a manifestation of the open bankruptcy of the reformist discourse in our country. It was not the reformists who rebelled against the vali faghih: it was the supreme leader who practically threw them out of the inner circles of the religious state.

In the midst of all this, the emergence of a self-instigated movement against electoral fraud propelled the reformists to the leadership of mass protests. That is the contradictory situation created by the rigged elections - reformists managed to lead the protest at the very time when the bankruptcy of the reform programme had become obvious. Clearly this situation cannot last long. We are now in the post-reformist era and the best proof of this is the growing gap between the slogans of the protest movement and the reformist discourse. The demonstrations that started with slogans like ‘Where is my vote?’ have now moved on to slogans such as ‘Death to the dictator’, ‘Death to Khamenei’, and even ‘Death to the principle of velayat faghih’.

The people’s protest movement started under reformist leadership for two obvious reasons:

1. the first protests were against election fraud and it was inevitable that candidates who lost should take pole position within them;

2. in periods of severe repression, protesters usually rely on some sort of cover to protect them - a cover that can reduce a little bit the cost of protest.

In any case, although the reformist programme was clearly bankrupt, the fact that reformists flocked to the ranks of the protest demonstrates the crisis within the regime. A phenomenon which is a necessary precondition for a revolutionary situation. Today, the presence of reformists on the side of the popular movement is a sign that the ruling order’s position is untenable. At a time when the regime cannot even tolerate reformists who abide by the velayat faghih constitution, we can see a sign of absolute dictatorship and despotism, reducing the regime’s chances of survival. Clearly this situation cannot last for a long time. However the reformists themselves have reached the end of the road - caught between the velayat faghih system and the anti-dictatorship movement of the masses, they are so hemmed in, they have lost the ability to take any initiative.

The brutal, repressive reaction of the regime in confronting the protests was one of the most important factors in the radicalisation of the protest movement over the last eight months. As I mentioned before, the protests against rigged elections (which was indirectly a protest against velayat faghih) disrupted the calculations of the regime. They had not expected mass popular interest in the elections and had even organised TV debates between candidates (a rare event in the Islamic Republic) to try and inject some enthusiasm and show the elections to be a real contest.

In the three weeks before the elections support for reformists candidates became so widespread that Ahmadinejad’s defeat was obvious to everyone. It was in this atmosphere that the vali faghih system, seeing a repetition of the 1997 elections, declared two days before the elections, via the Revolutionary Guards, that a ‘velvet revolution’ was being planned by western powers. On the day of the election itself the Revolutionary Guards staged a military manoeuvre in Tehran to stop this alleged attempt. The election headquarters of reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi was ransacked by plain-clothed security forces.

When the authorities saw the angry reaction of the masses after the announcement of the unbelievable results, they attacked Tehran University on the night of the election, killing a number of people and injuring more than a hundred. And again on June 15, when three million people were marching peacefully against the rigged results, they opened fire on defenceless protesters, killing more people and arresting hundreds. After that came the torture and rape of young boys and girls in prisons, and the death of more than a hundred political prisoners in detention. Illusions in reformism rapidly evaporated and slogans now clearly proclaimed opposition to all the main organs of the current order.

Throughout the last eight months, the shameless Goebbels-like lies of the regime has aggravated the situation. For example, they shamelessly claimed that Neda Agha Soltan, the young girl killed by the security forces, had died through a plot by a BBC reporter, even though witnesses to the attack arrested her killer and confiscated his security ID. When Massoud Ali Agha, a physics professor and supporter of Moussavi, was killed, they claimed he was a nuclear scientist and so Mossad had targeted him. All this, plus the escalating repression, has played a crucial role in reducing the reformists to a forgotten phenomenon and radicalising the youth (the main force behind the anti-dictatorship movement).

Contrary to the opinion of those who consider the movement ‘middle class’, there can be no doubt that workers and toilers have played a very important role in the current protests. For example, how can one say that the June 15 demonstration was only middle class, when Tehran’s mayor admits three million people joined the protest (in a city with a maximum of 12 million inhabitants). Of course, the workers were not raising their own slogans in this demonstration, but the same is true of other sections, such as women and the youth, whose participation in the protests is not in doubt.

We should not forget that we are currently dealing with an anti-despotic movement which is facing brutal repression. In such movements, political protests take the form of sporadic demonstrations, fighting here, fleeing there, and under such conditions workers cannot get involved in independent political struggle at their workplace or in the districts where they live. This is a point made by Rosa Luxembourg in her summation of the Russian uprising of 1905. The experience of the February revolution in Iran against the shah confirms this. In that uprising there was no sign of independent workers’ protests until the massacre of September 1978. It was only after that event (the police opened fire on demonstrators, killing large numbers), when street actions became more difficult and dangerous, that protests moved from the street to workplaces and gradually we witnessed important workers’ strikes. And, of course, at that time, until very close to February 1979, most of the workers’ strikes only raised economic and trade union demands.

At present too, despite all the arrests and repression of labour activists, workers’ protests in support of their demands has manifestly increased. A review of workers’ protests over the last eight months and a comparison of these with the same period last year leaves no doubt that the workers’ movement is on the rise. The least one can say is that without a movement based on workers, toilers and the poor (who constitute the overwhelming majority of the population of the country) the current anti-dictatorship movement will get nowhere and in fact it is even difficult to envisage its continuation. Of course, the elimination of subsidies on essential goods (which is due to start in the first weeks of the new Iranian year, beginning on March 21) will no doubt lead to major workers’ protests and this can create suitable conditions for the development of class-consciousness.

We must also remember that under dictatorships people do not believe any of the government’s propaganda and in general do not consider the enemy of the government as their enemy (they are more likely to consider them as friends). In other words, that famous saying, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’, gains legitimacy. In today’s Iran, where the regime’s entire propaganda is geared towards opposition to the United States, public opinion against the US is weaker than in most Islamic countries. A couple of months ago when Obama was discussing the nuclear issue with the regime, in one of the demonstrations people were shouting, “Obama, Obama, you are either with them or with us!”

However, this does not mean people are oblivious to the dangers of military action or economic sanctions. One can say with certainty that the majority of Iranians are opposed to economic sanctions and any military action against their country. In particular, the US military invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the general massacre and destruction it has created in our two neighbouring countries has had a profound effect on public opinion in Iran. There are even signs (unfortunately) that Iranians support the regime’s nuclear programme and would not even mind if their country possessed nuclear weapons. In fact the painful experience of the bombing of cities during the Iran-Iraq war and especially the indifference of western states towards the use of chemical weapons by Saddam’s regime during that war created a sense of nationalist impotence which the regime tries to use. It is no coincidence that at present the state raises the nuclear issue in order to divide the masses.

How optimistic are you regarding the future of this movement? What are the prospects of the working class putting its stamp on any regime that follows the defeat of the theocracy?

There are many reasons to be optimistic about the prospects for this movement. In fact, even if this movement dies down today and its continuation becomes impossible, what it has achieved so far will have historic consequences.

The events of the last eight to nine months have left the Islamic regime with no future. Even if it survives for a while, it will never recover from the fatal blows it has suffered at the hands of this mass uprising. The young generation, the main motor of these protests, did not witness the 1979 revolution or the bloody repression of the first decade of this regime and until recently it was preoccupied with minor changes and certainly not thinking about social revolution. This generation is now irreversibly against the very existence of the Islamic regime.

There is no doubt that during the last three decades Iran’s economy has fared worse than other countries in the region. For example, in 1977 (a year before the revolution), Iran’s gross national product per capita was 60% more than Turkey and five times more than Egypt’s. Now Iran’s GNP, despite its oil income, is only 14% ahead of Turkey, and just twice that of Egypt.

The civil repression imposed by the regime will have consequences that will be with us for a long time. It is enough to remember that Iranian girls have been deprived of participation in sport for three decades and have not taken part in any major international sporting competition. The damage resulting from this is a tragedy that is occasionally referred to even within the pages of the regime’s own educational journals. The reason is that, according to the clerics, girls’ sporting activity must not be seen from people in neighbouring buildings, for example, and this makes any form of sport in girls’ schools impossible. The absence of any rights for women has turned half of the society into second-class citizens, as far as law is concerned.

Around 15% of the country’s population - the Sunnis, who are mainly Kurds, Baluchis and Turkmens - face double deprivation because of their religious beliefs and this endangers the country’s territorial unity. It is a weapon in the hands of the US and its allies.

For all its claims of supporting the ‘disinherited’, Iran’s Islamic regime is thoroughly corrupt, it is a parasitic state, pursuing brutal, anti-worker policies. According to many estimates, the current line of poverty in Iran stands at 800,000 tomans ($800), while the official minimum wage (which is often ignored and workers are paid less) is 300,000 tomans ($300). More than 80% of workers have temporary jobs and those in workplaces of less than 10 employees (ie, the majority of Iranian workers) are officially exempt from any labour legislation. For them it is the law of the jungle. Even those activists who demand the establishment of independent workers’ organisations or workers who fight for payment of unpaid wages are arrested and tortured.

It is revealing to compare the government’s attitude towards capitalists and managers compared to its attitude to workers. Last year when the government announced a two percent rise in tax for bazaar merchants, it faced a strike by shop owners in the Tehran bazaar and the state retreated immediately.

All this shows that the current anti-dictatorship movement is the only hope for improving the plight of the working class and ordinary people in Iran. The continuation of this movement and expansion of its scope has created a suitable atmosphere for raising class-consciousness and the formation of independent workers’ organisations and no doubt will improve political conditions in favour of workers to such an extent that it will, in the words of the Persian proverb, learn in one night what usually takes a century. Of course, if the regime creates such an atmosphere of fear where workers’ participation in political and economic protests becomes more difficult and costly, there is a danger that the struggle will take a violent form, when the role of organisations associated with foreign powers would increase, initiatives from below by the working class would fade away and reactionary, anti-democratic forces would gain the upper hand.

Let us not forget that, unlike the shah’s regime, Iran’s Islamic Republic has many powerful enemies throughout the world who seek to find allies amongst the forces opposed to the regime. No doubt such a scenario will harm democratic and socialist forces within the movement and it will give the regime an excuse to link the people’s legitimate struggles with foreign powers. In my opinion the worst scenario in the current situation would arise if groups associated with foreign powers gained more influence within the opposition, because even if they do not manage to stifle the protests they will divert it from its democratic direction.

However, given the current awareness amongst social movements inside Iran, especially amongst the youth over the last 10-12 years, one can be hopeful that the anti-dictatorship movement will not be diverted from such a path. Of course, liberal discourse still dominates Iran’s political scene and the left has a steep hill to climb to overcome this problem. But if the protest continues and takes a revolutionary path, as the role of the working class increases, the conditions for the dominance of socialist thought will develop.

How do you see radical change in Iran linking in with political developments in the region as a whole?

The coming to power of the clergy in the February 1979 uprising in Iran undoubtedly played a significant role in the development of Islamic movements in the region. In my opinion, the overthrow of the Islamic Republic in Iran can play an important part in weakening the influence of Islamic movements.

The reality is that Iran’s Islamic experience is about 10 years older than other countries and so disillusionment with Islamism came much earlier than in other Muslim countries. The overthrow of the Iranian regime could increase that process in other countries, even though it might not necessarily lead to the coming to power of defenders of socialism in our country. Given the current situation in Iran and the region, such a perspective is possible.

It should be pointed out that, although liberal discourse is still powerful in Iran, the economic crisis engulfing world capitalism, the destructive effects of US military intervention, the bankruptcy of corrupt, pro-western regimes in the region and the fact that they are not tolerated - all this has created suitable conditions where, with the demise of Islamism, toilers in the region might turn towards more enlightened horizons. We are now witnessing the Islamic movements subsiding and if US military interventions stopped this decline would be faster. In none of these countries would liberalism be capable of responding to the stacked up problems of poverty, dictatorship and obscurantism, nor can it benefit from mass support amongst workers and toilers.

Right now in two key countries of the region, Egypt and Turkey, a powerful working class movement is rising and if in Iran the anti-dictatorship movement succeeds in strengthening the working class left (and in my opinion there is a strong possibility of that happening) it may be that a ‘strategic bloc’ would be created in these three key countries. A strong left in Iran, Egypt and Turkey would be in a good position to oppose not only the swagger about the ‘free market’ and neoliberalism, but also the obscurantist slogans of Islamism. In reality both currents are not as attractive as they used to be in the Middle East and if the left can learn from past mistakes and take up a democratic, radical, mass-orientated discourse, our region can move in a direction similar to Latin America.

The principal danger for the formation of such a perspective in our region is the destructive policies of the US. For example, Nato’s plans in Afghanistan and Pakistan might lead to the disintegration of both countries - a phenomenon that will be as destructive as an earthquake for the whole region, and especially Iran. Countries in the region have strong religious, tribal and cultural links and Iran has more than 2,500 kilometres of common borders with these Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tribal strife in Kirkuk could heat up dangerous nationalist strife in Iraq, strengthening such arguments in the region and producing disastrous consequences.

What are the role and tasks of the international solidarity movement with those fighting the Iranian regime?

Undoubtedly the solidarity of western organisations and parties with the Iranian people has an important subjective effect on political and social activists inside the country.

Of course, we must have a realistic understanding of this influence. The truth is that the Islamic regime has a monopoly when it come to the radio and television that is available to all and especially the lower classes. These media present everything in a distorted manner, with Goebbels-like lies, and constantly make use of the support of some western left groups who praise the regime’s anti-imperialism! This creates a certain hatred of the ‘international’ left amongst the population. Let there be no doubt: any support for the regime is met with nothing but animosity from the people it suppresses. Satellite radio and television, available to around 20% of the population, is mainly controlled by the US, UK or sections of the opposition directly or indirectly connected to foreign powers and most of them are anti-left and combine opposition to the regime with propaganda for the stance of the US and its allies.

Expressions of support for the working class movement in Iran from international progressive, leftwing organisations is mainly possible through the internet. However, although it is the most important means of communication for the majority of anti-dictatorship activists, inevitably it has a limited number of users - an optimistic estimate would be that 10% of the population has access to the internet.

Despite these limitations, though, support for the anti-despotic movement and, of course, for worker struggles plays an important role in strengthening the left and attracting the country’s youth towards socialist ideas. Let us not forget that there are already favourable conditions for the re-establishment of a strong worker-socialist movement and clear positions taken by socialist forces in the west help bring neoliberalism as well as Islamist ideas into disrepute. In my opinion the anti-war, anti-sanctions movement abroad undoubtedly has a positive influence on the Iranian people, because, as I said before, the overwhelming majority of Iranians do not want to see a repetition of the Iraqi or Afghan experience in their own country, and they have seen how it is ordinary people who suffer the burden of sanctions (Iran has already had three decades of sanctions).

But the important issue is that opposition to the imperialist policies of the US and its allies must not lead to support for the Iranian government. Unfortunately the position of certain ‘anti-imperialist’ forces in the west is as damaging as the stance of those who support military intervention and sanctions. It is vital to oppose war and sanctions, but it must never take the form of supporting the dictatorial, bloodthirsty and obscurantist Islamic Republic. We must not forget that any support for the Islamic regime discredits leftwing and socialist ideas and in practice strengthens the hand of the US and its allies. Whether they like it or not, leftwing apologists for the regime actually help strengthen the imperialist, pro-capitalist camp in our country.

Our readers have followed Rahe Kargar’s stance on many issues for over two decades. Could you explain the reasons for last year’s split in your organisation?

The reason for the split was that for quite a while a group of people had tended towards a kind of reformist anarchism and latterly they wanted to impose their anti-organisation model on the rest of us.

Of course, they were only a minority, but others who did not necessarily agree with them politically ended up supporting them organisationally, creating conditions which would have meant nothing but dissolution. This made coexistence in the same organisation impossible. Amongst the comrades who had more formulated ideas were those who followed an interpretation of John Holloway’s ‘change the world without taking power’. But they propagate a caricature version of this, portraying any organisation as stifling and they are opposed not only to the notions of a working class party and state, but even to trade unions and other workers’ organisations.

The conflict started around an article written by one of the comrades regarding the establishment of independent trade unions in Iran. This comrade warned workers that such an organisation would lead to hierarchical structures and claimed that unions, which limit their politics to economic issues, would benefit the liberals and pave the way for conciliation with capitalists. Those responsible for the website and the organisation’s paper, followed our internal rules and put this article in the ‘point of view’ section of the website and some comrades considered this discriminatory. The reality is that the Iranian working class is actually fighting to establish independent organisations and it is not our policy to leave the working class defenceless.

Another difference arose around Palestine, starting with Israel’s attack on Gaza. They thought the condemnation of Israel’s crimes must be expressed in such a way that it would not strengthen Hamas and, although this was not clearly expressed, they wanted us to condemn both sides (Israel and Hamas) equally. Our position was that Israel’s crimes must be condemned unconditionally and firmly.

Report of Cork meeting & Week of Action 13-20 February

2010-02-07T03:14:00.000-08:00

On January 28 the Historical Society at University College Cork, hosted a useful meeting. The theme was the history of the ‘new left’ in Iran and the talk was presented by Yassamine Mather. Over 50 people attended and took part in the discussion, which was wide-ranging and thought-provoking.

Some Iranian students argued that ‘reformist’ leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi would be a step forward compared to the present government. It was said that the working class could become stronger under a ‘reformist’ administration.

Yassamine answered that Moussavi has now accepted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election as president and has conciliated with the regime. He fears the masses and is willing to broker a compromise to undermine the movement for change. If he gets into power he will move to crush the struggle, not facilitate it. He was prime minister in the 1980s when thousands of activists were massacred by the regime. Moussavi is not in essence different from Ahmadinejad. He and the ‘reformists’ want to preserve the status quo.

A question was raised about whether Ahmadinejad is an ally against Israeli domination of the Middle East. Yassamine replied that his was a fake anti-imperialism and the true relationship with Israel is less belligerent than Ahmadinejad pretends. He is willing to make whatever deals are necessary, both with imperialism and with the Israeli government, to stay in power and maintain Iran’s own regional influence.

The issue of national minorities within Iran was explored, and it was acknowledged as a vital issue in the struggle.

The kind of solidarity we could provide was also discussed and Yassamine said that she believed we need to give support to the prisoners arrested during the recent struggles. We need to demand an immediate end to executions and the unconditional release of all political prisoners now.

Hopi in Cork will follow this successful meeting with a continuing programme of solidarity. We will hold a week of action from February 13-20. This will include street stalls, meetings and other fundraising activity.

An organising meeting will take place this coming Tuesday February 9, at 7.30pm at Solidarity Books in Douglas Street. For further information and to get involved, contact me on 086 23 43 238, at Anne@hopoi.info or via www.hopi-ireland.org

Hopi Week of Action February 13-20
Manchester: Saturday February 13: Day school, University of Manchester students union, meeting room 1, Oxford Road, M13, 1pm. Sessions on ‘Imperialism and Iran’, ‘The Iranian revolution 1979 and today’. Followed by fundraiser, 6pm, Whitworth Arms, 508 Moss Lane East, Rusholme, Manchester, M14.

London, Friday February 19, 7pm: Solidarity gig, Ryan’s Bar, Church Street, Stoke Newington, N16. £5 (£10 concessions).

Declaration from Steelworkers in Iran

2010-01-25T09:12:00.000-08:00

Declaration on the formation of the Provisional Workers Council in
Isfahan's Steel Company
Isfahan's Steel Company is and has always been one of the largest industrial complexes in Iran. Despite this, and although workers have been involved in industrial action to improve their working conditions, Iran's Steel Company workers have never benefited from the right to form any type of trade union , workers organisation... to defend their wages and, to pursue their just rights and demands.

In the current situation, as a result of severe economic hardship and the uncertain future, at a time when workers in this complex face many backbreaking pressures, as a group of workers of Steel Company we have decided to take the very first steps in the direction of defending workers right and consolidating our dispersed ranks hereby announcing the formation of the Provisional Council of Isfahan's Steel Company Workers.

Since this step (the formation of the council) was taken in conditions of underground work, it is not based upon workers' elections.That is why the council has given itself the title "provisional" however, as a body it is committed to hold free elections with the participation of all factory workers as soon as suitable conditions arise. Until such time, this council will endeavor to defend the rights of all workers in this complex and we will keep fellow workers informed of all our decisions through
statements.

The council presents its positions and views as follows;

1 - The council considers all workers equal and alike. It believes that both the obvious and hidden discriminations between official workers and workers under contract (those employed directly by the company under contract or through contractor companies) are initiated entirely by managers and decision makers and workers are not responsible for this. The Council believes that the creation of such discriminations amongst workers is a deliberate policy to divide workers in this complex.

2 - Council believes that the right to strike is an absolute right of the work force, and, in conditions where the company's workers have not received their wages (for between two to six months) going on strike is the only means by which the workers can struggle for their demands. Therefore the council states its solidarity with courageous workers of Ehyagostaran Espadan, Nasooz Azar, Isaargarane-hadid, Nasre Bonyad and all the workers who have gone on strike to fight for the payment of their unpaid wages.

3 - The councils warns workers to be aware of the delays of official deadlines for payment of their wages and monthly bonuses, There is a possibility that management is trying to reduce or abolish monthly bonuses; that is why workers have every right to go on hunger strike, white strike (working less and disrupting production lines) and finally strike. Such actions are just and legitimate.

4 - Council finds Plant's policies of blaming workers for all the severe hardships they face , especially when accidents causes workers death or severe injuries leading to handicap as an inhumane policies and, declares that the main reasons for safety failures are severe working conditions for the workforce, worn out equipment, old technologies and pressure and expedition that the management imposes upon workers to increase production.

5 -At a time when the official line of poverty in urban areas is declared (by the state) to be 800 thousands Tomans, the council finds maximum income of 400 thousand Tomans per month an obvious oppression towards workers and their families and expects gradual, step by step annihilation of discriminations between official workers and reset of the work force.

6 - The council believes Privatising the Steel Company complex will have terrible effects upon the workers' living conditions and their labour and considers the reconstruction period for privatization as definite proof that showed the effects of this policy on workers' income and conditions; this is an experience we, Iran Steel workers are experiencing every day.

7 - Billions have been paid for expenses and hundred million Toman contracts made and spent on the Steel Company Football Team during the last few years at a time when official workers are paid with delay and rest of the workforce has incomes below the poverty line. The Council's view is that such policies are outrageous.

8 - Council considers company's weekly ATISHKAR as a management source use for self flattery and exaggerated claims. The claim that the company produced and supplied the railroad for the National Rail Company - is a blatant lie and every worker here is aware of it. The Council expects ATISHKAR's content to include reports about workers' payment conditions and their protests, covering all incidents that cause death and disability, announcing the names of workers dying at work and also monthly reports about work accidents.

9 - Due to not having aboveboard activities the council asks all workers to create their spontaneous workers nucleuses all over the Steel Company and,it believes without such units formed by workers themselves they will not have a chance develop to their struggles and advance in them. Role of such units is bringing awareness, unity and solidarity among workers and electing leaders for their struggles. Such units can be formed around team of friends, recreation groups, workers welfare boxes and so forth.

Fellow workers! We shake your hands in solidarity.

Provisional Council of Isfahan Steel Company - January 2010

‘Reformists’ fear revolution

2010-01-22T10:29:00.001-08:00

‘Reformists’ fear revolution

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 the protesters, continue. Clearly now no-one, from the government to the ‘reformists’, to the revolutionary opposition, has any doubt that the current protests are no longer about who should be the ‘president’ of the Islamic Republic, but represent a serious challenge to the very existence of the religious state.

Ashura is a day of mourning for Shia Muslims, as they commemorate the martyrdom of Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Mohammed in 680AD. In December 2009 it coincided with the seventh day following the death of a clerical critic of the regime, ayatollah Montazeri. Throughout Iran hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets with slogans against the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. When security forces attacked, the crowds fought back. Tehran was “covered in thick smoke from fires and tear gas” and there was “hand-to-hand combat between security forces and the protesters,” with reports of street battles in other major cities.¹ For the first time in the last 30 years, many women came out into the streets to join the demonstrations wearing no headscarves or hijabs.

At a number of locations in Tehran security forces were forced to retreat, as demonstrators burnt police vehicles and bassij posts and erected barricades. There are videos showing instances where police and bassij were captured and detained by demonstrators and three police stations in Tehran were briefly occupied. Demonstrators also attacked Bank Saderat in central Tehran, setting it on fire.

The government’s reaction was predictable. Since December 27 bassij and pasdaran (revolutionary guards) have been unleashed to impose further repression. Hundreds of people have been incarcerated. The summary arrest of leftwing and worker activists, the death sentences issued against left political prisoners, the sacking of workers already in prison are part of a deliberate attempt by the regime to impose an atmosphere of terror.

Ultra-conservative clerics have also called for the arrest and execution of ‘reformist’ leaders. In a speech on January 9 the supreme leader told government security forces and the judiciary to act decisively against “rioters and anti-government demonstrators”.

Conservative divisions

Despite the bravado of Khamenei, there are clear signs that the demonstrations of December 27 have divided the conservatives further on how to respond to the protests. While supporters of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly call for more arrests and even the execution of political opponents, the ‘principlist’ faction² within parliament is preaching caution.

On January 9, a parliamentary committee publicly blamed Tehran’s former prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, a close ally of Ahmadinejad, for the death of three prisoners arrested during anti-government protests in June 2009. The committee found that Mortazavi had authorised the imprisonment of 147 opposition supporters and 30 criminals in a cell measuring only 70 square metres in Kahrizak detention centre. The inmates were frequently beaten and spent days without food or water during the summer.

Ali Motahhari, a prominent fundamentalist parliamentarian, told the weekly magazine Iran Dokht: “Under the current circumstances, moderates should be in charge of the country’s affairs.” He suggested Ahmadinejad should also be held accountable for the deaths in Kahrizak and for fuelling the post-election turmoil. Iranian state television is broadcasting debates between ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ conservatives, in which Ahmadinejad is blamed by some for causing the crisis.

There are two reasons for this dramatic change in line:

1. The December 27 demonstrations were a turning point, in that both conservatives and ‘reformists’ came to realise how the anger and frustration of ordinary Iranians with the political and economic situation is taking revolutionary forms.

2. The principlists are responding to a number of ‘proposals’ by leading ‘reformists’ as a last attempt to save the Islamic Republic. Fearful of revolution, ‘reformist’ leaders from the June 2009 presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi to former president Mohammad Khatami have made conciliatory statements, and the moderate conservatives have responded positively to these approaches.

‘Reformist’ compromise

In a clear sign that ‘reformists’ have heard the cry of the revolution, Moussavi’s initial response to the Ashura demonstrations was to distance himself from the protests, emphasising that neither he nor Mehdi Karroubi had called for protests on that day. His statement on January 1 entitled ‘Five stages to resolution’ (of the crisis) was a signal to both his supporters and opponents that this was truly the last chance to save the Islamic regime from collapse.

Western reportage of the statement concentrated on his comment, “I am ready to sacrifice my life for reform.” Of course, Iranians are well known for their love of ‘martyrdom’, from Ashura itself to the Fedayeen Islam in 1946,³ to the Marxist Fedayeen (1970s-80s). Iranians have been mesmerised by the Shia concept of martyrdom, inherited from Sassanide ideals, a yearning to put their lives at risk for what they see as a ‘revolutionary cause’. But Moussavi will no doubt go down in history as the first Iranian who is putting his life on the line for the cause of ‘reform’ and compromise!

His five-point plan is seen as a compromise because it does not challenge the legitimacy of the current president and “presents a way out of the current impasse” in order to save the Islamic Republic, basically demanding more freedom for the Islamic ‘reformist’ politicians, activists and press, as well as accountability of government forces, while reaffirming his allegiance to the constitution of the Islamic regime, as well as the existing “judicial and executive powers”. The preamble to the proposal explains very well Moussavi’s message to the supreme leader and the conservative faction: it is not too late to save the regime, but this could be our last chance.

It reads: “Today the situation of the country is like an immense roaring river, where massive floods and various events have led to its rising and then caused it to become silted. The solution to calm down this great river and clear its water is not possible in a quick and swift action. Thinking of these kinds of solutions that some should repent and some should make deals and there should be some give and take to solve this great problem is in practice going off the track ... I also believe that it is still not too late and our establishment has the power to accomplish this important task, should it have insight and a respectful and kind view toward all of the nation and its layers.”

This statement was followed on January 4 by a ‘10-point proposal’ from the self-appointed ‘ideologues’ in exile of Iran’s Islamic ‘reformist’ movement: the former Pasdar, Akbar Ganji (nowadays introduced on BBC and CNN as a “human rights activist!”), Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohsen Kadivar, Abdolali Bazargan and Ataollah Mohajerani.⁴

Fearful that the Moussavi plan will be seen by many as too much of a compromise, the group of five call for the resignation of Ahmadinejad and fresh elections under the supervision of a newly established independent election commission to replace that of the Guardian Council. In the last few days both Khatami and another former president, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, have publicly declared their support for the compromise, while condemning “radicals and rioters”. Khatami went further than most, insulting demonstrators who called for the overthrow of the Islamic regime.

All in all, it has been a busy two and a half weeks for Iran’s ‘reformists’, terrified by the radicalism of the demonstrators and desperate to save the clerical regime at all cost. Inevitably the reformist left, led by the Fedayeen Majority, is tailing the Moussavi-Khatami line. However, inside Iran there are signs that the leadership of the green movement is facing a serious crisis.

None of the proposals addresses the most basic democratic demand of the Iranian people: separation of state and religion. A widely distributed leaflet and web post inside Iran entitled ‘Who is the leader of the current protest movement in Iran?’ refers to comments made by ayatollah Taleghani 31 years ago,⁵ at the height of the revolutionary movement. Taleghani, faced with a similar question, replied that it was the shah who led the protest movement because the repression he imposed and his inability to compromise caused it to move forward day by day. The leaflet concludes that the current force leading the movement is supreme leader Khamenei, who by his words and actions is fuelling the revolutionary fervour.

Working class response

In every event Iranians see real and imaginary parallels with the 1978-79 uprising that led to the shah’s downfall. Last week the publication of Khamenei’s alleged escape plans and the revelations that senior clerics had arranged to send their fortunes abroad to avoid sanctions and the consequences of an uprising reminded Iranians of January 1979, when the shah and his entourage were busy making similar arrangements.

The Iranian left is not immune to such nostalgia. Arguments about the ‘principal contradiction’ and ‘stages of revolution’ seem to dominate current debates. While some Maoists argue in favour of a ‘democratic stage’ of the revolution, citing the relative weakness of the organised working class, the Coordinating Committee for the Setting Up of Workers’ Organisations (Comite Hahamhangi) points out that the dominant contradiction in Iran, a country where 70% of the population lives in urban areas, is between labour and capital. They point out that the level and depth of workers’ struggles show radicalism and levels of organisation and that the Iranian working class is the only force capable of delivering radical democracy.

Leftwing organisations and their supporters are also discussing the lessons to be learnt from the Ashura demonstrations. Clearly sections of the police and soldiers are refusing to shoot at demonstrators and the issue of organising radical conscripts in order to divide and reduce the power of the state’s repressive forces must be addressed. In some working class districts around Tehran and other major cities the organisation of neighbourhood shoras (councils) has started.

The current debates within the ruling circles have had no impact on the level of protests undertaken by workers and students. There are reports of strikes and demonstrations in one of Iran’s largest industrial complexes, Isfahan’s steel plant, where privatisation and contract employment have led to action by the workers. Leftwing oil workers/employees are reporting disillusionment with Moussavi and the ‘reformist’ camp amongst fellow workers and believe there is an opportunity to radicalise protests in this industry despite the fact that close control and repression has intensified over the recent period.

Last week a number of prominent labour activists, including Vahed bus worker Mansour Ossanlou, who are currently in prison (some incarcerated for over a year) were sacked from their jobs for ‘failing to turn up at work’, which prompted protests in Vahed depots and the Haft Tapeh sugar cane plant. In late December workers at the Lastic Alborz factory went on strike demanding payment of unpaid wages. This week workers have been holding protests at dozens of workplaces, including the Arak industrial complex, the Mazandaran textile factory, at the Polsadr metro construction and in Tonkabon.

Over the next few weeks Iranian workers will face major challenges. Even if the two main factions of the regime achieve a compromise, it will be unlikely to defuse the movement. In fact the conciliatory line of Moussavi and Khatami is certain to further reduce their influence amongst protesters. However, if the religious state is able to reunite, it will be more difficult to attend demonstrations, call strikes and hold sit-ins, etc.

Whatever happens, Iranian workers will need our solidarity more than ever. That is why Hands Off the People of Iran is currently planning a week of solidarity and fundraising actions in February - check the Hopi website for more details (www.hopoi.org).

Notes

1. New York Times December 29 2009.

2. One of the groups in the conservative faction of the Iranian parliament.

3. Fedayeen Islam was one of the first truly Islamic fundamentalist organisations in the Muslim world. It was founded in Iran by Navab Safavi in 1946 for the purpose of demanding strict application of the sharia and assassinating those it believed to be apostates and enemies of Islam.

4. http://enduringamerica.com/2010/01/04/iran-five-expatriate-intellectuals-issue-the-demands-of-the-green-movement.

5. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Taleghani.

Siahkal 1971 - Tehran 2010

2010-01-13T13:58:00.000-08:00

UCC History Society hosts

“Siahkal 1971 - Tehran 2010 the history of the new left in Iran”.

Boole 3, Main Campus, University College Cork, College Road.

January 28th 7.30pmYassamine Mather, Iranian political activist and writer will trace the emergence of a movement of extraordinary significance in the struggle for democracy in Iran today.

“The take over of a gendarmerie in the small village of Siahkal on 8 February 1971 by a group of revolutionaries marked the beginning of the end for the despotic rule of the Shah. Nine members of the newly formed Fedayeen, a left-wing guerrilaist group launched an attack which sparked the creation of an armed revolutionary movement in Iran. While the attack itself was easily crushed, the event and the massive repression that followed proved to be a turning point in the struggle against the Shah. It inspired a new culture of poetry, song and art for a new generation and created a momentum of resistance that would result in the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.”

“Today again the movement is on the streets of Iran. Another generation is refusing to be silenced or cowed into submission, despite the overwhelming force used against them by the Islamic regime. The anniversary of Siahkal and the movement it created has become particularly significant for today’s opposition. There has been a renaissance of the music and poetry of the 1970s. The political parallels are obvious but today illusions in Islamic radicalism have gone. The revolution begun by Siahkal remains unfinished.”

Yassamine Mather, Glasgow
Yassamine Mather is an Iranian socialist in exile in Scotland. As a young woman in Iran she became a member of the Fedayeen. In exile, she left the group and became a member of the coordinating committee of Workers Left Unity Iran. She is a member of the Centre for Socialist Theory and Movements (Glasgow University) and the deputy editor of the journal Critique. She is in active contact with the left-wing and student movement in Iran today

Theocracy threatens bloodbath as mass movement grows

2010-01-07T09:02:00.000-08:00

Theocracy threatens bloodbath as mass movement grows

Iranian workers are one the offensive, reports Chris Strafford

2010 has begun the way 2009 ended in the Islamic Republic of Iran, with millions protesting in cities and towns across the country. But the dangers facing the Iranian people have undoubtedly increased over the last few weeks.

Further sanctions are being put in place, and Obama is holding back Israel for the time being, but has been promising “decisive action” if Iran does not halt all uranium enrichment. One Israeli diplomat was quoted in The Guardian as saying, “Obama has convinced us that it’s worth trying the sanctions, at least for a few months” (January 3). The imperialists seem to be moving towards military aggression this year - Washington has now dismissed the validity of the intelligence estimate which concluded that Iran was no longer trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

They have also been hypocritically talking about repression and democracy in Iran. Yet it was the CIA that put into power and propped up the vicious regime of the shah, under whom similar scenes to what we are seeing on the streets of Iran today were played out again and again. And today the US and Britain support regimes which are equally adept at violent oppression, such as that of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

While the alleged threat of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons is played upon, the only actual nuclear power in the region, which happens to have a history of bloody military adventures and aggression, continues to threaten Iran. Israel undertook joint war games with the US in October to test its new ground-to-air missile defence system.

Imperialist warmongering and sanctions have undoubtedly damaged the mass and working class movement in Iran, but despite that at present that movement is very much on the offensive. The funeral of ayatollah Montazeri, who died on December 20, became a focus for the latest opposition protests, with hundreds of thousands attending. A founder of the Islamic Republic, he later became a loyal oppositionist who was horrified by the mass murder that took place under Khomeini, along with the embarrassment of the Iran-Contra affair. His funeral procession and the gatherings in Qom were attacked by state repressive forces, which only fuelled the protests.

Tens of thousands of ordinary Iranians came out onto the streets on Sunday December 27. Clashes took place in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Ardebil, Arababad and Mashhad. Martial law was declared in Najaf-Abad and at least four were killed in the city of Tabriz. In every part of Iran security forces, backed up by bassij militia and Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), resorted to violence to put down protests.

In Tehran the supreme leader’s residence was surrounded by massed ranks of Pasdaran and police. Throughout the day chants such as “This month is a month of blood! Khamenei will be toppled!” rang out in the streets. A clear indication of how far the movement has come since the initial protests against the rigging of the June 2009 presidential elections by one wing of the regime against the other.

In Tehran clashes erupted at many religious sites, as people started to gather for the planned opposition protests. The fighting was intense, with security forces being forced to retreat, as demonstrators burnt police vehicles and bassij posts and erected barricades. In a couple of instances police and bassij were captured and detained by demonstrators and three police stations in Tehran were briefly occupied. Demonstrators also attacked the Saderat Bank in central Tehran, setting it on fire.

As the day wore on, the security forces began to crack, with the first division of the special forces refusing orders to shoot protestors. There are many pictures and videos that show police retreating or being beaten back. There are also unconfirmed statements from sections of the army declaring that they will not be used to put down popular unrest.

Over a week on it is still unclear how many were killed - reports range from seven to 15, but it is known that the nephew of ‘reformist’ leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi is among them. The official cause of the deaths that have been admitted varies from ‘accident’ to ‘murder by unknown assailants’. Marxist groups and the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organisation (MKO) have also been blamed, although videos and pictures have been posted online of the bassij firing on demonstrators.

Hundreds have been incarcerated and 300 of those arrested during the recent protests have been moved to section eight of Gohardasht prison under the control of the Revolutionary Guards. Beatings, torture and rape of prisoners is continuing on a daily basis. Ebrahim Raiesi, first undersecretary of the judicature, said that the “rioters” will be prosecuted immediately and that charges range from “causing disorder” to “war against Islam” (which is punishable by death).

On December 30, 500 bassiji and Hezbollah attacked a gathering at the University of Mashhad armed with knives. They injured dozens of students and arrested over 200, possibly killing two. The day after, over 4,000 students and professors staged protests against the attacks and arrests at Ferdowsi and Azad universities, but were laid siege by security forces and militia.

Students, professors and parents have tried to find out information about those arrested and hospitalised. They sent a delegation made up of representatives from the university Islamic Society to meet with officials, but they were themselves arrested. Amongst them is Seyed Sadra Mirada, a relative of Khamenei.

Protestors have taken to chanting “Independence, freedom, Iranian republic” - a slogan that has been condemned by Moussavi as too radical, as the ‘reformists’ go to great lengths to try and impose some sort of control on the mass movement. Other slogans that have been used include “Not the coup government, nor America” and “No colour revolution here!”

The ongoing political crisis in Iran is compounded by the economic crisis caused by the neoliberal polices pursued by consecutive governments, the world economic crisis and sanctions. Inflation is running at over 25% and unemployment has reached 12.5% - nearing 30% for young workers - impoverishing millions of families. Workers in numerous industries have gone months without pay, and on January 4 those at the Mazandaran textile factory downed tools in protest against non-payment of wages and the laying off of workers on temporary contracts.

The economic situation and the political upheaval have fused the demands of the workers’ movement with those of students and the mass movement as a whole. More and more workers are taking part in, sometimes leading, the street protests. This has scared the authorities, who have begun rounding up known left and worker activists across Iran.

The regime aims to scare the movement off the streets with dire threats. On January 2 the Revolutionary Guard released a statement saying: “The devoted bassijis of Greater Tehran will smother all the voices that come out of the throat of the enemies of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.” This came amongst calls by leading conservative clerics, such as the chair of the Guardian Council, ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, for the execution of leading activists. A motion has been submitted to the Iranian parliament calling for “enemies of the Islamic Republic” to be hanged within five days.

The international workers’ movement must be prepared for a new round of mass murder in Iran. We must support our comrades in any way we can. The majority of the left has indeed come out in support. To its credit the Socialist Workers Party has continued to back the movement, whilst opposing imperialism - something it previously said the anti-war movement could not do. Maybe the SWP will now permit the affiliation of Hands Off the People of Iran to the Stop the War Coalition, now that the SWP itself has taken up a watered down version of Hopi’s principled stance.

However, there remain nominal socialists who defend the mass murder and repression of the regime in Iran. Respect MP George Galloway, Andy Newman (Socialist Unity blog and Respect member) and groups like the CPGB-ML have all defended the “mature democracy” of the Islamic Republic (Newman - www.socialistunity.com/?p=5051) and poured scorn on the mass movement as an attempt at some sort of colour revolution. Such claims have clearly been disproved by what is happening on the streets and the slogans taken up by the movement. Newman has been particularly idiotic, opting to ignore the murder of thousands of trade unionists, socialists, feminists and LGBT people under the clerical regime and instead defending the miserly welfare provisions that exist in Iran.

Defenders of the regime see it as anti-imperialist, forgetting that the clerics have made deals with the imperialists before and will no doubt do so again, if they think that will maintain their rule. The Iran-Contra affair and the welcoming of the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are good indications of how consistently the theocratic regime ‘opposes imperialism’. No, the only genuine opponents of imperialism can be found on the streets: democrats, students and most of all the working class. It is these forces to whom we must give our support - in deeds as well as words.

It is essential to maintain a clear position of opposition to any faction of the Islamic Republic and to US-led imperialism. We must begin to strengthen the campaign against sanctions initiated by Hopi - Stop the War Coalition needs to take up this issue in a serious and organised way, so that the anti-war movement can begin to win the argument that sanctions undermine working class struggle through impoverishing the masses. We need to state loud and clear that sanctions are not some soft option, but part of the imperialist war drive.

News From Iran: More Arrests

2010-01-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

News From Iran: More Arrests

Activists In Danger

Here are some news updates on what has been happening in Iran. More details may be found at http://hopoi.org/

Rouzbeh Karimi a marxist activist and law graduate who wrote for the leftist magazines such as Rokhdad Magazine has been arrested along with his partner Forough Karimi who has recently been involved in defending political prisoners and is also a Marxist. They were both arrested on Friday January 1. No charges have been made yet.

There is a concerted campaign on the part of the Iranian Regime to move against the Left element of the protesters. You can help: Writ to the following Iranian officials demanding that the detainees rights be protected. Demand that all death sentences be commuted and all political prisoners be released.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS TO:

Leader of the Islamic Republic:
Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei
The Office of the Supreme Leader
Islamic Republic Street – End of Shahid Keshvar Doust Street,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of iran
Email: via website: http://www.leader.ir/langs/en/index.php?p=letter (English)
http://www.leader.ir/langs/fa/index.php?p=letter (Persian)

Head of the Judiciary:
Ayatollah Sadeqh Larijani
Howzeh Riyasat-e Qoveh Qazaiyeh (Office of the Head of the Judiciary)
Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave., south of Serah-e Jomhouri,
Tehran 1316814737,
Islamic Republic of iran
Email: Via website: http://www.dad iran.ir/tabid/81/Default.aspx
First starred box: your given name; second starred box: your family name;
third: your email address

COPIES TO:

Director, Human Rights Headquarters of iranMohammad Javad Larijani
Howzeh Riassat-e Ghoveh Ghazaiyeh
Pasteur St, Vali Asr Ave., south of Serah-e Jomhuri,
Tehran 1316814737,
Islamic Republic of iran
Fax 01198 21 3390 4986

Email: fsharafi@bia-judiciary.ir

Here is a report on some of the moves the regime has been taking against known leftwing activists and the threats that leading officials have been giving on state television. This report was sent to us by Anahita Hosseini of the ‘Independent Leftist Students’ who represent an anti-imperialist socialist tendency within the student movement in Iran

After the mass protests of Sunday December 17 the regime is showing its fear of people uprising by going to well known activists homes one by one and arresting them. This morning armed plain cloths forces went to Mahin Fahimis home who is a member of the organization of: mothers for peace and arrested her and her son Omid Montazeri who is a known leftist student activist. Omid is Hamid Montazeriz son a known communist activist who was executed by the regime during the mass murders of the leftists and Mujahadeen in prison in 1988.

Ardavan Tarakameh another leftist student activist who was staying in Omids home this morning was arrested, afterwards the plain cloths forces went to Ardavan’s parents home and searched it all and took some books and notes, and told his mother she is not allowed to ask any questions about what they are doing or where her son is. Zohreh Takaboni one of the mothers for peace whose husband was also executed as a leftist in 1988 has also been arrested.
Full report at: http://hopoi.org/?p=942

On December 30 two students were critically wounded and scores injured by knife wielding members of Ansar-e Hezbollah and Basij militia, up to 500 thugs were brought in to attack students at Mashhad University after they staged anti-regime protests during Ashura. One of the students professors was also attacked and sustained knife wounds, whilst a young female student was badly injured after being struck repeatedly over the head with a piece of wood. Students at the university were holding silent mourning ceremonies for the Ashura were they opposed the repression of popular protests. The police aided the Basij and Hezbollah by blocking the roads leading up to the University and attacking crowds of students with tear gas and batons. Around 210 students and youth were arrested by the state-repressive forces throughout the recent Ashura protests.
vid at http://hopoi.org/?p=948

In a clear display of desperation the Revolutionary Guard has released a statement saying: “The devoted Basijis of Greater Tehran will smother all the voices that come out of the throat of the enemies of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.” (Persian2English blog) this comes amidst further calls from clerics, members of the Iranian parliament and chair of the Guardian Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati for the severe treatment and death to those who "insulted religious sanctity". Ali Saremi who was arrested in 2007 for attending a memorial ceremony for the 19th anniversary of the massacres that took place in 1988 and spent 23 years in the Shah’s prisons has warned that the regime is preparing to carry out further mass killings of political opponents. He was condemned to death on December 29 where he wrote “It is clear that my death sentence lacks a legal basis and their only goal of hanging me is to intimidate the people and youths of this country, and scare them away from pursuing their demands.” His full statement can be read here.

Many protestors who were arrested during the Ashura protests are being indicted for trial with some possibly facing death. According to Iran Khabar News Agency over 300 people arrested on the day of Ashura have been passed on to the Judicature. Ebrahim Raiesi who is the first undersecretary of the judicature said that the “rioters” will be prosecuted immediately and that charges range from “causing disorder” to “war against Islam (Moharebeh)” which can be punishable by the death penalty. On December 28 Anahita Hosseini of the Iranian anti-imperialist socialist student organisation Independent Leftist Students (link) warned that the regime is preparing to murder political prisoners and those arrested for participating in protests since the disputed June elections.

For more details of Hands off the People of Iran contact Anne on 0862343 238 or Anne@hopoi.info

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Fighting over the corpse

2009-12-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

Iran: Fighting over the corpse

As the two wings of the regime continue to squabble, write Chris Strafford and Yassamine Mather, the opposition movement grows in radicalism and confidence

There seems to be no end to the crisis which has erupted after Iranian state television showed protesters tearing down or burning images of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini following the nationwide student protests of December 7. None of the videos revealed the faces of those responsible, they were not linked to any one student demonstration or protest and most people in Iran believe the screening was a deliberate act by supporters of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or supreme leader Ali Khamenei - or both - to increase tension and justify further repression. In fact the event has given a new dimension to the current political conflict between the two factions of the regime.

The opposition denies charges that its supporters were responsible for ‘desecration’ of Khomeini’s image. Prosecutors in Tehran claimed a number of people have been arrested and there would be “no mercy towards those who insulted the imam”. Ahmadinejad is warning that a “hurricane of the revolutionary anger of the nation” is coming. In a speech on December 13 Khamenei went further: “Some have converted the election campaign into a campaign against the entire system.”

The “incident” is being used by conservatives to attack reformist opponents - while the ‘green movement’ is blaming Ahmadinejad supporters (of course, repeated use of Photoshop to multiply the number of people attending Ahmadinejad rallies has left the government open to accusations of fraud). The two wings of the regime are fighting over Khomeini’s corpse.

The supreme leader’s pictures are regularly torn and set on fire these days, yet there seemed to be no major outcry about the ‘desecration’ of the images of god’s current representative on earth, as opposed to the first supreme leader. Many in Iran believe the fabrication of the scandal shows a level of desperation in the government and the ruling faction, as various previous attempts to stop the protests have clearly failed.

Irrespective of who is responsible for the “incident”, there is no doubt we are witnessing a deliberate escalation of the current conflict by the government and its supporters. This could cost them dear for a number of reasons.

Attempts to blame the ‘reformist’ opposition seem to have backfired. There is a consensus even amongst the regime’s supporters that Mir-Hossein Moussavi, ayatollah Mohammad Khatami and Mehdi Karroubi, who boast of being the genuine disciples of Khomeini, had little to do with the ‘desecration’ and, of course, if it is true that the imam’s picture was deliberately set on fire by hard-line fundamentalists for political gain, they will be the losers in this piece of theatre. It should also be noted that some of Khomeini’s family, including his grandchildren, are involved in the opposition reformist movement.

Putting so much focus to the affair carries its own risks. Now that there is nothing sacred about the image of “the imam”, the Islamic Republic’s icons, values and therefore legitimacy are clearly being called into question. In fact many amongst Iran’s young population never had any ‘respect’ for Khomeini in the first place and this incident might make them braver and more determined in challenging every aspect of the Islamic regime.

Each day that goes by, the gap between the protesters and the leaders of the ‘green movement’ increases. The statements of Moussavi, Khatami and Karroubi expressing allegiance to Khomeini will not go down well with many of their own supporters. Moussavi is clearly concerned that he is losing control of the protests, as he keeps warning everyone about the threat of “radicalism”. On Monday December 15 he said: “If people’s questions were answered and they were not confronted violently, we would not see some of the controversial moves today ... People want an end to the security-obsessed atmosphere: in such an atmosphere radicalism grows.”

Vote rigging

Of course, he is right about the increased radicalisation of the protests. The first demonstrations in June were in opposition to vote-rigging. Many of the slogans addressed the issue of electoral fraud and were against Ahmadinejad. The supreme leader’s support for his president radicalised the movement, as slogans against the vali faghih (Khamenei) started to become more prominent in September and October, despite attempts by ‘reformists’ to seek compromises with him.

The demonstration of November 4 was very different from those in the summer. Slogans against the entire regime and in particular against Khamenei dominated the marches, not only in Tehran, but also in dozens of other cities. By December 7 the slogans were almost entirely against the supreme leader - it was as though Ahmadinejad did not matter any more. Students shouted, “Moussavi is an excuse! The entire regime is the target!” That is why, even if the ‘desecration’ of Khomeini’s image was staged by the ultra-conservatives, it nevertheless marks a new phase in the protests, one from which both factions of the regime and the protesters cannot retreat. Ironically this stupid stunt, probably devised by Ahmadinejad supporters, is a risk too far. As one commentator put it this week, what will happen at the next protest? Will they burn the Koran?

The regime has also faced an online backlash after the state’s news agency published a picture of student activist Majid Tavakoli dressed in a chador, a black, head-to-toe garment worn by Iranian women, as he was trying to escape arrest by the security forces. Hundreds of men, amongst them well known authors, film directors, artists and academics posted pictures of themselves on the internet wearing women’s headscarves as a political statement. The regime claimed Tavakoli had been caught wearing the veil in an attempt to hide himself. However, opposition bloggers insisted that the photo as published had been manipulated. The government was hoping the pictures would humiliate Majid Tavakoli, presumably because all ‘macho’ men would see the picture as a sign of shame and weakness. Again the scheme backfired: Iranian men of all ages seemed proud to be photographed in headscarves, and Tavakoli’s last speech before his arrest is becoming one of the most popular Youtube videos of the recent upsurge.

Tens of thousands of students have continued their protests throughout Iran. Over the weekend youth and workers joined them and further swelled the numbers. It should be noted that, whilst the major media pick up on one or two big protests, there are others taking place every day in varying forms. One only has to search Youtube or the endless blogs from Iranian students to get a sense of the size and scope of the movement.

Respect MP George Galloway said on June 15 that the protests “will soon fizzle out”.¹ How wrong he was. This week actions have taken place at universities in Isfahan, Tehran (where students have begun a hunger strike against the arrest of their comrades and have staged protests to call for the resignation of the principal), Qazvin, Kerman, Al-Zahra, Shiraz, Beheshti (where some brave students waved a red flag), Sharif and Shahroud. High school students in Tehran and Isfahan have also taken to the streets; young women are at the forefront of these demonstrations, with several inspiring videos captured on mobile phones and distributed across the internet.²

Officially the regime says that they arrested 204 students during last week’s protests. However, this figure is a lot lower than the reality, as many students were taken to secret detention centres - and a large number of arrests continued to take place afterwards. The show trials that followed the June protests have now been taken off air, but 80 people have been sentenced to prison terms and five have been given the death penalty.

Long-time imprisoned student Mohommad Pourabdollah was sentenced to six years in prison by the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary court. A member of the leftwing Students for Freedom and Equality, he was arrested on February 12 and has spent a large part of his incarceration in solitary confinement and has been tortured by guards and interrogators. His heavy sentence is no doubt intended as a message to students in the opposition movement who raise their head above the parapet.

The solidarity movement needs to condemn these arrests and call for the immediate release of comrade Pourabdollah, a committed anti-imperialist, along with all other political prisoners in Iran. On December 18 Iranian students from the newly established Independent Left Students are set to confront Ahmadinejad at the Copenhagen climate conference.

Nuclear trigger

Iran’s nuclear programme has again been the focus of media attention, with the regime testing its medium-range missile, the Sejil-2, on December 16. The Sejil-2 has an alleged range that could hit Israel and all US military bases in the region. This comes in the same week that intelligence agencies leaked documents to The Times claiming the regime is continuing its nuclear weapons programme.³ The document apparently describes the design of the trigger device involving uranium deuteride, which has no civilian use. This comes as talks between the Islamic Republic and the west have ground to a halt.

Irrespective of the truth of the allegations, it is quite clear that the regime is seeking to use the threat of more sanctions and military action by the US or Israel to strengthen its faltering position, and the left should be very clear: any further sanctions that are imposed on Iran will hit those elements that are capable of bringing substantial change in Iran - the working class and the poor. Gordon Brown has already said that further sanction have to be implemented. This is something the anti-war movement must take seriously. Sanctions against Iran are a stepping stone to military aggression.

Notes
blogs.dailyrecord.co.uk/georgegalloway/2009/06/you-can-count-on-the-fact-elec.html
See, for example, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFgRsCiwhdA
The Times December 14.

Entire regime is the target

2009-12-16T09:26:00.000-08:00

Entire regime is the target

Opposition in Iran is no longer directed at supporting one section of the theocracy against the other. The days of the regime are numbered, say Yassamine Mather and Chris Strafford

The 56th anniversary of the murder of three students by the shah?s security forces during vice president Richard Nixon?s visit to Tehran in 1953 may prove to be the last Students Day commemorated under the heel of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hundreds of thousands of students, youth and workers took to the streets in protest against the regime and the barbaric repression meted out since the June elections. Though hard to confirm, the protests to mark Azar 16 (December 7 in the Iranian calendar) could be the largest since millions came out immediately after the rigged presidential poll. Demonstrations took place in Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, Arak, Karaj, Orumieh, Kerman, Rasht, Shiraz, Ahvaz, Kermanshah and Hamedan and there have been reports of soldiers protesting at Qom airbase. People taking part in the various actions carried Iranian flags, but without the Islamic Republic?s sign of Allah, showing that the movement is moving beyond the slogans of the ?reformists?.

In preparation for these demonstrations the regime formed lines of police, Bassij paramilitaries and Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) around the universities, squares and monuments in the major cities, and foreign correspondents were warned to stay away from all protests. The authorities put up long drapes outside the main gate of Tehran University (at least 20 metres long and three metres high) to stop passers-by witnessing protests planned inside the campus. The government also attempted to limit internet access, with up to 50% of attempts failing to connect. However, the regime is simply unable to stop the flood of information that is now on hundreds of blogs, twitter and news sites. At one point the Bassij were seen frantically searching computer rooms at Tehran Polytechnic University in an attempt to stop pictures and videos coming out. Mobile phone networks were also shut down in central Tehran and restricted in other parts of the city, but still activists managed to spread news of the protests and relay information about road blocks and meet-up points. Once again the Iranian youth have shown the world that the state cannot keep a lid on protests and unrest.

Throughout the length and breadth of Iran students demonstrated. Even in small towns and cities far away from Tehran thousands took part. This was by far the biggest and most widespread student protest since the revolution in 1979. At Hamedan University, where there were heavy clashes between students and security forces, two students were thrown from the second floor by the Bassij - reports indicate that both sustained severe injuries. At Tehran Polytechnic University students broke down gates that the Bassij had locked to stop crowds outside the campus joining the student protestors.

Students clashed with the police and managed to repel them for a considerable time. They were shouting, ?Marg Bar Khamenei? (Down with Khamenei!), as the focus of popular anger shifts from Ahmadinejad onto the supreme leader and the entire Islamic Republic. At hospitals in the capital police with dogs prevented injured people from entering, arresting and beating those who looked like protestors. In Amir-Kabir University students were also savagely beaten by security forces, and a prominent student leader, Majid Tavakoli, was arrested. At the Medical College in Tehran, Bassij thugs attempted to break up a demonstration and viciously assaulted several students - there were reports of people being badly injured at this demonstration too. At Razi University in Kermanshah militia and police had a massive presence, but failed to stop the student demonstration. At Sanati University in Isfahan student protests were attacked by security forces. Professors at Beheshti University joined with the 2,000-strong protest, to scenes of massive cheering and chants of ?Death to the dictator?.

In Kurdistan students burned images of Ali Khamenei and the first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini. Here the protests were particularly focused on the murder of socialist fighter Ehsan Fattahian, who was executed on November 11. School students have also taken part in the demonstrations - at a high school for girls in Tehran the students gathered outside the gates chanting slogans.

There was heavy fighting across Tehran, with students at times getting the better of the security forces and militia. At Khaje-Nasir University Bassij carrying Hezbollah flags were attacked and thrown out by brave students. Outside Tehran University, in the streets approaching Enghelab Square and Valiasr Street security forces opened fire - it is not clear whether they were warning shots or aimed at the crowd, but some reports claim that students were shot. It seems that around Enghelab Square the Bassij abandoned their positions and vehicles, which were swiftly used to form burning barricades by the youth.

There were also reports of security forces refusing to attack demonstrators and at times accepting drinking water from students who were calling for them to join the protests. In another significant development, it is said that riot police actually turned against the Bassij who were attacking demonstrators. If this wavering from security forces and the stories of soldiers? demonstrations are confirmed, then this will certainly undermine the regime?s confidence in its ability to suppress protests and may possibly signal an acceleration of its collapse

Proving that the protests go far beyond the student movement, elderly women dodged bullets and tear gas to bring water, sandwiches and first aid to the student demonstrators. Some were set upon by militia. Wherever fighting was taking place, residents rushed to aid the students and young workers and many formed voluntary medical groups, helping the injured into nearby homes and distributing water to crowds. Many workers joined the demonstrations after finishing work, swelling the numbers in central Tehran and other cities.

Many students posting on social networking sites have been asking, ?Where are the reformists?? The mass movement still mobilises behind the green of Mir-Hossein Mousavi?s presidential campaign, yet it seems he has abandoned the movement he helped stir up. Students across Tehran chanted: ?Moussavi is an excuse: the entire regime is the target? - the ?reformists? have been made acutely aware that the movement is now far beyond their control.

Protests continued into the evening, with sporadic clashes between demonstrators and police. The state news agency put the total of arrests at 204, though the number was probably higher - many students were taken to undisclosed locations and denied contact with their family.

On December 8, as students arrived at Tehran University, Bassij and Pasdaran were waiting. Soon there were fresh clashes and tear gas was fired not just into the crowds demonstrating outside, but also into the campus itself. Later the Bassij entered the university and encountered fierce resistance. That day there were several other clashes across the country, involving tens of thousands of students.

Statement by Iran Khodro Workers

2009-12-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

Fellow workers and friends,

During the last few days tens of workers, students and grieving mothers [a reference to mothers of young people killed following protest gatherings on December 4] have been arrested and sent to jail. Many of our colleagues and fellow workers are in prison. Tens of students, who are our children and our allies, are incarcerated. Mothers have been held. The government is closing its eyes to reality and arresting anyone they want. The country is under the grip of security forces and people do not even have the right to gather in a public park.

- In which country is it illegal to demand payment of unpaid wages?

- In which country is it forbidden to go to a park or to climb mountains? [The regime has banned students from climbing in case they organise political meetings under the guise of mountain climbing]

- What is the crime of our grieving mothers?

- In which country is it illegal to form workers’ organisations?

Fellow workers, how dare they be so shameless? We must protest! The situation created by the government is unbearable. Freedom is a basic right of all human beings

Long live freedom!

Group of Iran Khodro Workers
Translated and distributed by Hands Off the People of Iran
http://www.hopoi.org

Massive protests in Iran December 7

2009-12-07T14:04:00.000-08:00

16 Azar: Student protests accelerate regimes collapse

“Mousavi is an excuse, the entire regime is the target”

The 56th anniversary of a murder of a student by the Shah’s security forces during President Nixon’s visit in 1953 may prove to be the last held under the heel of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Possibly millions of students, youth and workers took to the streets in protests against the regime and the barbaric repression since the rigged June elections. Though hard to confirm, today’s protests could be the biggest since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Protests have taken place in Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, Arak, Karaj, Orumieh, Kerman, Rasht, Shiraz, Ahvaz, Kermanshah and Hamedan and there have been reports of soldiers protesting at Qom Airbase. Protestors carried Iranian flags that omitted the Allah sign showing that the movement is moving beyond the slogans of the June protests.

In preperation for these demonstrations the regime formed lines of police, Basij and Pasdaran around the universities, squares and monuments in the major cities. The government also attempted to limit internet access with up-to 50% of attempts to connect failing, however, the regime failed to stop the flood of information that is now on hundreds of blogs, twitter and news sites. The mobile phone network was also shut down in central Tehran and limited in other parts of the city. At one point there Basij were scene frantically searching computer rooms at Tehran Polytechnic University in an attempt to stop pictures and videos coming out. Protestors managed to organise the protests and relay information of road blocks etc through the internet and land lines in defiance of the government. Once again the Iranian youth has shown the world that the state cannot keep a lid on protests and unrest.

Repression and Resistance
On the streets the state repressive forces backed up by militia assaulted and arrested protestors but were met with courage and defiance.

At Hamedan University two students were thrown from the second floor by Basij scum, reports indicate that both students have sustained severe injuries. There were also heavy clashes between students and security forces here. At the hospitals in Tehran police with dogs prevented injured protestors from entering, arrested and attacking people who looked like protestors. At Amir Kabir University students were savagely beaten by security forces, where a prominent student leader; Majid Tavakoli was arrested. At the Medical College in Tehran Basij thugs attempted to break up a demonstration beating several students, there were reports of some badly injured protestors at this demonstration. At the Polytechnic University students clashed with the police and managed to repel them for a time shouting “Marg Bar Khamanei” (Down with Khamanei!) as the focus of popular anger shifts from Ahmadinejad and onto the Supreme Leader and the entire Islamic Republic. At Razi University in Kermanshah militia and police had a massive presence but failed to stop the student demonstration. At Sanati University in Isfahan in Kermanshah student protests were attacked by security forces. Professors at Beheshti University joined with the 2,000 strong protest to scenes of massive cheering and chants of ‘Death to the Dictator’. In Kurdistan students burned images of Khomanei and Khamanei in the University, they were also protesting the murder of socialist fighter Ehsan Fattahian who was executed on the 11th November. There were protests and clashes at Azad Shahrkord University, Elm o Sanat University, Sharif University, Azad University of Mashhad, Azad University of Najafabad, Sanati University in Isfahan, Hormozgan University, University of Zanjan, Yasooj University and others. School students have also taken part in the demonstrations, at a high school for girls in Tehran they gathered and chanted slogans, the video is below.

There was heavy fight across Tehran with students turning the tide against security forces and militia at times. Basij who were carrying Hezbollah flags were attacked and thrown out of Khaje-Nasir University by brave students. Outside Tehran University, the streets approaching Enghelab Square and Valiasr Street saw shots fired by security forces, it is not clear whether they were warning shots or fired into the crowd, some reports claim that some students have been shot. There were reports of security forces refusing to attack students and at times taking water from students who were calling for them to join the protests. It also seems that around Enghelab Square Basij abandoned their positions and vehicles which were swiftly used to form burning barricades by the youth. It has been reported that riot police attacked Basij who were attacking demonstrators. If this wavering from security forces and demonstrations from soldiers are confirmed then this could undermine the regimes confidence in its ability to suppress the protests and may possibly signal an acceleration of the regimes collapse.

Proving that the protests go far beyond the student movement, elderly women dodged bullets and tear gas to bring water, sandwhiches and first aid to the student demonstrators. Some were attacked by security forces, one women was beat savagely by Basij thugs. Below is the video of her after the attack:

Where fighting was taking place residents rushed to aid the students and young workers and many have formed voluntary medical groups, helping the injured into nearby homes and distributing water to crowds. Many workers joined the demonstrations after finishing work swelling the numbers in central Tehran and other cities.

Many students posting on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook have been asking where are the reformists? The mass movement has kept the colour of Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s presidential campaign yet it seems he has abandoned the movement he helped to stir up. As students chanted across Tehran “Mousavi is an excuse, the entire regime is the target” the reformists will have been made acutely aware that the movement is far beyond their control now.

Protests have continued on into the evening with sporadic clashes between protestors and police. It is unclear how many have been arrested today, though we expect it to be in the hundreds. The workers movement internationally must get serious in organising solidarity and demanding the immediate release of all of those who are in prison and secret detention sites. An analysis of todays events and a wider report will be posted shortly.

http://hopoi.org/?p=850

No way back for warmongers

2009-12-07T06:04:00.000-08:00

No way back for warmongers

Mike Macnair addressed the Hopi AGM on the continued threat of war. US imperialism has a new face, but when it comes to foreign policy it is business as usual

It should now be clear enough to everyone that Barack Obama’s policy in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan is for all practical purposes the same as that of George W Bush.

True, in its propaganda the new administration presents itself as much less gung-ho and unilateral, preferring to focus on the ‘common interests of the international community’ and so on. True, too, during the last summer there was a pause or toning-down in the drumbeats of threats against Iran, as the US clearly hoped the mass movement around the rigged elections would produce a ‘colour revolution’. Nevertheless, sanctions remain high on the agenda, diplomatic pressure is intense and the threat of a bombing strike, ostensibly to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities, is still a serious one.

In response to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s November 26 resolution condemning the Qom enrichment facility, the Iranian regime has - for domestic political reasons - declared an extension of its nuclear programme. Obama has announced that most of the additional US soldiers demanded by general McChrystal for a ‘troop surge’ - ie, escalation - in Afghanistan, will be sent. The last few days has seen the British government agree to increase its contingent by 500 extra troops and other Nato powers are being urged to follow suit.

Sanctions represent an extremely serious threat to the people of Iran. It is important to be clear that sanctions are a clinical word for what is in fact military blockade. Blockade of trade is an act of war. Not as sharp and immediate as dropping bombs, to be sure. But if an army were to surround London and, while allowing food and medical supplies in, refused to let in petrol and so on, no-one would have any hesitation describing that as an act of war. It is a form that has existed since classical antiquity and before: a siege. In essence, ‘sanctions’ are a euphemism for besieging a country.

Not Bush, the warmonger, but US state interests lie behind US policy in the Middle East. It does not make any difference having a Democrat and a black face in the White House if those state interests continue to determine the underlying structure of US policy.

What are those interests? One - the Carter doctrine, dating formally to 1980 - asserts that “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force”. “Outside force”, in this context, obviously does not include the US!

But the Carter doctrine itself is part of a larger body of ideas. Consider, for example, the 2008 book Chinese naval strategy in the 21st century: the turn to Mahan by James R Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, professors at the US naval academy. What is of interest in this context is less the authors’ arguments about the policy of the Chinese state than the US naval doctrine they assume, adopted in the late 1940s - that the US navy must have access to all the world’s coastlines and shipping lanes. It follows naturally enough that any denial of access by the US navy to the coast of China is an immediate threat to US security - and Holmes and Yoshihara say so openly. They raise the appalling possibility of China having enough naval strength to defend its own territorial waters - and claim that this would be a threat to US security.

There is nothing particularly novel in this idea. In the late Middle Ages Venice - even as an interstitial merchant-capitalist state within a predominantly feudal society - felt compelled to have a naval policy which would give it unrestricted access to and control of the whole of the eastern Mediterranean. The Dutch Republic in the 17th century aimed for global dominance and ability to strike with naval power in Spanish waters. After the displacement of the Netherlands as the ‘lead capitalist power’ by Britain in the wars between 1689 and 1713, the doctrine became fully transparent. The British navy aimed at global dominance and access to shores anywhere in the world.

Capitalism is from its inception an international system. From its inception a capitalist state has to be concerned about access to raw materials and its ability to protect its shipping for export purposes. Therefore from the beginning there is a necessary choice facing every leading capitalist state - aim for global top-dog status or accept a subordinate military position. Thus the Netherlands after 1714 accepted a subordinate position to Britain, while after 1945 the latter deferred to the US.

Why does capitalism have to have this hierarchy? Ultimately because capitalism - even very primitive and proto-capitalism - needs credit money, and that necessarily involves the state. For full development of capitalism, the scale of credit money operations involved requires the central bank and the central market in state bonds, whether this be the Venetian, Amsterdam, London or New York money market.

And at the same time, because capitalism is an international phenomenon, money - as Marx stated - is only money to the extent that it is global money. So capitalism as a world system necessarily aspires to a world state, which it never achieves. What it gets is a nation-state which partially plays - as a proxy - the role of a world state. Hence, a capitalist country which is progressing in terms of capitalist industrial development is forced in the direction of becoming the world state, the top dog, the state which can maintain a navy capable of touching anywhere in the world. Military success in this competition makes the top-dog state’s money into world money.

But this in its turn has its own logic. In the first place, to win and maintain world military dominance requires consent from important sections of the subordinate classes in the dominant state. It is highly skilled workers who have to both manufacture the ships and armaments and crew them. Concessions must be made to these classes in order to maintain such consent and the domestic political stability that brings.

Secondly, it costs money. There is a massive tax bill associated with providing a navy (and, since the 20th century, air force) which can outfight those of any other two (or more) states in the world. That tax bill has got larger and larger as capitalism has developed and the technology of warfare has got more and more expensive.

The consequence, therefore, is that the underlying profitability of industry in the dominant capitalist state declines, both because of concessions which have been made to the working class and because of the overall tax burden. The dominant state now needs to convert its dominance into extracting tribute from subordinate states. Its internal dynamics of world dominance lead to the export of capital and the rise of industrial production in other countries, as opposed to the world dominant state, and an increase in the practice of skimming the cream from global financial transactions - exploiting monetary dominance to bring in the funds which enable the dominant state to continue supporting the armed forces, which in turn enables that state to continue to be financially dominant.

The effect of world dominance is thus to undermine the industrial dominance on which it was originally based. The imposing structure of military-financial dominance becomes increasingly hollow, while other capitalist countries grow up as centres of industrial and technical development. There is no road back. Like Macbeth, any dominant power of this sort is “in blood stepped in so far that ... returning were as tedious as go o’er”. The dominant state’s only practical option is to step up the exploitation of its military and financial dominance and its global property claims, to go further towards the role of world parasite.

The increasing disjuncture which results from, on the one hand, the increasing financial and property claims of the world power and, on the other, the decline of its domestic industry results in a decreasing ability of the world dominant power to actually act as a global policeman and provide order for the world capitalist economy. This drives other powers towards developing their own military capabilities and their own bilateral relations with other countries. In the later 19th century in relation to Britain, that meant the rise of rival colonial powers; today we have other powers increasingly pursuing their own bilateral relations - notably China with large numbers of South American countries and in Africa. China is visible and obvious because the bourgeois press wants us to know about these things: the capitalist media wants us to worry about China. But it is also happening with the continental European powers and their relations with various countries in the ‘south’.

The US has entered into the first phase of its decline. But we are not in 1913, or even 1900, or 1890. Rather the US has entered into decline in the same sense as Britain entered decline after the 1853-56 Crimean War. The phase takes a different form from the decline of Britain, which was characterised by the growth of European territorial empires. It took that form because Britain’s Indian empire allowed access to the enormous Indian military labour market. As a consequence Britain was able to use the combination of its navy and Indian troops to establish territorial power all across the world and the other European countries were forced to imitate Britain in that respect.

With the US, the dynamic has been very different. The turning point - the Crimea of the US - was Vietnam. At that moment the US lost the ability to impose order by direct military intervention. What has replaced that policy is one of exporting destruction - Lebanon, Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Yugoslavia, etc, etc. The US combines in various ways support for insurgents of one sort or another against local states; US strategic bombing activities; and blockades (‘sanctions’) to break down the structure of states. The US is not able to impose pro-United States regimes, but is able to punish those who are seen in some way to defy it.

The effect of exporting destruction is still to levy tribute from the subordinate countries. On the one hand, it makes direct French, German and so on investment in the regions targeted for US attack unattractive. Global capital is sucked into the US financial and other markets as a ‘safe haven’; US capitalists, on the other hand, can better afford to take the risks of investing in ‘emerging markets’ which may become US targets.

The attempt to conquer Iraq was in part an attempt by the neo-conservatives to change that: to turn US policy into a policy of ‘constructively imposing order’. But it failed - the outcome is not a pro-US regime, but a pro-Iranian regime perched on a chaotic society. Why did it fail? In the first place the US would have had to put four times the number of troops on the ground as were actually available to ensure order; secondly it would have to be willing to give up resources to the material reconstruction of Iraqi industry and infrastructure.

But in reality the US cannot put a million troops on the ground. US imperialism represents a decline in capitalism as such relative to British imperialism and has to make more concessions to the working class than British imperialism in its world-dominant phase ever had to make. With the result that going overseas to fight and die for ‘your’ country is unattractive to the working class. They call it the ‘Vietnam syndrome’ ...

Equally, US capital decreasingly wishes to engage in constructive activities: it is increasingly a parasite which looks to suck on the teat of state support. $56 billion is what the US claims to have spent on Iraqi reconstruction, but the Iraqis have seen hardly any of this. Iraq has seen ‘private finance initiative’ on the largest possible scale, with far more money poured into corruption, thrown away and stolen by the contractors, and far less delivered on the ground by the contractors themselves. So the US proves unable to turn away from the policy of exporting destruction to the policy of imposing order.

The question of US policy towards Iran, therefore, has to be seen within the framework of the Iraq debacle. This places the US under severe threat of being seen to be defeated. All the more is this true of the continuing failure in Afghanistan. Obama’s administration has wavered over what policy to follow and whether to send more troops. But in reality there was no real choice. If the US is seen to be defeated in the Middle East 34 years after being seen to be defeated in Vietnam, there will inevitably be an acceleration of the growth of rival bilateral relations between countries in the global north and the global south. Not rival empires, but rival direct investments and rival naval and air rearmament. That will follow, as night follows day, from the US being seen to be defeated.

And that means the question of an attack on Iran is inevitably on the agenda. Because that is the direction in which decline drives the US. It is obliged to expand the scope of its ‘war on terror’, even as it fails, to avoid being seen to be defeated. This is why Obama’s Middle East policy is essentially the same as Bush’s. However much important capitalists and senior state figures, in the US and the US’s allies, may think that the neocons were irrational, that it would have been better not to invade Iraq and that it might be better to seek a deal with the Iranian regime, there is now no way back for the United States from the policy of escalation.

HOPI Britain conference report

2009-12-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

Chris Strafford reports on the annual general meeting of Hands Off the People of Iran
On Saturday November 28 around 60 people gathered for Hands Off the People of Iran’s third conference. Motions condemning sanctions and threats of war against Iran and calling for a nuclear-free Middle East were overwhelmingly carried.

The conference was opened by national secretary Mark Fischer (CPGB), who outlined Hopi’s strengths as well as weaknesses. Whilst we have gained some smaller affiliations over the last year, we have not made a big breakthrough and it is important for Hopi to “up its game”, he said. The June elections in Iran and subsequent mass protests were “a defining political moment” in the history of the Islamic Republic, which totally vindicated Hopi’s stance.

Hopi has always called for the building of strong links between the democratic and revolutionary movements in Iran, whilst others in the movement - most notably the Socialist Workers Party, George Galloway and the sycophants that surround him - previously attacked us for ‘trying to dictate to the movement in Iran’. Some had even accused us of playing into the hands of imperialism for daring to criticise the theocratic regime. SWP members were left looking red-faced and sheepish when the leadership realised the way the wind was blowing and made a U-turn, coming out in favour of the millions of protestors who marched through the streets of Tehran and other cities (although SWP comrades on the leadership of the Stop the War Coalition continue to oppose Hopi’s affiliation). Galloway, however, has simply made himself look idiotic by defending not only the rigged elections and the subsequent repression, but also the Islamic republic itself.

Comrade Fischer went on to report our successful Hopi v Labour Representation Committee cricket match, which raised £1,000 for Workers’ Fund Iran, an organisation which aids workers in struggle and their organisations. He spoke briefly about our priorities over the coming year - firstly, building genuine internationalism through helping organisations like WFI; secondly, stepping up our campaign against sanctions; and, thirdly, developing our national infrastructure and branches, with the possibility of employing someone on a part-time basis.

Jim Jepps (Green Party), Hopi’s treasurer, gave a quick report on the current state of our finances, which he described as “modest” - we spent more than we raised last year. In the discussion Charlie Pottins (Jewish Socialist Group) urged Hopi to attend more demonstrations called outside the Iranian embassy, David Mather (Hopi Glasgow) said that Hopi needs to build its internet profile.

The next session was titled ‘Imperialism’s need for conflict and the situation in the Middle East’ with Moshé Machover (Matzpen founder) and Mike Macnair (CPGB). Comrade Macnair discussed US doctrine in the Middle East and its need as the imperialist hegemon to have undisputed military dominance. This means that, whatever Barack Obama may want to do, he is forced by events and the needs of US capital to carry on the strategy developed under the Bush government (for comrade Macnair’s speech, see 'No way back for warmongers').

Comrade Machover began his contribution by saying that Hopi should congratulate itself on putting forward the correct line against imperialist threats and sanctions, while supporting the movements in Iran. He said that the two major events of the last year were the elections in Iran and the election of Barack Obama. The US did not recognise that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan would strengthen the regime in Tehran and did not rule out the possibility that both wings of the regime could capitulate or do a deal with the American administration. However, the threat of war is growing - author Benny Morris, who is essentially acting as an unofficial spokesperson for the Israeli government, has warned that an Israeli attack on Iran is a foregone conclusion for the spring and summer of next year. Comrade Machover ended his speech by moving his motion, ‘For a Middle East free of nuclear weapons and other WMDs’.

An amendment from Tina Becker (CPGB) to delete the demand for “democratic international supervision” of the decommissioning and non-development of all nuclear weapons and other WMDs on the grounds that it might be misunderstood to mean under the auspices of the United Nations. Peter Manson (CPGB) proposed an amendment from the floor to make it specific that Hopi is opposed to Iran attaining a nuclear weapon, the so-called ‘mullah’s bomb’. But this was rejected as unnecessary, as the motion’s opposition to the “development and manufacture of nuclear weapons” throughout the Middle East obviously included Iran.

The motion was opposed outright by Gerry Downing (Socialist Fight), who pursued the long established error of some in the Trotskyist movement of defending the ’mullah’s bomb’ on the lines that it would ward off attacks from the US and Israel and may one day become a “workers’ bomb”. He condemned the whole motion as “pacifist”.

John Bridge (CPGB) attacked comrade Downing’s defence of Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions by asking what kind of “workers’ bomb” it is that massacres workers. If the Soviet Union ever had used weapons against major cities in the US, the result would have been a massacre of the working class, the only force capable of stopping the drive to war and replacing capitalism with socialism, under which such weapons would be dismantled. A rewording of the demand for “democratic international supervision” was passed and the section was kept in the original motion, which passed overwhelmingly with only comrade Downing opposing.

After a quick lunch break comrades returned to the second session, which was opened by Marsha-Jane Thompson from the Labour Representation Committee, who read out a message of continued support from her organisation and John McDonnell MP. The session was presented by Cyrus Bina, author of Modern capitalism and Islamic ideology in Iran. Comrade Bina’s talk was titled ‘Why sanctions are not a “soft alternative” to war’ and he started by saying he considers himself a follower of Karl Marx. He said that sanctions are supplementary to war, and that they often are a precursor to military action and used to break the industrial base and civil society of countries in the sights of the imperialists.

He slammed those who said that demonstrations in Iran following the rigged elections had been made up of the middle classes, pointing out that on one occasion there were over three million on the streets. Comrade Bina went to say that sanctions hurt the workers and the poor far more than they damage the regime and even so-called “smart sanctions” would be detrimental to the lives of ordinary Iranians. The movement that has risen in Iran has international implications and it is important for socialists to build solidarity with its working class and progressive component.

The third session was introduced by Hopi chair Yassamine Mather (CPGB), who spoke on the session entitled ’Iran’s workers’ movement since the June 2009 elections’, and went on to move her motion against both sanctions and war. Comrade Mather explained that the oil workers, who were responsible for bringing the shah’s regime to its knees, have once again been discussing whether to strike or whether such action now would hit the working class and poor more than the regime - not least because an energy strike coupled with sanctions could result in power cuts and reduction in fuel for heating, when people need it most. The oil workers do not want to be seen as “part of US policy”.

During the discussion a leftwing supporter of the green movement in Iran argued that sanctions in Iraq had pushed the people towards a reactionary government and would similarly strengthen the faltering regime in Iran. Andrew Coates (Hopi Ipswich) argued that Hopi has and should continue to undercut those who argue that Ahmadinejad is some kind of progressive or defend the regime because it is nominally anti-imperialist. Comrade Mather said that the reformists are getting very nervous about the protests, as they have become more radical and have evolved from simple calls for a rerun of the elections to outright rejection of the Islamic republic. The resolution was passed unanimously.

The third motion, ‘Day of solidarity with Iranian workers’, moved by Ben Lewis (CPGB), called for Hopi fundraising event like this year’s cricket match. This was passed unanimously.

The final motion from Hopi steering committee member Charlie Pottins was titled ‘No to state murders’. Comrade Pottins argued that Hopi and the whole of the movement needs to condemn the murder of oppositionists and stressed the barbarity of the regime against national minorities such as the Kurds. On November 11 Ehsan Fattahian, a Kurdish socialist, was executed by the Islamic Republic. The motion also called for Hopi, while rejecting Zionist and imperialists propaganda that compares the Islamist regime with Hitler fascism, to condemn the hosting of a holocaust denial conference in Tehran. This motion was disputed by several comrades who wanted it referred back to the steering committee for rewording, and some amendments came from the floor. In the end, however, it was passed unaltered by a clear majority.

Overall the day showed Hopi’s strengths and weaknesses. Whilst the events of the past year have vindicated our stand, as opposed to the apologists of the Iranian regime, we now need to move forward by pulling in new forces and ensuring that activists are aided by a strong steering committee and national organisation.

Oil workers take on regime

2009-11-20T02:35:00.000-08:00

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. Yassamine Mather reports

The refinery authorities associated with what remains of the state-owned Iran National Oil Cohttp company say the workers are employed by a contractor and they cannot do anything about their demands. The protest followed a strike by the whole workforce of 450 involved in the development of Bandar Abbas Oil refinery. This was their third walkout in less than three months and the strike is continuing. The Iranian government’s privatisation plans are notoriously corrupt and generally help empower and enrich the Islamic Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards). But in the oil industry it is different from elsewhere. Privatisation has been undertaken with the aim of dividing workers and hampering national negotiations over wages and conditions, in the knowledge that for oil workers deployed in various sectors of the industry, working for so many different contractors, it would be impossible to negotiate common terms and conditions.

Private ownership of some oil functions is still prohibited under the Iranian constitution, but the government has permitted buy-back contracts, allowing international oil companies to participate in exploration and development through an Iranian affiliate. The contractor receives a remuneration fee, usually an entitlement to oil or gas from the developed operation. Iran’s total refinery capacity in 2008 was about 1.5 million barrels per day (bbl/d), with its nine refineries operated by the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company. Iranian refineries are unable to keep pace with domestic demand, while the threat of sanctions and removal of fuel subsidies have created price rises and the fear of a shortage of refined fuel.

The current protests are very significant because the Islamic government, wary of the power of oil employees, has so far avoided confrontation with this section of the working class by making sure they receive regular payment and imposing very strict security measures in refineries, services to the oil industry and oil extraction fields.

Iran ranks among the world’s top three holders of both proven oil and natural gas reserves. It is Opec’s second largest producer and exporter after Saudi Arabia, and fourth largest exporter of crude oil globally. Natural gas accounts for half of Iran’s total domestic energy consumption, while the remaining half consists predominantly of oil. The continued exploration and production of the offshore South Pars natural gas field in the Persian Gulf is a key part of the country’s energy sector development plan. Iran has nine oil refineries with a total capacity of 1.4 million bbl/d. They include Abadan, which was one of world’s largest when it was destroyed in 1980 in the Iraq-Iran war. It was also the refinery where the first political strike took place in the late 1970s. Meanwhile, gasoline demand is forecast to grow at around 11.4% per year.1

The Islamic government has not forgotten the significant role of oil workers in the events that led to the February uprising of 1979. In November 1978, a strike by 37,000 workers at Iran’s nationalised oil refineries initially reduced production from six million barrels per day to about 1.5 million. That strike not only cost the government about $60 million a day in oil revenue, but also suddenly raised the spectre of petroleum shortages in Japan, Israel, western Europe and, to a much lesser degree, in the US; all these countries to one extent or another depended at the time on Iranian crude. After a week of strikes and protests, some oil employees went back to work. But the strike played a crucial role in encouraging further militant action and boosted opposition to the regime. It was also significant in asserting the role of the working class in political struggles. The oil workers’ walkout climaxed two months of labour unrest that had spread to nearly every sector of the economy. Demands ranged from pay rises to compensate for spiralling inflation to political reforms, an end to martial law and the release of all remaining political prisoners. A strike of a million civil servants and government workers followed that of the oil workers.

There are many parallels between those strikes and the current unrest amongst oil employees. The present strikes follow weeks of political protests up and down the country. Also Iran’s economic situation is worse than anyone can remember - in addition to rocketing inflation, mass unemployment and systematic non-payment of wages, the new subsidies legislation, passed only a week ago, has already increased the price of basic goods. Everyone is predicting major price hikes.

Bread prices reached 1,000 tomans ($1) in Tehran this week. The newspaper Hemayat said that the two traditional breads, barbari and sangak, were being sold for 600 and 2,000 tomans respectively. The semi-official news agency, ILNA, predicts that both a litre of milk and a kilogram of sugar will soon reach 1,000 tomans. The estimated average wage is around $223 a month, and many workers are not paid for months at a time, while the employer can use the threat of job losses to get away with this form of systematic super-exploitation. In recent statements Iranian workers have once more called for international solidarity and support for their demands - and they are adamant that such support must be from fellow workers. Over the last few years labour activists inside Iran have sometimes been innocent victims of the foolish mistakes of sections of the Iranian ‘left’ that have collaborated with social-imperialist political groups and pro-imperialist, rightwing trade unions.

Those who maintain the principled position of opposing war and sanctions have a duty to show genuine international solidarity with Iranian workers. We can do so by supporting their immediate demands. One of the major organisations trying to unite the current nationwide struggles, the Coordinating Committee to Form Workers’ Organisations, has issued a number of statements regarding recent events, as well as a list of basic demands. Sections of that statement can be summed up as follows:

The Iranian working class is struggling against the entire capitalist system (all factions of the regime). There is a need to safeguard the independence of the working class in the class struggle. Our movement uses the strength of its organised and conscious forces against political power in its totality; that is why workers must unmask ruthlessly the reformist capitalist faction, a faction that misleads workers by creating the illusion of reform within the system.

The unity of the working masses in the struggle against capitalism and the need for promoting its material and moral ability to struggle for the abolition of the wage-slavery system requires that this class initiates its organised and conscious struggle from basic demands as described in the Charter of the Fundamental Demands of the Working Class of Iran.

The main condition for the success of these efforts, including the takeover of factories, the general strike or any struggle for the abolition of capitalist social relations and seizing political power, is the existence of anti-capitalist councils of the working class.

There must be a struggle against unemployment caused by factory closures, against various forms of intensification of exploitation in the workplace. Proposed tactics include taking over closed down factories or those that are on the brink of closing down in the first instance, and strikes in the second instance.

“Based on the above points,” the statement reads, “we call upon all anti-capitalist activists of the working class movement to unite around the following points” for the organisation of the class against capitalism:

Agreement on the basic demands of the working class.

Efforts to form anti-capitalist councils of the working class within workplaces and neighbourhoods.

Unified planning for launching strikes in all centres of work and centres of production.

Preparations for the takeover of factories that have closed down or those on the verge of closing down.

Participation within the current movement, with the aim of forming an independent line for the realisation of the basic demands of the working class.

“Workers, let’s get organised against capital!” concludes the call from the Coordinating Committee to Form Workers’ Organisations.

We in Hands Off the People of Iran must continue our efforts in support of Iranian workers, not just as an act of international solidarity, but as an integral part of our international efforts to confront the economic crisis. Excellent work has been done in 2009, with funds raised by the Fire Brigades Union, Unite, Unison and the RMT, and the efforts of the Labour Representation Committee and Hopi cricket teams. But we must do a lot more in 2010.

Iran: Workers gain new courage

2009-11-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

Workers gain new courage

Iranian demonstrations have given a real boost to working class opponents of the regime, writes Yassamine Mather

Every year November 4, the anniversary of the 1979 take-over of the US embassy in Tehran, is marked in Iran with a state-organised demonstration outside the building that used to house the American ambassador and his staff. On that date 30 years ago militant Islamic students stormed the embassy and took 71 hostages. Nineteen were released within weeks, but the remaining 52 were held for 444 days.

The ceremony commemorating the 30th anniversary of the ‘US hostage crisis’ was no different from recent years: a lacklustre ritual addressed by an insignificant minister. However, no-one in Iran will ever forget November 4 2009. It was the day when illegal demonstrations in at least six separate locations in Tehran and 20 cities and university campuses throughout the country overshadowed the state-organised event. As the national broadcasting service was showing live pictures of the gathering outside the former US embassy, shouts of “Death to the dictator” from protesters on neighbouring streets and squares were so loud that it was difficult to hear the minister’s speech. In Tehran the six locations were Enghelab Square, Ferdowsi, Haft Tir, Enghelab Square, Vali Asr and Vanak Square.

Revolutionary guards had issued stern warnings that they would not tolerate any protest demonstrations, and the night before dozens of political activists were arrested. On the morning of November 4 itself, government offices closed their doors at around 10am to stop employees leaving their workplace to join the protests. The ministry of the interior deployed special units of anti-riot police, many on motorbikes, as well as the religious bassij militia, to block main roads, intimidate potential demonstrators and attack any gathering. Yet despite all these measure, by all accounts - including admissions in the pro-Ahmadinejad press - tens of thousands of Iranians joined the protests against the regime.

Highly significant was the absence of any slogans regarding the rigged elections. Four months and 22 days after the June 2009 presidential poll, demonstrators in Iran have clearly moved on. Even the BBC Persian Service, that staunch defender of the ‘green movement’, had to admit in its broadcasts and analyses what most of the left has been saying for some time: as a result of the impasse within the factions of the Islamic regime the protests are no longer about the results of the presidential elections. Protesters are now challenging the very existence of that regime. ‘Reformist’ leaders are tailing the masses.¹

The advice of their ‘leaders’ - most of whom, with the exception of presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, did not even dare show their face at the demonstrations - was totally ignored. Fellow ‘reformist’ candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi had spent the previous 10 days warning everyone against “radical” slogans that would only “benefit the enemy”. Yet demonstrators did the exact opposite.

Even the bourgeois media had to admit that the radicalisation of the demonstrations has marked a new phase in the life of the opposition. The main slogans that dominated the day were directed at the supreme leader himself: “Our guardian is a murderer [the supreme leader’s official religious title is ‘guardian of the nation’]. His rule is null and void” (Vali ma ghateleh velayatesh bateleh), plus the usual “Death to Khamenei, death to the Islamic republic”.

The crowds were also at odds with Moussavi over the nuclear issue. In late October he and Karroubi met to discuss the recent US-EU offer to Iran, and made it clear that they considered Ahmadinejad’s response to be a sell-out. Moussavi was quoted by his own website Kalameh as saying: “If the promises given are realised then the hard work of thousands of scientists would be ruined.” Yet for the first time in many years, it looked like the nationalist defenders of a nuclear Iran had no supporters amongst the protesters, whose slogans were very clear: “We don’t want reactors, we don’t want the atomic bomb.”

A week earlier, Moussavi, after a lot of dithering, had called on his supporters to back the November 4 demonstrations, yet on the day he failed to show up at any of the protests. His supporters claimed he was prevented from leaving a cultural centre by the security forces, but witnesses deny this. For all his faults, Karroubi, the 70-year-old cleric, showed more courage. He was prepared to join the demonstrations, even though one of his bodyguards was badly injured and ended up in hospital.

In another qualitative development angry demonstrators tore down posters of Khamenei and trampled all over them in what were unprecedented scenes. The man who is supposed to be god’s representative on earth (for Shia Muslims) was called a murderer and his image defiled by demonstrators wiping their feet on his posters.

Most of all, though, November 4 will be remembered as the day Iranians realised their strength and found the courage to stand up to the regime’s supporters and security forces. A number of bloggers have remarked on how government supporters leaving the official gathering hid memorabilia and photos of the supreme leader that had been dished out at that event when they saw the huge number of protesters in neighbouring streets.

There were many reports and films of the bassij and militia attacking protesters, especially women. However, there were also many incidents where demonstrators confronted those forces and actually got the better of them. In some incidents old women defended young protesters and shamed the security forces into retreating.

Some protesters have also taken up a new chant: “Obama, Obama - either you’re with them or you’re with us.” On the face of it, this does not sound like the most radical of slogans. However, this is a country obsessed with conspiracy theories regarding foreign interference and it was the first time since 1979 that Iranians have directed a slogan at the leader of the hegemon capitalist power in the face of such conspiracy theories. It should be noted that since Irangate² no-one in Iran takes slogans like “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” shouted at official demonstrations seriously.

A number of foreign reporters were detained, most of whom have now been released, together with an Iranian journalist working for Agence France Presse. The stupid leaders of the regime had thought that by making such arrests they would stop the world hearing about the protests, but the reality is that now Iran has millions of reporters, with their text messages, emails and video footage captured on mobile phones. Perhaps the regime will consider banning all electronic equipment in their desperation to stop the ‘wrong’ news spreading.

The demonstrations have given a real boost to working class opponents of the regime. For the first time in many years they are finding allies in their struggle against the Islamic government. Sections of the left, including Rahe Kargar, have been talking of setting up neighbourhood resistance committees and clearly, given the vicious attacks by security forces on the growing opposition, such committees are necessary. For the first time in many years Iranians are discussing the need for the masses to be armed to confront the state security forces, while maintaining their opposition to ‘militarist’ tactics.

But the regime will not give up easily. More than 200 people were arrested in Tehran and the provinces on or around November 4, while a number of labour activists from the Haft Tapeh sugar cane company have been sent to prison for organising strikes. There are unconfirmed reports that despite many efforts to save the life of Kurdish leader Ehsan Fattahian, he was executed on November 11 in Sanandaj Central Prison. Ehsan’s 10-year prison sentence for membership of an illegal Kurdish organisation was recently changed to execution for no apparent reason.

Hundreds of protesters remain in prison and we must do all we can to support and defend them. Let us step up our solidarity with the working class and democratic opposition.

Respond to this article

Notes
See BBC Newsnight report, including interview with BBC Persian Service presenter: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPgi2LUNdqI
See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair for a summary of the ‘Iran Contra affair’, also known as ‘Irangate’.

Regime’s most persistent opposition

2009-11-13T11:39:00.000-08:00

Ali Pichgah is a veteran of the Iranian oil strikes of 1979-81, when he was a representative of the Tehran refinery workers shora (council) on the National Shora of Oil Workers. He spoke to Yassamine Mather about the current situation in Iran

How do you evaluate the recent political protests and the role of the working class in them?

First of all, I think we have to ask ourselves why the protest against the regime’s rigged elections took such dimensions. I have no doubt that the majority of the population are opposed to the absence of political freedoms in Iran. In particular the youth, who constitute a high percentage of the population, feel contempt for the way the religious state interferes in their private lives. People are losing patience and in general opposition to the regime has reached unprecedented levels.

All these elements led to conditions such that when the regime fixed its own sham election protesters took to the streets. But let us not forget that there is nothing new in the expression of dissatisfaction with or opposition to this regime and this is not the first time one faction has resorted to fraud during what the regime calls an electoral process. I think what is different this time is the terrible economic situation. Inflation above 25%, mass unemployment, the growing gap between rich and the poor ... and from this point of view one can say that the relentless workers’ struggles of the last two years against job losses and poverty, against non-payment of wages (which has become one of Iranian capitalists’ favoured method of increasing profits), as well as the demonstrations by teachers, nurses and so on against the economic policies of the government, were precursors to the huge demonstrations we saw this summer.

Of course, many of these protests were defensive (wage-earners trying to maintain what little they had), yet the working class has remained the most persistent opposition to the entire regime over the last few years, in the run-up to June 2009.

Coincidently we see the continuation of the mass protests of early summer in the unprecedented level of workers’ struggles in recent weeks, the victory of the Iran Khodro workers (where the regime clearly retreated), the revolutionary tactics of Pars Wagon workers (from ransacking the refectory to mounting hunger strikes), workers bringing their families along to demonstrations ...

How do you explain the continuation of these protests when it appears one faction of the regime has defeated the other faction, at least for the time being?

Ordinary people - and here I mean wage-workers, irrespective of whether they are workers, clerks, teachers or this army of millions of unemployed - have nothing to lose but their poverty. That is why they come out onto the streets as soon as an occasion arises, such as for the recent Quds day [Palestine Day - September 18] or in front of their factory, their workplace, sometimes in front of where they used to work. As I said before, it is the economic situation that has given impetus to the current political opposition to the regime.

In some ways we could say this summer’s political struggles took place against the background of an unprecedented economic crisis, which is inevitably linked to the international economic crisis. Any crisis unleashes its own class struggles and, of course, world capitalism has a long experience of transferring the worst effects of such crises to countries of the periphery. But Iran’s parasitic and corrupt capitalist economy paved the way for a major intensification of its economic problems. If you add this background to the existing political discontent, it is not difficult to understand why protests are continuing.

I am sure you are aware that people talk of the absence of the working class from the political arena in Iran and it is interesting that you rebuff such views. But I wanted to know what workers, especially in the oil industry, think of the current political upheaval.

Let me emphasise this once again: the working class was not only present in the demonstrations against the regime and the government from day one (June 12), but it was protesting long before it.

However, recent events mean the situation has changed a bit. First of all, the number of workers’ protests has increased considerably (and, of course, this has something to do with the worsening economic situation), but more significantly during the last few months their struggles have moved from defensive to more aggressive forms - for example, amongst car workers. You have to remember that participation in workers’ protests is far more dangerous than going on a street demonstration. Your name, address, work details are known to the factory owner and the security forces and the minimum problem you face is losing your job - a serious matter when a high percentage of the workforce is unemployed. Yet with all these dangers we see a manifold increase in workers’ protests, so no-one should talk about the absence of the Iranian working class.

However sections of the working class and in particular oil workers are well aware of their historic role. Older workers remember the strikes of the late 1970s, which played a crucial role in the people’s struggles. The younger oil workers (I should say oil employees, because they all participated) have heard about the significance of the oil workers’ intervention in the struggles of 1979 from older workers. But the reason why they haven’t gone on strike is quite specific.

First of all, they are concerned that in the current political climate a strike might benefit the reformist faction of the regime and, of course, this faction is our class enemy as much as the conservatives - they only discovered the need to defend democracy when they themselves faced repression. There have been many discussions amongst oil workers about this issue, which are still continuing. The other concern is that the strike should take place only when there is coordination between all the refineries to make sure there is a successful nationwide action.

In 1981 we wanted to go on strike in protest against the political situation [the first mass arrests of leftwingers, the execution of political activists, the banning of secular and left organisations]. Some people were in favour of the strike; others were opposed to it. Of course, even then a section of oil workers were opposed to the regime, but now this opposition is much stronger. Let me tell you, if the political protests continue, I am sure (by that I mean I promise!) that employees in the oil industry will defend the political struggles and will do what is necessary.

My last question is about the proposed sanctions planned by the US, Britain, France and Germany on the export of refined oil to Iran. What is your opinion about such sanctions?

It is clear that sanctions will hit ordinary people. In winter, they will harm the impoverished working class and the poor in general. Essential goods will not reach the cities and villages. All this benefits world capitalism, but it will be an obstacle to workers’ struggle and its immediate effect will be to strengthen the regime. We have been working for the revolutionary overthrow of this regime since 1981 and every foreign intervention delays this process - they create conditions that hold back workers’ protests.

That is why we can’t stay silent: we must do all we can to oppose these sanctions.

Iran: Green road to nowhere

2009-10-23T07:11:00.001-07:00

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 movement conscious of the international complexities of the current situation

Every day for the last few weeks Iranian workers have been protesting, at times in their thousands - at their workplaces, outside government offices and provincial offices complaining about job losses, non-payment of wages, privatisation ... Universities have been the scene of daily protests and ordinary people have used every opportunity, even football matches, to express their opposition to the regime. At the same time a new wave of exiles, including reporters, writers, professors of literature, are leaving the country, despairing of continued repression and the ineffective ‘reformist’ leaders.
For the overwhelming majority of Iranians, however, such an option does not exist. Tens of millions of wage-earners have no choice but to continue their struggles against the regime in their daily confrontation with factory-owners and the religious state that backs them. In the words of those at Wagon Pars, who went on hunger strike last week, workers have “nothing to lose but their unpaid wages”. The 1,700 employees of Wagon Pars, manufacturer of freight wagons and passenger coaches, have been in dispute with management and the state for months over unpaid wages. In August 2009 these workers went on strike and staged a sit-in protest on factory grounds, locking the gates and preventing managers from entering.
The factory had been privatised as a subsidiary of troubled car maker Iran Khodro, after Iran’s supreme leader changed article 44 of the constitution, removing the guarantee of public ownership for key industries. Protests and threats of strike by Iran Khodro workers forced the government to retreat, showing the vulnerability of the rulers when confronted by united working class action. Iran Khodro workers have now won five of their demands, including an overtime pay rise of 20% for all workers on the production line.
Last week there were also major workers’ protests over non-payment of wages in Louleh Sazi Khouzestan (manufacturers of pipelines) and a demonstration by Tractor Sazi workers in Kurdistan, where tens of workers were sacked, while others are expected to work longer hours. Managers in most of these disputes blame the world economic downturn for the new wave of job losses. Nearly four months after the huge demonstrations of June 2009, the continuation of protests in workplaces and universities proves that opposition to the regime goes well beyond the issue of the sham presidential elections.
Sanctions and the working class
Sanctions have compounded an already dire economic situation. In the South Pars oilfields almost 6,000 contract workers are threatened with job losses, as whole fields are abandoned following news that Total, Repsol and Shell are pulling out. The current protests should indeed be seen in the light of the world economic crisis - whose effects have been felt far worse in the countries of the periphery - as well as the impact of sanctions. Iranian workers are adamant that the dire economic situation is one of the main reasons why protests continue and evolve, despite the failures of the green movement. Some of their supporters talk of the “suffocating silence” of the green movement’s leadership.1
Of course, workers’ protests in Iran are nothing new. They have been going on for years. What is different is the massive increase in their number and the introduction of political slogans, such as “Death to the dictator” or “Tanks, bullets, bassij [militia] are not effective any more”, in workers’ sit-ins, protests and demonstrations. Workers were the first section of the population to confront unscrupulous capitalists and the religious state, and their audacity paved the way for the wider opposition to develop. Now they are showing themselves the most tenacious in continuing the protests, even if the western media do not find workers’ actions newsworthy. The problems they face are enormous. Unlike the myriad well funded NGOs, some with dubious links to US regime-change funds, the Iranian working class has no source of ready income. On the contrary, their protests cost workers their meagre wages.
Reporting workers’ struggles on radio and TV is considered ideological, while giving wall-to-wall coverage to the utterances of ‘reformist’ Islamists or bourgeois liberal politicians is deemed ‘impartial’. The state can identify and punish labour activists much more easily than demonstrators. Nowhere is the state’s control more severe than in the oil industry. Worker activists discussing possible strike action are moved from their regular posts to other areas.
Yet none of the state’s increasingly repressive measures seem to deter the Iranian working class, who are turning the defensive actions of last year into more aggressive forms of protest, establishing road blocks, taking managers hostage, bringing their families to occupy closed factories and workplaces. In order to overcome the lack of news coverage of their struggles, Iranian workers are setting up their own means of communication through internet sites and email.
But the combination of proposed new sanctions and the ‘new’ economic policies of the regime will make life even harder for the majority. Just when it became clear that Iran has no intention of adhering to a proposed deal for the ‘resolution’ of its nuclear crisis2 and the US began passing legislation to impose new unilateral sanctions, the majles (Islamic parliament) discussed regulations that would sharply reduce energy and food subsidies, in compliance with long-term demands of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
In the US, the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act (IRSA), approved by an overwhelming 414 to six margin in Congress, will allow local and state governments and their pension funds to divest from foreign companies or US subsidiaries with investments of more than $20 million in Iran’s energy sector. And the house foreign affairs committee has scheduled a vote for October 28 on the Iran Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA) bill. This will impose sanctions on companies involved in exporting refined petroleum products to Iran or expanding Tehran’s capacity to produce its own refined products. Similar sanctions are likely to be imposed by France, the United Kingdom and Germany. Meanwhile most US politicians and commentators agree that sanctions affecting the general population could actually bolster support for the Tehran government.
The new subsidies legislation in Iran will increase the prices of goods, including gasoline, natural gas and electricity. Similar legislation was proposed by ‘reformist’ president Mohammad Khatami during his term (1997-2005), proving once more that, when it comes to major economic decisions, including compliance with IMF demands, the two main factions of the Islamic regime have identical policies. It is therefore no surprise that ‘reformist’ MPs, including supporters of Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the main challenger in the June elections, back the measure.
With subsidies and the current rationing system, a litre of gasoline costs 100 tomans ($0.10). The new bill will raise the price to as much as 500 or 600 tomans per litre - before the effects of US/European sanctions start to bite. The measure could double Iran’s already astronomic rate of inflation, fluctuating between 15% and 30%. It will make the poor poorer, while the rich will be least affected. Ironically, legislative bodies in both the US and Iran are making sure the Iranian people will suffer this winter. Iran is the world’s fifth-largest crude oil exporter, but its eight refineries cannot produce near enough fuel for the home market.
Islamic values?
If anyone had any doubt about the reactionary nature of the ‘reformist’ leaders, this week’s meeting and joint statement from Moussavi and Khatami should have shattered their illusions. They called for “a return to the values of the Islamic republic and to the country’s constitution”. What values are we talking about? Air raids on inhabited villages in Kurdistan in the early 1980s, when Moussavi was prime minister? Or the massacre of peasants who sheltered leftwingers in Kurdistan? The values that led to the mass execution of political prisoners in 1987, or the values behind serial political murders during Khatami’s presidency? The list of ‘Islamic values’ under Khatami and Moussavi is indeed endless. These gentlemen and the ‘reformists’ as a whole are obsessed with calling recent events a coup, as their pleas for a return to the ‘glory days’ of the Islamic republic make clear: Iran had previously been a democracy, you see - at least when Khatami was president or Moussavi was prime minister - but then in June 2009 there was a coup!
In reality, the Islamic regime’s attitude towards any form of opposition has not changed much over the last few months. Opposition groups and labour activists, women and student protesters have been arrested, tortured and executed throughout the last 30 years. What has changed is a reduction in the executive power of the ‘reformists’, who have been part and parcel of the regime. It is hard to see how one could call the current state of affairs a coup when the major players claiming to be the victims still hold their positions. Former ‘reformist’ president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani (1989-97) remains chair of the council of experts and chair of the national security council. Khatami’s International Institute for Dialogue among Cultures and Civilisations is not under threat. Clerical allies of the ‘reformists’ in Ghom remain free to express their opinions.
None of this, of course, makes Iran a democracy. Iran remains a religious capitalist state with all the contradictions of such a combination. However, what we are witnessing is not a coup, but divisions amongst rulers.
Left illusions
The events of June 2009 have unleashed a whole set of new movements in Iran. One can no longer speak of a single movement. In the words of activists inside Iran, we see a rainbow of political forces, including an increasingly strong red component. As I said at the CPGB’s Communist University in August, 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 - but also as the only movement conscious of the international complexities of the current situation.
However, the events of the last few years, as well as the BBC’s obsession with the Iranian clergy and ‘ayatollogy’,3 has moved much of the exiled left and some of their supporters inside Iran further into liberalism and nationalism. For these forces, mesmerised by the euphoria of maintaining ‘unity’, class politics has become a dogmatic irrelevance. Yet there have been very few times in Iran’s history when the role of the working class has been so pivotal in the political arena as it is today - as sections of the Iranian working class, in particular in the oil industry, keep reminding us.4 They are the force that continues to fight for their jobs and their livelihoods, and in doing so they are in the forefront of the battle for democracy.
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the pro-Soviet Stalinist left in Iran started its analysis of the political situation from an international perspective. According to the dogma, there existed two camps, imperialism and socialism, and from that followed tactics and strategy. In an almost total reversal of that old position, we now see an Iranian ‘left’, often with roots in organisations that had pro-Soviet tendencies, looking only at Iran and analysing the region and the world through the prism of nationalism. No wonder this ex-left has become so liberal in its attitudes towards imperialism, war and sanctions.
By identifying the main enemy as the current regime in Iran with its Islamic characteristics (as opposed to its capitalist nature), this section of the ‘left’ becomes, consciously or unconsciously, part of the rightwing agenda. It seeks justice for Iranian workers from pro-imperialist trade unions; it wants tribunals financed by the Pentagon for abusers of human rights and executioners of political prisoners; it sees nothing wrong with accepting funds from western capitalist organisations to set up NGOs; when it comes to imperialism, it supports ‘third campist’ positions, choosing to ignore the predominant role of the hegemonic forces in world capitalism (this malaise goes well beyond the disintegrating splinters of the Worker-communist Party of Iran, spreading to other sections of the exiled left like a contagious disease).
That is why, at a time of political upheavals which should see the radicalisation of this ‘left’, we hear the most astonishing comments, ranging from the sublime - ‘Both Israel and Palestinians are equally at fault over Gaza’ (the Palestinians presumably for being occupied), ‘We should support a third campist position’ - to the ridiculous - crediting the bourgeoisie in western Europe for “bringing about universal suffrage” (N Khorasani, feminist activist). Our liberal left is keen to talk of social movements rather than class politics, forgetting that social movements, in Iran as anywhere else, are so divided by class, nationality, religion and politics that it is impossible to consider them a single coherent force - the women’s movement being a clear example.
The heralded movement of movements in Iran will go nowhere unless the working class succeeds in putting its mark on current events. In so doing it will inevitably have to deal with the increasing ‘liberalism’ of sections of the ex-left.
We are at the beginning of such a struggle and it will take a long time. Nevertheless the signs from debates amongst workers inside Iran are encouraging. Car workers and oil workers who face international capital in their daily protests seem unaffected by the myth of bourgeois liberal heavens that will permit the development of trade unions, apparently a precondition for all workers’ struggles! The Iranian working class - and here one should include the millions who have lost their jobs because of the neoliberal policies of finance capital - are in daily confrontation with world capitalism.
No wonder, despite their hatred of the Islamic regime, they remain the only class aware of the objective interests of the United States and it allies in controlling the Middle East and the Persian Gulf region. Unlike sections of the national minorities or the women’s movement, which have become pawns in imperialist games, Iranian workers have maintained their opposition to a regime which is subordinate to the US in the global pecking order, and are conscious that their movement must draw clear lines against bourgeois alternatives and imperialist plans.
They are already taking initiatives well beyond the limited horizons of our liberal left, talking of workers’ control in the thousands of abandoned factories and plants throughout the country. They are talking of the need for unity in organising employed and unemployed workers, of the need to set up neighbourhood organisations in working class districts. They are discussing the possibility of a general strike, its likely risks and potential rewards.
They certainly have no illusions regarding any of the shades of the green movement, even though they clearly understand the unprecedented opportunities presented by the current divisions amongst Iran’s theocratic rulers. Our solidarity and our support should be with the working class - and its many allies in the women’s movement, amongst students and in the national and religious minorities.

Threats over uranium enrichment aid regime

2009-10-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

Threats over uranium enrichment aid regime
by 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 prepare the world for a new conflict in the Middle East. The presentation of the ‘news’ and the language used in delivering the threats were reminiscent of the warnings about Iraq’s ‘45-minute’ strike capability.

According to Obama, "Iran is on notice that when we meet with them on October 1 they are going to have to come clean, and they will have to make a choice." The alternative to sticking to ‘international rules’ on Iran’s nuclear development, would be "a path that is going to lead to confrontation".

Yet in some ways the existence of a second uranium enrichment plant is old news. By all accounts US and UK secret services had known about this plant for at least three years - Israel and France also knew about it for some time and had delivered their finding to the International Atomic Energy Agency earlier this year. The ‘dramatic’ disclosures came at a time when Russia was already on board regarding further sanctions. Given its billion-dollar trade with Iran, China - one of Iran’s major commercial partners - is unlikely to change its opposition to further sanctions.

So what was the main purpose of the Obama-Sarkozy-Brown show on September 25? Could it be it was directed mainly to audiences in the US, UK and France, to convince them that, at a time of economic uncertainty, western leaders have to deal with a ‘major external threat’ posed by Iran’s nuclear development?

But the elephant in that press conference room was the Israeli nuclear programme. While Iran might be approaching nuclear military capability by 2010-15 (no-one is claiming it has such capability now), another ‘religious’ state in the Middle East is exempt from IAEA regulations and possesses between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads (this according to US estimates), yet it maintains a policy of ‘deliberate ambiguity’ on whether it has nuclear weapons.

Former IAEA director general Mohamed El Baradei regarded Israel as a state possessing nuclear weapons, but there has been no IAEA inspection, hence the ambiguity over the number of warheads it possesses. Strictly speaking, as a beneficiary of the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II, Israel is not supposed to have any. Yet every year the US congress approves billions of dollars of US military aid to Israel. For the fiscal year 2010, Obama is requesting $2.775 billion.

The Symington and Glenn amendments to foreign aid law specifically prohibit US aid to nuclear states outside the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran has signed the NPT. Israel has not.

Of course, none of this justifies the Iranian rulers’ obsession with reaching a stage where they can produce nuclear-weapons. Unlike middle class nationalist Iranians, who even in their opposition to the regime, favour the government’s nuclear programme, the Iranian working class has been clear on this issue, as shown by placards on recent demonstrations: "We don’t want nuclear power - we don’t want huge salaries. We work so that we can live - we don’t live to work."

Millions of Iranian workers have not been paid for months, while capitalists and the religious government keep telling them of Iran’s economic crisis and shortfalls in both the state and private funds, yet the Islamic regime seems to have sufficient funds to equip one more nuclear enrichment plant, paying billions - presumably to dubious sources - for black market equipment. The current escalation of the conflict also exposes the stupidity of the Iranian rulers who only admitted to the existence of this ‘secret’ plant after its existence was ‘exposed’.

Of course, Iranians have become so used to hearing total lies from the leaders of all factions of the Islamic regime that the revelation of the existence of this facility, hidden not far from the capital, did not come as a surprise. After all, this is the same government that used Photoshop to pretend a failed rocket did successfully launch, the same government that cheated in the presidential elections, then lied about the number of people killed in the subsequent protests, and the same government whose president claims to have seen a white light descending from another world while he was addressing the UN assembly in 2007.

Further sanctions will bring more poverty for Iranian workers and it will be the Iranian people who will pay the price for the foolishness of the very leaders they have been protesting against for over two months. The US is keen on sanctions against companies exporting refined oil to Iran (which imports 60% of its requirements). It now looks like France and Germany are sceptical about such sanctions. They refer to the Iraq experience and the ease with which petrol can be smuggled across land borders.

The Iranian government has already indicated that it will cut petrol subsidies. It is blaming the west and hopes such a move will unite the country against the ‘foreign enemy’. Contrary to the pessimism of sections of the Iranian left in exile who ‘despair’ of the growth of the ‘Green’ movement or who have joined the bandwagon behind ‘reformist’ presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi, workers in oil refineries in Iran are well aware of the historic role of their class in the current situation and there have been discussions regarding strikes in this industry for the last few weeks. These workers have two valid concerns: (1) that their strike should not benefit Moussavi (he is hated by these workers, some of whom remember his time in power); and (2) that their strike should not help US efforts for regime change from above.

Western countries are also considering options including an embargo on investment in Iran’s oil and gas sector, an end to loan guarantees to all companies investing in Iran, a ban on Iranian businesses trading in euros, and a ban on foreign companies insuring Iranian shipping and air transport. All of these measures will target the Iranian people, the majority of whom hate the clerical state.

UN lies

If the Iranian government lied about its nuclear installations, Ahmadinejad’s speech last week at the UN was also full of deceit. His holocaust-denial comments, repeated in every interview he gave while in the US, were a deliberate attempt to divert attention from mass protests at home and to heighten the tension with the rest of the world. This regime and this president rely on foreign crises to survive - he desperately needs enemies abroad to divert attention from problems at home, and the Obama-Brown-Sarkozy trio gave him that.

However, his speech contained other lies. The man who has printed money in an attempt to solve Iran’s economic problems told the world: "It is no longer possible to inject thousands of billions of dollars of unreal wealth into the world economy simply by printing worthless paper assets, or transfer inflation as well as social and economic problems to others through creating severe budget deficits." He also criticised "liberal capitalism" (as opposed to clerical capitalism?). After all, this is the president of a government that is busy privatising every industry in Iran, from services in the oil industry to car plants and Iran’s national telecommunications. The telecom company was privatised and sold to the ‘revolutionary guards’ in the last week of September, although Iran’s ‘monopoly regulatory commission’ is now said to be investigating this.

However, such actions by Iran’s Sepah Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) do not imply that the country is under military capitalist rule: they are controlled by the most conservative sections of Iran’s clerical elite. The Pasdaran ownership of the telecommunication services is only another success for supreme leader Ali Khamenei, his son and the clerics around him, as this ideological military force has no life and no significance without clerical rule.

The few delegates in the UN assembly hall who heard Ahmadinejad condemn the excesses of "liberal capitalism" might have thought Iran is an egalitarian religious society. Nothing could be further from reality. After 30 years in power Iran’s Islamic regime has created one of the most unequal, corrupt societies of the region, where the gap between the rich and the poor is amongst the highest in the world. As Ahmadinejad was speaking, Iran’s car workers (amongst the best paid sections of the working class) were protesting at long shifts causing ill health and workers throughout Iran were on strike or demonstrating against non-payment of wages. While factory closures due to privatisation continue, Aryaman Motors, a Tehran-based company specialising in reproducing classic cars, launched a new series of replica vehicles based on the original design of the earliest Rolls Royce models at $120,000 each - wealthy Iranians have already pre-paid for the first models that will be finished later this year.

In his speech Ahmadinejad also referred to the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, failing to mention Iran’s role in support of US aggression in both - as leaders of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran keep reminding us! The Iranian president then referred to breaches of human rights in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Of course, it is inevitable that abuse of human rights by the ‘torch holders’ of liberal democracy in the US and the UK will be used by every tinpot leader in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere to justify the tortureand execution of opponents. The Iranian president is the leader of a government that has killed at least 72 civilians and torturedhundreds in the last two months alone, yet the actions of western governments allow him to stand up in New York and give moral lectures about ‘human right abuses’. We truly live in irrational times.

Protests and divisions

The first days of the new university term in Iran saw major protests on campuses throughout the country - the largest being at Tehran University on September 27-28. Students shouted "Death to the dictator" and booed the new minister of higher education. Security forces retreated from the campus. On Tuesday September 29 students protested at Sharif University, once more causing the minister for higher education to abandon plans to speak. Meanwhile, security forces are warning football crowds not to chant political slogans at the Tehran derby between Esteghlal and Persepolis on October 2.

As former president and leading ‘reformist’ Ali Akbar Rafsanjani continues his efforts to find a compromise between the regime’s warring factions, the first signs of a rift amongst ‘reformists’ has appeared. In an open letter addressed to Rafsanjani, another ‘reformist’ presidential candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, writes: "What is your answer to the people who, under dangerous conditions, question the actions of the Assembly of Experts under your leadership? ... By what measure have you preserved the ideals of the revolution in your role as chair of the Assembly of Experts, whose first duty is fighting injustice?"

Moussavi’s latest statement on September 28 is also predictably uninspiring. Its repeated references to the "wisdom" of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, confirmed his continued allegiance to the ‘imam’s line’. But this will not gain him much support amongst young Iranians, who will not accept any solution short of the overthrow of the entire regime. Moussavi’s call on his supporters to "avoid any radical measures which could damage the achievements so far made by the opposition" expose once more his fear of radical change and his determination to save the religious state.

All this is very good news for the revolutionary forces. However, the threat of sanctions and war only strengthens Khamenei and Ahmadinejad. In the words of UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, any "rush to punitive sanctions - tightened to the point where ordinary Iranians, already suffering the effects of chronic unemployment, had to endure petrol shortages or big fuel price hikes - could backfire spectacularly".

Hands Off the People of Iran has always condemned sanctions and threats of war against Iran. We oppose them not only because we want to see imperialism defeated, but because they increase patriotism and nationalism, thus helping the reactionary regime. The government will use the ‘threat of the enemy without’ to increase repression, to arrest and torture its ‘enemy within’. Sanctions disorganise the working class, as people are forced to squander their fighting energies on day-to-day struggles to keep their jobs and feed their families - Iranian oil workers are right to be concerned about going on strike at a time when sanctions will also target ‘imported refined oil’.

The proposed US-European sanctions dramatically degrade the ability of the working people to struggle collectively on their own account, to organise and to fight. In other words, for the sake of Iranian working class we must continue our opposition to war, sanctions and regime change from above, while increasing our solidarity with the revolutionary movement inside Iran.

Richard Hunt was not just a statistic

2009-09-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

Richard Hunt was not just a statistic

John Sidwell recalls a well intentioned and honest young man

On Saturday August 15, my good friend Richard Hunt became the 200th British casualty since the initial invasion and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan. Inevitably a shock to all his friends and family, his death brought home to me the fragility of thousands of working class lives in the shape of troops sent to fight the latest imperialist war - always in the name of both the ‘national interest’ and ‘bringing democracy’ to whatever people are suffering under occupation. His death was all the more tragic in that it came in only his second week in Afghanistan (his first outing from base camp), when he was just a week short of his 22nd birthday.

Richard was a well intentioned and honest young man. Although I did not share his passion for all things rugby, we got along very well and spent many an hour in the pub discussing the question of the war and the validity of British involvement. Whilst he was committed to whatever function his position as a private in the British army would entail for him, he was always clear that his main allegiance on the battlefield was to his fellow soldiers, and not to some grand political agenda. But that is fine by the top brass - however it is achieved, the unquestioning carrying out of orders is the aim. The more far-fetched and unjustifiable the apparent reasons for such conflicts are, the more vital this becomes, and Richard told me this was the attitude prevalent amongst the majority of lower-ranking troops he came into contact with.

Because Richard’s death was the 200th in Afghanistan it received more than the usual publicity - I doubt whether The Guardian would have felt it necessary to feature it on its front page had it been the 201st. But the Stop the War Coalition was correct to call for it to be marked with demonstrations and pickets. It is our duty to stop the slaughter - of both innocent Afghans and the occupying troops.

The fact that I felt this as a personal loss emphasised for me how grotesquely misplaced it would be for anti-imperialists, anti-war campaigners and working class partisans to express satisfaction at, still less celebrate, the death of British troops. We are for the defeat of the British state’s imperialist operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and defend the right of the Afghan people to fight back using any means at their disposal, but that does not mean we relish the deaths that result. Rather we fight for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all occupying troops.

We have to recognise that the military rank and file are overwhelmingly working class. Forced or encouraged into the armed forces for a variety of reasons - often the lack of any viable alternative - they are persuaded to carry out the agenda of an enemy class by the prospect of a ‘decent’ wage, training or perhaps escape from a dead-end life of unemployment and alienation. They are denied even the most basic right to speak out or exercise the slightest control over their working environment.

The case of Joe Glenton - court-marshalled for desertion after refusing to be sent to Afghanistan - is clear evidence of a level of discontent within the armed forces. While we would criticise the terms of his condemnation of Britain’s role in Afghanistan - such wars must be opposed whether or not they are technically “illegal” - his rebellion is to be welcomed and could easily be replicated and generalised if the left took agitation amongst troops more seriously. Labelling all British troops as imperialist butchers is hardly going to help in such a task.

It is understandable that Richard’s family have called for any donations in his name to be given to the Help for Heroes organisation. But it is an utter indictment of the British state that those injured in a conflict supposedly waged in ‘our’ interest are dependent on Rupert Murdoch-backed charity handouts to provide them with the most basic of needs.

As communists it is vital we seek to build a mass anti-war movement equipped with both the political and practical means to challenge the state. Both in order to apply as much pressure as possible on the government for the immediate withdrawal of troops from the Gulf region, and to make its pursuit of further imperialist projects increasingly impossible. That is the way to defeat imperialism.

While Richard never came to agree with all my criticisms of the British state’s role in the ‘war on terror’, our discussions on the issue were certainly worthwhile and, I would hope, informative for both parties - they certainly were for me. Although my time with Richard was too short - it was certainly far too short for me to be able to persuade him to take a different course - the memory of him will be with me forever. He was warm and friendly and always up for a laugh. His needless death, whilst deeply personal for me, was another wasted life in a barbarous conflict.

Misogynist torturers cling to power

2009-09-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

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 attending ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Reports from the working class neighbourhoods of Tehran, such as Ekbatan, Apadana and Karaj, and from the white-collar suburbs of Tehran Pars, indicate that anti-government demonstrations take place every night and often lead to confrontation between protesters and Bassij militia.

Last week dozens of political prisoners started a hunger strike in Evin prison and on the first day of Ramadan families of those arrested in recent protests gathered outside calling for the immediate release of all political detainees. There are daily protests in factories and workplaces against the political and economic conditions and in some provinces, including Khorassan, there is news of peasants protesting against confiscation of their land by religious authorities. Five hundred peasants from Sarakhss have staged a sit-in for the last week in front of Mashad’s main petrol station, complaining about the use of religious legislation to expropriate their land.

The crisis in the government continues, with clear divisions between the conservative ‘principlists’ and the proposed government. On Thursday August 20 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled a cabinet boasting 11 new faces, including three women. Loyalty to the president seemed to be the main factor, as ‘conservative’ and ‘reformist’ MPs alike condemned the nominations. Clearly Ahmadinejad will face an uphill struggle getting them passed by the majles (parliament)

. Even the principlist faction seems to be opposed to most of the nominations, guaranteeing months of uncertainty and the continuation of the political crisis. According to the ILNA news agency, speaker Ali Larijani complained: “The ministry is not a place for apprenticeship; it is a place that requires expertise and experience”.

Iran’s defence minister-designate is on an Interpol ‘wanted’ list over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Argentina. Interpol put out a ‘red notice’ for Ahmad Vahidi in 2007 over the Buenos Aires attack that killed 85 people. As for the women appointees, they were clearly chosen for their ultra-conservative views on everything - including women’s rights. These comments from Fatemeh Ajorloo, Ahmadinejad’s choice for minister of social services, speak volumes: “… it is men who go for khastegari [the custom of a man asking for a woman’s hand] and they remain responsible for the marriage. This is great: that is how society should operate. Why did the family break down in the west? Because women went to work and men lost their true role.” That was from a speech in defence of quotas for university entrance - the government believes too many women are going into higher education.

Ajorloo is also a defender of new legislation before the majles entitled ‘Efaf’ (chastity). She is in favour of a ‘uniform’ for Iranian women of all ages - a long black chador (a tent-like covering from head to toe, pinned under the chin) and, to be fair, she herself is a walking advertisement for this bizarre attire, as revealed by her official photos.

However, even tame Islamist women like Ajorloo are too much for Iran’s clerics. A number of senior ayatollahs have expressed opposition to Ahmadinejad’s decision to nominate women ministers. On August 22 conservative MPs told the media that leading Iranian clerics - including grand ayatollahs Nasser Makarem Shirazi and Lotfollah Safi Golpayghani - had “doubts about choosing female ministers and want Ahmadinejad to reconsider”, according to the Tehran Emrouz newspaper.

Defending his nominations for ministerial posts, Ahmadinejad managed to offend almost everyone by comparing his outgoing health minister, Kamran Lankarani, to a peach that any man would want to eat! A conservative MP, Ali Ghanbari, said it was beneath the president’s dignity to compare his minister with a fruit. A video of Ahmadinejad’s peach comments has been widely circulated on the internet and posted on blogs and social networking sites.

‘Against torture’
As the protests continue and news of atrocities in prisons and detention centres spreads, the anger against the ineffectiveness of ‘reformist leaders’ - some of whom are clearly involved in behind-the-scene deals with the conservative faction - grows.

The super-rich ayatollah Ali Akbar Rafsanjani is in the process of being rehabilitated in the centres of religious and political power. He was consulted by the supreme leader in the nomination of the new chief justice and attended his inauguration ceremony. Rafsanjani’s August 22 statement urging Iran’s political factions to follow orders from the supreme leader, had all the hallmarks of a new conciliatory move. Rafsanjani has also reportedly reiterated his previous call to politicians and the media to “avoid causing schisms” and “take steps toward the creation of unity”. Clearly for Iran’s ‘reformists’, the survival of the Islamic regime remains paramount.
Over the last two months ‘reformist’ presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi have done very little to improve their standing, falling far short of the expectations of their most ardent supporters. However, as news of the torture and death of protesters detained after recent demonstrations spread, first Karroubi and then Moussavi realised that unless they acted they would lose any credibility. First came the statement by Karroubi that he was enraged by the torture of demonstrators and then both men issued statements condemning the torture and rape of detainees - ‘reformist’ leaders say 69 protesters died in the post-election violence.
Although one should welcome any condemnation of torture, some of us cannot help remembering comrades who died under torture when Moussavi was prime minister and Karroubi was a close ally of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini - he was head of the Khomeini relief committee and the Martyrs’ Foundation between 1979 and 1989. Let me mention one in particular - comrade Nastaran, with whom I shared a room in Kurdistan. In the autumn of 1983 she left our Kurdistan Fedayeen base, having been given responsibility for a workers’ committee in south Tehran.

Nastaran was arrested a few months after returning to Tehran and, although she had tried to swallow her cyanide tablet (a standard practice among arrested Fedayeen members), she did not manage to commit suicide. Fellow prisoners, who saw her between the day of her incarceration and her untimely death are unanimous in describing the frightening state to which she was reduced following months of torture. She “couldn’t stand on her feet”, she had been lashed so many times. She “couldn’t see - her eyes were too swollen from all the beatings” ...
Over the last week I have not stopped thinking about Nastaran. Maybe if messrs Moussavi and Karroubi had done something about torture in those days, she and thousands like her who died in the dungeons of the Islamic Republic would still be alive. But, of course, had they done so, their beloved Islamic Republic, the regime they still want to save, would not have survived the protests of the last three decades.

In 2009 the religious judiciary denies all accusations of torture and rape of prisoners as baseless - the detainees making these claims cannot even produce the basic prerequisite for a prosecution: witness statements from four male adults!

In the meantime the trials of ‘reformist’ leaders have continued and have featured on a tragicomic show on state TV. In addition to the ministers of ex-president Khatami and ideologues of the Islamic ‘reformist’ movement such as Saeed Hajjarian, the conservative faction is now trying in absentia German sociologists Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas!
Hajjarian, the prosecutor said, once met Habermas, who was famous for his theory of civil disobedience, according to which it is permissible to refuse to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, or of an occupying power, without resorting to physical violence. The accusations against Weber were not mentioned in court (presumably because he died in 1920), but the Shia conservatives clearly do not like him either!

Last week Moussavi, Karroubi and Khatami launched a new front: the ‘green road to hope’. As the title suggests, this a road to nowhere, yet it is already clear that the front, which aims to “unite the opposition from below” with branches in every city and community, is organised from above. As time goes by, another generation of young Iranians is learning through practice not to have any illusions about reformists leaders whose only concern remains their tattered political careero:s. Yet in the absence of a powerful left, there is little prospect for real change in Iran.
If up until June 2009 factory owners and the government blamed the ‘world economic crisis’ for non-payment of workers’ wages, job cuts and mass unemployment, after June they have had another excuse: the protests paralysed the economy and that is why workers cannot be paid. No doubt Iran’s economy is in serious trouble, yet it is mainly the working class, the wage-earners, who are paying the price.

Over 1,500 major Iranian companies are on the verge of bankruptcy and they include major firms such as the Arak Automobile Factory and Azar Water Company. Iran Khodro, Iran’s main car plant, was only saved by an injection of over $1 billion by the government in early August. Managers of this factory and other major companies are encouraging workers to accept redundancy packages so that they can conform with the government policy of only employing temporary contract workers (Ahmadinejad’s last minister of labour had promised that by 2010 100% of Iran’s workforce will be employed on such contracts).

But workers are resisting. Kashan textile employees are amongst those staging demonstrations against the non-payment of wages - they have not been paid for 22 months. These workers have pointed out that their dispute with managers predates the current political crisis. This month there was a major dispute at the Pars Wagon Company, when workers destroyed the canteen in protest at non-payment of wages, smashing windows and breaking tables and chairs.

And workers in Haft Tapeh staged a noisy sit-in on Friday August 16 as part of a long-standing struggle with the factory’s management. They are demanding the implementation of an agreed job reclassification, increased wages, better overtime pay, an end to the logging of every task and no more sackings of contract workers.

There are also directly political protests in workplaces. On hearing of an impending visit by Ahmadinejad, workers at the Bandar Abbas shipyard threatened to go on strike in mid-August, saying they would not allow a “coup d’etat president” to visit.

News coverage of events in Iran often concentrates on what is happening amongst the ruling circles, but Pars metal workers protesting against job cuts, low wages and poor working conditions for the last six months say they will continue their protests until the media inside “Iran’s capitalist hell” is shamed into broadcasting their demands.

In other developments, a new formation in Tehran, the Council in Support of Iranian People’s Struggles, has become more active. It includes political organisations, women’s groups and sections of the independent left in opposition to the entire regime and in support of workers’ struggles.

Clearly most of these protests would have gone on irrespective of the political turmoil. However, the events of the last few weeks have given a new momentum to workers’ actions, whose slogans are now more political and less defensive. They are lasting longer and pose a real threat to the efforts of all factions of the regime to control the political situation and maintain the status quo.

Iran: Hope and anticipation

2009-08-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

Hope and anticipation

Afshin is a student at Tehran University who was involved in the protests following the presidential elections. He spoke to the Weekly Worker

Can you explain what happened and the reaction from the authorities?

The protest at Tehran University was one of the first post-election movements. Students started to gather near the main gate chanting slogans such as ‘Death to the dictator’. This was the same day as Ahmadinejad’s celebration rally in Vali Asr Square - very close to the university. Afterwards some of his supporters, including plain-clothes bassiji, headed to the main gate chanting pro-Ahmadinejad slogans and throwing stones, injuring several students. They eventually forced open the gate and viciously attacked students with wooden sticks - several were killed.

That night bassiji and police stormed into the university dormitories whilst students were asleep, leading to more deaths and many arrests. Those held in Evin prison and the ministry of the interior’s underground jail were denied access to food, water and toilets and subjected to torture. They were released after about 30 hours, but not before they had been forced to give a detailed account of their political activities and beliefs.

What other protests do you know about?

Most were concentrated in the first two weeks after the election. At first there were rallies every day and also many silent protests. But there were reports of gunfire and deaths too. However, in the second week, after ayatollah Khamenei had declared his opposition to the protests, the repression and violence got a lot worse, with more beatings, shootings and arrests. Gatherings were banned.

Most people were waiting for Ali Akbar Rafsanjani to say something about the election. Not because they agree with him, but rather in the hope that he could stop the attacks on demonstrators. He finally spoke at the end of the second week and many people gathered at Friday prayers and in the streets nearby to hear him. But the speakers in the streets outside were cut off - which the authorities blamed on the protesters themselves. Once more people were attacked by police and bassiji, even though Friday prayers are supposed to be holy and many elderly and religious people in Iran consider it a sin to behave in such a way. Some now refuse to go because there don’t want to hear propaganda for the regime.

What is the current mood amongst students and the wider population?

There is a mixture of hope, fear and anticipation. No-one knows what is going to happen next. People follow the news every day and discuss the meaning behind every decision, every act of the regime. In this sense there is no difference between students, workers and left activists.

However, what people are hoping for differs drastically. Some are looking for the regime to collapse, some for Ahmadinejad to step down and some simply for things to get back to normal and carry on as they were before. However, we communists are talking about the mood of the Iranian people and the prospects for revolution.

Do Ahmadinejad and Moussavi both retain support amongst sections of the Iranian people?

First of all, it has to be stressed that most people have never been firm supporters of either Ahmadinejad or Moussavi.

When Ahmadinejad was elected the first time, large numbers of Tehran citizens voted for him. It appears that this support was greatest among the middle classes - it is not true that he is first and foremost president of the rural poor and working class, as he claims. At first he was able to depict himself as an outsider to the regime, who was not responsible for what had previously happened in the Islamic Republic - somebody who had been kept out of office by the powers-that-be. This image fits perfectly with the aspirations of the middle classes - they hoped he was the saviour they had been waiting for.

However, in the June 12 election, Ahmadinejad could no longer portray himself as an outsider and most of the middle class appeared to turn to Moussavi, even though he had always been identified with a wing of the regime. But now Ahmadinejad was the agent of the regime and so it was Moussavi, because he against Ahmadinejad, who was considered the potential saviour.

It is very difficult to say what support exists among the poor and working class - there was a huge amount of fraud in the election, and so much bribery: money and food were given away by the government. So their vote - both in the past and during the recent elections - is not a true representation of their views. But one thing is for sure - the hopes of the working class in Ahmadinejad had never been raised to the same extent as the middle class.

Ahmadinejad had promised to revive the values of the Islamic revolution, which he accused the previous president, Khatami, of neglecting, and this had appealed to some religious people. But that changed in the recent election, when religious concerns were less prominent compared to other issues like the economy and social rights. Moreover, it was Moussavi who attracted part of the religious vote, because of his background as part of the reformist wing of the religious regime.

On the other hand, there are also those who take their lead from Khamenei, including the bassiji and fundamentalist sections of the military. They continued to support Ahmadinejad.

Capital itself is divided. There is a traditional market based on imported goods, and this section provides Ahmadinejad with his main spiritual and financial support (and, of course, these are the people who have gained the most from his policies). Another section consists of technocrats with more liberal views, and these people tended to support Moussavi.

What I’m trying to say is that none of the candidates enjoyed firm, consistent support from the majority of Iranians, who are always looking to the candidate who seems to be standing in opposition to the regime. Previously that was Ahmadinejad; this time it was Moussavi.

However, not everyone who voted for Moussavi believes he can do the job. And not everyone who was protesting on the streets was a Moussavi supporter. Those who are against Ahmadinejad are hardly fully behind Moussavi, Khatami and Rafsanjani.

What is the attitude of left activists to the reformists?

The left was divided over the election itself: the majority were for a boycott, while others (myself included) decided to vote against Ahmadinejad.

But now there has been a major realignment. Some of the boycottists and almost all who had voted joined in the protests. Of course, there is a genuine fear that falling in behind a leader like Moussavi will produce the same result as after the 1979 revolution, when Marxists and socialists were jailed and executed. So it is important to stress that it’s the mass movement we support, not people like Moussavi.

Finally, let me thank you and your readers - we appreciate the support our international comrades have showed at this time.

Out of step with the masses

2009-08-01T10:43:00.001-07:00

Out of step with the masses

With the crisis-ridden Islamic regime wracked by divisions, what is the state of Iran’s opposition? Yassamine Mather surveys the sorry scene

Statements from some of the most senior clerics of Iran’s Islamic state has left little doubt that the Shia republic is in deep crisis.

First came the rather sad sermon of ayatollah Ali Akbar Rafsanjani at Friday prayers on July 17. His voice broke as he told the gathering he had devoted 60 years of his life to the establishment of the Islamic Republic and now he feared for the very survival of the regime. On the disputed elections, he said: “People became very hopeful. Everything was set for a glorious day. This glory was due to the people ... I so very much wish that that path had been continued. But unfortunately, that was not the case.”

The hint in his call for unity was that he and he alone could save the present order from total collapse. We could almost feel sorry for the man - if we could forget the billions he and his immediate family have pocketed from dodgy deals, sanction-breaking contracts and sheer extortion.

A couple of days later the supreme leader himself, ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seemed to echo Rafsanjani’s warning and he was followed by former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, whose call for a referendum (it was not clear which question this would address) caused further confusion.

Then came the predictable conflict between president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ‘principlists’. His nomination of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a relative by marriage, as first (and the only significant) vice-president prompted a chorus of denunciations by ultra-conservative clerics and politicians. In 2008 Mashaei had angered the supreme leader when he said Iranians were “friends of all people in the world - including Israelis”. He was also filmed watching a belly dancer during an official visit to Turkey.

It is now clear that, after receiving Khamenei’s short letter instructing him to sack Mashaei, who is the father-in-law of Ahmadinejad’s daughter, the president battled for a whole week to keep him as vice-president. Some time during that week he lost the support of key ministers in his cabinet and on Sunday July 26 he was forced to sack a close ally, minister of intelligence ayatollah Ejhei, while the minister for Islamic guidance, Saffar Farandi, resigned his post. When Ahmadinejad refused to accept the resignation, Farandi announced he would not attend further cabinet meetings.

In fact Ahmadinejad has lost so many ministers that, in the words of the conservative deputy leader of the Islamic majles, Mohammad Bahonar, “According to article 136 of the constitution, as half of Iran’s ministerial posts are vacant, the government is, strictly speaking, illegal.” The conservative newspaper Tehran Emrouz described it as a “chaotic” day for the government, while MP Ali Motahari called on Ahmadinejad to “control his nerves” and accused him of intentionally provoking tension.

Warning

By Tuesday July 28 it became clear that Ahmadinejad had lost the support of conservative MPs in the majles. Over 200 ‘principlists’ wrote a strong letter condemning the president and warning him that a fate similar to Abolhassan Banisadr (the disgraced first president of the Islamic Republic who was forced into exile) awaited him if he continued to disobey the supreme leader.

Meanwhile, following a report by a parliamentary commission, Khamenei ordered the closure of Kahrizak detention centre, where dozens of detainees died following torture. One hundred and forty political prisoners were also released from Evin. It should be remembered that death under torture is not a new phenomenon in Iran. What is different this time is that sons and daughters of the regime’s own officials are now amongst the victims.

Of course, this crisis amongst the Islamic Republic’s rulers - and, this week, the crisis within the faction in power - is only a reflection of the continuing rebellion and protests on the streets and in the workplaces in most Iranian towns and cities. Every day, as the relatives of young Iranians are informed of the death in custody of their loved ones, people gather on the streets of Tehran in spontaneous demonstrations. Dozens of bodies have already been returned to grieving parents, hundreds of people are in custody, yet the protests continue with no end in sight. Those arrested include 36 officers who had allegedly planned to attend the July 17 ‘protest’ Friday prayer in their uniforms.

What is significant in the last few weeks is the growing gap between the slogans, demands and aspirations of the protesters, whose anger has dramatically radicalised the movement on the streets and neighbourhoods of major cities, and the limited horizons of reformist leaders and their supporters, some of whom are amongst the most discredited sections of the Iranian opposition - in particular the former Stalinist, turned Islamist, social democrats. While reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi keeps talking of “legal means” in a desperate attempt to save the Islamic regime, the demonstrators’ slogans - ‘Death to the Islamic Republic’, ‘Wait until we are armed’ - clearly show the differences between the two.

The left’s influence is still limited. However, clear examples of its efforts can be seen in the last two weeks in protests at Tehran oil refinery, continuing actions against job losses, notably in the textile industry, leaflets by workers calling for a general strike, and the successful gathering at the tomb of socialist poet Ahmad Shamloo on Friday July 24. At this political meeting, students distributed dates, as is the custom at Shia funerals, joking that this was to mark the impending death of the Islamic regime.

In addition, supporters of a number of exiled communist organisations (including Rahe Kargar and Fedayeen Minority) issued a joint statement in Tehran announcing the formation of United Supporters of Left and Communist Groups.

Sad state

Yet, at a time when ordinary Iranians, losing faith in government reformists, might be open to the ideas of the exiled opposition, one cannot avoid despairing at the sad state of the latter - as shown by the superficial slogans, leaflets and statements put out for the united actions of July 25. They proposed a multi-class, liberal, ‘green’ coalition that will unite all Iranians under the banner of “democratic Islam”.

Iranians are still paying the price of the anti-dictatorship front of 1979; yet few of those who advocate ‘unity’ of the opposition seem to realise the irony of their call. Of course, inside Iran it has been both useful and at times desirable that opponents of the regime join forces with supporters of Moussavi and take advantage of the conflict within the ranks of the leadership in order to reduce the risk of repression at the hands of the security forces. Shouting “Allahu Akbar” (‘God is great’) is a manifestation of such tactics. However, there is no justification in uniting around that slogan in front of the Iranian embassy in London or Brussels. On the contrary, repeating this slogan in Europe is a retrograde step.

So who is involved in this Islamic-green rainbow coalition in exile? Let me describe some of its components, their recent history and some of the more laughable political positions they have taken.

Islamist reformists: Some of the founding ideologues of the Islamic Republic of Iran are currently in exile, having fallen foul of the current leadership, and, together with royalists, they represent the most backward sections of the opposition. Yet they have been given unprecedented coverage by the international media, including, worst of all, sections of the Farsi-speaking media.

First we have Akbar Ganji, promoter of a New York hunger strike and a man portrayed in the US media as a “human rights activist” who talks of Islam and democracy. An ironic description for someone who founded, and was a commander of, the dreaded Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) and who played an active role in some of the worst mass executions of leftist and socialists under the Islamic regime.

Our former Pasdar is now a fully fledged supporter of western capitalism. This is what he said at a meeting in Berkeley in 2006: “A market economy allows you to create institutions separate from the government. A totalitarian regime, or a fascist regime, requires that all economic aspects of life must be controlled by the government. The communist economies have all been defeated. Once the free-market economy enters a society, the occurrence of fascism and totalitarianism become impossible.”

And in his acceptance speech for an award in Canada: “I consider western democracies to be the best option among the actually existing forms of government and ways of organising power.” Yet the Voice of America’s favourite Iranian ‘human rights activist’ has no regrets about his own past and defends everything that happened during and in the first few years after the February 1979 uprising!

The next ‘Islamist democrat’ propelled to fame on Farsi-speaking airwaves, broadcast both by the BBC Persian service and Voice of America, is the ‘philosopher’, Abdolkarim Souroush, who is a visiting scholar at Georgetown University in Washington DC. When the Islamic regime ordered the closure of all academic institutions in the early 1980s in what was called the ‘Islamic cultural revolution’, a new body was set up - the Cultural Revolution Institute - comprising seven members, appointed directly by the supreme leader. They included Soroush. Although he has now fallen out with his former allies, his anti-communist views are as strong as ever: “I was mainly interested in breaking Marxist philosophy,” he once said.

More recently he claimed that “the spectre of Popper is all over Iran”. Maybe someone should tell our Islamist friend that these days the spectre of Popper is actually riding high over Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib ...

To this list we could add Ataollah Mohajerani, culture minister during Khatami’s time; former Islamic regime minister and now prominent journalist Mohsen Sazegara; and many others.

Former Stalinists: Probably the worst defenders of the green bandwagon and constant advocates of a “democratic Islamic state” are Iran’s ex-Stalinists turned social democrats.

The Fedayeen Majority and Rahe Tudeh (one of the splits from the ‘official’ communist Tudeh Party) are in the forefront of green gatherings outside Iran. They try to impose reformist slogans and ban all radical demands from their rainbow coalition. At a time when ‘Down with the Islamic Republic’ has become a regular slogan in Tehran and other Iranian cities, outside Iranian embassies in London, Paris and Amsterdam they decry this as “too radical” and “not in the interests of the movement”.

Of course, we all remember the days when the Fedayeen Majority and Tudeh, following Moscow’s disastrous analysis of the Khomeini regime, were cheerleaders for the black repression of the early 1980s; we remember how they called on Iranians to vote for current supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei when he became president in 1981. Throughout the last decade they defended successive incompetent Islamic reformists in power. Now they are a key force behind Moussavi and his rather discredited allies outside Iran.

Satellite TV and BBC Persian service: Around 40 TV channels broadcast into Iran. Some are from exiled groups, ranging from royalists to those claiming to represent communist organisations. Sadly, most of the programmes are so appalling (or so boring) that very few people pay any attention to them. Yet Iran’s official radio and TV news service is so unreliable that no-one takes it seriously.

In this situation, the slightly more informative BBC World Service, broadcast by satellite and on the internet, has suddenly become a main source of news and analysis for many Iranians, resulting in the supreme leader’s accusations of British involvement in the protests. In fact many Iranians consider the BBC to be too even-handed, giving too much time to supporters of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

The reporters and editors pride themselves in presenting an “unbiased, non-ideological” programme; yet the reality is that their so-called balanced programming inevitably appeals to the centre ground of politics - and that in itself is ‘ideological’. The perceived centre ground requires giving virtually unlimited time to ‘Islamic democrats’ Soroush, Mohajerani and Kadivar. Yet, for example, Soroush can spout about the spectre of Popper over Tehran, while at the same time defending the darkest days of repression under Khomeini, but is never challenged by an experienced interviewer.

Ends and means

While this is the state of the bourgeois Iranian exiles, sections of the ‘radical’ left in exile are not much better. On the one hand, we have those who are preaching a return to armed struggle in order to “empower the working class”. On the other hand, desperate to see the end of the regime, some believe ‘the end justifies the means’ - even if the means are provided by rightwing organ-isations, Zionist peace groups or pro-imperialist trade unions.

Yet the leaflets put out by the left inside Iran are very promising. Unlike our exiled social democrat ex-Stalinists in the Fedayeen Majority and Rahe Tudeh, they call for a fully democratic and uncompromising secularism. Not only the complete separation of state and religion - a demand that can only be achieved with the overthrow of the entire Islamic republic regime - but the expropriation of all vaghf (Shia charitable wealth), all property owned by religious foundations, the abolition of the bassij and Pasdaran, the right of every citizen to bear arms, and freedom for all political prisoners.

As for the Iranian working class, its militants are putting forward demands for an end to current neoliberal economic policies, an end to ‘white’ (short-term) contracts, the right to set up independent workers’ organisations and the right to strike. Rather than supporting holocaust deniers such as Ahmadinejad or tailing reformist Islamists, the radical left in Europe and the US must do all in its power to promote these demands - not only for the sake of the Iranian working class, but because what happens in Iran will be crucial for the future of the whole region.

Iran: Our solidarity and theirs

2009-07-12T09:34:00.001-07:00

Our solidarity and theirs

Yassamine Mather examines a regime in crisis and looks to working class forces for a solution

The continuation of demonstrations and protests against the Islamic republic of Iran, albeit on a smaller scale than two weeks ago, have fuelled further divisions at every level of the religious state: the Shia scholars of Ghom oppose the clerics in the Council of Guardians; leaders of the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) are arrested for siding with the ‘reformist camp’; senior ayatollahs are divided, with Ali Saneii and Ali Montazeri declaring the election results fraudulent, while most other grand ayatollahs have remained loyal to the supreme leader.

Nearly a month after the elections, the political crisis in Iran still dominates events in the Middle East, while in the country itself most people, irrespective of their political allegiance, agree that the situation has changed so dramatically over the last few weeks that nothing in the Islamic republic will ever be the same again.

With the exception of isolated believers in conspiracy theories, no-one doubts that the Iranian people have expressed loud and clear their desire for an end to the current political system and - in view of the fact that the ‘reformists’ keep wasting valuable time, still expecting miracles from above - it is the entire Islamic order, not just the conservatives, whose future is called into question.

Let us be clear: most Iranians do not believe a word of government claims that the protests were organised from outside Iran. As far as they are concerned, this crisis has all the hallmarks of one made in the Islamic republic. The regime has relied on crisis after crisis to survive over the last 30 years, constantly using real and imaginary foreign threats as an excuse for failure to deliver on any of its promises of equality and prosperity for the masses. A victory for Mir-Hossein Moussavi, coinciding with a new administration in the US, carried the ‘danger’ of reducing, albeit temporarily, tensions with America, thus depriving the Islamic regime of its convenient external scapegoat. That could not be allowed to happen.

The supreme leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei, admits he favoured Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and clearly as early as this spring, before the ‘selection’ of the final candidates, plans for an Ahmadinejad victory were in the pipeline. Our arrogant supreme leader could not resist the temptation of a premature announcement. From April he used a number of public occasions to declare his wish for, and confidence in, four more years of an Ahmadinejad presidency.

Presumably this is when plans for the stuffing of ballot boxes were organised - boxes that were still being discovered in the corridors and libraries of the ministry of the interior last week.
However, at a time of conflict over the country’s nuclear programme, Iran’s rulers needed to demonstrate their legitimacy to the ‘international community’. Ignoring the level of dissatisfaction and opposition that existed in the country, once the number of candidates was reduced to four members of the inner circles of the religious state’s factions, an election show beyond anything seen in the last 30 years was sanctioned. The press and the media of the reformist faction were given a short-lived relative freedom. Within the framework of the existing order, all four candidates were allowed to expose the shortcomings of their opponents.

Corruption, incompetence, lies and deceit came out into the open, and even Ahmadinejad, certain of Khamenei’s backing, went beyond the normal red lines of the Shia state. But the elite of the Islamic republic, in both factions, underestimated the level of hatred and anger towards the regime amongst the young, who make up over 70% of the population. An Iranian sociologist, speaking from Tehran, compared this anger to a glass of water getting fuller and fuller: “We all failed to notice it, until the last drop - but then the election process caused it to overflow.”

Most Iranians were already familiar with the huge wealth, accumulated through corruption, of Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, former president and current chairman of the Assembly of Experts. It was the foreign account of Khamenei’s close relatives (including his son, whose personal account of £1.6 billion has been frozen in London) and the charts showing the position of Ahmadinejad’s relatives in the most important financial posts that deprived the conservative front runner of any credibility. Looking back at the turbulent election period, clearly workers’ organisations and Marxist groups who advocated a boycott, at a time of mass hysteria around Moussavi’s candidacy, were right to do so.

It is obvious that Khamenei, surrounded as he is by subservient advisers, underestimated the fury that followed the dashing of hopes - otherwise he might have chosen a more modest percentage for the Ahmadinejad ‘victory’. But in order to establish Ahmadinejad as the truly legitimate leader of the Iranian people, Khamenei needed a higher vote than the 20 million claimed by Khatami in 1997.

Looking back at the election, it is possible that the Islamic order could have been saved had the regime decided to pull an Ahmadinejad victory with a smaller margin or even in the second round. Alternatively, a Moussavi presidency, despite the problems posed by his exaggerated promises of personal freedom within the religious state, would undoubtedly have lengthened the life of the Islamic regime by a few years, until yet another generation of Iranian youth, fooled by promises of reform, witnessed the ineptitude and unwillingness to change of our modernist Islamists. Once the results were announced, however, it soon became clear that Moussavi is a weak character - and his popularity continues to plummet, as he struggles to tail the mass movement.

Working class

According to reports from Iran, on June 13, as the Moussavi camp dithered, it was students and activists of the left who first took to the streets of Tehran in the initial protests. They were joined by demonstrators from working class districts of Tehran who hate Ahmadinejad.

In the words of a leaflet by Iran Khodro workers, his “exhibitionist distribution of cash in the poor districts of major cities is an insult to the Iranian working class”. Oil workers in Tehran state that Iranian workers, whose strikes in 1979 brought down the shah, do not want charity and remind us of their demands over the last four years: the abolition of ‘white’ (temporary) contracts, an end to mass unemployment and low wages, the prompt payment of wages, better housing - the real grievances of the poor and the working class. Workers in Iran are well aware that Ahmadinejad’s government cannot and will not respond to such demands - it is still seeking to maintain its position as the IMF’s model for the implementation of neoliberal economic policies.

Iran Khodro workers warn of the disastrous consequences of printing money during hyperinflation and compare Ahmadinejad’s economic policies with those of Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Addressing fellow workers, they say: “It is the Iranian working class who will pay for Ahmadinejad’s mad economic policies.”

In fact right from the beginning it has been workers, unemployed youth and students - who have suffered under four years of military presence on campuses - who have been in the forefront of the protests. Young women in particular hate the regime for its constant interference in their daily lives. They are the ones whose early presence on the streets of Tehran on June 15 encouraged hundreds of thousands of people - including, yes, people from Tehran’s middle class districts - to join the protests, which prompted Moussavi to attend the demonstration himself late in the afternoon. They are the ones who are continuing the protests even as the repression intensifies. In the absence of any clear direction from Moussavi or fellow reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi, these are the forces that have called for demonstrations on July 9, the anniversary of the student protests of 1998.

No-one can doubt the significance of June 15. For years Iranians had felt isolated, demoralised and fearful of the regime. On that Monday, according to Tehran’s mayor, around three million people were on the streets of the capital. In Isfahan, the historic Shah Jahan square - one of the largest open squares in the world - was jammed with protesters. Shiraz and Tabriz saw similarly huge demonstrations. The Iranian people had finally spoken and the solidarity they found in those protests has given them unprecedented confidence and the sense of victory.

As in 1979, it is this confidence that encourages them to confront the most brutal forms of repression with courage and determination. Unarmed demon-strators confront the Bassij, apparently with no fear for their lives, and those who claim that such courage and determination are a feature of the middle classes have no understanding of the realities of Iranian society. Last week during a protest in a shanty town near Tehran, where the regular battles of those living beyond the official Tehran border with the authorities has resulted in the deployment of the Bassij (the hated Islamic militia used against protesters), the crowd shouted “Death to the dictator”, attacked the Bassij and succeeded in forcing them to retreat, leaving behind their motorcycles.

In working class districts of Tehran, groups of people have been throwing paint on photos of the supreme leader, writing slogans under his portraits and using every opportunity to taunt the religious militia with slogans such as ‘Death to Khamenei’ and the rhyming chant, “Rahbar ma ola-gheh - ye dastesham cholagheh” (“Our supreme leader is an ass - one of his arms is paralysed”). Iran’s state television is also under attack after broadcasting the ‘confessions’ of young demonstrators, who, bruised and exhausted, are shown on TV admitting they are ‘agents of foreign powers’.

If the middle class districts of Tehran have been quiet during the day (at night people do go on rooftops throughout the city), the working class districts - in the factories, mines and shanty towns - have been the scene of impromptu protests. On July 1 thousands of workers in a mine in Khouzestan province started a strike and when security forces arrived to disperse a sit-in, the workers shouted “Death to the dictator”. Haft Tapeh sugar cane workers restarted their strike on Sunday July 5, accusing the authorities of failing to deal with their previous demands.
Discussions about a general strike are continuing and last week after almost three weeks of organising demonstrations, an organisation calling itself the Workers’ Committee in Defence of Mass Protests issued a number of statements regarding the organisation of demonstrations - security measures that should be taken, advice on what to do if the Bassij attack, as well as detailed suggestions regarding civil disobedience.

Debacle

With every day that passes the two reformist candidates are losing support. Having spent two weeks hoping for a breakthrough with the cleric-led Guardian Council, Karroubi, Moussavi and finally former reformist president Mohammad Khatami issued statements calling the election results, together with the new government, illegitimate. However, ordinary Iranians are furious at Moussavi’s reference to the current debacle as an argument “within the Islamic family”, while the reformists’ ally in the Council of Experts, ayatollah Rafsanjani was seeking the vote of enough ‘councillors’ in order to demote, or at least put pressure on, the supreme leader.

As always, the reformists are aware that their destiny is tied to the that of the regime, yet by seeking solutions within the ruling circles, while promising the impossible to the crowds in the street, they are digging their own graves. They know they only gained support in June 2009 because many Iranians decided to opt for the lesser of two evils. Once the clerical regime denied this limited opportunity and slammed the door, the days of support for Moussavi and Karroubi were numbered. However, no-one should underestimate the effect this unprecedented schism at the highest level of the Islamic regime will have.

The Islamic republic is a complicated beast. Power lies in a twisted web of clerical, executive, judicial and military circles: the Guardian Council, the Council of Experts, the majles (Islamic parliament), Council for the Safeguarding of National Interests, the government led by the president, civil, criminal and ‘revolutionary’ (political) courts, the army/Pasdaran, Bassij, various Islamic associations (some calling themselves parties) ...

Until now all of these forces, whatever their differences and factional allegiances, ended up obeying the supreme leader. In fact throughout the last 30 years the most important role played by both Khomeini and Khamenei, as vali faghih (supreme leader), was as an arbiter of power between the various factions. All this came to an end on June 19, when Khamenei declared the presidential voting results accurate and sided with Ahmadinejad. It is therefore correct, as Hamid Dabashi does in the Cairo weekly, Al Ahram, to identify the supreme leader as the principal loser in the current situation (June 25-July 1).

The second loser is Ahmadinejad - the incompetent racist who in the 1980s was an interrogator in Evin prison, often leading the post-torture questioning of leftwing activists, and who is in his element as the loyal servant of the supreme cleric.

The reformists are also losers in this process - every day that goes by, their support continues to drop. They are caught in a corner, trying to save an Islamic order that is not prepared to compromise even with them.

But there are winners too - the peoples of Iran, the demonstrators, those who risk their lives every day against the regime and its military might. The repression is severe, brutal and unlike anything seen since the 1980s. However, this only shows the desperation of the regime. The demonstrators are winning.

The creative way in which they have used every opportunity to voice their hatred of the current regime has given them hope and confidence, which makes it certain that the current conflict will not end until the regime is overthrown. It has made too many enemies, especially amongst the youth and the poor, for anyone to be able to contemplate its survival.

In the forefront of those who have defied fear and repression to go onto the streets of Tehran are women (many of them under 30) who will never forget how Pasdars arrested them for showing a fringe of hair and how they were subsequently flogged (in many cases 60-80 lashes) for this ‘crime’. Young men and women who over the last decades have been arrested, humiliated and imprisoned not just for expressing political opinions, but in hundreds of thousands of cases for failing to adhere to strict interpretations of Islamic dress or behavioural codes.

Students who are tired of the interference of the state in every aspect of their private and public lives; workers who have faced poverty, non-payment of wages; shantytown dwellers who are in daily conflict with the authorities over lack of water or electricity; relatives of those killed by the regime, and not just in recent protests, when at least 100 people have lost their lives, but also of those executed by the regime for their political beliefs in 1979, the 1980s and 90s (and let us not forget that the executioners of Iran’s political prisoners belong to both the ‘reformist’ and the conservative camp): none of them will forgive or forget the criminals responsible.

In the last few days parents of those arrested in recent demonstrations have been gathering every lunchtime outside Iranian prisons, demanding the release of the prisoners and justice for those killed by the Bassij. Too many people in Iran find another four years of Ahmadinejad too awful to contemplate - they will not stop their protests, with or without Moussavi and Karroubi.

Solidarity

The Islamic regime had the chance to entice people with promises of a slightly less repressive order under a Moussavi presidency, but blew it. However, faced with severe repression at home and the continued threat of military attack (a second Israeli nuclear submarine is now getting close to the Persian Gulf), the one kind of ‘solidarity’ the people of Iran do not need is the one offered by the imperialist states and their ‘regime change’ associates in Iran. The enemies of the Iranian working class - in the Moussavi camp, amongst royalists or within the confused left - will seek support from European states, the US administration, rightwing trade unions, liberal NGOs, media personalities ... while the defenders of the Iranian working class will remain vigilant in choosing our allies.

In Hands Off the People of Iran we have maintained our consistent, principled, anti-imperialist, anti-regime stance, and we are in an excellent position to build a much larger campaign in support of the struggles of the Iranian people. In doing so we welcome the cooperation of all Iranian and international forces that share our principles. But let me be clear - we cannot unite with supporters of Moussavi or those who seek war or sanctions instead of, or as a short cut to, revolutionary change from below. We will not suspend our criticisms of those prepared to tolerate imperialist war or economic sanctions - measures that will harm Iranian workers first and foremost.

There are calls for political sanctions against Iran now being proposed by liberals such as Shirin Ebadi and by two of the three splinters from the Worker-communist Party of Iran.

It is not our business to advise Washington or London what measures they ought to take against Tehran - quite the opposite. We say they should stop interfering in Iran. Instead we seek solidarity from below - amongst workers, trade unionists and anti-capitalist forces - with the struggles of the Iranian people. That is the essence of our politics and we will not be diverted from it.

Message of solidarity to 9 July demos in Iran

2009-07-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

Hands off the People of Iran’ calls for solidarity with the masses in revolt against the Islamic regime!
Solidarity with the 9 July demonstrations in Iran!
No illusions in Moussavi!
No to any US or UN intervention of any kind!
We do not want another Iraq or Afghanistan.Real solidarity can only come from the working class internationally.
Hands off People Of Iran sends solidarity greetings to protestors in Iran on 9th July. This day is the 10th anniversary of 18 Tir – when the Iranian state, under President Khatami violently put down a protest by students. The protest was initially against the suppression of a popular newspaper. Students were attacked in their university dormitories , as they were ransacked and set on fire by state forces. The reaction to the attack was overwhelming, with mass demonstrations taking place. The students became very radicalised and openly opposed the regime. Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’I ordered the movement to be crushed and President Khatami approved this decision.
Khatami is today a supporter of Moussavi. His role in the brutal suppression of the student movement must not be forgotten. Moussavi himself has a terrible history of repression when he was prime minister in the 1980s, when many activists were executed by the regime. In power Iran’s reformists are just as vicious and dictatorial as the current government.
Today we send our support to those protesting to mark 18 Tir and commit ourselves to build support for your struggle in Iran. We are against any intervention by the United States or other governments. Real solidarity can only come from the working class, from those who stand with you in our common struggle.
Hands Off the People of Iran utterly condemns the brutal crackdown against the opposition movement in Iran. We call for the immediate unconditional release of prisoners, for the withdrawal of state forces from the streets, for the lifting of the ban on reporting and restrictions on internet and mobile phone use.
The regime in Iran is under threat from below. But the United States or the UN are no friends of the Iranian people. Economic sanctions have brought hardship to the ordinary people of Iran but have not affected the rich and powerful. Diplomatic sanctions and isolation will only strengthen the hand of the regime against the people.
Real democracy must come from the struggle from below. It cannot be delivered through the theocrats, whether they happen to be Ahmadinejad, Moussavi or Karoubi. Neither should there be a return to a monarchy – the Shah himself imprisoned tortured and killed thousands of democrats and working class activists.
It is up to the people of Iran to take things into their own hands. It is up to the working class and progressives throughout the world to make solidarity with their cause. It is time for a second, democratic revolution in Iran.
Contact Anne on 086 2343 238 or at anne@hopoi.info
http:// www. www.hopi-Ireland.org

Cork Hopi Meeting this Thursday

2009-06-29T05:25:00.001-07:00

Come along to a meeting this thursday at the Victoria Hotel, Patrick Street Cork at 8pm.

Speakers:

Mick Barry, Socialist Party councillor

Fariba Talebi, Iranian political activist.

Free the political prisoners now! No more arrests, no more killings! Support the striking workers! Down with the Islamic regime! For solidarity from the international working class! No to imperialist intervention - we don't want another Iraq!

Contact Anne on 086 2343238 or at Anne@hopoi.info

Call for general strike

2009-06-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

Rahe Kargar says the protest movement must not be limited to street demonstrations, but that it has to take other forms

The call for a general strike has been put forward by a number of tendencies active in the current protest movement inside Iran and is gaining increasing support amongst Iranian activists outside.

In my opinion, ignoring such calls is ignoring the challenging potential of the mass movement we and the world are witnessing in total amazement, a protest whose brave steps are witnessed with great admiration.

If we agree that the protests of the Iranian people against the supreme leader’s coup d’etat have entered a fateful time, if we agree that supporting this movement with all its weaknesses and confusions can present a path towards democracy and equality in our land downtrodden by dictators, if we accept that without direct and independent action by the people themselves, no-one will seek a ‘tunnel towards the light’ and if we accept that the continuation and expansion of the scope of the current mass movement is the necessary and primary condition for any revolutionary change, then we must use all our abilities now to spread and expand the existing movement.

A general strike is important for a number of reasons:

First, it can reduce the pressure from the repressive forces attacking street protests (the current dominant form of protest). The truth is that street demonstrations have limitations and as the security forces concentrate on the suppression of such protests, the price of participation goes up and the number of those who participate in these demonstrations diminishes inevitably.
Second, despite all their importance, street demonstrations do not necessarily go further than the political arena, while a general strike will put the regime under economic pressure. Let us remember the role of the general strike in 1979, in breaking the determination of the royal dictatorship to cling to power and its crucial role in the overthrow of that regime.
Third, a general strike inevitably raises the profile of the working class in the mass movement. We must remember that the role of oil workers was crucial without any exaggeration in the victory of the 1979 revolution, while their number in comparison with the total number of wage-earners was not so high. Let us not forget that any strike (never mind a general strike) raises the solidarity, class-consciousness and organisational initiatives of the workforce.
Fourth, we must not forget that even the most brutal dictatorships usually cannot suppress people in their workplace as they do in street protests, because they have to consider the economic and political consequences of the damage and disruption caused by such methods.

In any case, currently the mood exists for a general strike and no-one can deny the role such a strike would play to help the continuation and spread of the current mass protests.

However, we cannot forget that a general strike requires great organisation and means of communication and it is difficult to harness such means when the regime is adamant in breaking the communication infrastructure and will increase its efforts in this direction.

If we are unduly optimistic about such a call this will reduce its chances of success. One should not expect that it can come from a single call from those active in the protest movement. However, under the present conditions it is absolutely necessary to draw attention to the crucial role of such actions that can be achieved through a wave of local and scattered actions leading towards a major strike.

We should not forget that the general strike of 1979 came about in the midst of major upheavals in the struggle of the masses and not through a single call to strike.

The important issue is to understand the historic significance of the current situation and to realise that the protest movement must not be limited to street demonstrations, but that it has to take other forms, such as strikes, sit-ins and a boycott and isolation of all state organs. The brave actions of different sections of the population against the coup d’etat by the supreme leader has given us hope that the masses will take up new initiatives.

Joining this just struggle is our civic duty.

Mohamad Reza Shalgouni
Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran (Rahe Kargar)
June 21 2009

Beginning of the end

2009-06-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Iran Embassy demo report and protest this coming Saturday

2009-06-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

Hands off the People of Iran held a very successful demonstration outside the Iranian Embassy in Dublin last Saturday, 20 June. We will continue our protest this coming Saturday 27 June at 2pm, Central Bank, Dame Street Dublin.

The demonstration began at 1pm, at the same time that people were taking to the streets of Tehran in defiance of the oppressive state forces. A number of Iranian activists joined us as well as members of Irish left wing groups and campaigns.
We chanted slogans in support of the struggle and called for the overthrow of the Islamic republic. We also made clear in our speeches and slogans that we are against any imperialist intervention in Iran – any US attempt at regime change from above must be opposed. The hell holes created by imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq are examples of the terrible devastation wrought by imperialism.One of Iranian comrades did a fantastic job on the megaphone, shouting ‘marg bar Ahmadinejad, marg bar Moussavi, marg bar Khamenei’. He and most other Iranians there were fully supportive of our principled position on imperialism.
However a leading member of a group called ‘Free Iran’ was opposed to our anti-imperialism and said he supported sanctions. We made it clear that we will not countenance any compromise on this vital question. The US, under Bush or Obama is not a friend, but a dangerous enemy of the Iranian people.
We continued our discussions later at a meeting in Seomra Spraoi, where the debate centred on the prospects for the left in Iran and whether the protests are simply about rigged elections. It was a passionate and lively debate and we finished by agreeing to organise another demo this coming Saturday pm at the Central Bank, Dame Street Dublin.
We will also be holding meetings in other cities, with a meeting in Cork on 2 July, 8pm Victoria Hotel Patrick Street.Join us in showing your solidarity. Let’s send a message to the protestors in Iran that we are on their side!Contact Anne on 086 23 43 238 Anne@hopoi.info www.hopi-Ireland.org