Torab Saleh, socialist and participant in the 1979 revolution examines its historical roots.
The revolutionary movement in Iran, which culminated on February 10 1979 in an insurrection against the US-backed monarchy, coincided with a crisis of Iranian capitalism which had already emerged as early as 1974. In the sense that it was a direct reaction to that crisis, this was an anti-capitalist revolution.
This can be demonstrated by the actual dynamics of the unfolding revolutionary crisis that begins with riots by the urban poor in the shanty towns of south Tehran in the summer of 1976 and ends up with a general strike of around four million workers from September 1978 to February 1979. The revolutionary period, especially during the general strike, led also to a rapid rise in those forms of organisation such as workers’ strike committees, factory councils, regional and industrial coordinating committees and myriads of neighbourhood associations - all of which are usually associated with such anti-capitalist revolutions.
At the time, there were some heated debates within the left as to the nature of Iranian society. Today, 30 years later, hardly anyone still claims that it was anything but capitalism which dominated Iran in 1979. It was, however, a capitalist system with a political regime closer to Asiatic despotism than even the most backward forms of bourgeois parliamentarism. The shahanshah (‘king of kings’ - as he used to call himself) ruled over a totally corrupt police state kept in power by the USA. In this contradiction alone, the entire crisis of Iranian society could be observed. When all the usual propaganda about the benefits of the new world system was removed, layer by layer, the only stark fact that explained the Iranian condition was that the longevity of despotic monarchic rule went hand in hand with US domination of Iran. It was thus only natural for the revolution to also develop an anti-monarchic and anti-imperialist character.
Unpredicted
The insurrection on February 10 came about in a way not predicted by anyone. It was in no way organised or led. None of the bourgeois politicians, pro- or anti-shah, had expected it. The supporters of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were so surprised that, many hours into the insurrection, they were still telling their people to go home because, “The imam has not ordered an uprising”.
When the insurrection took place, the shah had already been dispatched abroad by his US backers and forced to appoint Shapour Bakhtiar, a bourgeois nationalist politician from the National Front,1 to form the next government. The new government had promised a return to “constitutional rule” and had made a number of concessions in its first few days. Soon after, Khomeini was allowed to return to Tehran. The US administration had also made it publicly known that the Iranian army would “refrain from intervention” in the mass movement.
The catalyst was the revolt of the Royal Guards stationed in north Tehran. They rejected Bakhtiar’s concessions, which they viewed as a threat to the established order, and marched south with their tanks towards an airforce base they regarded as a centre of ‘anti-shah conspiracy’. The people of Tehran soon heard about this and mobilised to stop their advance. The airforce technicians at the base opened up the arsenals. The armed people soon defeated the Royal Guards and moved on to every known centre of Savak, the secret police. Within eight hours the regime was overrun in Tehran.
The next day, February 11, following a statement from the armed forces declaring their neutrality, the shah’s last government fell and a ‘provisional government’, headed by Mehdi Bazargan and nominated by a secret committee appointed by Khomeini,2 took power. The new government presented itself as a liberal Islamic capitalist regime based on a coalition of bourgeois nationalist parties, both Islamic and secular, alongside the pro-Khomeini wing of the Shi’ite hierarchy and its backers within the Iranian bazaar.
Bazargan’s government fell a few months later, but the same forces that appointed and dismissed him still rule Iran today. The new power soon shed its liberal pretence and started referring to the Iranian revolution as an Islamic one. They even changed its anniversary to February 1, the date of Khomeini’s return to Iran.
Well worn
How did this revolution - which in terms of the degree of mass participation was one of the most important of the 20th century - end up becoming ‘Islamic’? Indeed what was the ‘Islamic revolution’?
One common interpretation has been based on the well worn model of ‘anti-colonial struggles in the countries of the periphery’, popular within the left since the early 1920s. A model, it must be said, which was inadequate even then. By this reasoning, the Islamic revolution becomes an anti-imperialist revolution led by bourgeois nationalist forces. The politics which flow from this differ only in shade - from shameless collaboration to so-called ‘critical’ support. For adherents of this model, the revolution lived on, despite the leadership.
Although such views have long since been discredited, given the current conflict with the USA/Israel it has been rebranded by a number of left currents and has once again become a justification for all sorts of opportunist overtures towards the Iranian regime. Yes, they say, it is a corrupt, clerical-capitalist regime - but look at how the anti-imperialist aspect of the Iranian revolution survives to this day! (Now not only via Ahmadinejad’s government, but also by its support for Hezbollah and Hamas).
But this interpretation of the revolution as ‘Islamic’forgets a few simple historical truths. Firstly, the label itself was invented later - after the fact, as it were. It obviously came from outside the revolutionary movement. To put it crudely, no-one went on strike or demonstrated against the shah’s regime shouting, ‘For an Islamic revolution!’ Not even those following the Islamic currents ever said that. Khomeini himself, even as late as February 1 1979 in an interview on the plane returning home, made no such claim. In fact in his first speech in Tehran he promised he would personally have nothing to do with government work and would shortly be returning to his religious studies in Ghom. The masses were only ‘persuaded’ later that the revolution they undertook was in fact ‘Islamic’. It was, therefore, something so far removed from reality - something imported from the outside - that it had to be concealed from the masses by its creators and leaders.3
Of course, anyone who reaches the heights of the Shi’ite hierarchy is already a master of demagogy. Now backed up by political power, the demagogy carried with it imprisonment and even execution for those refusing to be ‘persuaded’. Just two years after February 79, even to relate the facts about the revolution was tantamount to sacrilege and punishable by death.
It cannot be denied that on the eve of this revolutionary change, sections of the masses, including important sections of the working class, were ready to be persuaded. Khomeini had become the unchallenged leader of the anti-shah opposition, but does this prove that the ‘Islamic revolution’ was identical with a genuine, popular revolution? Just because the masses had illusions in Khomeini, it does not automatically follow that the Islamic leaders were in turn expressing the will of the masses, albeit in a distorted clerical way.
The second obvious fact which disproves this interpretation is that under the flag of the Islamic revolution stood those forces that in reality were organised in active combat with the genuine revolution. Attacks on revolutionaries by mobs associated with Khomeini’s leadership started even before the new regime was established. With the mullahs in power, attacks became open and daily, right from day one.
First the strikes were ordered to end. Then secret courts immediately executed a few of the pro-shah politicians, whilst mysteriously letting others escape or even stay and work behind the scenes for the new government. Soon after, the veil was forced on women. The free press was shut down, one by one. National minorities were attacked - first the Arabs in the south and then the Kurds. Socialist oppositionist parties were banned. Scores of revolutionary activists were arrested. Instead of the promised constituent assembly, a phoney referendum was quickly organised, in which the only choice offered was between the already overthrown monarchy or an Islamic republic (as yet undefined).
Thus, from the first day in power, the Islamic regime began not only a total rollback of all the gains of the revolution, but also a retreat into Iran’s reactionary past - crowned a few years later with the execution of around 40,000 political prisoners.
This does not follow the usual pattern of bourgeois nationalist movements - either previously in Iran or elsewhere. The ferocity of the repression against the masses and the depths of reaction into which the new government has pushed back Iranian society have not been witnessed anywhere else in the world in recent history. Thirty years on, the conditions of the vast majority of the population are many times worse than they were during the worst period of the shah’s rule. All the indices by which you may judge a nation’s social and economic well-being have worsened.
Whatever interpretation one may place on the events of 1979, the fact remains that the masses did succeed in overthrowing the monarchy - but only to find their struggle hijacked by a theocratic regime which has established an even more vicious police state, defending an even more reactionary system of capitalism.
Historical roots
How did a defeat on such a scale become possible? To answer this question one must, of course, look into recent Iranian history and highlight those developments which led to the specific conditions and the unique alignment of class forces in 1970s Iran.
Even a cursory glance at this history reveals two glaringly obvious features. The first is one of continuous defeats for the progressive movements; and the second is the ever present hand of foreign (imperialist) intervention in ensuring such defeats. Indeed, the 1979 revolution was not the first revolution in the country’s recent history. During the same century we had already witnessed one full-scale revolution and at least two other important periods of revolutionary upsurge.
In 1906, Iran went through the Constitutional Revolution, which was very similar to the 1905 revolution in Russia. It led at first to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and an elected parliament, but was soon defeated (in 1911) with the help of the Russian Cossack army brought in by the new shah. Asiatic despotism was soon re-installed, maintained and managed jointly by the embassies of tsarist Russia and Britain. The only reason Iran escaped direct colonisation was the rivalry between these two powers.
After October 1917, a new revolutionary period opened up in Iran - which even resulted in the establishment of a soviet republic in Guilan, in the north. This time, the revolutionary movement was defeated by a British-backed military coup which placed Reza Khan (an Iranian officer in the Cossack division stationed in Iran and now under British tutelage) on the Iranian throne - and thus the Pahlavi dynasty. Imperialism required a ‘strong state’ to withstand the ‘threat of Bolshevism’. Asiatic despotism now acquired a very ‘modern’, British-backed, militaristic face. This was to be the Iranian version of a modern bourgeois state, but, thanks to the power of that state, Reza Shah ended up becoming the biggest landlord in Iran. His military dictatorship lasted right up to World War II.
After the removal of Reza Shah (by now a Nazi collaborator!) by the Allies, a new revolutionary upsurge unfolded, leading to the nationalisation of the oil industry and the escape of the new shah to Italy. This time, in 1953, the CIA came to the rescue of the Iranian ruling class and, by utilising a very ‘novel’ combination of the army and urban gangs, overthrew Mossadegh’s government and placed the shah back on the throne. The summary execution of the leaders of the political opposition after the coup deservedly earned him the title, ‘butcher of the Middle East’.
The 1979 revolution could not, therefore, appear just as a revolution against Iranian capitalism. It carried within it the ghosts of all the previous defeats. Not only had none of the demands of the constitutionalists (rule of law, freedom and security for all citizens) been resolved, but new ones were added after every defeat. For example, the establishment of Reza Shah’s ‘strong state’ from above could only be achieved by the creation of a Farsi national bureaucracy and army and thus by the suppression of every other nationality living in its border areas. Since then, ending national oppression has been added to all the other tasks of the Iranian revolution.
History has thus given a combined character to the Iranian revolution. But a combination of tasks produces a combination of classes which participate in the revolutionary process. It is thus not accidental that Iranian revolutions appear more like bourgeois popular revolutions than workers’ ones. Almost the entire petty bourgeoisie and even large sections of the ruling class had grievances against the shah’s regime too. The Iranian working class amounted to no more than 4.5 million, but at the height of the revolutionary process more than 10 million people were actively involved in day-to-day struggles.4
Furthermore, this combined character was also an important feature of the counterrevolutionary classes/layers and political forces/institutions. The weight of the previous defeats could best be described by the strong presence in Iranian society of all the previously defeated counterrevolutionary layers/classes. The Iranian revolution had not only kept piling up unresolved tasks, but accumulating a counterrevolutionary opposition.
Capitalism in Iran
This composite character of the situation in Iran cannot be separated from its socio-economic system. By the 1970s, capitalism was dominant, but not by any stretch of the imagination a ‘normal’ type of capitalism.
As it actually existed in 1979, Iranian capitalism was itself a product of foreign import, grafted on from above by the shah’s bayonets, under the leadership of imperialism and for the benefit of imperialism. This was, of course, not imposed in a vacuum, but within a complex society already in transition to capitalism and already retarded in its tracks by continuous interventions from outside. In fact, without understanding the specific way Iran was integrated into the world capitalist system, its entire modern history is incomprehensible. The means by which capitalism became dominant and the type of capitalism it produced was the prelude to the Islamic counterrevolution.
Before the Constitutional Revolution, indigenous capitalist growth had already been hampered - first by the direct plunder of the entire region by various colonialist powers, and then by the domination of international trade routes by a few western European capitalist countries, which drastically reduced the share of major Asiatic countries like Iran in foreign trade. This dealt a major blow to the internal process of primitive accumulation, which had been boosted during the Safavid period (1502-1736) with the sudden increase in world trade. By the 18th and 19th centuries Iran suffered the destruction of most of its handicraft or small manufacturing industries in the face of competition from cheaper European imports. During the 15th and 16th centuries the Iranian economy (or for that matter the Indian or Chinese) had been on a par with any of the more advanced European countries, but by the 18th the huge gulf was already evident.
Iran was in transition to capitalism, but a transition from an Asiatic mode of production and not a feudal system. If in Europe the ‘third estate’ had already taken shape within the feudal system, in Iran even the appearance of an ‘independent’ landlord class belongs to the period of transition itself. A major characteristic of the Asiatic mode of production was indeed the dominant role of the state in social production. Thus almost all of the irrigated land and the monopoly of foreign trade belonged to the state. This made it very difficult for an independent bourgeois class to take shape - even during the Safavid period, when Iran’s exports in glassware and textiles had witnessed an enormous increase. The state was the ruling class and it simply did not tolerate any other independent source of power.
With the break-up of the all-powerful Asiatic state, however, a number of layers, institutions and individuals from within the ruling elites gradually lost their ties to the state and created what could be called an ‘independent’ ruling class, composed initially almost entirely of military and tribal chiefs, high-ranking functionaries, local notables, merchants, landlords and Shi’ite clerics. The crumbling state, in need of cash thanks to an ever decreasing source of taxation, fuels this process itself by the sale of state lands, international monopoly trade rights and large sections of the internal distribution system. Many simply take advantage of the central government’s weakness by taking over whatever assets they controlled. Thus we see, for example, a process whereby the endowment lands previously provided by the state for the upkeep of the Shi’ite hierarchy become the private property of the Shi’ite institutions. Similarly, local governors, military commanders and tax collectors take over huge tracts of land, mines, the local markets and even sections of the internal trade routes.
This break-up was then hugely speeded up by the intervention of British and Russian interests in Iran (which by the 18th century had more or less seen off all other competitors). Local warlords, tribal chiefs and notables willing to serve them were helped and encouraged to privatise the previously state-owned properties under their control.
The appearance of pro-British or pro-Russian sections of the ruling class is the outcome of this period. If you wanted to progress within the ruling elites, you had to have either British or Russian backing. The British in particular created a whole layer within the ruling class totally subservient to their interests - it has been called a ‘state within the state’. The British set up schools in India, by now a colony, to train functionaries, military officers and even Shi’ite clerics for work in Iran.
By the end of the 19th century, having run out of assets to sell internally, the Iranian state started granting wholesale concessions to foreign companies. The famous ‘tobacco revolts’ of the late 19th century, a precursor to the Constitutional Revolution, were a direct reaction of the new ruling elites to the rapid erosion of their newly gained monopoly powers because of the state’s collusion with foreigners. The split that subsequently took place within the ruling class - a split carried over to the Constitutional Revolution a few years later - is very indicative of the specific character of class conflicts in Iran. Unlike the clear-cut class division of a bourgeois nation against the combined power of the nobility, feudal lords and the clergy that we witness in most bourgeois democratic revolutions, in Iran we see powerful groups of merchants, landlords and even Shi’ite clerics on both sides of the divide.
This division sometimes produced comical results. Although, on the whole, both the British and the Russians were fully committed to the status quo, there were merchants and clerics associated with both camps on either side of the barricades. During the initial phases of the Constitutional Revolution there were still pro-British clerics defending it, while the pro-Russians were by now fully behind the shah. As the revolution gathered force and became more radicalised with the entry of the urban petty bourgeoisie, both sides swung fully behind the shah. But there were still merchants, landlords and clerics in the leadership of the revolutionary camp. In fact the Islamic ideology of Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, goes back to a division within the Shi’ite hierarchy which developed during the Constitutional Revolution.
Khomeini was, since his youth, a supporter of Sheykh Fazllolahe Noori, the leader of the Islamic opposition to the Constitutional Revolution. After the victory of the revolution, Noori was sentenced to public hanging in front of the newly established parliament. Basically, he was against all democratic reforms, calling them “a western conspiracy to undermine Islam”. He accused Mozaffaredin Shah, who had signed the new constitution, of being a “weak doubter”, who was foolishly opening up the floodgates to this conspiracy.
The infamous slogan of the Islamic fundamentalists then was: ‘Constitutionalism - no! Islamic legitimacy - yes!’ (ie, all secular laws must be derived from Islamic jurisprudence - meaning themselves). They actively collaborated with the pro-Russian wing of the ruling class, and even the Cossack army, against the constitutionalists. Not dissimilar to the initial reaction of the Catholic church to bourgeois democratic revolutions in Europe. Also, as with the divisions in Europe, a ‘progressive’ wing of the clergy - ie, pro-democratic reforms - took shape in Iran. The defeat of the Constitutional Revolution, and the establishment of Reza Shah’s rule later, did not, however, allow this wing to develop much further.
With 1917, Russian imperialism had left the scene and the British created Reza Shah, the ‘iron man’, who went on the rampage in his drive to ‘modernise’ Iran. The creation of a nation-state from above by military dictatorship soon brought the new order into direct conflict with the Shi’ite hierarchy. Those who wanted to survive had to comply. The more moderate and liberal clerics were either totally silenced or integrated into the new arrangements, whilst the fundamentalist currents found a new lease of life in ‘opposition’. Islamic fundamentalist radicalism in Iran dates back to those days. After all, they had been proved right, they would claim, pointing to the erosion of clerical powers during Reza Shah’s modernisation. The shah’s repressive rule kept the lid on all these developments, which only came back to the surface once he was deposed.
It should be noted that the capitalist world system is an imperialist one, in which the role carved out for Iran within the division of labour is one of an importer of foreign capital and exporter of raw materials. Yes! Oil. We thus have a nation-state, but without any significant role for the bourgeoisie. The composition of the ruling class hardly changes during the shah’s reign. The new royal family itself becomes one of the biggest landlords in Iran, also heavily involved in monopolistic foreign trade. Iran remains an agrarian society, in which absentee landlords dominate agricultural production and merchants rule the market and the internal distribution network. There is, however, a limited growth of industries during the same period - mostly state-owned, but also on a smaller scale developed by small private capitalists, especially in textiles and food production.
The emergence of a bourgeois nationalist opposition to the shah is also a product of this period. This was very different from the clerical opposition. Its earlier politicians even hailed Reza Shah’s modernisation. But this opposition was also totally suppressed, only to re-emerge after World War II.
The difference between the two showed itself nowhere better than during the events leading to the 1953 CIA-backed coup. Whilst at first the Shi’ite hierarchy allied itself to the more influential bourgeois nationalist movement under Mossadegh, towards the end it lined up behind the shah. What a number of observers of the history of that coup forget is the fact that it happened twice. The first attempt failed, but a few days later a second one was undertaken, this time successfully. The change in fortune was entirely due to the Shi’ite hierarchy switching sides and backing the coup. Although the radical fundamentalist wing was as yet insignificant, the entire hierarchy that had emerged after Reza Shah’s ‘modernisation’ was itself a lot more backward-looking than at the time of the Constitutional Revolution. Khomeini, who was at that time advocating the need for an “Islamic government”, was thus happy to toe the line of the clerical leadership.
Whilst the bourgeois nationalist politicians were seeking a capitalist redistribution of ownership in favour of the indigenous bourgeoisie, the clerics were really only concerned with the erosion of their own role in the face of capitalist secularisation of the state and economy. The Shi’ite hierarchy, this integral part of Asiatic despotism, thus felt closer to the monarchy than to secular bourgeois nationalism. But the shah’s white revolution was soon to change all that. With the defeat of Mossadegh’s project by the combined force of the pro-shah army, gangs of urban thugs and a coalition of bazaari merchants and Shi’ite clerics, the Iranian bourgeoisie lost its last chance to develop a ‘normal’ bourgeois state.
White revolution
At the core of the shah’s ‘revolution’ was a US-initiated programme for a limited industrialisation of Iran. It followed a ‘development’ model based on ‘joint ventures’ between the indigenous bourgeoisie and western capitalism to replace goods previously imported from the west with home-produced products.
Similar schemes had already been carried out in a number of other dependent countries. In fact, it was not even a US invention - Germany, during World War II, had embarked on similar plans in Latin America. The initial drafts for this ‘new’ US policy had already been made public during the implementation of the Marshall plan in Europe. This was indeed its appendix for the third world.
It is important to note that the same programme was already being worked out with Mossadegh’s government before the 1953 coup. As early as 1949, teams of US consultants were in Iran investigating the ways it could be implemented. In so far as Mossadegh’s government announced any long-term economic strategy, it did not go beyond repeating the same US plan. Indeed the shah’s implementation of this plan went much further than the bourgeois nationalist government had ever imagined possible. The shah envisaged a degree of protectionism, land reforms and modernisation of political structures that was much too radical for Mossadegh. Indeed, when the plan was announced, many National Front politicians were saying, ‘The shah has stolen Mossadegh’s policy’. It was not accidental that some of them even joined the shah’s regime in implementing it.
The first few years after the 1953 coup were spent bolstering up the shah’s rule, in particular by strengthening the apparatus of repression: the army and the secret police. But, as soon as the new and by now totally US-dependent regime consolidated its power, a ‘seven-year plan’ of ‘infrastructural development’ was put into practice; followed in 1962-63 by a whole basket of socio-economic measures, which were later bombastically referred to as the ‘shah’s white revolution’. The shah himself modestly referred to it as a ‘modernisation and industrialisation plan’, which would place Iran “on the verge of great civilisation”.
Encouraging indigenous capitalist formation and growth, which was at the heart of this programme, baffled the Iranian left of the day. What was behind this change of heart by imperialism, which had earlier prevented the national bourgeoisie from doing precisely that? The pro-Soviet Tudeh Party called it a “retreat” by world imperialism in the face of successes for the “socialist camp”, whilst the pro-Chinese wing denounced it as “phoney propaganda”, designed to head off the “oncoming peasant revolution”. In reality what motivated imperialism in this drive for ‘joint ventures’ with the national bourgeoisie was its new desire/need to utilise third world markets as a huge dumping ground for their overproduced and outdated technological goods.
The development, by leaps and bounds, of the armaments industry during World War II had signalled the beginnings of a new era in capitalist development, appropriately called the age of ‘permanent technological revolution’. Superprofits were now to be gained in technological innovations. We had, therefore, by the late 50s and early 60s, a runaway growth in the sectors producing the means of production. Crises of overproduction now increasingly took the shape of overproduction of capital goods. The sudden interest of the west in ‘development economics’ and the increasing calls for ‘modernisation’ or ‘industrialisation’ of this or that country of the periphery in the 50s was the natural outcome.
But selling means of production to the ‘natives’ calls for an entirely different set of relations between the centre and periphery. The same imperialism which had until then considered indigenous industrialists as competitors, to be denied any share in political control, now had to actively intervene not only to create an entire class of these competitors out of thin air, but also to transform them into a ruling class. To sell capital goods you need capitalist buyers. We thus enter a new phase in imperialism, whereby the west intervenes directly to transform the same old ruling classes - which had propped up its interests in the colonial age - into ‘modern’ capitalists.
These plans were vehemently denounced by the more fundamentalist currents within the Shi’ite clergy and an important section of the bazaari merchants. They opposed import tariffs introduced to protect home-grown industries, as this weakened the monopolistic control of the merchants over the economy. They denounced land reforms, designed to provide a labour force for the new industries free from ties to the land, as they were themselves amongst the biggest landlords in Iran. They also opposed local government reform, as this would have undermined their local power base in the provinces; and votes for women, because that would undermine their very ideological authority.
Khomeini first emerged as a known public figure during those protests and soon became the leader of that movement. In a fiery sermon he declared that the “evil intention” behind the white revolution was to hand over Iran to “Jews, Christians and the enemies of Islam”. He denounced the shah as an “infidel Jew”. It was in fact his arrest after this speech which triggered in 1963 a whole series of mass protests, leading to clashes with military forces in a number of cities. As these revolts were not supported by any other major sections of the population, they were easily crushed by the shah, and Khomeini was exiled to Iraq. Not a lot more was heard of this coalition of bazaari merchants and Shi’ite clerics until 15 years later, when the crisis of the shah’s ‘modernisation’ opened up a new revolutionary period.
Notes
1. The National Front was a coalition of a number of bourgeois nationalist currents set up in the late 1940s and originally headed by Mohammed Mossadegh.
2. This committee had been set up in October-November 1978 in Neauphle-le-Château in France. Subsequently it was given the name ‘Council of the Islamic Revolution’ - invented after the event to ‘prove’ that Khomeini had planned the whole thing.
3. It is interesting to note, as revealed in president Carter’s memoirs, that it was even concealed from the US administration during negotiations with Khomeini’s representatives.
4. This can be roughly estimated as around three-four million workers, two-three million urban and rural poor, and four-five million urban and rural petty bourgeoisie (internationalist.webs.com).
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Tehran will not and cannot accept US demands
Tehran will not and cannot accept US demands,
writes Yassamine Mather
Obama’s message to Iranians to mark Norooz, the Iranian new year, was hailed by sections of the media as “unprecedented” and “historic”, offering a new beginning in Iran-US relations. It was therefore inevitable that when ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, dismissed the message as consisting of meaningless slogans, Middle East and Iran ‘analysts’ expended a lot of effort trying to put a positive spin on a very unambiguous negative response.
So what was implicit in Obama’s message and why can Iran not accept it? There is no doubt that its tone differed from George Bush’s pronouncements on similar occasions - it accepted the existence of the Islamic Republic, to start with. However, for the most part it was very similar to what Bush had said before. He too used Norooz to appeal to Iran’s innate sense of cultural superiority as an ancient civilisation. One wonders how this went down in other Middle East capitals and amongst ordinary people in the area, not to mention the other minority nationalities living inside Iran’s borders (Arabs, Baluchis, Turks).
Demanding the impossible
As far as details are concerned, Obama repeated Bush’s conditions for normal relations, albeit in a slightly more diplomatic tone. Referring to Iran’s right to its place in the “community of nations”, he said: “You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms.”1
In other words, Iran should give up uranium enrichment, should stop arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, should abandon its threats against Israel, should continue supporting the occupation government in Iraq and should help the ‘peace’ conference in Afghanistan. Of course, Iran has done all in its power to help the US and its Nato allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and secret negotiations regarding US-Iran cooperation over the ‘war on terror’ are well documented.2
However, the government in Tehran will not and cannot accept the other three demands, because it has built its reputation on taking a tough political stance and cannot afford to lose face without risking losing power. For over three decades the Iranian leadership has thrived through maintaining a state of crisis. Conflict with the US and sanctions, many of them going back to the early 80s, provide the regime with a convenient excuse for its economic failures, the growing gap between rich and poor, political repression and endemic corruption. In fact the regime’s survival depends on the continuation of the sanctions and a form of ‘cold war’.
Khamenei’s response to all this was both predictable and clear: “They chant the slogan of change, but no change is seen in practice.” Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year yet in the same message accuse them of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons: “Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime?”
It is quite clear that the Obama administration has no intention of lifting sanctions against Iran - in fact earlier this month US sanctions were renewed. According to an Israeli newspaper, “Senior US officials are preparing to present Obama with a plan for dialogue with Iran on its nuclear programme, including increased international sanctions against Tehran.”3
Ayatollah Khamenei is well aware that his first demand - an end to ‘sanctions’ - will not happen unless Iran gives up its nuclear programme. His second demand - an end to US support for Israel - is even more unlikely. Israel acts in effect as a US military base in the Middle East and to call on the US administration to withdraw support is the equivalent of suggesting it abandons a key strategic outpost.
At a time of serious economic difficulties it is in fact in the interest of both governments to continue the state of conflict. So, contrary to the euphoria expressed by sections of the media (including supporters of the ‘reformist’ faction of the Islamic Republic inside and outside Iran), it will take more than quoting a couple of lines of Saadi, the 13th century Persian poet, to resolve this conflict.
However, there is no doubt that Obama’s message will encourage further (open or covert) Iranian cooperation with US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where both countries are natural allies against the common ‘enemy’: al Qa’eda, and Sunni and secular opponents of the Iraqi occupation government.
Iran elections and the US
There is a vague reference to Iran’s June 12 presidential elections in Obama’s message and, despite the new year public holiday, the ‘reformist’ faction repeated the popular call for ‘an end to isolation’, hoping to use the speech to its own electoral advantage.
Outside Iran the pro-‘reformist’ and anti-war National Iranian American Council led the praise: “President Barack Obama’s historic Norooz message recognised the greatness of Iranian civilisation, the contributions of Iranian Americans to America and that threats cannot resolve the differences between Iran and the US.”4 The central committee of Fedayeen Majority wrote to Obama to assure him that Khamenei does not speak for the Iranian people! (As if the supreme cleric in a religious theocracy was likely to do so).5
Clearly Obama’s speech is already playing a role in what passes for the presidential election campaign in Iran. It represents the main issue over which one can detect small differences between the two main factions of the Islamic Republic party. Both are united on the nuclear programme, on support for Hezbollah, on maintaining Iran’s ambivalent position regarding Hamas and on keeping up the propaganda against Israel. However, the ‘reformists’ argue that a positive response to the new US administration will bring prosperity (for the rich) and an end to isolation, while the ‘conservatives’ prefer maintaining the current state of affairs.
Currently the main preoccupation of the ‘reformists’ is selecting a presidential candidate. On March 17, former president Mohammad Khatami pulled out in favour of Mir Hossein Moussavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s. Given the slump in Ahmadinejad’s popularity resulting from Iran’s dire economic situation (high unemployment, 25%-29 % inflation, etc), the ‘reformists’ see a chance of winning, yet Moussavi, the only viable candidate they are left with, is more of a centrist - probably closer to Khamenei than Ahmadinejad is. Opposition papers have rightly labelled Moussavi the ‘official candidate of the current order’. He is a member of the National Confidence (Etemad-e-Melli) Party and only stopped being prime minister when the post was abolished.
‘Reformists’ are now pinning their hopes on a Moussavi victory, but the statement he produced announcing his candidature reads more like a something from the hard-line ‘principlists’ (the so-called Ossulgara, who advocate a return to the basic Islamic ‘principles’ of the first years of the revolution), who are the main backers of Ahmadinejad. In addition it is now clear that Moussavi was never keen to be closely associated with Khatami and resented his original proposal that only one of them should stand.
Although Khatami himself had not seemed very enthusiastic in his bid for the nomination, the timing of his decision to withdraw, a week after Moussavi’s announcement, exposes the disarray in the ‘reformist’ camp whose ‘grand strategy’ was to keep both Moussavi and Khatami, along with 2005 presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, as runners. This was in case one or two of the candidates were disqualified by the Council of Guardians, and was said to be a tactic that would confuse the ‘conservatives’. So the ‘grand strategy’ was not as coordinated as some had claimed.
But the ‘conservatives’ are not doing much better. Many in the principlist camp do not consider Ahmadinejad a suitable candidate and they are considering a number of alternatives, including Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and major-general Mohsen Rezai, former commander of Pasdaran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Elections and the economy
In some ways, the election debate about relations with the US will only matter as part of the debate about Iran’s economy.
The economic chaos is symbolised by oil. The budget for last year, which ended on March 21, was based on oil selling at $150 a barrel, but for many months during this period, the price was below $45. As a result Iran is looking at a deficit of $25 to $30 billion and Ahmadinejad’s government has lost a number of crucial votes regarding the budget in parliament. And yet a few months ago Iranian leaders made the bold prediction that the world economic crisis would not affect Iran! By the end of the Iranian year, however, all Iran’s ills were being blamed on the crisis.
In addition to the dramatic drop in the price of oil, Iran has faced a major drought, with severe consequences for generating hydroelectricity. This forced the government to impose rationing on both water and electricity supplies to homes and businesses. The extent of the drought is so bad that the level of lake Urmia in Azarbaijan province is said to be falling by 2cms a day. It has also had a drastic effect on agriculture, resulting in the import of 6 million tons of grain.
Sanctions are beginning to hit ordinary Iranians hard and the poverty line now stands at 8,500,000 rials ($860) a month. A 10% increase: “With a possible 35% inflation rate next year, a family of five would be in absolute poverty with an income of under 8,500,000 rials.”6
Unless there is breakthrough over the nuclear saga the situation will get much worse in the new Iranian year and, of course, none of the reactionary candidates presented by various factions/parties of the Islamic Republic regime will address the problems faced by the majority of Iran’s population. Whoever wins the presidential election, it will make little difference to the lives of workers and their struggle to survive in Islamic Iran.
Notes
1. The message can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ee0wrjVtkk
2. See for example, M Rubin, ‘Iranian politicians discuss secret US-Iran talks’: corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTU1ZDJhMjRkNWM1MjE4ODMzMThiYjBhZGYwZWViZjk=
3. ‘US plan for Iran: talks alongside sanctions’ Ha’aretz: haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072808.html
4. ‘Thank president Obama for his wonderful Norooz message’: www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1 373&Itemid=2
5. Fedayeen Majority - www.iran-chabar.de/news.jsp?essayId=20028
6. www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=88372§ionid=351020102
writes Yassamine Mather
Obama’s message to Iranians to mark Norooz, the Iranian new year, was hailed by sections of the media as “unprecedented” and “historic”, offering a new beginning in Iran-US relations. It was therefore inevitable that when ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, dismissed the message as consisting of meaningless slogans, Middle East and Iran ‘analysts’ expended a lot of effort trying to put a positive spin on a very unambiguous negative response.
So what was implicit in Obama’s message and why can Iran not accept it? There is no doubt that its tone differed from George Bush’s pronouncements on similar occasions - it accepted the existence of the Islamic Republic, to start with. However, for the most part it was very similar to what Bush had said before. He too used Norooz to appeal to Iran’s innate sense of cultural superiority as an ancient civilisation. One wonders how this went down in other Middle East capitals and amongst ordinary people in the area, not to mention the other minority nationalities living inside Iran’s borders (Arabs, Baluchis, Turks).
Demanding the impossible
As far as details are concerned, Obama repeated Bush’s conditions for normal relations, albeit in a slightly more diplomatic tone. Referring to Iran’s right to its place in the “community of nations”, he said: “You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms.”1
In other words, Iran should give up uranium enrichment, should stop arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, should abandon its threats against Israel, should continue supporting the occupation government in Iraq and should help the ‘peace’ conference in Afghanistan. Of course, Iran has done all in its power to help the US and its Nato allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and secret negotiations regarding US-Iran cooperation over the ‘war on terror’ are well documented.2
However, the government in Tehran will not and cannot accept the other three demands, because it has built its reputation on taking a tough political stance and cannot afford to lose face without risking losing power. For over three decades the Iranian leadership has thrived through maintaining a state of crisis. Conflict with the US and sanctions, many of them going back to the early 80s, provide the regime with a convenient excuse for its economic failures, the growing gap between rich and poor, political repression and endemic corruption. In fact the regime’s survival depends on the continuation of the sanctions and a form of ‘cold war’.
Khamenei’s response to all this was both predictable and clear: “They chant the slogan of change, but no change is seen in practice.” Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year yet in the same message accuse them of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons: “Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime?”
It is quite clear that the Obama administration has no intention of lifting sanctions against Iran - in fact earlier this month US sanctions were renewed. According to an Israeli newspaper, “Senior US officials are preparing to present Obama with a plan for dialogue with Iran on its nuclear programme, including increased international sanctions against Tehran.”3
Ayatollah Khamenei is well aware that his first demand - an end to ‘sanctions’ - will not happen unless Iran gives up its nuclear programme. His second demand - an end to US support for Israel - is even more unlikely. Israel acts in effect as a US military base in the Middle East and to call on the US administration to withdraw support is the equivalent of suggesting it abandons a key strategic outpost.
At a time of serious economic difficulties it is in fact in the interest of both governments to continue the state of conflict. So, contrary to the euphoria expressed by sections of the media (including supporters of the ‘reformist’ faction of the Islamic Republic inside and outside Iran), it will take more than quoting a couple of lines of Saadi, the 13th century Persian poet, to resolve this conflict.
However, there is no doubt that Obama’s message will encourage further (open or covert) Iranian cooperation with US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where both countries are natural allies against the common ‘enemy’: al Qa’eda, and Sunni and secular opponents of the Iraqi occupation government.
Iran elections and the US
There is a vague reference to Iran’s June 12 presidential elections in Obama’s message and, despite the new year public holiday, the ‘reformist’ faction repeated the popular call for ‘an end to isolation’, hoping to use the speech to its own electoral advantage.
Outside Iran the pro-‘reformist’ and anti-war National Iranian American Council led the praise: “President Barack Obama’s historic Norooz message recognised the greatness of Iranian civilisation, the contributions of Iranian Americans to America and that threats cannot resolve the differences between Iran and the US.”4 The central committee of Fedayeen Majority wrote to Obama to assure him that Khamenei does not speak for the Iranian people! (As if the supreme cleric in a religious theocracy was likely to do so).5
Clearly Obama’s speech is already playing a role in what passes for the presidential election campaign in Iran. It represents the main issue over which one can detect small differences between the two main factions of the Islamic Republic party. Both are united on the nuclear programme, on support for Hezbollah, on maintaining Iran’s ambivalent position regarding Hamas and on keeping up the propaganda against Israel. However, the ‘reformists’ argue that a positive response to the new US administration will bring prosperity (for the rich) and an end to isolation, while the ‘conservatives’ prefer maintaining the current state of affairs.
Currently the main preoccupation of the ‘reformists’ is selecting a presidential candidate. On March 17, former president Mohammad Khatami pulled out in favour of Mir Hossein Moussavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s. Given the slump in Ahmadinejad’s popularity resulting from Iran’s dire economic situation (high unemployment, 25%-29 % inflation, etc), the ‘reformists’ see a chance of winning, yet Moussavi, the only viable candidate they are left with, is more of a centrist - probably closer to Khamenei than Ahmadinejad is. Opposition papers have rightly labelled Moussavi the ‘official candidate of the current order’. He is a member of the National Confidence (Etemad-e-Melli) Party and only stopped being prime minister when the post was abolished.
‘Reformists’ are now pinning their hopes on a Moussavi victory, but the statement he produced announcing his candidature reads more like a something from the hard-line ‘principlists’ (the so-called Ossulgara, who advocate a return to the basic Islamic ‘principles’ of the first years of the revolution), who are the main backers of Ahmadinejad. In addition it is now clear that Moussavi was never keen to be closely associated with Khatami and resented his original proposal that only one of them should stand.
Although Khatami himself had not seemed very enthusiastic in his bid for the nomination, the timing of his decision to withdraw, a week after Moussavi’s announcement, exposes the disarray in the ‘reformist’ camp whose ‘grand strategy’ was to keep both Moussavi and Khatami, along with 2005 presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, as runners. This was in case one or two of the candidates were disqualified by the Council of Guardians, and was said to be a tactic that would confuse the ‘conservatives’. So the ‘grand strategy’ was not as coordinated as some had claimed.
But the ‘conservatives’ are not doing much better. Many in the principlist camp do not consider Ahmadinejad a suitable candidate and they are considering a number of alternatives, including Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and major-general Mohsen Rezai, former commander of Pasdaran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Elections and the economy
In some ways, the election debate about relations with the US will only matter as part of the debate about Iran’s economy.
The economic chaos is symbolised by oil. The budget for last year, which ended on March 21, was based on oil selling at $150 a barrel, but for many months during this period, the price was below $45. As a result Iran is looking at a deficit of $25 to $30 billion and Ahmadinejad’s government has lost a number of crucial votes regarding the budget in parliament. And yet a few months ago Iranian leaders made the bold prediction that the world economic crisis would not affect Iran! By the end of the Iranian year, however, all Iran’s ills were being blamed on the crisis.
In addition to the dramatic drop in the price of oil, Iran has faced a major drought, with severe consequences for generating hydroelectricity. This forced the government to impose rationing on both water and electricity supplies to homes and businesses. The extent of the drought is so bad that the level of lake Urmia in Azarbaijan province is said to be falling by 2cms a day. It has also had a drastic effect on agriculture, resulting in the import of 6 million tons of grain.
Sanctions are beginning to hit ordinary Iranians hard and the poverty line now stands at 8,500,000 rials ($860) a month. A 10% increase: “With a possible 35% inflation rate next year, a family of five would be in absolute poverty with an income of under 8,500,000 rials.”6
Unless there is breakthrough over the nuclear saga the situation will get much worse in the new Iranian year and, of course, none of the reactionary candidates presented by various factions/parties of the Islamic Republic regime will address the problems faced by the majority of Iran’s population. Whoever wins the presidential election, it will make little difference to the lives of workers and their struggle to survive in Islamic Iran.
Notes
1. The message can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ee0wrjVtkk
2. See for example, M Rubin, ‘Iranian politicians discuss secret US-Iran talks’: corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTU1ZDJhMjRkNWM1MjE4ODMzMThiYjBhZGYwZWViZjk=
3. ‘US plan for Iran: talks alongside sanctions’ Ha’aretz: haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072808.html
4. ‘Thank president Obama for his wonderful Norooz message’: www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1 373&Itemid=2
5. Fedayeen Majority - www.iran-chabar.de/news.jsp?essayId=20028
6. www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=88372§ionid=351020102
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Iran - no end to stand-off with US
Tehran will not and cannot accept US demands, writes Yassamine Mather
Obama’s message to Iranians to mark Norooz, the Iranian new year, was hailed by sections of the media as “unprecedented” and “historic”, offering a new beginning in Iran-US relations. It was therefore inevitable that when ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, dismissed the message as consisting of meaningless slogans, Middle East and Iran ‘analysts’ expended a lot of effort trying to put a positive spin on a very unambiguous negative response.
So what was implicit in Obama’s message and why can Iran not accept it? There is no doubt that its tone differed from George Bush’s pronouncements on similar occasions - it accepted the existence of the Islamic Republic, to start with. However, for the most part it was very similar to what Bush had said before. He too used Norooz to appeal to Iran’s innate sense of cultural superiority as an ancient civilisation. One wonders how this went down in other Middle East capitals and amongst ordinary people in the area, not to mention the other minority nationalities living inside Iran’s borders (Arabs, Baluchis, Turks).
Demanding the impossible
As far as details are concerned, Obama repeated Bush’s conditions for normal relations, albeit in a slightly more diplomatic tone. Referring to Iran’s right to its place in the “community of nations”, he said: “You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms.”1
In other words, Iran should give up uranium enrichment, should stop arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, should abandon its threats against Israel, should continue supporting the occupation government in Iraq and should help the ‘peace’ conference in Afghanistan. Of course, Iran has done all in its power to help the US and its Nato allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and secret negotiations regarding US-Iran cooperation over the ‘war on terror’ are well documented.2
However, the government in Tehran will not and cannot accept the other three demands, because it has built its reputation on taking a tough political stance and cannot afford to lose face without risking losing power. For over three decades the Iranian leadership has thrived through maintaining a state of crisis. Conflict with the US and sanctions, many of them going back to the early 80s, provide the regime with a convenient excuse for its economic failures, the growing gap between rich and poor, political repression and endemic corruption. In fact the regime’s survival depends on the continuation of the sanctions and a form of ‘cold war’.
Khamenei’s response to all this was both predictable and clear: “They chant the slogan of change, but no change is seen in practice.” Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year yet in the same message accuse them of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons: “Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime?”
It is quite clear that the Obama administration has no intention of lifting sanctions against Iran - in fact earlier this month US sanctions were renewed. According to an Israeli newspaper, “Senior US officials are preparing to present Obama with a plan for dialogue with Iran on its nuclear programme, including increased international sanctions against Tehran.”3
Ayatollah Khamenei is well aware that his first demand - an end to ‘sanctions’ - will not happen unless Iran gives up its nuclear programme. His second demand - an end to US support for Israel - is even more unlikely. Israel acts in effect as a US military base in the Middle East and to call on the US administration to withdraw support is the equivalent of suggesting it abandons a key strategic outpost.
At a time of serious economic difficulties it is in fact in the interest of both governments to continue the state of conflict. So, contrary to the euphoria expressed by sections of the media (including supporters of the ‘reformist’ faction of the Islamic Republic inside and outside Iran), it will take more than quoting a couple of lines of Saadi, the 13th century Persian poet, to resolve this conflict.
However, there is no doubt that Obama’s message will encourage further (open or covert) Iranian cooperation with US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where both countries are natural allies against the common ‘enemy’: al Qa’eda, and Sunni and secular opponents of the Iraqi occupation government.
Iran elections and the US
There is a vague reference to Iran’s June 12 presidential elections in Obama’s message and, despite the new year public holiday, the ‘reformist’ faction repeated the popular call for ‘an end to isolation’, hoping to use the speech to its own electoral advantage.
Outside Iran the pro-‘reformist’ and anti-war National Iranian American Council led the praise: “President Barack Obama’s historic Norooz message recognised the greatness of Iranian civilisation, the contributions of Iranian Americans to America and that threats cannot resolve the differences between Iran and the US.”4 The central committee of Fedayeen Majority wrote to Obama to assure him that Khamenei does not speak for the Iranian people! (As if the supreme cleric in a religious theocracy was likely to do so).5
Clearly Obama’s speech is already playing a role in what passes for the presidential election campaign in Iran. It represents the main issue over which one can detect small differences between the two main factions of the Islamic Republic party. Both are united on the nuclear programme, on support for Hezbollah, on maintaining Iran’s ambivalent position regarding Hamas and on keeping up the propaganda against Israel. However, the ‘reformists’ argue that a positive response to the new US administration will bring prosperity (for the rich) and an end to isolation, while the ‘conservatives’ prefer maintaining the current state of affairs.
Currently the main preoccupation of the ‘reformists’ is selecting a presidential candidate. On March 17, former president Mohammad Khatami pulled out in favour of Mir Hossein Moussavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s. Given the slump in Ahmadinejad’s popularity resulting from Iran’s dire economic situation (high unemployment, 25%-29 % inflation, etc), the ‘reformists’ see a chance of winning, yet Moussavi, the only viable candidate they are left with, is more of a centrist - probably closer to Khamenei than Ahmadinejad is. Opposition papers have rightly labelled Moussavi the ‘official candidate of the current order’. He is a member of the National Confidence (Etemad-e-Melli) Party and only stopped being prime minister when the post was abolished.
‘Reformists’ are now pinning their hopes on a Moussavi victory, but the statement he produced announcing his candidature reads more like a something from the hard-line ‘principlists’ (the so-called Ossulgara, who advocate a return to the basic Islamic ‘principles’ of the first years of the revolution), who are the main backers of Ahmadinejad. In addition it is now clear that Moussavi was never keen to be closely associated with Khatami and resented his original proposal that only one of them should stand.
Although Khatami himself had not seemed very enthusiastic in his bid for the nomination, the timing of his decision to withdraw, a week after Moussavi’s announcement, exposes the disarray in the ‘reformist’ camp whose ‘grand strategy’ was to keep both Moussavi and Khatami, along with 2005 presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, as runners. This was in case one or two of the candidates were disqualified by the Council of Guardians, and was said to be a tactic that would confuse the ‘conservatives’. So the ‘grand strategy’ was not as coordinated as some had claimed.
But the ‘conservatives’ are not doing much better. Many in the principlist camp do not consider Ahmadinejad a suitable candidate and they are considering a number of alternatives, including Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and major-general Mohsen Rezai, former commander of Pasdaran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Elections and the economy
In some ways, the election debate about relations with the US will only matter as part of the debate about Iran’s economy.
The economic chaos is symbolised by oil. The budget for last year, which ended on March 21, was based on oil selling at $150 a barrel, but for many months during this period, the price was below $45. As a result Iran is looking at a deficit of $25 to $30 billion and Ahmadinejad’s government has lost a number of crucial votes regarding the budget in parliament. And yet a few months ago Iranian leaders made the bold prediction that the world economic crisis would not affect Iran! By the end of the Iranian year, however, all Iran’s ills were being blamed on the crisis.
In addition to the dramatic drop in the price of oil, Iran has faced a major drought, with severe consequences for generating hydroelectricity. This forced the government to impose rationing on both water and electricity supplies to homes and businesses. The extent of the drought is so bad that the level of lake Urmia in Azarbaijan province is said to be falling by 2cms a day. It has also had a drastic effect on agriculture, resulting in the import of 6 million tons of grain.
Sanctions are beginning to hit ordinary Iranians hard and the poverty line now stands at 8,500,000 rials ($860) a month. A 10% increase: “With a possible 35% inflation rate next year, a family of five would be in absolute poverty with an income of under 8,500,000 rials.”6
Unless there is breakthrough over the nuclear saga the situation will get much worse in the new Iranian year and, of course, none of the reactionary candidates presented by various factions/parties of the Islamic Republic regime will address the problems faced by the majority of Iran’s population. Whoever wins the presidential election, it will make little difference to the lives of workers and their struggle to survive in Islamic Iran.
Notes
1. The message can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ee0wrjVtkk
2. See for example, M Rubin, ‘Iranian politicians discuss secret US-Iran talks’: corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTU1ZDJhMjRkNWM1MjE4ODMzMThiYjBhZGYwZWViZjk= 3. ‘US plan for Iran: talks alongside sanctions’ Ha’aretz: haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072808.html
4. ‘Thank president Obama for his wonderful Norooz message’: www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1 373&Itemid=2
5. Fedayeen Majority - www.iran-chabar.de/news.jsp?essayId=20028
6. www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=88372§ionid=351020102
Obama’s message to Iranians to mark Norooz, the Iranian new year, was hailed by sections of the media as “unprecedented” and “historic”, offering a new beginning in Iran-US relations. It was therefore inevitable that when ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, dismissed the message as consisting of meaningless slogans, Middle East and Iran ‘analysts’ expended a lot of effort trying to put a positive spin on a very unambiguous negative response.
So what was implicit in Obama’s message and why can Iran not accept it? There is no doubt that its tone differed from George Bush’s pronouncements on similar occasions - it accepted the existence of the Islamic Republic, to start with. However, for the most part it was very similar to what Bush had said before. He too used Norooz to appeal to Iran’s innate sense of cultural superiority as an ancient civilisation. One wonders how this went down in other Middle East capitals and amongst ordinary people in the area, not to mention the other minority nationalities living inside Iran’s borders (Arabs, Baluchis, Turks).
Demanding the impossible
As far as details are concerned, Obama repeated Bush’s conditions for normal relations, albeit in a slightly more diplomatic tone. Referring to Iran’s right to its place in the “community of nations”, he said: “You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms.”1
In other words, Iran should give up uranium enrichment, should stop arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, should abandon its threats against Israel, should continue supporting the occupation government in Iraq and should help the ‘peace’ conference in Afghanistan. Of course, Iran has done all in its power to help the US and its Nato allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and secret negotiations regarding US-Iran cooperation over the ‘war on terror’ are well documented.2
However, the government in Tehran will not and cannot accept the other three demands, because it has built its reputation on taking a tough political stance and cannot afford to lose face without risking losing power. For over three decades the Iranian leadership has thrived through maintaining a state of crisis. Conflict with the US and sanctions, many of them going back to the early 80s, provide the regime with a convenient excuse for its economic failures, the growing gap between rich and poor, political repression and endemic corruption. In fact the regime’s survival depends on the continuation of the sanctions and a form of ‘cold war’.
Khamenei’s response to all this was both predictable and clear: “They chant the slogan of change, but no change is seen in practice.” Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year yet in the same message accuse them of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons: “Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime?”
It is quite clear that the Obama administration has no intention of lifting sanctions against Iran - in fact earlier this month US sanctions were renewed. According to an Israeli newspaper, “Senior US officials are preparing to present Obama with a plan for dialogue with Iran on its nuclear programme, including increased international sanctions against Tehran.”3
Ayatollah Khamenei is well aware that his first demand - an end to ‘sanctions’ - will not happen unless Iran gives up its nuclear programme. His second demand - an end to US support for Israel - is even more unlikely. Israel acts in effect as a US military base in the Middle East and to call on the US administration to withdraw support is the equivalent of suggesting it abandons a key strategic outpost.
At a time of serious economic difficulties it is in fact in the interest of both governments to continue the state of conflict. So, contrary to the euphoria expressed by sections of the media (including supporters of the ‘reformist’ faction of the Islamic Republic inside and outside Iran), it will take more than quoting a couple of lines of Saadi, the 13th century Persian poet, to resolve this conflict.
However, there is no doubt that Obama’s message will encourage further (open or covert) Iranian cooperation with US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where both countries are natural allies against the common ‘enemy’: al Qa’eda, and Sunni and secular opponents of the Iraqi occupation government.
Iran elections and the US
There is a vague reference to Iran’s June 12 presidential elections in Obama’s message and, despite the new year public holiday, the ‘reformist’ faction repeated the popular call for ‘an end to isolation’, hoping to use the speech to its own electoral advantage.
Outside Iran the pro-‘reformist’ and anti-war National Iranian American Council led the praise: “President Barack Obama’s historic Norooz message recognised the greatness of Iranian civilisation, the contributions of Iranian Americans to America and that threats cannot resolve the differences between Iran and the US.”4 The central committee of Fedayeen Majority wrote to Obama to assure him that Khamenei does not speak for the Iranian people! (As if the supreme cleric in a religious theocracy was likely to do so).5
Clearly Obama’s speech is already playing a role in what passes for the presidential election campaign in Iran. It represents the main issue over which one can detect small differences between the two main factions of the Islamic Republic party. Both are united on the nuclear programme, on support for Hezbollah, on maintaining Iran’s ambivalent position regarding Hamas and on keeping up the propaganda against Israel. However, the ‘reformists’ argue that a positive response to the new US administration will bring prosperity (for the rich) and an end to isolation, while the ‘conservatives’ prefer maintaining the current state of affairs.
Currently the main preoccupation of the ‘reformists’ is selecting a presidential candidate. On March 17, former president Mohammad Khatami pulled out in favour of Mir Hossein Moussavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s. Given the slump in Ahmadinejad’s popularity resulting from Iran’s dire economic situation (high unemployment, 25%-29 % inflation, etc), the ‘reformists’ see a chance of winning, yet Moussavi, the only viable candidate they are left with, is more of a centrist - probably closer to Khamenei than Ahmadinejad is. Opposition papers have rightly labelled Moussavi the ‘official candidate of the current order’. He is a member of the National Confidence (Etemad-e-Melli) Party and only stopped being prime minister when the post was abolished.
‘Reformists’ are now pinning their hopes on a Moussavi victory, but the statement he produced announcing his candidature reads more like a something from the hard-line ‘principlists’ (the so-called Ossulgara, who advocate a return to the basic Islamic ‘principles’ of the first years of the revolution), who are the main backers of Ahmadinejad. In addition it is now clear that Moussavi was never keen to be closely associated with Khatami and resented his original proposal that only one of them should stand.
Although Khatami himself had not seemed very enthusiastic in his bid for the nomination, the timing of his decision to withdraw, a week after Moussavi’s announcement, exposes the disarray in the ‘reformist’ camp whose ‘grand strategy’ was to keep both Moussavi and Khatami, along with 2005 presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, as runners. This was in case one or two of the candidates were disqualified by the Council of Guardians, and was said to be a tactic that would confuse the ‘conservatives’. So the ‘grand strategy’ was not as coordinated as some had claimed.
But the ‘conservatives’ are not doing much better. Many in the principlist camp do not consider Ahmadinejad a suitable candidate and they are considering a number of alternatives, including Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and major-general Mohsen Rezai, former commander of Pasdaran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Elections and the economy
In some ways, the election debate about relations with the US will only matter as part of the debate about Iran’s economy.
The economic chaos is symbolised by oil. The budget for last year, which ended on March 21, was based on oil selling at $150 a barrel, but for many months during this period, the price was below $45. As a result Iran is looking at a deficit of $25 to $30 billion and Ahmadinejad’s government has lost a number of crucial votes regarding the budget in parliament. And yet a few months ago Iranian leaders made the bold prediction that the world economic crisis would not affect Iran! By the end of the Iranian year, however, all Iran’s ills were being blamed on the crisis.
In addition to the dramatic drop in the price of oil, Iran has faced a major drought, with severe consequences for generating hydroelectricity. This forced the government to impose rationing on both water and electricity supplies to homes and businesses. The extent of the drought is so bad that the level of lake Urmia in Azarbaijan province is said to be falling by 2cms a day. It has also had a drastic effect on agriculture, resulting in the import of 6 million tons of grain.
Sanctions are beginning to hit ordinary Iranians hard and the poverty line now stands at 8,500,000 rials ($860) a month. A 10% increase: “With a possible 35% inflation rate next year, a family of five would be in absolute poverty with an income of under 8,500,000 rials.”6
Unless there is breakthrough over the nuclear saga the situation will get much worse in the new Iranian year and, of course, none of the reactionary candidates presented by various factions/parties of the Islamic Republic regime will address the problems faced by the majority of Iran’s population. Whoever wins the presidential election, it will make little difference to the lives of workers and their struggle to survive in Islamic Iran.
Notes
1. The message can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ee0wrjVtkk
2. See for example, M Rubin, ‘Iranian politicians discuss secret US-Iran talks’: corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTU1ZDJhMjRkNWM1MjE4ODMzMThiYjBhZGYwZWViZjk= 3. ‘US plan for Iran: talks alongside sanctions’ Ha’aretz: haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072808.html
4. ‘Thank president Obama for his wonderful Norooz message’: www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1 373&Itemid=2
5. Fedayeen Majority - www.iran-chabar.de/news.jsp?essayId=20028
6. www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=88372§ionid=351020102
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Hopi Campaign launched
Hopi Campaign launched
Simon Wells reports on the launch of the Smash the Sanctions campaign
On March 16, Hands Off the People of Iran kicked off its Smash the Sanctions campaign with a press conference in the House of Commons. John McDonnell MP, Jenny Jones (Green Party member of the London assembly) and Hopi chair Yassamine Mather addressed the meeting.
Go to link below to listen to the speeches given by Yassamine Mather (chair of Hands Off the People of Iran) John McDonnell MP and Jenny Jones (London Assembly member, Green Party)
http://www.hopoi.org/
Comrade Mather started off by saying that sanctions are another form of war. The current set has just been renewed by Barack Obama. This shows that - if any proof was needed - his policies are very much a continuation of those of the Bush administration. There has also been a new round of sanctions, which includes serious restrictions on Sharif University, a leading educational institution in Iran, along with the Razi institution, a developer of immunisation medicines and a textile plant in the north of the country.
“I really fail to see how you can build a nuclear bomb with immunisation medicine or textiles, said comrade Mather. “But these sanctions have a real effect in that doctors and hospitals in Iran tell us that they can’t get hold of so-called ‘dual use’ equipment.”. It is not the senior clerics’ welfare which is harmed by the sanctions. They can buy the goods they need through the black market, but “at a price that the poor simply cannot afford”. The Iranian working class is hit thrice: it is hit by sanctions, the disastrous economic policies of the Islamic government and by world recession.
Clearly, sanctions are an important weapon in imperialism’s arsenal. They are supposed to pave the way for regime change from above.
However, Iraq and Zimbabwe are two countries that show where these efforts lead: sanctions strengthen the leaders of those countries and at the same time disempower the working class, which is struggling just to survive. “But this is the only force that can bring about real regime change - change from below,” said John McDonnell. “These are not smart sanctions: they are insane! They force people into poverty, giving them little opportunity to rise up to challenge the regime.”
He suggested that Hopi should do some work in explaining that the sanctions on Iran are of a qualitative difference from those imposed on South Africa, which many people on the left campaigned for: “For a start, British capital had a lot of money invested in and profited from the apartheid regime. And, of course, the people in South Africa asked for our solidarity to impose those sanctions.”Jenny Jones agreed with both speakers and added that in today’s media culture it would be useful if Hopi could find some concrete examples of Iranians suffering from the sanctions.
The meeting went on to discuss the campaign and concrete ways to spread the message. For example, comrade McDonnell is preparing an early day motion, a request to the foreign affairs committee to investigate the effect of sanctions on the Iranian people and a letter from the Labour Representation Committee to political parties on the European Left.
There were also suggestions that Hopi should contact the National Union of Journalists regarding the internet ban which affects millions of students in Iran, to link up Hopi supporters in Unison with Iranian health workers in hospitals, where staff are complaining about the effects of sanctions, and to mobilise student activists and academics to oppose sanctions on Iranian universities.
Simon Wells reports on the launch of the Smash the Sanctions campaign
On March 16, Hands Off the People of Iran kicked off its Smash the Sanctions campaign with a press conference in the House of Commons. John McDonnell MP, Jenny Jones (Green Party member of the London assembly) and Hopi chair Yassamine Mather addressed the meeting.
Go to link below to listen to the speeches given by Yassamine Mather (chair of Hands Off the People of Iran) John McDonnell MP and Jenny Jones (London Assembly member, Green Party)
http://www.hopoi.org/
Comrade Mather started off by saying that sanctions are another form of war. The current set has just been renewed by Barack Obama. This shows that - if any proof was needed - his policies are very much a continuation of those of the Bush administration. There has also been a new round of sanctions, which includes serious restrictions on Sharif University, a leading educational institution in Iran, along with the Razi institution, a developer of immunisation medicines and a textile plant in the north of the country.
“I really fail to see how you can build a nuclear bomb with immunisation medicine or textiles, said comrade Mather. “But these sanctions have a real effect in that doctors and hospitals in Iran tell us that they can’t get hold of so-called ‘dual use’ equipment.”. It is not the senior clerics’ welfare which is harmed by the sanctions. They can buy the goods they need through the black market, but “at a price that the poor simply cannot afford”. The Iranian working class is hit thrice: it is hit by sanctions, the disastrous economic policies of the Islamic government and by world recession.
Clearly, sanctions are an important weapon in imperialism’s arsenal. They are supposed to pave the way for regime change from above.
However, Iraq and Zimbabwe are two countries that show where these efforts lead: sanctions strengthen the leaders of those countries and at the same time disempower the working class, which is struggling just to survive. “But this is the only force that can bring about real regime change - change from below,” said John McDonnell. “These are not smart sanctions: they are insane! They force people into poverty, giving them little opportunity to rise up to challenge the regime.”
He suggested that Hopi should do some work in explaining that the sanctions on Iran are of a qualitative difference from those imposed on South Africa, which many people on the left campaigned for: “For a start, British capital had a lot of money invested in and profited from the apartheid regime. And, of course, the people in South Africa asked for our solidarity to impose those sanctions.”Jenny Jones agreed with both speakers and added that in today’s media culture it would be useful if Hopi could find some concrete examples of Iranians suffering from the sanctions.
The meeting went on to discuss the campaign and concrete ways to spread the message. For example, comrade McDonnell is preparing an early day motion, a request to the foreign affairs committee to investigate the effect of sanctions on the Iranian people and a letter from the Labour Representation Committee to political parties on the European Left.
There were also suggestions that Hopi should contact the National Union of Journalists regarding the internet ban which affects millions of students in Iran, to link up Hopi supporters in Unison with Iranian health workers in hospitals, where staff are complaining about the effects of sanctions, and to mobilise student activists and academics to oppose sanctions on Iranian universities.
Wave of repression
Wave of repression
Internationalism must be a principle which we make concrete, writes Dave Isaacson
The level of repression against radical activists and voices of opposition to the Islamic Republic in Iran has increased in the recent weeks. Activists from the students’, women’s and workers’ movements, as well as those from national and religious minorities, have all suffered violent attacks and arrests. Eight labour activists from the Haft Tapeh sugarcane factory union in southern Iran have been detained by the intelligence ministry, including Ali Nejati, the president of the board of directors of the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Company Workers’ Syndicate, who was arrested on March 8.
Thousands of workers and their relatives have engaged in protests, strikes and sit-ins over the past couple of years. Many have been charged with “acting against national security” - an allegation used frequently by the regime against labour and social activists. Ahmadinejad’s government is trying to impose the Islamic Labour Council - a state-sponsored agency - on workers in order to undermine their own independent organisation. However, workers have overwhelmingly boycotted elections to the Islamic Council, which is considered a repressive force that supports government and employers.
The regime also mobilised its repressive forces to prevent activists marking International Women’s Day on March 8. Women activists had called a gathering for Warsaw Park in Tehran, but security forces blocked the entrance. Students of Shiraz University in southern Iran had also planned a meeting, but buses carrying students were stopped and students were forced to give their details.
The most serious incident occurred outside Malat Park in Mashhad, where when 700 women had gathered to celebrate International Women’s Day. Fifty were arrested and transferred to an unknown location. At one point the security forces attacked the women in an attempt to disperse the demonstrators, but they fought back bravely with bricks and stones.
On February 18, Sussan Razani and Shiva Kheirabadi, two women labour activists, were flogged inside the central prison in Sanandaj, capital of the Iranian Kurdistan province. Razani was given 70 lashes and Kheirabadi 15. they had been prosecuted because of their role in a May Day celebration in May 2008. The court also sentenced two other working class activists, Abdullah Khani and Syed Ghalib Husseini, to prison terms and flogging for their part in the same event.
Four other men, whose identities were not given, were hanged on March 9 in a prison in Zahedan, according to the official state news agency, IRNA. They were accused of kidnapping and murder - a charge regularly (mis)used against political opponents of the regime. Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-va-Baluchistan province, and Baluchis are a predominantly Sunni Muslim national minority.
These are just a few examples of a wave of repression being unleashed in the run-up to the Iranian presidential elections to be held on June 12 this year. All voices opposing the Islamic Republic must be cowed.
The international media did report the February 23-24 protests at Amir Kabir polytechnic university in Tehran, which ended with violent attacks by Revolutionary Guards and the basij militia and the arrest of over 70 students. Prior to this comrades from Students for Equality and Freedom in Iran (SEF) had informed us of the arrest of two of their activists - Mohammad Pourabdollah and Alireza Davoudi:
“On the morning of February 12 2009, the forces of the regime arrested Mohammad Pourabdollah in a brutal attack on his house in Tehran. He has been kept in Evin prison since then. There is no recent news from his situation and he has had no contact with his family. Mohammad, a chemical engineering student at the University of Tehran, was one of the 50 SEF students who were arrested last year following Student Day celebrations. Alireza Davoudi was taken from his home in Isfahan by regime forces and transferred to an unknown place. He is a well known student activist at the University of Isfahan who was arrested last spring and subjected to physical and mental torture” (Letters Weekly Worker February 19).
On February 23 SEF comrades at the University of Tehran held a protest demanding the release of the two. On the same day over at Amir Kabir, another university in Tehran, hundreds of students gathered for the first of two protests at the site on campus where the remains of five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, ‘martyrs’ who died during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, were being reburied.
Iran’s supreme leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has insisted that commemorating such people is a duty for each and every Iranian: “Our nation, mainly our youth, are indebted to the martyrs.” Protesters said they feared that the government would use the presence of the war graves in universities as a pretext for official suppression of demonstrations, which might be deemed ‘disrespectful’. This would also have allowed the basij increased access to the campus in order to police student activities.
Despite all these pressures, and the presence of the Revolutionary Guards and basij, the students defiantly chanted slogans such as “Dictator of the day, the war dead have become your excuse”, “Death to the dictator”, “We don’t want a fascist regime”, “Basiji get lost” and “Guns, tanks, basijis are no use any more”, immediately before the reburial ceremony on February 23.
The protesters were viciously attacked. Over 60 students were injured and around 20 taken to hospital with injuries consistent with the use of knives and knuckle-dusters as well as fists. Photos and videos of the assault, captured on student mobile phones, can be seen at www.autnews.us/archives/1387,12,00017569 and www.youtube.com/watch?v=UytG8w ByRIQ.
There were further clashes and arrests on February 24 and over 70 students were arrested and many still remain in prison. Students are saying that their campus is being turned into a graveyard and Tehran’s notorious Evin prison is being turned into a university due to the number of students held there.
Subsequently four more of Students for Equality and Freedom - Amirhosein Mohammadifar, Sanaz Allahyari, Nasim Roshanai and Maryam Sheikh - were arrested. It goes without saying that as communists we demand the release of these comrades, and of all political prisoners held by the Islamic Republic. We stand in solidarity with all students, workers and women who are fighting the regime.
Equally, we understand that that the war threats and sanctions emanating from the US and other imperialist countries make the position of our comrades in Iran more difficult. It gives the theocratic regime the perfect excuse to crack down on internal dissent. It is no accident that so many political opponents to the regime are arrested on the pretext of being stooges of foreign powers. The war threats play directly into the hands of the regime.
However, while the bulk of the left (excluding the social-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty) are clear in their opposition to any attack on Iran, they are less than clear about the position they take with regard to the Iranian regime and its attacks on movements inside Iran.
Much of the left makes the mistake of believing that that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’: reactionary states in conflict with imperialism must be supported - or at least opposition to them suspended. This is the ‘anti-imperialism’ of fools. It is a class-collaborationist politics which leads ‘socialists’ to take a side other than that of the working class.
When the US sent ships into the Gulf in 1987 in a show of support for Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war, according to Phil Marshall of the Socialist Workers Party, this meant that, “notwithstanding the reactionary nature of the Khomeini regime, socialists should therefore support Khomeini’s military campaign against Iraq and the west, while retaining their complete political independence of the regime” (Revolution and counterrevolution in Iran London 1988, p106). But this “political independence” did not stop Socialist Worker from opposing strikes. In its November 28 1987 edition it argued: “We have no choice but to support the Khomeini regime ... socialists should not call for the disruption of military supplies to the front … should not support actions which could lead to the collapse of the military effort.” A shameful position.
Earlier this year, the SWP appeared to take up a different line. Its article marking the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution of 1979 noted: “Khomeini and his allies argued that national unity was needed to defeat the US. Any dissenters were enemies of the revolution. The left didn’t know how to respond ... The left’s failure to organise independently among workers and the poor to fight for socialism allowed Khomeini to consolidate power” (Socialist Worker January 20). But the article made no mention of the working class movement in Iran today - the SWP has virtually nothing to say about the repression of activists by the regime.
Indeed at the last conference of the Stop the War Coalition in October 2007 it was SWP comrades who lead the rapturous applause for Campaign Iran’s Somaya Zadeh when she belittled the repressive actions of the Iranian state in an astonishing display of apologetics. She outlined what she saw as five “lies”. ‘Lie’ number five was that “Iran is an undemocratic and repressive country” (see Weekly Worker November 1 2007).
Internationalism must be more than something we mention in ‘Where we stand’ statements and Sunday afternoon meetings. It is a principle which we must make concrete. We must stand in solidarity with our comrades around the world, whether the states they are fighting happen to be in conflict with US interests or not.
This does not mean we do not also oppose US imperialism. Our movement must be able to walk and chew gum.
Internationalism must be a principle which we make concrete, writes Dave Isaacson
The level of repression against radical activists and voices of opposition to the Islamic Republic in Iran has increased in the recent weeks. Activists from the students’, women’s and workers’ movements, as well as those from national and religious minorities, have all suffered violent attacks and arrests. Eight labour activists from the Haft Tapeh sugarcane factory union in southern Iran have been detained by the intelligence ministry, including Ali Nejati, the president of the board of directors of the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Company Workers’ Syndicate, who was arrested on March 8.
Thousands of workers and their relatives have engaged in protests, strikes and sit-ins over the past couple of years. Many have been charged with “acting against national security” - an allegation used frequently by the regime against labour and social activists. Ahmadinejad’s government is trying to impose the Islamic Labour Council - a state-sponsored agency - on workers in order to undermine their own independent organisation. However, workers have overwhelmingly boycotted elections to the Islamic Council, which is considered a repressive force that supports government and employers.
The regime also mobilised its repressive forces to prevent activists marking International Women’s Day on March 8. Women activists had called a gathering for Warsaw Park in Tehran, but security forces blocked the entrance. Students of Shiraz University in southern Iran had also planned a meeting, but buses carrying students were stopped and students were forced to give their details.
The most serious incident occurred outside Malat Park in Mashhad, where when 700 women had gathered to celebrate International Women’s Day. Fifty were arrested and transferred to an unknown location. At one point the security forces attacked the women in an attempt to disperse the demonstrators, but they fought back bravely with bricks and stones.
On February 18, Sussan Razani and Shiva Kheirabadi, two women labour activists, were flogged inside the central prison in Sanandaj, capital of the Iranian Kurdistan province. Razani was given 70 lashes and Kheirabadi 15. they had been prosecuted because of their role in a May Day celebration in May 2008. The court also sentenced two other working class activists, Abdullah Khani and Syed Ghalib Husseini, to prison terms and flogging for their part in the same event.
Four other men, whose identities were not given, were hanged on March 9 in a prison in Zahedan, according to the official state news agency, IRNA. They were accused of kidnapping and murder - a charge regularly (mis)used against political opponents of the regime. Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-va-Baluchistan province, and Baluchis are a predominantly Sunni Muslim national minority.
These are just a few examples of a wave of repression being unleashed in the run-up to the Iranian presidential elections to be held on June 12 this year. All voices opposing the Islamic Republic must be cowed.
The international media did report the February 23-24 protests at Amir Kabir polytechnic university in Tehran, which ended with violent attacks by Revolutionary Guards and the basij militia and the arrest of over 70 students. Prior to this comrades from Students for Equality and Freedom in Iran (SEF) had informed us of the arrest of two of their activists - Mohammad Pourabdollah and Alireza Davoudi:
“On the morning of February 12 2009, the forces of the regime arrested Mohammad Pourabdollah in a brutal attack on his house in Tehran. He has been kept in Evin prison since then. There is no recent news from his situation and he has had no contact with his family. Mohammad, a chemical engineering student at the University of Tehran, was one of the 50 SEF students who were arrested last year following Student Day celebrations. Alireza Davoudi was taken from his home in Isfahan by regime forces and transferred to an unknown place. He is a well known student activist at the University of Isfahan who was arrested last spring and subjected to physical and mental torture” (Letters Weekly Worker February 19).
On February 23 SEF comrades at the University of Tehran held a protest demanding the release of the two. On the same day over at Amir Kabir, another university in Tehran, hundreds of students gathered for the first of two protests at the site on campus where the remains of five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, ‘martyrs’ who died during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, were being reburied.
Iran’s supreme leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has insisted that commemorating such people is a duty for each and every Iranian: “Our nation, mainly our youth, are indebted to the martyrs.” Protesters said they feared that the government would use the presence of the war graves in universities as a pretext for official suppression of demonstrations, which might be deemed ‘disrespectful’. This would also have allowed the basij increased access to the campus in order to police student activities.
Despite all these pressures, and the presence of the Revolutionary Guards and basij, the students defiantly chanted slogans such as “Dictator of the day, the war dead have become your excuse”, “Death to the dictator”, “We don’t want a fascist regime”, “Basiji get lost” and “Guns, tanks, basijis are no use any more”, immediately before the reburial ceremony on February 23.
The protesters were viciously attacked. Over 60 students were injured and around 20 taken to hospital with injuries consistent with the use of knives and knuckle-dusters as well as fists. Photos and videos of the assault, captured on student mobile phones, can be seen at www.autnews.us/archives/1387,12,00017569 and www.youtube.com/watch?v=UytG8w ByRIQ.
There were further clashes and arrests on February 24 and over 70 students were arrested and many still remain in prison. Students are saying that their campus is being turned into a graveyard and Tehran’s notorious Evin prison is being turned into a university due to the number of students held there.
Subsequently four more of Students for Equality and Freedom - Amirhosein Mohammadifar, Sanaz Allahyari, Nasim Roshanai and Maryam Sheikh - were arrested. It goes without saying that as communists we demand the release of these comrades, and of all political prisoners held by the Islamic Republic. We stand in solidarity with all students, workers and women who are fighting the regime.
Equally, we understand that that the war threats and sanctions emanating from the US and other imperialist countries make the position of our comrades in Iran more difficult. It gives the theocratic regime the perfect excuse to crack down on internal dissent. It is no accident that so many political opponents to the regime are arrested on the pretext of being stooges of foreign powers. The war threats play directly into the hands of the regime.
However, while the bulk of the left (excluding the social-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty) are clear in their opposition to any attack on Iran, they are less than clear about the position they take with regard to the Iranian regime and its attacks on movements inside Iran.
Much of the left makes the mistake of believing that that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’: reactionary states in conflict with imperialism must be supported - or at least opposition to them suspended. This is the ‘anti-imperialism’ of fools. It is a class-collaborationist politics which leads ‘socialists’ to take a side other than that of the working class.
When the US sent ships into the Gulf in 1987 in a show of support for Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war, according to Phil Marshall of the Socialist Workers Party, this meant that, “notwithstanding the reactionary nature of the Khomeini regime, socialists should therefore support Khomeini’s military campaign against Iraq and the west, while retaining their complete political independence of the regime” (Revolution and counterrevolution in Iran London 1988, p106). But this “political independence” did not stop Socialist Worker from opposing strikes. In its November 28 1987 edition it argued: “We have no choice but to support the Khomeini regime ... socialists should not call for the disruption of military supplies to the front … should not support actions which could lead to the collapse of the military effort.” A shameful position.
Earlier this year, the SWP appeared to take up a different line. Its article marking the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution of 1979 noted: “Khomeini and his allies argued that national unity was needed to defeat the US. Any dissenters were enemies of the revolution. The left didn’t know how to respond ... The left’s failure to organise independently among workers and the poor to fight for socialism allowed Khomeini to consolidate power” (Socialist Worker January 20). But the article made no mention of the working class movement in Iran today - the SWP has virtually nothing to say about the repression of activists by the regime.
Indeed at the last conference of the Stop the War Coalition in October 2007 it was SWP comrades who lead the rapturous applause for Campaign Iran’s Somaya Zadeh when she belittled the repressive actions of the Iranian state in an astonishing display of apologetics. She outlined what she saw as five “lies”. ‘Lie’ number five was that “Iran is an undemocratic and repressive country” (see Weekly Worker November 1 2007).
Internationalism must be more than something we mention in ‘Where we stand’ statements and Sunday afternoon meetings. It is a principle which we must make concrete. We must stand in solidarity with our comrades around the world, whether the states they are fighting happen to be in conflict with US interests or not.
This does not mean we do not also oppose US imperialism. Our movement must be able to walk and chew gum.
Call to prosecute officials after Iranian blogger dies in prison
The Guardian, Friday 20 March 2009
An Iranian blogger convicted of insulting the country's religious leaders has died in jail after taking a drug overdose.
Omidreza Mirsayafi, 29, died in Tehran's notorious Evin prison on Wednesday, just over a month after a judge gave him a two-and-a-half year sentence for posting comments on his blog about figures including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini .
Human rights campaigners called for prison officials to be prosecuted after Mirsayafi took extra doses of tranquilisers prescribed by prison doctors. He was suffering from depression and had previously attempted to commit suicide, according to a fellow inmate.
His death followed that of Amir Hossein Heshmatsaran, founder of an Iranian opposition group called the National Unity Front, who died on 6 March while serving an eight-year sentence. Heshmatsaran's family alleged that he had died because of negligence, after suffering a stroke.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said the deaths illustrated contempt for political detainees' health.
"Iranian leaders have relegated the administration of the prison system to a group of incompetent and cruel officials who are showing their utter disregard for human life," said Hadi Ghaemi, the campaign's spokesman. "If the authorities do not move quickly to hold negligent officials responsible, they are reinforcing impunity and the lack of accountability."
Mirsayafi was convicted of insulting religious leaders and of making propaganda against the Islamic system. He was awaiting a further trial on charges of insulting "sacred Islamic values". The offences were allegedly committed on his blog, Rouznegar, which focused mainly on music and cultural issues.
Mirsayafi denied the postings were insulting and said they were only intended to be read by friends. Before being convicted, he told associates he would die if he was imprisoned.
Details of Mirsayafi's deterioration in prison were given by Hesam Firoozi, an imprisoned doctor who witnessed his treatment. Firoozi, who has treated some of Iran's best-known political activists, told Mirsayafi's lawyer that medical staff had denied him proper care by failing to send him to hospital.
Iran has come under scrutiny before for its treatment of imprisoned activists. Human rights groups voiced outrage in July 2006 when Akbar Mohammadi, incarcerated for leading anti-government student demonstrations, died in Evin prison after going on hunger strike. He had been fasting to protest against the lack of treatment for injuries suffered in captivity.
News of Mirsayfi's death emerged as officials announced the arrest of 27 people they said were involved in pornographic and erotic websites allegedly created by foreign powers aiming to foment a "soft revolution" against the Islamic regime.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/20/omidreza-mirsayafi-iran-blogger-rouznegar
An Iranian blogger convicted of insulting the country's religious leaders has died in jail after taking a drug overdose.
Omidreza Mirsayafi, 29, died in Tehran's notorious Evin prison on Wednesday, just over a month after a judge gave him a two-and-a-half year sentence for posting comments on his blog about figures including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini .
Human rights campaigners called for prison officials to be prosecuted after Mirsayafi took extra doses of tranquilisers prescribed by prison doctors. He was suffering from depression and had previously attempted to commit suicide, according to a fellow inmate.
His death followed that of Amir Hossein Heshmatsaran, founder of an Iranian opposition group called the National Unity Front, who died on 6 March while serving an eight-year sentence. Heshmatsaran's family alleged that he had died because of negligence, after suffering a stroke.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said the deaths illustrated contempt for political detainees' health.
"Iranian leaders have relegated the administration of the prison system to a group of incompetent and cruel officials who are showing their utter disregard for human life," said Hadi Ghaemi, the campaign's spokesman. "If the authorities do not move quickly to hold negligent officials responsible, they are reinforcing impunity and the lack of accountability."
Mirsayafi was convicted of insulting religious leaders and of making propaganda against the Islamic system. He was awaiting a further trial on charges of insulting "sacred Islamic values". The offences were allegedly committed on his blog, Rouznegar, which focused mainly on music and cultural issues.
Mirsayafi denied the postings were insulting and said they were only intended to be read by friends. Before being convicted, he told associates he would die if he was imprisoned.
Details of Mirsayafi's deterioration in prison were given by Hesam Firoozi, an imprisoned doctor who witnessed his treatment. Firoozi, who has treated some of Iran's best-known political activists, told Mirsayafi's lawyer that medical staff had denied him proper care by failing to send him to hospital.
Iran has come under scrutiny before for its treatment of imprisoned activists. Human rights groups voiced outrage in July 2006 when Akbar Mohammadi, incarcerated for leading anti-government student demonstrations, died in Evin prison after going on hunger strike. He had been fasting to protest against the lack of treatment for injuries suffered in captivity.
News of Mirsayfi's death emerged as officials announced the arrest of 27 people they said were involved in pornographic and erotic websites allegedly created by foreign powers aiming to foment a "soft revolution" against the Islamic regime.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/20/omidreza-mirsayafi-iran-blogger-rouznegar
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Israel says Gaza assault was preparation for attack on Iran
Australian News Channel Was Invited "Accidentally" to Very Open DialoguePosted January 30, 2009After ordering a cameraman to turn off his camera, Israeli Ambassador toAustralia Yuval Rotem engaged in a very frank discussion about the recentIsraeli war in the Gaza Strip, calling it ³a preintroduction² to an attackon Iran that Israel apparently expects within the year.Before the camera was turned off, Ambassador Rotem said ³the best thing todo is to have a very open dialogue if there are no reporters or journalistshere,² adding ³I am far more reserved in the way I am saying my things (oncamera).² Unbeknownst to him however Sarah Cummings, a reporter forAustralia¹s Seven News service, was actually in attendance at the meetingafter having been ³accidentally² invited.Israel has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran, and while its officialshave repeatedly attempted to tie the Iranian government to its war on theGaza Strip this is the first time one of their officials has publicly (ifinadvertently so) suggested that the attack on the strip was a warm-up toits long talked about attack on Iran.
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