Sanctions siege turns into cyberwarfare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Divided theocratic regime paralysed by sanctions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crippling effects

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

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

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

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

Workers’ movement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revolutionary left

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

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

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

‘Reformists’ exposed on first anniversary

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

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


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

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


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


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

Whose violence?

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

Tied to regime

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


yassamine.mather@weeklyworker.org.uk


Notes

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

Jafar Panahi released

Solidarity works, says Jim Moody

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

jim.moody(at)weeklyworker.org.uk

Notes

1. See www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/politically-charged-finale-as-jury-honours-thai-and-binoche-stages-protest-1981119.html?action=Popup
2. hopoi.org
3. economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/Iranian-director-Kiarostami-seeks-release-of-Jafar-Panahi/articleshow/5946654.cms
4. isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1544889&Lang=E

Panahi stages hunger strike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solidarity success

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

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

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

PCS welcome

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

Execution to impose terror

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

1. www.komala.org/english/eindex.htm
2. www.nysun.com/foreign/kurdish-iranian-opposition-leader-seeks-clear/54772

From ‘smart sanctions’ to sanctions with ‘bite’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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