IRAN TODAY is run by a reactionary Islamic regime. Using the language of seventh century rellgion as the basis for its laws and social programme, the Islamic Republic suppresses all hints of socialism, liberalism, women's rights, rights of national minorities and freedom of speech (remember Rushdie?).
Yet in 1979, the Iranian revolution was hailed by the left as a revolution against imperialism.
The Shah of Iran, with huge financial and military backing from the US, reinforced imperialist domination of the economy, based on agriculture and one main industry - oil. Traditional agriculture and the large class of small merchants in the bazaar were pauperised. While vast shanty towns arose, only a tiny bourgeoisie profited.
Sixty per cent of the population were from national minorities, and denied lational rights; a vast army police (SAVAK) repressed all opposi tion; the Shah was imperialism's Gulf policeman.
Millions
The Shah was overthrown by the people in a giant struggle which started in 1978. The response was repression, but each massacre led to even greater mobilisations, based on mourning cycle. Four million demonstrated in September 1978 chanting 'death to the Shah! Strike action by the 3-million strong working class sealed the fate of the regime.
The armed forces cracked, and the final insurrection took place on 9 February 1979.
Left parties were active, armed and growing in influence among students and workers. Strike committees turned into workers councils (shoras). Women demonstrated on government looked fragile. Would Women's Day. The new bourgeois ran's February revolution be followed by a socialist October? The question of leadership of the struggle proved to be decisive, and the and secret price of getting it wrong was paid in blood. Nationally-known The Shi'ite clergy filled the gap left by the failure of the rest of the opposition. The bourgeois nationalists were weak and divided. The Communist (Tudeh) party, had long tail-ended the Sha's the 40-day regime. Only people exile since 1963, was a nationallyknown figure who consistently fought the regime. In the absence of alternatives, the network of 80,000 mosques and their dedicated army of mullahs and religious students provided the organisational base revolution. The revolutionary or tne guards (Pasdarans), the revolutionary We welcome letters on any subject but please committees, lahs. International Republican ana or course women the clergy. Ayatollah Khomeini, in ders rather consolidated its Khomeini the revolutionary courts, were all heavily influenced by the mulThe victory of Khomeini's Islamic Party was not inevitable While the IRP had a strong base in the programme. bazaar and among the dispossessed where it recruited its thugs (the Hezbollahis) its programme was openly against the interests of the workers (trade unions were 'unislamic), the poor, the peasantry, national minorities But convinced that Khomeini repre- land reform, sented the anti-imperialist revolution, the left was silent when he rushed through a referendum establishing the Islamic republic, with final power for When Khomeini launched the occupation of the US embassy, the geois opponents. left either ignored the mass mobilisation which followed or tail-ended it uncritically. When Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980, left parties became enthusiastic supporters of the regime s orthan demanding a real mobilisation of the masses linked to political demands. As the IRP carefully position through 1980/1, banning the press, purging the iT SHRUNK! army and government, the left tound that the policy of subordinating the class struggle to Khomeini's impere a was teenough to sa veit largest group, Mujahadeen, abandoned mass struggle for guerrilla warfare in 1981. Crushed by repression they formed an alliance, the National Resistance Council, with bourgeois forces on a bourgeois Political independence Had revolutionaries instead advanced a programme based on class independence from bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces (such as the IRP), and fought for the rights of nationalities, for for women, there was a chance of building a mass party capable of challenging first the old regime, then the fundamentalists. The Iranian left instead abandoned the class programme either to follow Khomeini, or his bourIn any revolution, where the masses take control of their own destiny, there can be more than one outcome to the struggle as rival class forces fight for their interests. It was not guaranteed that a mass revolutionary leadership could have led the Iranian masses to liberation - but it was certainly guaranteed they would not if they did not try.