05.01.2023
The struggle continues
Executions and long prison sentences have failed to intimidate the spontaneous protest movement. But conscious leadership by a revolutionary party is indispensable, argues Yassamine Mather
More than a hundred days after the start of the mass protests there seems to be no end to the demonstrations and gatherings challenging the Islamic Republic of Iran and the rule of the ayatollahs.
Repression, death sentences and the threat of long-term imprisonment have so far failed to return things to ‘normal’. Demonstrations occur throughout the country on the 40th day after the death of each protester killed by security forces. There is also new vigour in the workers’ protests, some about unpaid wages but many about inequality, poverty and hatred of corruption.
It is no longer just the ‘reformists’ but politicians from across the most conservative factions who are suggesting changes to Iran’s legal and political system. Of course most of these interventions are too little, too late. However the list of these new ‘reformers’ calling for fundamental change makes interesting reading. They include: former parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani; current speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf; minister of cultural heritage, handicrafts and tourism, Ezzatollah Zarghami; an economic advisor to president Ebrahim Raisi with strong association with the revolutionary guards command (IRGC), Mohsen Rezaee; and secretary of the supreme national security council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani.
In the midst of all this the rightwing opposition in exile is keen to portray recent events as just ‘women’s protests against headscarves’. Don’t mention poverty or workers’ wages … after all, how can they mobilise international rightwing press and media if they start talking about poverty and corruption. Limiting everything to ‘Woman, life, freedom’ has got them the support of truly brainless celebrities from king Albert of Monaco to Meghan Markle, not to forget leaders such as Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron. For such an audience, protests by Iran’s oil workers complaining of low wages is too close to strikes and protests in their own country. The rightwing exile opposition and their press and media want to hide films of university protests where slogans against the ex-shah and the present‑day royal pretender are as prominent as slogans against ayatollah Khamenei. Anyone following events in Iran will know that irrespective of the origin of the protests - the tragic death of Mahsa Amini in detention - the movement that followed has come a long way in the last 100-plus days.
Reducing the issue to women’s opposition to forced hijab, as opposed to women’s equality and liberation from the burden of double exploitation allows these right wing supporters of the monarchy to tell the world about the good old days of the shah where apparently women faced no discrimination …
So, at 12.30am on new year’s day, half a dozen rightwing Iranian exiles, most of them non-entities, posted the same message as the son of the ex-shah Reza Pahlavi: “Let 2023 be the year of freedom and justice.” This was apparently the official announcement of an alliance that intends to replace the Islamic Republic. I am reliably informed that when young teenagers want to announce they are in love but do not want their parents to know, they post the same message simultaneously on social media. The fact that our rightwing ‘political’ leaders seem to have imitated these teenagers says volumes about their intelligence.
Of course, we all know the kind of freedom and justice they have in mind. The shah’s era is, after all, contemporary history. No doubt we should blame the Islamic republic and its disastrous 44 years in power for the fact that these people have risen out of the dustbin of history. If we don’t want historical illiterates to win, exposing everything they say and do must be an integral part of our tasks.
Shah’s visions
Let us start with Mohammad Reza Shah’s views of Islam and religion before quoting him on women. Iranians who do not want to bury their heads in the sand are very familiar with the infamous interview Pahlavi gave to Italian journalist Oriana Fellaci in 1973. The YouTube video shows his wife, Farah Diba, sitting next to him as he tells the reporter first about ‘religious visions’:
My mystical force. Moreover, I receive messages. I have lived with god beside me since I was five years old. Since, that is, god sent me those visions.
Q: Visions?
A: Visions, yes. Apparitions.
Q: Of what? Of whom?
A: Of prophets. I’m really surprised you should ignore this. It is common knowledge that I’ve had visions. I’ve even put it down in my biography. As a child, I had two visions: one when I was five and one when I was six. The first time, I saw our prophet Ali, he who, according to our religion, disappeared to return the day he would save the world. I had an accident: I fell against a rock. And he saved me: he placed himself between me and the rock. I know because I saw him. And not in a dream: in reality. Material reality, if you see what I mean. I alone saw him. The person who was with me didn’t see him at all. But nobody else was supposed to see him except me ...”1
However the section watched by most Iranians is on women. At the time of the interview it was widely rumoured in Iran that the shah had taken a fourth wife.
Q: But, your majesty, you’re a Muslim. Your religion allows you to take another wife without repudiating empress Farah Diba.
A: Yes, certainly. According to my religion, I could, so long as my wife grants her consent. And, to be honest, one must admit there are cases where … When a wife is ill, for instance, or when she refuses to perform her wifely duties, thereby causing her husband unhappiness … Let’s face it! One has to be a hypocrite or an innocent to believe a husband will tolerate that kind of thing ...
Q: Your majesty. If there is a monarch whose name has always been associated with women, it’s you. And now I’m beginning to suspect women have counted for nothing in your life.
A: I fear your suspicion is justified. Women, you know … Look, let’s put it this way. I don’t underestimate them, as shown by the fact that they have derived more advantages than anyone else from my white revolution ... but I wouldn’t be sincere if I asserted I’d been influenced by a single one of them. Nobody can influence me, nobody at all. And a woman still less. In a man’s life, women count only if they’re beautiful and graceful and know how to stay feminine and … This women’s lib business, for instance. What do these feminists want? What do you want? Equality, you say? Indeed! I don’t want to seem rude, but … You may be equal in the eyes of the law, but not, I beg your pardon for saying so, in ability.
Q: Aren’t we?
A: No. You’ve never produced a Michelangelo or a Bach. You’ve never even produced a great cook. And don’t talk of opportunities. Are you joking? Have you lacked the opportunity to give history a great cook? You have produced nothing great, nothing! Tell me, how many women capable of governing have you met in the course of interviews such as this?2
Diaries
If this was polite talk to a foreign journalist, we also have the memoirs of Assadollah Alam, the shah’s minister of court and his closest confidant. The memoirs give a daily record of the shah’s sexual exploitation of hundreds if not thousands of women. According to Alam, and confirmed by countless witnesses, in the last two decades of the shah’s rule upper class men were always careful not to take a beautiful wife or daughter to court, fearful that the shah would demand sleeping with them – and, in a dictatorship, no-one was in a position to refuse.
Again from Alam’s diaries we know the shah’s concern for procuring prostitutes for visiting heads of state and the extent of his efforts to lure a well-known French madame and her employees to Persepolis for the 2,500-year celebrations of Iranian history.
Exile TV stations keep broadcasting images and videos of the ‘good old times’ under the shah, showing women working in offices wearing no headscarf … however that was by no means the life of the majority of women. In traditional areas of most cities and in the countryside women did wear headscarves - and the way middle class women referred to women in the lower classes as ‘chadori’ was a form of insult that no doubt created resentment.
Many of the misogynist laws currently in place in Iran were also part of the shah’s legal system; after all, as he claimed in the above interview, he was in direct contact with prophets and didn’t think much of women. These included the law forbidding a woman to travel abroad without the consent of her husband even if she was separated from him. An unmarried woman could travel abroad only if she had the permission of a guardian.
The image portrayed by the country’s national TV, as in most capitalist third world countries, was that of women as a commodity. In films approved by the censor, women were portrayed either as prostitutes or innocent young girls hoping to marry a rich guy to change class status. The pro-government women’s magazines sponsored a kind of beauty contest - dokhtar shayeste - something like miss congeniality, where young girls were paraded like cattle in front of judges.
The official state-sponsored women’s organisation was led by the shah’s twin sister, famous for her gambling and drug dealing activities. On a number of occasions she and the shah tried to find her an official position as ‘commissioner for women’ … again, according to Alam, these efforts failed because UN officials were concerned about her criminal drug dealing activities.
This is the kind of women’s rights the supporters of the former regime and their so called left and liberal supporters are aiming for. Yet sections of the left are silent about all this. Why? Because not only have they failed to come up with any strategy, any plan, any organisation, they still have illusions about united fronts with the right to get rid of the Islamic republic. As I keep saying, it worked so well when they supported such fronts with Islamists! The problem is that this time the right has powerful global allies in the US and Europe.
Party
Given the current situation, in which the exiled left is so weak and divided that it cannot put forward a single decent proposal, some are even questioning our support for the movement inside Iran. Here I have to emphasise two points:
- The movement inside Iran is far more radical, revolutionary and leftwing than the exiled diaspora.
- Iran’s Islamic republic is so corrupt, so hypocritical, so repressive that it has reached the end of its life and no-one in their right mind can or should support its survival.
In such circumstances, and in the absence of an organised revolutionary left, what we have to do is to expose those presenting themselves as ‘alternatives’ to the current regime, while building and uniting the left. It is true that the failure of many working class parties (both of the reformist and revolutionary character) and the failures of a number of ‘unity’ projects, have resulted in an irrational and, in my opinion, stupid denial of the need for a revolutionary party. However, the idea that councils (shoras) on their own, without any political direction, can lead to a revolution is nothing but a pipe dream. Unless the Iranian left comes out of this coma and starts taking seriously the challenge of revolutionary organisation, we will face yet more decades of repression and injustice ... this time led by a pro-western bourgeoisie that will continue the economic policies of the Islamic republic but will not face the same criticisms because it will bring about ‘modern’ as opposed to ‘Islamic’ exploitation.
The new state’s promise of ‘democracy’ will last less than a couple of weeks. We can predict the timeline because this is exactly what happened in Egypt after the Sissi military coup supported by the US and its regional allies. Yes, the interference of the religious state in the private lives of Iranians will cease, but don’t expect much else.