04.01.2007

Iran solidarity

Yassamine Mather (Critique editorial group) explains why the campaign 'Hands off the People of Iran' has been set up. To get in touch with the campaign, email nowaroniran@yahoo.co.uk

After months of discussion and hesitation, the United Nations security council finally imposed sanctions against Iran on Saturday December 23. Inside Iran no-one is in any doubt that it is workers and the poor who will pay the price of these sanctions, as the islamic regime uses the excuse of 'new economic conditions' to sack tens of thousands of workers, stop paying the wages of thousands of public sector employees and increase repression, while pressing ahead with its nuclear programme.

In the November-December issue of Radical philosophy, Étienne Balibar and Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond write that "both the crusade against the 'axis of evil' and the renewed calls for the elimination of the 'Zionist entity' and for jihad are still tearing the Arab world apart. It is obvious for all to see that Bush and Ahmadinejad need each other and that the rhetoric of one is modelled on the rhetoric of the other."

They could have added that the supporters of 'regime change in Iran' (including forces deluding themselves that calls such change, imposed from outside, will improve the plight of workers, women and national minorities) and the apologists of the islamic regime in the anti-war movement also need each other and that "the rhetoric of one is modelled on the rhetoric of the other".

Events of the last few weeks of 2006 showed once more the perilous nature of both positions. The recommendations of the Iraq Study Group have not altered the threat of military aggression and, now sanctions against Iran are a reality, the US-UK governments have not given up plans for regime change from above.

At the same time a rainbow of rightwing and reformist groups inside and outside Iran, some even claiming to support workers' rights, are playing up to this gallery, at times unaware of the disastrous consequences of simply calling for trade union, women's and democratic rights, while failing to mention the role of imperialism and its barbarous wars in the region. They cannot see that singling out islamic regimes such as Iran's shia republic as the only forces of 'evil' plays into the hands of world capital. Such campaigns, whatever the intention of their supporters, add up to no more than direct or indirect support for imperialist scenarios of 'velvet revolution'.

On the other hand, the apologists for political islam in the Stop the War Coalition have chosen to turn a blind eye to the most ridiculous situation in Iran's islamic republic, where Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and a range of fascists and anti-semites made a mockery of anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism, in the fiasco of Ahmadinejad's holocaust denial conference. They fail to see the appalling economic and social results of the widespread privatisation and casualisation being pushed through by the theocracy in Iran.

In the midst of all this madness, Iranian students and workers have been showing the way. Around 1,500 students protested in Tehran on Wednesday December 6 on the eve of Iran's national student day. Although some news agencies tried to portray the demonstration as a pro-reform rally, the students' slogans and placards were clearly very radical: 'Socialism is way to emancipation'; 'Socialism or barbarism'; 'Students, workers, teachers - unite and fight'; 'Freedom for political prisoners'; 'We don't want war, we don't want nuclear weapons - we just want a better life'.

Then there was: 'Annihilation of the Taliban' (students often refer to the islamic regime in this way); 'Sexual apartheid shows contempt for human beings'; 'Equality, freedom - these are the people's slogans'; 'Students fight, reactionaries tremble'; 'Execution must be abolished today'; 'Free all student activists from prison'; 'Freedom for independent student organisations'.

Police blocked off roads surrounding the campus. Thousands of students angry at the repression in the universities broke down the doors of the faculty of science and clashed with security forces. Activists say that since Ahmadinejad's election 181 students have been summoned to university disciplinary boards and 105 of them have been suspended as part of a crackdown against the politically active. Then on December 11, The Iranian president's speech at Amir Kabir university was interrupted by protests and firecrackers, as students set fire to photographs of Ahmadinejad. One placard read: "Fascist president, the polytechnic is not your place." This was a clear reference to Ahmadinejad's sponsoring of the holocaust denial conference.

Meanwhile, there were scores of workers' actions, as 2006 drew to a close. Eight hundred workers from the Iran Sadra factory went on strike in protest at non-payment of wages, as did workers from the Ghove Pars factory in Alborz, who mounted a demonstration outside provincial offices on December 12. Workers from the Farsh Pars Ghazvin carpet factory gathered in front of the local governor's office on December 9 to protest at the closure of their factory and the fact that they have not received any wages for over four months.

Protesting workers from Poushineh Baft in Ghazvin blocked roads in response to the uncertain future facing them following the privatisation of the plant, while a meeting of council workers in Yassouj - again over the non-payment of wages - was broken up by the military when they tried to enter the municipal offices. Dozens were involved in skirmishes with the security forces and a number were subsequently arrested.

Of course, over the last few months many rightwing, pro-imperialist forces have shed crocodile tears for Iranian workers. Tony Blair, New Labour and some rightwing trade unions claim military action in the Middle East has helped defend workers' rights against islamists. Yet Iranian workers have shown in their daily struggles that, as far as they are concerned, the battle for democratic trade union rights are an integral part of the struggle against contemporary global capital - irrespective of whether it appears under an islamist, christian or neoliberal banner. Time and time again these workers have made their position against war and sanctions clear and it is to them that the anti-war movement should look.

Western radical forces struggling against imperialism and its wars in the region have genuine allies in this revolutionary movement of workers and youth inside Iran. It is time the left in the anti-war movement woke up to this reality and took up a principled stance not only against imperialist wars and sanctions, but also against theocratic regimes such as Iran's islamic republic. I urge such forces to support the recently launched Hands Off the People of Iran campaign, whose founding statement embodies precisely this principled stance.