27.10.2010

Adding a new dimension

Yassamine Mather of Hands Off the People of Iran is standing for the STWC steering committee. This is her election statement

Since the autumn of 2010, the unprecedented economic sanctions against Iran imposed by the US and the UN have made life unbearable for the majority of Iranians. The price of basic goods has doubled, many factories have shut down or are producing below capacity and thus contributing further to high rates of unemployment. The banking and finance sectors are in crisis and the devaluation of the Iranian rial inevitably entails further poverty and destitution for the majority of Iranians. In a country where privatisation, corruption and greed have destroyed manufacturing and food industries and where most goods, including basic subsistence items (tea, rice, meat, fruit, etc), have to be imported, it is low-income Iranians that have suffered most from the vicious sanctions recently imposed.

Those Iranians who recall the air raids and bombings during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s fear a return of their worst nightmares. The Tehran government is oblivious to all this suffering. It is in denial over the effects of sanctions and too embroiled in factional in-fighting to notice much outside its own narrow range of concerns. It surfaces only to repress any manifestation of opposition and to mouth vacuous anti-western rhetoric. In such terrible circumstances, the anti-war movement in western countries must up its game and dramatically increase its solidarity and support with the Iranian people in their struggle against US-inspired sanctions and aggression, but also for democracy and basic human rights.

It is a weakness that the leadership of STWC has been quiet on Iran. In the past, the coalition was perceived of by many Iranian exiles as too soft on the regime in Tehran; this had the negative effect of isolating the coalition from the bulk of these forces, something that did harm to the effectiveness of both the anti-war movement and these exile groups and individuals. The massive protests in Iran of 2009-10, following the rigged presidential elections, have created a new opportunity to heal this division. The STWC leadership took a cautious stand with the mass movement, while correctly demanding that the west did not interfere. However, in a year when the US’s aggressive raft of sanctions is directly impoverishing the very people who formed the mass ranks of that protest movement, we do not hear enough from the coalition against these attacks.

As a leading member of Hands Off the People of Iran, I have been heartened by the response to our campaigning work over the last three years. We have shown it is possible to organise a principled campaign against imperialist war and sanctions on the Iranian people and to simultaneously defend the just struggles of these masses against the clerical regime. We have helped workers’ struggles inside Iran both materially and in terms of generating wider international solidarity. I believe that I can strengthen the STWC leadership by being a voice for these forces inside Iran - brave and hard-pressed activists who have no illusions in the ‘democracy’ of the imperialists or any ‘regime change from above’ imposed by the west, but at the same time fight a daily battle with the reactionary and corrupt regime that now rules over them.

Taking a stand like this is the way forward for the anti-war movement, I believe. Well intentioned though they are, calls for negotiations or peace talks between Iran and the United States are a blind alley. They miss the core reasons of the conflict. First, the fact that global economic crisis now powers imperialism’s drive towards war and destruction; second, that the fragile Ahmadinejad government needs to divert seething discontent at home against an external enemy in order to prolong its life.

Biography

Yassamine Mather is an Iranian socialist in exile in Scotland. Her political activities on the Iranian left started in the 1980s in Tehran and later in Kurdistan with the Organisation of Iranian People’s Fedayeen (Minority). In exile, she has been editor of Jahan (a monthly political journal) and a member of the coordinating committee of Workers Left Unity Iran. She is a member of the Centre for Socialist Theory and Movements (Glasgow University), an activist on the British left and the deputy editor of the widely influential journal Critique. She has been a prominent activist in the Hands Off the People of Iran campaign since its formation in 2007.

Endorsements

Yassamine is endorsed by a range of British, Iranian and international activists, including:

Moshé Machover, Israeli socialist; Mike Nelson, Glasgow; Marsha-Jane Thompson, chair, Unison United Left; Professor Christine Cooper, UCU - Glasgow University; Professor Bridget Fowler, UCU - Glasgow University; Charlie Pottins, Jewish Socialist Group; Barbara White; Ramin Rahimi, Iran Communist Workers of Iran; Bina Darab Zand, Iran Communist Workers of Iran; Ali Pichgah, Sweden, former leader of the Council of Oil Workers (Tehran refinery); Mohamad Reza Shalgouni, Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran (ORWI - Rah e Kargar); Ruben Markarian, ORWI (Rah e Kargar); Amir Javaheri Langaroudi; ORWI (Rah e Kargar); Borzu Fuladvand, USA Iranian Left Alliance; Sulmaz Moradi, Canada Iranian socialist; Siamak Ghoubadi; Iranian socialist, Canada; Fariba Talebi, Ireland HOPI; Mila Mossafer, Germany, Iranian feminist socialist; Nasrollah Ghazi, ORWI Britain (Rah e Kargar); Raft Ranjbaran, ORWI Sweden (Rah e Kargar); Arjang Bamshad; ORWI Germany (Rah e Kargar); Reza Chitsaz, ORWI Sweden (Rah e Kargar); Soroujh Ghazarian, ORWI Sweden (Rah e Kargar); Ahmad Novin, ORWI Sweden (Rah e Kargar); Asgar Shirin Balaghi, socialist; Farrokh Ghahremani, former political prisoner; Maryam Oskouii; Siranoush Moradiyan; Jalal Naderi; Reza Sepid Roudi, ORWI Sweden (Rah e Kargar); Hamid Azar; Javad Ghodoussi, ORWI Sweden (Rah e Kargar); Naghi Ryahi Langaroudi, ORWI Netherlands (Rah e Kargar); Mohsen Tossifyan; Youssef Tajali Jou; Sima Riyahi; Shahab Shokouhi, ORWI (Rah e Kargar); Mojataba Nazari, ORWI Sweden (Rah e Kargar); Ardeshir Nazari; Fereydoon Mansouri, Iranian worker in exile, Sweden; Mehdi Kia, UK Middle East Forum (Iran Bulletin); Justin Constantinou, Socialist Workers Party, Cambridge; Anand Pillay, Leeds Coalition Against the War; Lee Rock, PCS assistant branch secretary, Sheffield.