Revolution and Counterrevolution in Iran

The brochure "Revolution and Counterrevolution in Iran expresses the positions of the Socialist Workers Party of Iran (HKS is the initials that identify this organization in its original language). SWP-I is a sympathizing section of the Unified Secretariat - Fourth International, one of the fundamental currents of world Trotskyism.
The publication of this brochure on our pages would be justified by the sole fact that it provides the vision of Iranian Trotskyist militants about the course that the situation has taken in their country after the extraordinary revolution that shook the world and the Middle East.
But to this we must add as a factor of great interest that the pamphlet also includes the proposal of the comrades of the SWP-I for the regrouping of the Iranian revolutionaries, in the perspective of the construction of a party that leads the fight for the overthrow of the capitalist regime led by Khomeini and the construction of a workers' state based on the organizations of the masses.

While coinciding with the comrades of the PST-I in these fundamental objectives, we want to place the debate on the situation in Iran within an international and regional framework, also pointing to some controversial arguments of the work we are editing.

The crisis of imperialist domination

The world revolutionary rise, especially since the victory of the Vietnamese revolution, has dislocated the imperialist apparatus of military aggression.
The Middle East represents a fundamental chapter in this story. The defeat of the Shah and the destruction of his powerful army by the Iranian revolution in 1979 amounted to the liquidation of one of the military and political strongholds of imperialism in the Middle East. To contain the revolutionary shock wave generated by the Iranian outburst, the counterrevolution launched three very hard blows: the Soviet bureaucracy invaded Afghanistan with the Red Army to contain the mobilization of the Islamic peoples; Iraq attacked Iran militarily, starting the Gulf War with the green light of both Stalinism and imperialism; Israel's army invaded Lebanon.
Three years after the invasion began, Israel was defeated by the Lebanese people, it had to withdraw its army at the beginning of 1985 and a crisis began within the Zionist state that has prevented it from launching new large-scale military aggressions against the Arab peoples until today.
With the liquidation of the Shah's regime and his army and the crisis in Israel after the defeat of its troops in Lebanon, the masses have managed to bring into crisis the entire strategy of military aggression of imperialism in the Middle East. Together, Iran and Lebanon constitute the greatest politico-military defeat of imperialism after Vietnam.
In the article Islam in flames (Correo Internacional No. 19) we had said that despite the victory of the Lebanese masses over the Israeli army, a situation of revolutionary status quo remained in the Middle East, where neither the masses nor imperialism and their allies made decisive advances. We believe it is necessary to amend that definition. For the region as a whole, Israel's defeat in Lebanon meant the beginning of a new revolutionary wave, which would soon be followed by the victory of a democratic revolution in Sudan that ended the long-standing dictatorship of Marshal Nimeiry. We even believe that Israel's defeat in mid-1985 initiated the new world revolutionary wave that has achieved recent successes in Haiti and the Philippines.
Let us see how the revolutionary new wave is expressed in the Middle East.

Towards the destruction of Israel?

As it could not be otherwise, a defeat of the caliber of that Zionism suffered in Lebanon had to strongly reflect within Israel. Due to the discredit caused by the war and the defeat, Zionism saw the weakening of both political pillars of the state, Laborism and the Likud (right-wing alliance), which has forced the formation of an extremely unstable coalition government.
There are also indications that the economic system mounted on two columns, the war economy with its military enclave high-tech weaponry industries and the immense US imperialism subsidies (which have exceeded 100 billion USD since the foundation of the Zionist state), is in a serious crisis.
Apparently imperialism has decided to reduce its aid, as a result of its own economic difficulties, at a time when, due to the military defeat, the Israeli arms industry has gone into a crisis.
All this allows us to advance a hypothesis: possibly the definitive crisis in Israel has begun, which will lead to the destruction of the Zionist enclave.

The balance without counterweight

Israel's weakness, its inability to immediately intervene in a military way, means a serious imbalance for the Arab bourgeois rulers. The Arab masses are mobilizing with less and less fear of the reprisals from the Zionist monster. In Lebanon, the Palestinians, who had suffered the hardest blows of the Israeli invasion are reorganizing. In Jordan, King Hussein no longer expects that Israel will be able to repress - as it has done so many times - the disgruntled popular sectors and the guerrilla and leftist organizations, if they were to overtook the weak Jordanian state and army. In Egypt, the feeling that allowed the regime to adhere for fifteen years to the agreement with imperialism and the Zionists is fading. Few Egyptians now say “Israel is too strong to fight it; let us make agreements with the Zionists and we will have peace”.
Expressions of rebellion and crisis from the Arab regimes sprout everywhere.

The Nile countries

The Nile countries, which have lived through closely intertwined histories, saw the policy of submission to imperialism that their rulers have maintained for twenty years enter a crisis.
Although the revolution in Sudan that ended the pro-US imperialism dictatorship has now enthroned a bourgeois-democratic regime equally servant of imperialism, the masses of that country continue to mobilize, with general strikes and the growing action of a mass anti-imperialist guerrilla that controls important territories.
Egypt was the scene of an uprising by security police recruits last January, reflecting a growing mobilization and popular opposition to President Mubarak's agreements with Israel and the US and the IMF plans. The growth of workers' and popular struggles, channeled in part by Islamic religious leaderships, may be leading to the fall of the pro-imperialist government.
Meanwhile, to the west of Egypt, the Maghreb countries (the Islamic nations of North Africa), are the scene of growing popular struggles where the working class of Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Algeria have more and more weight.

On the borders of the monster

The countries directly bordering Israel have entered a marked process of destabilization in recent months.
King Hussein of Jordan has suffered two very hard blows. First, the failure of his attempt to create, in agreement with Israel, a Palestinian leadership that displaces the PLO, the organization in which the national independence of the Palestinians is represented. At the beginning of the year, a powerful mobilization in the city of Nablus (located in Israeli-occupied territories on the border with Jordan), where fifty thousand Palestinians marched with PLO flags and portraits of Arafat, ended the attempt to assemble the new puppet leadership. This has had a tremendous impact inside Jordan, where 60% of the population is made up of Palestinian exiles.

And also within Jordanian territory, the new situation was recently expressed in a powerful mobilization in repudiation of Hussein for not having taken a clear attitude of condemnation to the United States for the illegitimate aggression against Libya.
Imperialist media such as The Economist affirm that in Syria there is a strong rebirth of mobilizations led by Muslim currents. The media claimed that these Islamic forces had been crushed for a long time, following the massacre perpetrated by the Syrian army in the city of Hama, the center of Islamic action, in 1983. This outbreak calls into question the ability of Syrian repressive forces to sustain General Hafez Assad in government.

On the other hand, Syria, which had tried to become the guarantor of order in Lebanon after the last Israeli withdrawal, sees its authority permanently diminished, since all attempts to stabilize governments under its tutelage have failed, due to the continued confrontations between the fascist militias and those of the Muslim and Palestinian currents.
As for the struggle inside Lebanon, the imperialist media are trying to convince the world that the Shiite guerrilla Amal is on its way to crush the Palestinian guerrilla and its allies again. However, these information reveal an extraordinarily positive fact: after their defeat at the hands of the Israeli army and the fascist militias in 1982, the Palestinian guerrillas have managed to recover sufficiently to enter combat again. For the first time since 1982, the Palestinian camps in Beirut manage to resist the siege of their enemies without serious defeat, even if they suffer some partial setbacks. This recovery of the Palestinians and the progressive forces inside Lebanon is underlined by the growing action of the Palestinian guerrillas (Al Fatah) in the south of the country, from where they have again launched rockets at populations in the north of Israel.

In the Arabian Peninsula, the most important event has been the civil war in South Yemen at the beginning of the year. Everything indicates that the most progressive wing of the Yemeni Socialist Party has succeeded in that struggle, strongly confronted imperialism and the oil monarchies. This in turn has led into crisis the policy of the Soviet bureaucracy that was trying to use Yemen as a bridgehead to reach agreements with the pro-imperialist regimes of the peninsula.
Furthermore, the growing economic crisis in the oil-producing countries is an accelerator of workers' and popular mobilizations throughout the Middle East.

The revolution stagnates in the East

Iraq and Iran, stuck in the bloody swamp of the Gulf War, Afghanistan, crushed by the Soviet army and Pakistan, which still suffers from the dictatorship of General Ziaul Huk, make up an area where the revolution has not managed to get out of the stagnation. Israel's defeat in Lebanon did not succeed in putting the revolution back on its feet in these countries.
There is something similar to what the LIT-CI has defined in the region of Central America and the Caribbean. Nicaragua, El Salvador, remain stagnant by the imperialist military and political counteroffensive and also by the brakes put by the Sandinista and FMLN leaderships, and Castro-Stalinism. But the Caribbean has come out of lethargy with the Haitian revolution.

The Middle East is in the middle of the revolutionary offensive of the masses, but the peoples of the area made up of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan have not been able to get out of the stagnation caused by the imperialist counter-offensive.
A fundamental aspect of this is the setback that the revolution has suffered within Iran.

Khomeini helps the counterrevolution

The brochure "Revolution and Counterrevolution in Iran" provides strong elements to show how the Khomeinist reaction has put an end to the democratic freedoms conquered by the revolution and, more importantly, to the fighting organizations of the masses, such as the shoras or workers' councils.
As the comrades of the SWP-I clearly show in their brochure, Khomeini set out to end the organizations and the struggles of the workers that questioned the very power of the bourgeois state. The comrades are also correct in showing how the ayatollas' regime used the war with Iraq to control and push back the mass movement and its revolutionary vanguard. We fully share their view that Khomeini seeks to pursue the war against Iraq primarily in order to better dominate the workers and people of Iran.
With this policy, Khomeini also attempts against the other great conquest of the revolution: the independence of Iran from imperialist domination. However, we have to clarify that unlike the SWP-I comrades, we don’t believe that Khomeini has already led Iran back to a situation of semi-colony of imperialism like the one it suffered under the Shah. Khomeini doesn’t respond to the orders of imperialism as the Shah did, nor does he have his army ready to intervene in the service of imperialist policy as it did before the revolution. Iran remains an independent country despite the bourgeois reaction led by Khomeini.

Build the new revolutionary leadership

To end this presentation we want to reiterate our support for the task that the SWP-I comrades have imposed on themselves. Faced with the inevitable betrayals of the Islamic leaderships and other signs that today lead the struggles of the masses from the Middle East, the only prospect of final triumph against imperialism, Israel and its partners, will be given by the emergence of a workers' and revolutionary leadership that guides the struggle towards socialism.
The project of regrouping the Iranian Socialist Revolutionaries, of relying on the experience of the workers' councils (shoras) that marked the great Iranian revolution, the consequent struggle against the bloody Khomeinist dictatorship, are a formidable basis for the construction of the revolutionary party in Iran and throughout the Middle East. We simply want to make the fraternal call to the comrades of the SWP-I to add a firm will to defend the independence of Iran from any imperialist attack and, also, from the permanent and growing surrender of the ultra-reactionary independent government headed by Khomeini.

GABRIEL MASSA

GLOSSARY

White Revolution: reforms carried out by the government of the Shah during the 1960s, aimed at modernizing the country and that did not go, except in the countryside beyond a superficial level although they reduced the weight of the traditional bourgeoisie of the bazaar, giving it to the new sectors linked to the state apparatus.

Molłahs (or Mullahs): Shiite clerics, linked to the commercial bourgeoisie of the bazaar.

Farsi (Persian): majority and dominant nationality in Iran.

Passdaran: Guards of the Revolution (shock group of the Khomeini faction)

Mossadegh: Nationalist politician, prime minister between 1951 and 1953, nationalized oil and was deposed  by a US-led coup.

Fedayeen and Mujahideen: leftist petty bourgeois secular groups, currently illegal and fighting against the Khomeini regime.

Bani Sadr: first president of the Islamic Republic, forced to resign by the Khomeini sector.

Behesti: one of the top leaders of the Khomeini fraction

Majlis: Parliament

Toudeh: Communist Party

CHRONOLOGY

1951: Dr. Muhammad Mossadegh, leader of the National Front, a movement whose central slogan was oil´s nationalization, is appointed prime minister against the background of a growing anti-imperialist mobilization of all working-class and popular sectors. Mossadegh cancels the oil concessions to the imperialist monopolies and then nationalizes the Anglo Iranian company. Faced with the workers and popular mobilization that threatens the monarchy, the Shah flees the country.

1953: CIA-organized coup that overthrows the Mossadegh government. The Shah returns and the monarchy is reinstated.

1960-1970: White Revolution, cosmetic reforms, modernization of the country, superficial agrarian reform, exponential growth of the army.

1971-1978: Increasing repression, tens of thousands of political prisoners and hundreds of executed.

1976-1977: There is a first movement of strikes and popular protests as a response to the economic crisis. The Shiite hierarchy and Bazargan will take the political leadership.

1978: Strikes and workers mobilizations are on the rise, the clergy declare war against the regime and provide the mosques as a meeting place and organization of the mass movement. The repression is increasing.

November 1978: Khomeini, from exile, calls on the masses to win the soldiers to his cause.

January 1979: The Council of the Islamic Revolution is constituted, made up of Bani Sadr, Bozargan, Yszdi, Gobdazeh, Khomeini and other religious dignitaries. The Shah flees and Shapur Bakhtiar is appointed prime minister with the agreement of imperialism.

February 1979: On the 1st, Khomeini arrives in the country and names Bazargan as "true prime minister." Treaties by the Council of the Revolution to reach an agreement with the army. On February 10, the masses rise up, the barracks are attacked and the agents of the Savak (secret police) are persecuted. After their initial opposition, the Khomeini leadership has to join the insurrection to try to control it. On February 18 the government calls for order and return to work.

1979-1980: Shoras (factory councils) multiply, strikes for workers' demands are daily. Shora coordinators are being formed throughout the country. As early as May 1979, the government adopts laws limiting union activity and the anti-working class legislation from the Shah's time continues to be used. The Kurdish national movement, which supports the revolution, asks the government for national autonomy, its demands are rejected and in August 1979 the military attacks against the Kurdish population begin. The same response to the Arab nationalist demands in Khuzestan. In November 1979, the US embassy was occupied, taking civilians and marines as hostages. Bazargan resigns. The Khomeini sector is strengthened in power.

1980: Attack of the Passdaran to the Mujahideen facilities. In April the US carried out a frustrated attack on Tabas seeking to free the hostages from the embassy. In response, Khomeini purges a sector of the army excessively linked to the Shah and consolidates the power of the Passdaran within it. In January the presidential elections give the overwhelming victory to Bani Sadr, but in the elections for the Majlis the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) of Khomeini triumphs against the supporters of Bani Sadr, the latter linked to the commercial bourgeoisie of the bazaar. The USSR intervenes in Afghanistan.

September 1980: Iraq attacks Iran. It’s the beginning of the Gulf War.

1981: In January the occupation of the North American embassy ends with an agreement by which Iran is obliged to pay immediately all its debts with the American banks. In June Bani Sadr was removed from command of the Armed Forces. He, in alliance with the mujahideen calls for popular resistance against the clerics, with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in the streets of Tehran on June 20. The government responds with mass arrests and the first executions of leftist militants begin the next day. Bani Sadres is forced to resign and begins a campaign of terror against the opposition. Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Tammuz, the Zionist government provides military supplies to Iran. In September the Iranian military counteroffensive begins.

1982: In June Israel invades Lebanon. In the course of the year, Iraqi troops have practically left Iranian territory. The masses of the city and the countryside, after a first time dedicating all their energies to the defense of the country against the invasion, are once again concerned about their own demands. Every time unemployment is higher and inflation continues to grow.

1983: The Toudeh is accused of espionage in favor of the USSR, it is outlawed and its main leaders arrested. The repression is accentuated on the already illegal Fedayeen and Mujahideen. The US authorizes the export to Iran of previously banned strategic electronic material. The return of a certain part of the expropriated assets to the Shah's supporters is announced, as well as the denationalization of several state-owned companies.

1984: New Iranian military offensive, Khomeini's refusal to Saddam Hussein's peace proposals. Second elections to the Majlis, a 40% decrease in the turnover compared to the previous ones. Evidence of fraud. Unemployment now reaches 4 million people, inflation is around 40% per year, controlled by strict rationing. Anti-worker legislation is hardened. The number of strikes increases as well as the protests of the peasants against their expulsion from the occupied lands.