The mass upheaval in Teheran and the clashes of the popular mobilizations in support of the Presidential candidate Moussavi with the police and the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) continue following the Presidential elections, where Ahmadinejad was officially declared as the victor. Until this moment (17/6/09) 8 protestors were killed by the Pasdaran, including 3 young students in the Dormitory of the University, cradle of the anti-theocratic opposition.
There is no doubt that in the mobilization of thousands of youth and women, genuine demands for democratic freedoms against the ruling theocracy are expressed. But that does not mean that “The revolution has begun” as pompously Alan Woods, the ideological guru (after the death of Ted Grant) of the misnamed International Marxist Tendency has declared. Popular discontent against theocratic oppression is manipulated by a section of the bourgeoisie, including by a powerful wing of the theocratic regime itself, with the support of the imperialists.
The French NPA remains totally blind in front of this fact. In its Communiqué of June 16 declares its support to “all those who want to finish with the Islamic Republic”:
Le NPA dénonce la répression qui frappe les manifestants, exigent la libération de ceux qui ont été arrêtés et soutient toux ceux et toutes celles qui veulent en finir avec la République Islamique.
The repression launched by the theocratic regime has to be denounced and opposed. But that does not mean that we support ALL those without exception who want to finish with the Islamic Republic, because are included the liberal pro-imperialist forces and imperialism itself.
Behind Moussavi, the former prime minister of the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq war who disappeared politically for two decades to re-appear now, stands, not only ayatollah Hatami, the former “reformist” right wing President but also one of the pillars of the theocratic regime, Hodjatoleslam Hashemi Rafsanjani, who amassed enormous fortunes from his position in power and push, together with an elite of nouveaux riches towards a liberalization of the economy and an accommodation with the US and the West. The Islamic regime is internally split and the world capitalist crisis deepens its internal divisions which are now exploding.
It is not by accident that the current Czech Presidency of the imperialist European Union, Germany, Britain and above all Sarkozy of France and the Zionist leader Ehud Barak came strongly in support of Moussavi. The US President Obama, for the moment, remains more restrained, despite the pressures by the right wing of the Democratic Party, the Republican neoconservatives and the Zionist lobby. For the most aggressive sectors of imperialism, the post-electoral upheaval in Iran, following the recent electoral victory of the pro-imperialist coalition in Lebanon, is a great opportunity for a pro-Western “regime change” in Teheran.
The populist wing of the Islamic regime around Ahmadinejad not only is totally unable to defeat the imperialist threat but, defending with its own reactionary means the capitalist order, theocratic obscurantism and oppression, it opens the gates to a complete liquidation of the anti-imperialist resistances in Iran and the Middle East generated by the 1979 Iranian revolution. The Iranian masses have to mobilize independently of the two wings of the regime, liberal and populist-obscurantist, and fight for democratic freedoms, for social justice and social emancipation of the Mustazafin(Destitute), against imperialism and capitalism, under the banner of the Fourth International and of the permanent revolution.
June 17, 2009
Savas Michael-Matsas
