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Revolt in Iran: Whose Side Are You On? (Socialist Worker, US)
By Lee Sustar
Socialist Worker
August 12, 2009
A repressive government crushes independent unions, steals an election, shoots down unarmed protesters, tortures detainees and stages a show trial of opposition leaders. For the left, it should be a no-brainer: support for the pro-democracy movement against an increasingly despotic regime.
But not in the case of Iran.
Incredibly, sections of the U.S. left have teamed up with neoconservatives to pronounce that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the legitimate winner of the June 12 elections, despite the ludicrous claims of the Iranian government to have achieved an overwhelming majority in the first round of a hotly contested vote.
For the right, the agenda is clear enough. The neocons are out to rehabilitate their careers, and they need Ahmadinejad to shore up what remains of the "axis of evil" cited by George W. Bush as the pretext for an aggressive new phase of U.S. imperialism. As Daniel Pipes, the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab intellectual hit man for the right, wrote on his blog: "better to have a bellicose, apocalyptic, in-your-face Ahmadinejad who scares the world than a sweet-talking Mousavi who again lulls it to sleep, even as thousands of centrifuges whir away. And so, despite myself, I am rooting for Ahmadinejad."
But why are individuals and organizations on the U.S. left--such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Workers World Party--rooting for Ahmadinejad as well? How can a respected left-wing Web site, MRzine, debase itself by becoming a platform for apologists for a dictatorial, corrupt and murderous regime?
The arguments of the pro-Ahmadinejad left are based on essentially five claims: (1) the election returns are in fact legitimate; (2) Ahmadinejad is a populist with the support of the poor; (3) Ahmadinejad is a frontline leader in the struggle against U.S. imperialism; (4) Ahmadinejad is the representative of a progressive revolutionary; (5) the opposition led by Mir Hussein Mousavi is the cat's paw of U.S. imperialism.
None of these arguments holds water. Let's look at each in turn.
A stolen election
Claims that the Iranian election results are legitimate are based largely on two grounds: a poll taken two months before the election by two conservative pollsters that anticipated a 2-to-1 Ahmadinejad win, and second, the supposed lack of evidence of fraud. "I will pay $10,000 to the first person or organization that presents a coherent story for how the Iranian election was stolen," declared Robert Naiman, national coordinator of the liberal organization Just Foreign Policy, in a June 25 blog post.
Naiman should have paid up weeks ago. The British organization Chatham House found substantial evidence of irregularities--including a swing toward the right that simply beggars belief in view of previous elections, not to say the mass pro-Mousavi elections in Tehran and other cities before the election.
"The plausibility of Mr. Ahmadinejad's claimed victory is called into question by figures that show that in several provinces he would have had to attract the votes of all new voters, all the votes of his former centrist opponent and up to 44 percent of those who voted for reformist candidates in 2005," Chatham House said in a statement.
Critics say that because Chatham House receives funding from the British state, its findings must be suspect. But researchers were analyzing official Iranian government reports. Pro-Ahmadinejad leftists point to the fact that Iranian voters can cast ballots wherever they happen to be, so vote totals may exceed registered voters in a given area. But that hardly explains how two entire provinces--Yazd and Mazandaran--could have turnout of greater than 100 percent.
And if Naiman is looking for "coherent stories" of how the election was stolen, he could avail himself of the numerous reports of Mousavi election monitors who reported results that sharply diverge from the official totals.
Ahmadinejad the pseudo-populist
James Petras, a leading left-wing author, vigorously supported the government's official election return. In a June 18 post on his Web site, he wrote: "In general, Ahmadinejad did very well in the oil- and chemical-producing provinces. This may be a reflection of the oil workers' opposition to the 'reformist' program, which included proposals to 'privatize' public enterprises."
In fact, Ahmadinejad has accelerated the privatization process begun under the previous administration of reformer Mohammad Khatami. The Iran Privatization Organization, a government ministry, reported that 247 state enterprises have been partly or fully privatized since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005. Ahmadinejad has already privatized the postal service, sold stocks in two state-owned banks and sold 5 percent of shares in a state-owned steel company.
Many of these state assets are sold through a "justice shares" program that puts the stock in the hands of the poor. But as the Iranian-American analyst Kaveh Ehsani points out, the poor, who need cash, are compelled by their circumstances to sell the shares to businessmen at low prices. The model is the rigged privatization process in Russia and Eastern Europe, where Stalinist apparatchiks bought up stocks initially sold to workers in order to create vast, private corporate empires.
Ahmadinejad's leading attorney on the U.S. left, Phil Wilayto, a longtime contributor to Workers World newspaper, shuts his eyes and ears to all this. In his "Open Letter to the Antiwar Movement" about Iran, Wilayto writes: "Ahmadinejad has retained this class support through his promotion of services and subsidies to the poor--programs which depend on the continued state ownership and control of the oil and gas industries."
In fact, as Ahmadinejad's second inauguration day neared, state-controlled media announced that the privatization plan would accelerate with the sale of 40 percent of government stock in 14 state-owned companies, including: "the National Iranian Gas Company, National Petrochemical Company, Iran Air, Iranian Oil Terminals Company, Iranian Tobacco Company, National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company and 10 percent of its shares in a number of oil refineries."
To be sure, Ahmadinejad has spent some government money on the poor to build a political base on a clientelist basis, Latin American style. Conveniently ignored by Ahmadinejad's leftist champions is the fact that the Iranian president tried and failed to pass legislation last December to cut subsidies to the poor. Pre-election bonuses to state employees and handouts of potatoes to the poor are simply a cover for his pro-business, pro-privatization policies that are ignored by Ahmadinejad's leftist supporters.
Then there's the question of the regime's denial of the right of workers to form independent unions, about which the pro-Ahmadinejad left is silent. In researching their 2006 book, Iran on the Brink, Swedish journalists Andreas Malm and Shora Esmailian interviewed worker activists involved in the 2004-2005 strike wave in the country. Workers braved beatings, bullets and arrest to organize--and sometimes won. The struggle of Iranian bus drivers to form a union--their leader, Mansour Osanloo, is imprisoned--has been widely publicized.
But for the Ahmadinejad-loving leftists, such struggles are either slandered as CIA operations or passed over in silence. Perhaps that isn't surprising for the likes of Phil Wilayto. He's associated with the Workers World political tradition, which has supported tanks and Stalinist repression against worker and popular uprisings going back to Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and China in 1989. But with few Stalinist regimes left for that crowd to support, it seems that Ahmadinejad's Islamist authoritarian state will do just fine.
A collaborator with imperialism
Iran has been in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism since the revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of the Shah in 1979. It was at the behest of the U.S. that Iraq's Saddam Hussein launched the Iran-Iraq war, an eight-year slaughter that killed a million people on both sides. Sanctions have caused considerable economic damage--and such measures have only increased since the U.S. sought to prevent Iran's nuclear industry from enriching uranium.
There is also evidence of U.S. interventions in Iranian Kurdistan and tolerance for a Pakistani-based Sunni extremist group that has carried out bombings of civilians in Iran. Moreover, a cadre of neocons in the George W. Bush administration pushed for a military strike against Iran, either directly by U.S. armed forces or by Israel. And the U.S. and Iran did fight a kind of proxy war in 2006, when Israel invaded Lebanon in its failed attempt to crush the Iran-aligned Hezbollah organization.
All this may seem clear enough--the U.S. is out to achieve regime change in Iran, so therefore the regime must be anti-imperialist. But this logic is fallacious--and it doesn't describe reality. Iranian governments of all sorts have tried to achieve a kind of accommodation with the U.S., dating from the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s when the Iranian government used its influence to obtain the release of Western hostages in Lebanon. In exchange, the Iranians were able to purchase U.S. weapons via Israel to fight Iraq--and the money used to buy the hardware was sent to the right-wing Contra guerrillas fighting to overthrow the Nicaraguan Revolution.
Trita Parsi, author of a book on post-revolution Iran's dealings with the U.S. and Israel, wrote, "Throughout the 1980s, when Iran's strategic interest compelled it to cooperate with Israel in order to repel the invading Iraqi army, the [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini government sought to cover up its Israeli dealings by taking Iran's rhetorical excesses against Israel to even higher levels."
Moreover, Iran effectively supported the 1991 Gulf War. A decade later, Iran provided invaluable support in securing Western Afghanistan for the occupying forces following the U.S. invasion; the Taliban had been seen in Tehran as a major threat. And even after being denounced by Bush as part of the axis of evil alongside North Korea and Iraq, Iran again collaborated with a U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq in order to help achieve the removal of Saddam.
Ahmadinejad's supporters at home and abroad claim that it was Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessors who surrendered too much to the West, whereas Ahmadinejad pushes back. In fact, Iran continues to collaborate with the U.S. in both Afghanistan and Iraq. As an Iraqi official told journalist Patrick Cockburn last year, "There really is an Iranian-American condominium ruling Iraq these days." One can explain Iran's foreign policy as realism in the name of regime survival--but anti-imperialist, it's not.
A progressive society?
The Iranian Revolution did bring some social advances over the Shah's dictatorship. As noted by historian Ervand Abrahamian, a left-wing critic of the clerical regime, the ayatollahs have maintained power through a kind welfare state. This involved seizing and subsidizing factories abandoned by pro-Shah capitalists, reducing illiteracy from 53 percent to 15 percent, expanding education, increasing life expectancy, improving rural infrastructure, implementing land reform, expanding affordable housing and boosting consumption of the masses with subsidies.
But these gains for the mass of people came not because of the clerics' rule, but in spite of it. The Iranian Revolution saw one of the greatest working-class mobilizations of the 20th century, but it was hijacked by Ayatollah Khomeini and the middle-class merchants in the market, or bazaar. Khomeini's rule was established through a counterrevolution that involved taking over workers' councils and repressing the revolutionary left through jailing and executions.
Most women's rights were eliminated as the supposed norms of Islamist behavior became enforced by the state. And the regime was willing to extend social benefits during the 1980s--measures carried out by Mir Hussein Mousavi, then the prime minister. These policies were undertaken in large part due to the pressure of the war with Iraq, which required the new regime to mobilize broad support.
Some defenders of Ahmadinejad are willing to acknowledge the anti-working-class, capitalist character of the Iranian regime. Thus Mazda Majidi, writing on the Web site of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), states that, "The Islamic Republic, from the very beginning, was strongly opposed to forces representing the working class," and describes the repression against the left.
Majidi goes on to correctly restate the socialist position against defending any government from imperialist intervention, despite its capitalist character: "Imperialism is the enemy of working people everywhere, including within the imperialist countries. This forms the basis of the PSL's approach toward the Islamic Republic of Iran and other bourgeois national states and forces." (PSL is a splinter of the Workers World Party and shares its theoretical framework).
But even after admitting that Mousavi was an "acceptable" candidate for president for the Iranian ruling class, Majidi leaps to the conclusion that the mass protest of 3 million people could only benefit U.S. imperialism: "What would have happened had the street demonstrations overthrown the Islamic Republic regime? Would we now have a more independent, a more anti-imperialist, a left-leaning government with more benefits for the working class? There is a reason that 'left' forces supporting the opposition do not ask this question. There is not the slightest bit of evidence to think this 'revolutionary' movement would result in a leftward shift in the Iranian state and every reason to think the contrary.
"If the opposition had toppled the Islamic Republic, this would have been another example of a U.S.-sponsored color revolution--this time, green. It would likely have resulted in the overthrow of a nationalist regime in favor of a client state implementing neoliberal policies."
Let's get this straight. Any successful mass opposition to what Majidi admits is a reactionary regime would automatically lead to the victory U.S. imperialism. According to this logic, it's in the demonstrators' interests to passively submit to the basij militia's clubs and snipers' bullets rather than struggle risk a comeback for private capital.
The problem with this argument is that it is Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who are driving the neoliberal agenda. In fact, it was Mousavi's camp that was arguing for a different approach: using the state oil and gas revenues for investment to rebuild the economy in key sectors, following the example of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. In a document posted on his campaign Web site, Mousavi declared that to achieve these development aims, it will be necessary to "re-nationalize" Iran's oil.
Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, one of Mousavi's key spokespeople, made a similar point during the post-election protests before he was elected. "They [Ahmadinejad's government] are selling the gas to India at lower and worse prices than even the Turkmanchai Treaty," he said in a reference to the 1828 treaty that gave Russia control over much of old Persia. "...They [Ahmadinejad and his backers] are throwing everything to the wind. So of course they have to arrest us. If a government that is conceding everything that is ours to foreigners--if it can't show it can arrest a few students, and arrest a few activists--then how it call itself a government [in the front of foreigners]?"
Ramezanzadeh was one of the 100 opposition leaders put on trial this month. In a rather bizarre advertisement to international capital, the prosecution's indictment against the men said that the crackdown showed that Iran was open for business: "This election [became] a real democratic performance [and a source of] pride; and is a message to worldwide people that Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the most secure and stable countries in the world for investment and progress in economical projects."
That's what people like Wilayto, Maijdi and others are signing up to support--a regime that cynically uses populist gestures to cover up a grab for even more economic and political power. The real threat to U.S. imperialism in Iran comes not from Ahmadinejad, the right-wing clerics and security forces, but from a mobilized, politically conscious mass of people fighting for democratic rights.
The popular struggle in Iran is the most important to emerge since the onset of the world economic crisis. It has the potential to go beyond the split between sections of the ruling class headed by Ahmadinejad and Mousavi and to revive the left and working-class forces that made the revolution of 1979. Such developments would give a boost to the left internationally. It deserves our unstinting support.
The opportunistic nature of Trotskyism is made clear yet again with their support for the imperialist-backed, right-deviationist disturbances that hae occurred in Iran. They are more interested in slandering a struggling, besieged popular-revolutionary regime like that of Iran than combating imperialism and the machinations of the class enemy. One must ask why opportunist sections of the "Left" are collaborating with a reactionary liberal movement that the vast majority of Iranians clearly do not support. Such a position smacks of arrogance and shows an absence of faith in the creative powers of the popular masses.
This is an outright lie that insults the intelligence of any normal person. Iran has always strongly condemned the aggression and ongoing occupation of Iraq. Specifically, I'll refer to remarks made by Iran's representative to the UN at the Security Council debate in March 2003:
Oh my god, a UN speech! If we believed nations statements to the UN, then we would also have to believe the lies the US spews about bringing democracy to the Balkins or Hati
Besides, Obama could say the exact same thing about condemning the invasion: I was always against the war - it was contrary to "international law" and so on.
This is like the left-wing equivalent of being a "birther". While obviously the US would love to see Iran humiliated or weakened by internal conflicts, this is hardly some attempt at a coup. For one thing it looks nothing like the real coups the US has tried to carry out which tend to be backing other leaders at the top rather than fomenting dissent from below. Secondly, for the US to be pulling strings, they would have to know the outcome of the election and the fact that it would be disputed!
It is nothing but a conspiracy theory to say that the revolt was orchestrated by the US (maybe you're not saying it but I've heard it quite a bit)!
I think the trots, anarchists and other radical left who have supported the revolt have been clear that they are against US interference with Iran unequivocally, but they are in full support of people fighting for reforms within the country. It's called being a tribune of the people rather than being some kind of anachronistic mouthpiece for a defunct pro-USSR Cold War era model of viewing international politics.
I'm on the side of the working-class majority of Iranians, as long as they don't seek to suppress an innocent minority (e.g., women). If they seek to suppress a minority that is, by its very nature, guilty of profound injustices (e.g., capitalists), then I support that suppression.
As for political leadership, if they sincerely support Candidate X, then, as long as doing so doesn't contradict the previous statements, I support Candidate X, too.
Replace "Iranians" with any other national or ethnic group and the same holds true for me. I want what the working-class majority wants, as long as they want what is just.
Free your mind, and your ass will follow. --George Clinton
Free your ass, and your mind will follow. --Karl Marx
If the Iranian working-class went on strike for better pay or launched an uprising for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, then they would have to be supported by communist and workers' parties worldwide. But nothing remotely resembling a socialist revolution has shown the promise of developing in Iran. The right-wing deviationist disturbances are mainly an attempt by the discontented liberal bourgeoisie and bourgeoisified intellectuals to seize power and restore the privileges and corrupt way of life that have to some extent been combated by the Ahmadinejad government. This right-wing deviation has at the same time been exploited by counter-revolutionary monarchist forces in the West who seek to overthrow the Republic.
Comrade nobody here is supporting the Mousavi protesters, however mch you may not like it, the protests that stemmed frm the election results where not in the sway of Mousavi nor in fact any other faction of the Islamic Republic. We seen this in statements from Tehran hospital workers, the Bus Workers Syndicate etc. etc.
You're quite right to say the 'green' Reformist faction protests offered nothing to Iranians, but you're deluded if you think they were supported by the West. In fact so eager were the US and UK to stay out of Iranian affrairs suring that period they were silent! They could have has CIA operatives on the ground in Iran, but they didn't want to give Ahmadinejad ammunition to dismiss the democracy movement as influenced by foreign/imperialist regimes.
The streets of Tehran were echoing with chants of 'death to the Islamic Republic', 'Death to the dictator', of course it's convenient for apologists for the brutal theocracy of Iran like you to ignore this, but Mousavi's influence over the recent protests was minimal. The fact that Khomeini speedily banned the protests, yet they went ignored by the majority of those who had taken to the streets were testament to this fact. After all Mousavi is a pillar of the Islamic Republic, his obedience to the Supreme Ayatollah, like Ahmadinejads is unwavering.
*sigh*
All your silly Stalinoid rhetoric aside, let's get serious.
You're right, Ahmadinejad has made reforms that have hit the reformist faction of the regime, this we know to be true because of the spilt within the theocracy (because let's face it, it certainly isn't over any substantioal political difference) with leading reformist figure Rasfanjani being particually bitter. But the main way in which the Conservative faction of the dictatorship has alienated the Reformist faction has been to remain stationary of issues such as liberalisation of strict female dress codes and the lack of movement on enfranchaisement.
So comrade we agree that the reformist faction offers nothing to the workers of Iran, and that their protests did not have wide support. But you use that as justification for jumping into bed with the regime that has killed more leftists than any otherin the Middle East?! The regime that brutalises any democracy, feminist, secular, progressive movement in Iran? If you think by defending the Islamic Repuiblic of Iran you're doing something for workers within Iran you're deluded. I hate to be a leftie internationalist, but you can oppose both US imperialism and the anti-worker manifestation of reaction that is the Iranian ruling class and it's theocratic regime.
Why hate it, you're so good at it!
Just to add a little - many uprisings happen because of a split at the top of society: think the French Revolution where divisions between the aristocracy and the monarchy led to massive popular uprisings that got out of control.
I think this is what happened in Iran - of course the electoral options in Iran are limited because - well, they actually have to be approved by the regime in order to run! In this context, the disputed election was a crack in the status quo in which all kinds of frustration in the population rushed out. To believe that this was somehow orchestrated by the US you would have to believe that there is no social unrest in a country where there are not enough good jobs for a highly educated working class, there is a tradition of radicalism, and a living memory of a revolution.
"Stalinoid rhetoric" is probably the best come-back to this strange arument by some on the left against the uprising. I have to wonder that if there were Stalinists around during the time of the the French Revolution, would they dennounce the sans-culottes as tools of Prussian Imperialism? (ha, that line makes me laugh every time).
could be
Yes, all those who can see through the blatant western interventionism and propaganda support Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime.
There's no point in even debating such naive liberal bullshit.
The American Empire has been doing this exact thing for years and people still can't notice it when they see it, amazing.
Sorry to interrupt. Allahu ackbar!
Good to know that you couldn't even address the points raised in the article; it really shows your theoretical and ideological bankruptcy.
The Iranian working class is only one of the most militant and revolutionary in recent history. It would be, like, TOTALLY SECTARIAN BRAH to suggest that they move against Mullahs. No, we need to "patiently rebuild the left" (latest ISO buzz word) by tailing behind every left-bourgeois formation we can get our hands on.
Including the butcher of the Iran-Iraq War who ran on a policy of deep cuts in social services, closer ties to the west, and market reforms.
Seriously, if you accept the word of the opposition, the New York Times, and The Nation magazine on what happened with the election in Iran you fail at reality.
No one's supporting Mousavi. Did you actually read the article?
Originally Posted by SW
Just like the ISO doesn't come out and say "we tail the bourgeois left" they don't come out and say "we support Mousavi." Opportunists and fake revolutionaries often display a woeful lack of self-awareness. But the position of the ISO is operational support for Mousavi and his imperialist cheerleaders. The current situation in Iran and the ISO's position on it is inseparable from the history of Iran, the ISO, the latter's positions on the former, and broader social conditions.
You support the "rebellion" (or whatever it is you're calling it) in Iran because your organization has a long history of supporting anything that moves. The "rebellion" cannot be separated from support for Mousavi, as much as the ISO would like for it to be. I find it particularly illustrative that the ISO doesn't even blink about taking the same position as the New York Times and The Nation on the election (though disagreeing with the latter publicly might fuck up the annual feel-good, broad left event known as "Socialism" where all manner of political scoundrels are allowed to speak).
Nor is it irrelevant that the uprising in Iran is explicitly pro-West, pro-Mousavi, and even uses Imperial-era Iran iconography. I suspect that you and the other ISO members on the board will consider this trivial. But it is no more trivial than the ISO's support for Islamic reaction in 1979.
As usual, the ISO says whatever is going to make them seem "radical" to middle class liberals at any given moment. This is what the Cliffites have been in the business of for 60 years- providing left cover for imperialism. PROTIP: Being unconscious of the consequences of a political opinion does not make them disappear. SW's position on Iran is another example of the ISO's revival of two-stage revolution theory- build "the left" (which includes reactionary, bourgeois parties like the Green Party, btw), build a revolution at some point in the unnamed future.
So, if I may, I would like to turn this around and ask you why the amount of support Mousavi receives from the bourgeois press doesn't trouble you. Further, I would like to hear what role you think the US intelligence community is playing in the "Green Revolution" if any. Finally, I am curious how you separate Mousavi from the movement supporting him.
Unfortunately the ISO still denies this is true, even as they tail (what else do they do, after all?) the righteous uprising in Iran.
They're a great example of a broken clock being right twice a day.
Doesn't the ISO still politically support Hezbollah and Hamas, organs of the Islamic Republic of Iran's state apparatus in Lebanon and Palestine that are fighting for theocracy there and spearheading honor killings and inter-sect warfare? I'm surprised they haven't labelled themselves as "Islamophobic" for publishing this position -- as they threw this epithet at the RCP for opposing Islamic fundamentalist regimes and movements only a couple years back: http://revcom.us/a/091/iso-polemic-en.html (see this page for both the ISO's original article and the response in Revolution newspaper).
Here's a short quote from their article:
So, essentially in this article ISO posits that Islamic fundamentalists represent a resistance to imperialism and should be supported for representing an alternative for resistance, albeit with some "important criticisms" (ya think?)
If you guys want to see the RCP's position on supporting the uprising in Iran, check out Larry Everest's article and associated links:
http://www.revcom.us/a/177/Iran-en.html
and look for news coverage of the recent protest at Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN a couple days ago...
after this great uprising of the people in Iran, who could disagree with Avakian's analysis of the need for a communist pole or "third way" to be created that opposes both imperialism and religious fundamentalism?
