Narin Parvaz

The Islamic regime and the Left

Today it seems that many so-called democratic governments are determined to eliminate any freedom that threatens consumerism, and to maintain the class system and inequality that goes with it. Do we, those who claim to oppose the class system, know how to fight back? I don’t think so!

The idea that all anti-Imperialists or anti-Americans are revolutionaries is a dangerous one that has blinded Leftists all over the world to the crimes of Iran’s Islamic regime - to its sexual apartheid, its massacre of villages in Kurdistan in 1979, the massacre of prisoners in 1988, its assassinations of activists and writers and the crushing of student uprisings in the 90s. Because of their blindness, I’m not sure the world’s leftists can understand the latest uprising in Iran. They are still hypnotised by the slogan ‘Death to America’ with which Khomeini took power, a slogan quoted by leaders of the current Islamic regime and its followers.

Why can’t I believe that it was lack of information which led the Leftists to support Iran’s Islamic regime? Because in August 1979, less than six months after Khomeini’s regime took power, this picture of a row of men being shot in Kurdistan was published by newspapers all over the world:

The 1979 photo of an execution in Kurdish Iran, by Jahangir Razmi.

I wonder how the Leftists cannot see that the Iranian peoples’ lack of basic rights is no different now than it was in 1979, even though this recent uprising demonstrated that the Islamic regime can’t maintain the terror it created during the 1980s. For despite the regime warning journalists not to report what they saw in Iran, ordinary Iranians used Twitter or Facebook to broadcast the news. Their images were snapped up by newspapers and TV channels all over the world. Yet the right-wing international media managed to distort these pictures’ true meaning. The uprising was presented as the Iranian people’s attempt to bring democracy to Iran by voting for Mosavi. The polling system was rigged, the media argued, votes for Mosavi were stolen, and this alone was what had driven the people to protest.

But there is more to the story. Beginning with Mohammed Khatami’s rule as president from 1997 to 2005, capitalist governments have supported what is called Iran’s ‘Reformists’. They imply that it is a more democratic party. Yet none of Iran’s elections were democratic - not only because of the way they were run, but because no representatives of democracy were allowed to stand for presidential candidacy. In fact, the so-called ‘reformists’ were in power during the 1980s, when hundreds of striking workers were jailed and beaten to death, thousands of political prisoners were executed and hundreds of thousands of protesters were arrested. The 1988 massacre of prisoners was carried out when Khomeini was supreme leader, Khatami was Minister of Culture and Mosavi was Prime Minister.

Most of Iran’s population is young. With no freedom of speech in the country, they may not know about the criminal activities of Mosavi and his allies during the 80s, and therefore believe his promise to change things. But it is wrong for Western governments to suggest that the Iranian’s recent uprising was entirely because of Mosavi. Many protesters came out because at no other time in their lives had they been given the chance to speak freely, and finally they could express their objections to the Islamic regime’s rule. As usual, though, there were political groups who always back the regime - or at least part of it. It may seem unbelievable, but some of Mosavi’s supporters were imprisoned during the time he was Prime Minister!

What is the difference between the two factions of political Islam - religious fundamentalist and ‘reformist’ - that now confront each other? They are no more than two halves of the Islamic regime’s heart. Both are nationalist. Both want to save the capitalist system. Both have leeched their people until poverty is a thousand times worse than it was thirty years ago.

The most obvious difference is that AhmadiNejad’s party, with Ayatollah Khamenie as supreme leader, supports the Eastern block - Russia and China - and the party which includes Rafsanjani and Mosavi supports the Western block - America and Europe. The Reformists believe in oppressing people behind closed doors, whereas AhmadiNejad favours the 1980s method: killing people openly. During his reign, pictures of barefooted young people being hung from ropes in the streets were all over the newspapers. When Khatami, the first Reformist president, was in power, activists and writers were being assassinated in their own homes, each one asking: ‘Will I be next?’ A friend of mine who escaped told me that for a few months she didn’t buy a big bottle of cooking oil because, she said, ‘I thought I wouldn’t be alive to finish it.' The West was never allowed to know about such things because it would have ruined Iran’s image.

Iran’s latest riots and the reactions of both parties must have taught people some lessons: not to trust the regime to count their votes, not to go to polling stations anymore. While many people have ‘disappeared’, perhaps to be tortured or executed, the wall of silence has cracked.

During Iran’s ten days of rioting the working class did not support either party in the regime. The working class which in 1979 brought down the monarchy by going on strike, then betrayed their own interest by ending their strikes on Khomieni’s command, is now uneasy about following those who call for their support. When asked by Mosavi and other nationalist political groups to call a general strike, the workers did not listen. For thirty years they have not had the right to form unions, and have faced death and torture for attempting to establish any. Mansour Osanloo, acting as the president of the 17,000 workers of Tehran and Suburb Bus Company, and some of his colleagues are still in prison for trying to organise transport workers in 2005. It is clear that neither political Islamic party will allow freedom of speech or freedom of organisation.

Now that Iran has entered another phase, with capitalist governments trying to manipulate the country’s future, where do we on the Left stand? Certainly we must try to help those people under torture, but what can we do to ensure that Iranian women and men receive the same basic human rights that workers enjoy in western countries?

If you were born in Italy but work for an international corporation like TOTAL in Iran, then you should not be paid more than an Iranian working in the same corporation and doing the same work. If you have the right to speak freely and to organise a union, then so should he or she. Wages and rights must not be lower for an Iranian working for TOTAL in Asaloeh in southern Iran than for a European or Korean working there! Let’s put the system on trial that allows such injustice! If we can find a way to force the world’s governments and media to demand that the Iranian government gives Iranian workers freedom of speech and the freedom to strike, then this will be a first step towards getting basic human rights in the rest of the world.