Civil War in Iran?

According to reports, the children of Rafsanjani have been arrested. In addition, Moussavi, who is reported to have addressed crowds yesterday who came out in defiance of the orders from Ayatollah Kamenei to stay away or be shot, has now said that he is prepared to be martyred rather than give in. Well, we’ll see about that one; these people have been good at sending women and young kids as suicide bombers, but as with all such people rather reluctant to put themselves in the front line. Either way, and with the crowds on the streets now openly shouting “Death to the Supreme Leader”, this has now gone beyond simply a call for a new election. It is a challenge to the entire regime of political Islam. As one reporter put it, Moussavi is now being led by the masses not vice versa. If he retreats they will simply sweep him away along with all the others.

CNN’s “Larry King Show”, had a good one hour programme hosted by Christianne Amanpour. See: CNN . Reports were made from Channel 4’s Lyndsey Hilsum, and the New York Times’ Roger Cohen, both of whom have, along with many other journalists been forced to leave Iran. Both reporters said that the protests continue to draw more people into the streets despite the repression. Cohen reported seeing, yesterday, one policemen pleading with the crowds, because he did not want to attack them, and also reported, in addition to these individual cases, whole sections of the police wavering if not yet cracking. The main violence comes from the Bassiji, who are the ideological thugs of the regime, fulfilling the same kind of role as that played by the Nazis stormtroopers, or BNP thugs, in using violence to intimidate their opponents. However, the crowds are now so big, and so confident that they are beginning to take them on, and beat them up where they can pick them off.

In another worrying sign the regime has begun calling the protesters “terrorists”. At the same time there are reports of a “suicide bomber” blowing up the monument for Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as other reports today of petrol stations being blown up. That is alongside the attempts by the regime to divert attention on to Britain and the UK, to whip up nationalist feeling against the protesters, again a typical fascist response. If these reports of explosions are true they are almost certainly acts by the regime itself. When Hitler came to power, he had some of his thugs set fire to the Reichstag building in order that he could use it as a pretext to establish his Dictatorship, and to blame Communists for it. The Iranian regime is after all fascist even if clerical-fascist. In its case the clericalism serves the purpose of a populist covering for the real purpose of fascist parties, to smash the power of the working class, just as Nationalism and Racism does for other fascist parties like the Nazis, or the BNP. In fact, often these parties throw in a dollop of religious mysticism alongside their nationalism and xenophobia. Hitler was an occult nut, as well as a lunatic, and the Nazis had as one of their slogans KKK, standing for Church, Children and Kitchen, which is what they though the role of women should be, just as the BNP think that women’s place is in the home subservient to men. And even today some of these parties have members who are Christian fundamentalists, even being so wacky as to deny the Theory of Evolution!

As, Yasmine Mather says, in this week’s Weekly Worker,

“However, it is reassuring to see that the unique position Hands Off the People of Iran took - against imperialism, against the threat of war and for the overthrow of Iran’s Islamic regime - has been vindicated by the events of the last two weeks. Imagine what would have happened if during the last year we had witnessed a military strike by Israel against Iran’s nuclear industry, or various US plans for regime change from above had materialised. Political Islam in Iran and the region would have been the undisputed winner of such a scenario. We were right to argue that positive change can only happen from below and from inside Iran and we will continue to maintain this position.”

No Iranian, worker could under current conditions trust or be seen to be associated with anyone on the left, such as the AWL, who only a few months ago were arguing that surgical bombing of Iran by the US would be a “good thing”, and that a huge strike by Israel, possibly requiring even the use of nuclear tipped bunker busters, would be “understandable”, and that it would be difficult to see on what grounds it might be “condemned”!!!! To do so, would not only put them in severe danger from the regime, who would be able without difficulty to label them as agents of imperialism and/or Zionism, and just as much danger from other Iranian workers who would quite rightly see them in exactly the same light!!!!

Mather and HOPI are absolutely, correct, socialists oppose any outside intervention in this struggle by any Capitalist states. The task of defeating the Iranian fascists, and the Capitalist regime falls to the Iranian workers and oppressed masses along with whatever assistance we in the international Labour Movement can provide.