[Militant, No 443, 16 February 1979, p 1 and 2]
This week the Iranian working class completely smashed the attempt at counter-revolution by the pro-Shah Imperial Guard. This attempt provoked an insurrection of the working class of Tehran.
In one blow the remnants of the old regime were swept aside. At the same time it is clear that the Iranian working class is looking to totally transform society.
Last Friday, elements in the Imperial Guard attacked the air-force base where technicians and civilian workers had declared their support for Khomeini’s Islamic Revolutionary
Council. The airmen fought back, distributed arms to the people and soon the whole of SE Tehran, a working class district, was occupied.
The attempt to turn back the wheel of revolution, resulted instead, as in Portugal in 1974-5 in speeding it forward.
The much-lauded powerful Iranian army was fought to a standstill by the armed workers. Tanks were captured, the headquarters of SAVAK (secret police) seized and barricades criss-crossed the capital’s streets. Over the weekend the army began to split, so that on Sunday the Generals capitulated and ordered the armed forces back to barracks.
The government of Bakhtiar resigned and Khomeini immediately called on everyone to remain peaceful and not to attack buildings. He was ignored.
Armed with over 70,000 weapons including rifles, machine guns, anti-tank weapons and a number of tanks, the workers moved against all the symbols of the old order. The Shah’s winter palace and the headquarters of the Imperial Guard were captured. The Chief of the General Staff was shot by his fellow officers.
The threat of civil war, which the capitalists talked of, vanished. The mass of the population supported the revolution, isolating the pro-Shah elements to a small minority.
All the forces of the capitalist state were now powerless before the armed workers. Power lay in the streets.
The capitalists and the bazaar merchants who back Khomeini are scared that the revolution will go the whole way. Now we see the appeals for order, return to work and most important return the arms. The sheer speed of events in Iran has terrified Iranian and international capitalism. Bakhtiar’s government was meant to provide a breathing space after the departure of the Shah. It lasted precisely 38 days. Now western capitalism is hoping that Khomeini will put the break on the revolution.
But the workers have fought to put an end to a system which produced the Shah. They gave considerable but never total support to Khomeini in his uncompromising opposition to the ‚King of Kings‘. His Islamic Revolutionary Council government could lose that support if it tried to maintain the same system.
Bakhtiar consciously compared himself to the ill-fated Kerensky of the Russian revolution. That mantle could fall on Khomeini too in the coming period.
What is still lacking in Iran is a Marxist leadership with mass support. The danger of delay in the revolution isclear. The army has been defeated not dismantled. 24 families still control much of Iranian business and multinationals its economy.
Even now unless the Iranian revolution moves forward to take over the monopolies and establish workers‘ democracy it could give a reaction a long-term chance of recovery and revenge against the Iranian working class.
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