[Militant No. 437, 5th January 1979, p. 1 and 16]
Time and time again in the last few weeks over a quarter of Tehran’s 4½ million population have taken to the streets demanding the Shah’s downfall.
Events in Iran have acquired a revolutionary momentum of their own.
Day after day, in defiance of martial law, the demonstrations continue in all Iran’s cities and towns.
The oil fields remain paralysed by strike action. Formerly one of the world’s biggest oil exporters, Iran is having to import oil to keep essential services going.
Business activity has been strangled by strikes in the banks, the post office, and other institutions.
The flight of Iran’s rich to get out of the country has been hampered by a solid strike of air traffic controllers and civil aviation staff.
The Air Force’s attempt to take over has been undermined by the sabotage of their computer information centre at Tabriz, despite tight security precautions. The computer’s programme has been fixed so that whatever inquiries are fed in, the reply is always: “Yankee go home!”
Few expect the Shah to last much longer. At one point he apparently announced his readiness to leave the country on the pretext of a “winter holiday”.
He and his family have made lavish provision for their likely exile, with millions deposited in Swiss banks and big estates ready and waiting in the United States and Britain.
But the hardliners in the army leadership and among the Shah’s entourage seem to have persuaded him to stay on for the time being.
The ruling class faces the same dilemma as Franco’s regime did in Spain.
They are desperate to hold on to the enormous wealth and unfettered power they acquired under the Shah’s dictatorship. They are terrified by fear of the revenge that will be exacted by the workers for their years of corruption and torture.
If they try and intensify the repression, however, they will only stimulate the mass movement against them.
They can see no clear way forward. That is why the ruling clique is now split and cannot avoid lurching from paper concessions to more repression.
In the United States the government is also split and left without a clear policy. Driven to the conclusion that the Shah’s days are numbered, they can see no viable alternative figures through whom US imperialism can continue to exert its influence in Iran.
In Britain, the government’s immediate concern seems to be the future of Iran’s order for British-made Chieftain tanks.
The whole labour movement must vigorously demand an immediate end to the Labour government’s shameful support for the Shah and the remnants of his regime. All supplies of arms to Iran must be stopped at once! Trade unionists should enforce blacking of all supplies to Iran’s reactionary generals.
Despite the Shah’s promises that those responsible for repression and torture will be brought to book, ruthless right-wing elements in the army and police have stepped up their campaign of terror against the opposition, especially singling out workers’ leaders for systematic beatings and assassinations.
Yet the army has been incapable of quelling the mass upheaval. In spite of martial law and military government since November, it has failed to restore “order” or press the workers back to work.
The army itself is being undermined by events. Reports abound of troops refusing orders or turning on their officers.
The bloody clashes in Mashad last week, for instance, in which at least 100 were killed and several thousand injured, were sparked off by a minor incident in which a soldier, trying to talk a tank crew into joining a demonstration, was cut down by gunfire from another tank.
Tanks then moved forward and crushed crowds of demonstrators, starting two days of bloody carnage.
If the right-wing generals continue to crush the movement, the army itself will crumble. In the civil war that would follow, the ruling class are by no means confident that they would come out on top.
Shah’s relief
The more intelligent ruling class representatives are therefore trying to find a way out through compromise with the old liberal politicians so long excluded from power by the Shah. In an attempt to grant partial concessions, and to dampen the revolutionary movement on the streets, the Shah and his advisors called on Shahpour Bakhtiar, one of the leaders of the liberal-nationalist “National Front”, to form a government.
On the streets, however, this was immediately answered with cries of “Down with Bakhtiar!” – “Bakhtiar – a valet without power!”
The new “prime minister” has been given no real authority over the army and the police. The Shah even withdrew his promise to leave the country, originally, it seems, a condition of Bakhtiar playing his part.
The workers obviously understand that Bakhtiar is intended as a new facade behind which the old regime, with or without the Shah in attendance, will continue.
Even other National Front leaders have little confidence in Bakhtiar’s foundling administration. They have refused to join a government under him, denouncing his compromise with the Shah.
Nor has the Ayatollah Khomeini backed Bakhtiar, although (perhaps alarmed at the consequences of strike action on such a scale), he has apparently appealed for a return to partial production in the oil fields, a call which has so far been ignored.
The strikes and demonstrations will go on, despite any paper concessions from Bakhtiar. If Bakhtiar promised democratic rights, it is because the enormous movement of the workers leaves him no choice.
The workers and peasants of Iran want more than the downfall of the Shah, which is now a virtually foregone conclusion. They want an end to the whole regime, an end to the grotesque wealth and privilege of the ruling class in a country where millions still live in extreme poverty.
Were there a workers’ party in Iran, capable of giving the magnificent revolutionary movement socialist aims and of giving clear guidance to the movement on the streets and in the factories, the Shah’s regime would already have been decisively finished.
The army would have been broken by a class appeal to the troops. The workers would not only have toppled the Shah, but taken the axe to the root, clearing out all their exploiters, and begun the tasks of a socialist transformation of society.
This is the only way forward for the Iranian workers and peasants. All the signs are that they are moving in this direction on their own initiative.
But without an organised mass leadership, many obstacles and the danger of reaction remains.
It is the duty of organised workers throughout the world to give every possible assistance to the Iranian people in their struggle against the reaction and for a socialist Iran.
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