Iran's people's upsurge takes new level

We received the following from the A World to Win News Service:

January 18, 2010. A World to Win News Service. On December 26 millions of Iranian people once again came into the streets all over the country in a continuation of their struggles against the tyrannical and reactionary Islamic regime. They ignored the advice of the "Green movement" (Islamic opposition) leaders, certain liberal intellectuals and the pro-imperialist media to keep quiet in the face of brutal violence. The protestors defended themselves when they were attacked by the reactionary forces and even targeted them. For example when police cars and vans ran over protestors, on at least three occasions that day people set fire to the vehicles and attacked the repressive forces.

That date marked Ashura, a Shia religious holiday commemorating the day when the third Imam, Mohammad's grandson, Hussein, was killed in a fight with another faction of Islamic believers. For centuries this day has become emblematic of Shia identity and is its most important day of mourning. After the Iranian revolution, the Islamic regime used Ashura every year to strengthen Shia Islamic ideology and tighten the grip of backward religious ideas over the masses. Now protestors have been taking advantage of religious holidays and other occasions to come into the streets.

During the Iranian revolution in 1978, people also came out on Ashura to protest against the Shah's regime. But that day was marked as a day of conciliation. Ayatollah Khomeini and other Islamic leaders asked the protestors to give flowers to army soldiers. These Islamic leaders asked the people to chant the slogan, "The army is our brother." Army commanders, for their part, ordered their soldiers to sit back and let the demonstrations go ahead. This was a clear indication that secret negotiations were going on behind the scenes between the Islamic leaders and the imperialist powers. It could be said that in 1978 Ashura was a turning point in the Islamic regime's soft creep to power.

However this year Ashura was very different. Many people were no longer in a mood to go along with one-sidedly non-violent protest. The people and the youth gave a taste of their fury to the brutal repressive forces and also showed their clear frustration with the Green movement and its leaders.

The preface to Ashura was the National Student Day demonstration December 6. The radical protests of the students shook the whole system.

The rulers and the Green leaders had assumed that because it is an Islamic holiday Ashura would not go out of their control. But all their predictions and expectations turned out to be wrong. The regime's severe threats and extreme brutality used to dissuade protestors proved counterproductive. The protestors came out anyway. The ruling clique could see for themselves the seriousness of the people's opposition. And they have decided to get even tougher on the people, maybe because they see no other way out of this spiral.

However the Green leaders and other bourgeois forces were shocked by the people's violence. They panicked and hastily reacted. For the most part they fell short of condemning the regime's violence against the people—the killing of at least eight people and the injuring of many more in Tehran alone, and the thousands arrested, according to regime sources. Their main concern was that people were fighting back and targeting symbols of the regime, and chanting anti-system slogans. "Down with Khamenei" became one of the main slogans of the protestors.

A few days later various sections of the Green movement who had been horrified and alarmed by the people's struggle made statements, most seeking "a way out of the crisis" that would leave Islamic rule intact. Green leader Mir-Hussein Moussavi, in his statement no. 17, for the first time indirectly recognized the Ahmadinejad government. Then a few days later, five "Islamic intellectuals" known as "reformists" issued a statement once again proposing a way to resolve the "crisis." A few days after that, the other failed presidential candidate and one of the main Green leaders, Mehdi Karoubi repeated the same thing. Then "reformist" former president Mohammad Khatami, reacted to the day's protests by attacking those chanting anti-system slogans.

These reactions to the people's protest on Ashura show anxiety and fear of the people's real struggle and their frustration with people who had not followed the rules for opposition conduct that they had tried to lay down. They hastily rushed to rescue the system they had come from and are there to protect.

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine (aworldtowin.org), a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

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