Iran: "What is Mousavi's message?"

February 1, 2010. A World to Win News Service. The radical struggle of the Iranian people on Ashura (the Shia holiday on December 26) indicated new developments in the people's movement and triggered panic reactions within different factions of the ruling class and other bourgeois sections. In the face of the regime's extreme brutality protestors defended themselves, fought back and gave the regime's murders and thugs a taste of the people's potential power. These struggles terrified both the ruling clique and that part of the regime the has been removed from power, the leaders of the so-called Green (Islamic opposition) movement. The government announced that 500 were arrested that day; human rights and lawyer's organisation say that 1,000-2,000 people are still in prison. The location of most of them is unknown and they have not been able to contact their families. They are under severe pressure to confess to false accusations. (BBC Radio Persian Service, January 24)

Mir-Hussain Mousavi and other Green leaders backed down from their earlier positions. They have been issuing statement advocating a compromise "way out of the crisis." In many cases they have gone so far as to condemn the people's struggle. At the same time they are asking the ruling clique to abandon its monopoly on power and co-operate and ally with them once again to save the Islamic Republic and its principles before the people's struggle crushes them all. Mousavi's statement number 17 and the speech by Mohammad Khatami (president 1997-2005) the day after are the best known examples of this. Khatami condemned as "extremists" those who chanted slogans against the Islamic Republic and Velayat-e Faqi (the Islamic Republic's founding principle of clerical rule, or in other words the person and position of the Supreme Guide, currently Ali Khamenei). Medhi Karoubi, the other main Green leader, issued a statement recognising the legitimacy of the Ahmadinejad government on January 25. He said that while the June elections was "marked by massive fraud," "Ahmadinejad is the head of government, or in other words, the president of Iran, because the Guide has validated the election." While offering his hand to the regime in this fashion, Karoubi's statement narrowed the focus of his criticism to Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the regime's Guardian Council, who has prominent in calling for punishment of the Green Movement leaders. On 27 January the Islamic Republic hung two prisoners arrested in conjunction with the recent protests. Leading prayers the next day, Jannati said, "For the glory of god, more opposition members should be executed!" Sixteen more demonstrators have now gone on trial, and five face death sentences.

There are some signs of behind-the-scenes negotiations between the two reactionary factions, to suppress the people and prevent further radicalization. For example, the regime might sacrifice the murderer Judge Saeed Martazavi, responsible for many atrocities in the notorious Kahrizak prison. Ahmad Khatami (no relation to the ex-president), the imam who leads the Friday prayers, gave a sermon where contrary to his previous tough speeches against the rival faction, he abandoned his usual threats and instead adopted a softer approach and even called the Greens "brothers."

While the ruling power is heightening their atrocities against the people, and the Greens are backing down, the people are preparing themselves for another round of battle on February 11, the anniversary of Iranian revolution.

Following is a statement dated January 5, 2010, by the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) analyzing Mousavi's statement no. 17 and its context.

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Amidst the threats of more bloodshed Iran's criminal rulers are making against the people and on the eve of their medieval trials, more arrests and more quick executions of the people, Mr. Mousavi has issued a statement that has drawn much attention. The central point is his concern that the Islamic Republic may fall apart, and his complaint that his warnings have been drowned out by the criminal threats of the ruling clique. In this statement Mousavi has retreated from his previous position of refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the Ahmadinejad government. This retreat is not because of the threats that the rulers are making against the people but because of Mousavi's fear that what may lie ahead is not just a change of government but the collapse and complete disappearance of the whole Islamic system.

This statement was issued exceptionally quickly, shortly after the militant struggles on Ashura, and it is related to the attitudes people displayed and the slogans they chanted on that day.

Despite the ebbs and flows, over the last few months the people's movement has developed and gone beyond the red lines set by Mousavi and his trend. The Mousavi leadership has been seriously questioned and doubted by an increasing number of people—not all, but a large section of the people. On Quds [Palestine Day, September 28], the people's struggle was still mainly within the framework imposed by the "Green" leadership, but the 13 Aban [November 4] demonstration saw the first raising of radical slogans and people resorting to more offensive tactics. At that time Mousavi warned against these slogans, calling them "deviations" and expressed his concern about them. While "Death to the leader!" and other slogans against Velayat-e Faqi targeting the whole system were repeatedly chanted on November 4, in the December 6 Student Day protests these slogans were more broadly chanted and they were widely popularised during the Ashura struggles.

In his statement Mousavi admits that he did not call for a demonstration on Ashura but the people poured into the streets anyway. What he means is that at this point leadership over the movement is slipping out of his hands. Both Mousavi and the rival faction within the regime are aware of the potential danger of this situation. Even if there is no declared or undeclared agreement between the two rival factions, they both know that as long as the control of the people's movement is in the hands of people from the inner circle, there is always a way to save the regime and prevent its falling apart.

Mousavi's statement is an expression of an emergency situation and concern about the direction that the people's movement is heading and its consequences. Some important aspects of this upsurge imply that more serious and radical battles are on the way, battles that can set fire to the palaces of the reactionaries and bring to the forefront the new approaches that could put an end to the whole system once and for all.

Mousavi tries to paint a false picture of what the people's movement was like on Ashura, covering up the radial struggle of the people, he is well aware of the potential hidden within the different layers of this upsurge. He refers to "mourners for Imam Hussein" [as emblematic figure of Shiaism whose death this date commemorates] who (according to him) peacefully chanted Hussein's praises that day. But he knows full well that for the first time in Iranian history, in 2009, Ashura was not observed as a religious day of mourning but as a great festival of the people. He knows full well that the groups of mourners were the smaller section of the people, while the greater section of the people turned away from tradition and religious customs and converted Ashura into a day of struggle against the religious reactionaries.

If Mousavi, as he claims, has seen shocking pictures of that day, there is no doubt that what shocked him were the bare-headed women courageously taking part in discussions among the crowd. The sight of so many unveiled women was unprecedented, even at the start of the people's movement. This conduct is still rare but it could mark the start of a new mood that could spread quickly.

Mousavi says that he has "seen photos and videos showing people who see the security forces and Basiji as their brothers and … are trying not to harm them." Such pictures do exist. But certainly he must also have seen other videos that motivated him to write his latest statement. This was the first time that film sent throughout the world showed people teaching the Basiji thugs and other repressive forces a lesson. Some videos showed stone-throwing youths on the offensive and the repressive forces in retreat. They showed people seizing small security forces outposts and so on. Spontaneously putting their lives on the line in struggle, people were expressing the futility of superstitious belief in a "peaceful approach" and declared on the battlefield they will reply to reactionary and unjust violence with their own just fury.

Even though this attitude is small and in an embryonic stage, it could be the start of something big whose most important feature is going on the offensive. In the eyes of Mousavi & Co. it was not supposed to be this way—the criminal Basiji were supposed to be considered the people's brothers. But the people's vigilance and revolutionary fury brought their plan to nought.

In the wake of the December 26 events, Mousavi's main message to the whole of the Islamic Republic's rulers is this: "It's not too late yet." Neither the regime's current inner circle nor the system's "Green" supporters now on the outs have explained what it is not too late for, but Mousavi himself expressed it implicitly in his statement: It is not yet too late to stuff the genie back into the bottle; it is not too late to come to a behind-the-scenes agreement on this or that election parameter to drive the people off the political stage and make them inactive, and start to patch up the system that is falling apart. It is not late to spread the line of national conciliation and reverse the "people's changed verdict on (our) system" and regain the trust in the system they have lost.

The importance of Mousavi's recent statement is that it is a warning of the possible collapse of the whole system in the face of the broadening militant struggles of the people, spreading of the kind of "disrespect" for religion that people manifested on Ashura when they went so far as to rip apart portraits of the Islamic Republic's founder Iman Khomeini and so on. Like all the other reactionaries, Mousavi needs the support of the people, but of people who don't go beyond mourning for Imam Hussein in the streets and who in the face of oppression remain abject, humiliated and silent. Those who violate these red lines and get out of control are no longer of any use to people like Mousavi. Their goal is to channel the struggles into the confines of contradictions and differences within the ruling power once again—before it's too late. These differences include how to make the repressive organs more effective, and how to interpret the rotten and backward constitution in order to engage the people in the game of "pluralism and people's opinion" again. What they really mean is the pluralism and opinion of the people at the top of power hierarchy. In this way they seek to re-impose anti-women and enslaving Islam with a newly made-up face, that of a generous and merciful Islam.

The line of Mr. Mousavi's statement accords with the goals he put forward during his presidential campaign: The salvation of the Islamic Republic system and painting over of some of the shameful aspects of the 30 years of its shameful rule. Now that he is faced with the developing people's movement and losing its leadership, he has come forward to present his way out of the crisis and save the system before it's too late.

The fact is that the basic demands of the people are not that the regime "recognize the existence of the present crisis" as Mousavi claims, nor a return to the ballet boxes of June 12 [the date of the last so-called presidential election]. The level of the people's demands since then has continually risen and today they are asking for the demolition of Velayat-e Faqi with no preconditions. But this wave will not stop there. People should consciously consider the following: It is out of the question and impossible for things to go back to where they were before the June elections [as Mousavi demands]. There is no doubt that the demand for freedom and equality for all the people—independent of their gender, nationality, religion or no religion—is in the hearts of all those fighting heroically against the murderers of this reactionary system.

There is no doubt that spirit of freedom has boiled up in our veins for the last six months more than at any other time. So we will chant clear slogans against compulsory hijab [head covering], for freedom of expression and publication, for the realization of the rights of people's independent organisations, and for the right to strike of workers, teachers, nurses and other employers. There is no doubt that the sacrifices that the people are making in the struggle against oppression and suppression will be more clearly embodied in the slogan Overthrow the Islamic Republic system as a whole.

The train of the political developments in Iran is accelerating and whoever stands in its way will be thrown aside.

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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