War and revolution in Iran
Interview with HKS representative
The following interview was given to Gerry Foley in mid-October in London by Saber Nikbeen, a leader of the Hesbe Party), which is one of the three groups in Iran that adhere to the Fourth Inter-
There have been a number of articles in the press of the International presenting the views of the other two groups -the Revolutionary Workers Party (HKE) and the Workers Unity Party (HKV). But there has been less contact with the HKS in the last period because of repression. Therefore, their positions have not been so fully presented. To remedy this, we will publish a series of interview and articles by HKS leaders in the coming Question: What does the HKS think that the Iran-Iraq war has represented politically? What were the political motivations behind it and what has it represented for Answer: The war between the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein and the Iranian regime dominated by Khomeini and the forces around him has now entered its third year. Over the past two years, the character of the war and hence the attitude of the workers and oppressed masses it has undergone considerable changes have followed the evolution of the decisive political factors in Iran, that is, the stage of development of the Iranian revolution and process of rebuilding the bourgeois state after the old state apparatus was broken up by the mass upsurge and insurrection in 1978-
The most obvious change in the war is that while it was begun by an invasion of the Iraqi army, Saddam has now had to "international border" and it is Khomeini's soldiers that are being sent on massive the changes in the circumstances of the war are taken into account, one could easily fall prey to mistaken and simplistic ideas, into thinking that the present aims of the two regimes are simply a continuation of the earlier ones. It would be wrong, for example, to accept the claims of the Iranian regime that it is still waging the "same old defensive war," only now inside the Iraqi
The Iraqi population certainly cannot believe this, when the Iranian press and government raised the cry around the last offensive that the "Islamic fighters" were within a hundred kilometers of Baghdad (actually that is about how far the Iraqi capital is from the Iranian border at the nearest point), or when the Iranian government proclaims that its prime intention is to liberate the Shiite holy •cities of Nejaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq. In fact the headquarters of the Iranian invasion force is called "Nejaf Base.
There is no doubt now, if there ever was, that Saddam began this war with the tacit support of the reactionary Arab states and world imperialism, in order to weaken the Iranian revolution and to diminish the threats it was posing against the interests of reaction in the Middle revolutionary Marxists could not take a neutral position. The war was not simply a war between two reactionary bourgeois states. It offered the opportunity for reactionary forces to the Iranian revolution. And -this must be understood clearly, it was not just aimed at crushing the Iranian revolution from without but at changing the balance of forces within the country in favor of reaction, including the reaction ensconced in the Khomeini govern-
Wars represent vast social, political, and economic turmoil; they are not some sort of giant football game. There is usually a certain complicity between bourgeois regimes at war, that is, complicity against their respective working classes and oppressed population. It is very rare to bourgeois regimes to try to destroy the bourgeois social formation in another country; they usually have the idea of coming to terms with it at some
To assume that the Khomeini regime wanted to destroy the Saddam regime root and branch for example, one would have to assume that the Khomeini government actually wanted to spread a revolutionary upsurge through the region, when in fact its objective, as in the case of any bourgeois regime in a situation of such is to liquidate the upsurge in its own country, not to spread it. has tried to use the mass discontent in Iraq against Saddam to some extent, it has been very careful not to encourage a mass upsurge that could go out of
The opposite side of this coin is the determination of the Khomeini government to take advantage of the blows dealt to the Iranian revolution by the Iraqi situation in its own country. Within the the right also looked for ways to take advantage of the invasion to strengthen its position.
In short, the war has not been a twodimensional military conflict, but a threedimensional political-social-military struggle in which the essential stake is the future of the mass movement in Iran.
Therefore, what revolutionists in Iran and in the region had to do was to try to mobilize the oppressed masses in both countries to oppose the Baathist aggression. This campaign had to be focused around the central task of defending the Iranian revolution and putting an end to
: was the saddam regime simply actu
; a proxy for imperialism in launchir A: No, the relationship of neocolonial reregimes to imperialism is not so simple. The Baathist regime had its own social interests, its own objectives and strategy in maneuvering with imperialism, and the specific national interests bourgeoisie to advance.
Nowhere in the region was the impact of the Iranian revolution greater than in Iraq. It gave impetus to an upsurge of the so-called "Shiite" opposition to Saddam (which in reality is mainly the movement of the poor peasants, southern Iraq). It opened the way for the strengthening of the Kurdish movement struggling against national oppression. It encouraged a new wave of anti-imperialist feeling in a period in which the Iraqi bourgeoisie was preparing a shift toward a new increase in its integration into the world capitalist market.
The response of the Saddam regime to the Iranian revolution was a more marked shift to the right both internally and internationally, involving collaboration with ousted politicians and generals of the shah's regime, such as Bakhtiar and
The Iraqi regime began to advocate regime from the right and to systematically aid counterrevolutionary projects and schemes for coups in Iran. launched in September 1980 was simply the logical extension of this Baathist in mounting this attack, Saddam was able to take advantage of the
reactionary chauvinist policies of the
Khomeini leadership, such as the brutal repression of the Arab national minority in Iran, the "Greater Iran" nationalistic statements of the regime made under the cover of "pan-Islamic" rhetoric, and the refusal of the new government in Teheran to renounce the one-sided 1975 border treaty imposed on Iraq by the Shah.
Although the Arab states and organizations did not raise open protests against the repression of the Iranian Arabs, the impact of this went very deep. For example, Khomeini ordered the closing of the PLO office in Ahwaz, one of the main cities in the Arab area.
The Baathist regime also aimed at conwith imperialism.
the Iraqi regime through position in the Iraq. thing,
In general, it the thought the 16 was desirable.
against the lutionists.
We dence from, tion?
mass upsurge centers.
Moreover, the mass movement that led to the insurrection split very quickly after the shah fell. Within two months after the overthrow, the Khomeini forces had succeeded in destroying or isolating and intimidating the local and factory committees, and begun mounting violent attacks on the gains made by the masses.
The mass movement was not smashed.
There were subsequent upsurges, but the same political problems remained.
It is false and dangerous to maintai that at the time the Iraqis launched thei attack in September 1980, the revolution was the same thing that it was in Februa ry 1979, a year and a half before, that is a mass movement of the oppressed under the leadership of Khomeini.
The revolution, because of the Kho meinites' attacks on the masses and because of the rising expectations of the masses themselves had come to have two completely opposed meanings for the vast majority of the toilers and oppressed in Iran.
There was the actual revolution, which meant the struggle of the toilers and the oppressed for the extension and unification of the independent factory councils
(the shoras) and for workers control. And there was the "revolution" (that is, the "Islamic" one) which meant destroying the independent shoras by setting up Islamic shoras, which were not elected, not democratic, and antileft, and installing watchdog committees of the regime called Islamic Societies (Anjomanhaye Eslami), which were run politically by the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) and linked to the repressive apparatus outside the factory.
The real revolution involved the movement of the oppressed nationalities for self-determination, the struggles of the the insurrection. poor peasants to form rural shoras, and of the women, students, soldiers, and other layers for the rights. Khomeini's genocide against the national minorities, destruction of the peasant shoras, and the suppression of all democratic rights.
It was the first revolution that was threatened by the war. The second was already seen to mean counterrevolution by the vast majority of the revolutionary masses. It stood to gain from the Iraqi regime's aggression.
The situation at the time of the Iragi attack was that there had been a very extensive experience of mass mobilization and experience and at the same time of betrayal of this and attacks on it by the Khomeini forces. In this context, it was possible to call for a revival of independent factory and neighborhood committees independent of the regime in order to oppose the attack. It did not mean necessarily opposing the regime directly but it did mean appealing to the masses' understanding of the need to organize independently of it.
There were various tactical ways of applying this approach, but the fundamental problem was to avoid being pulled into building committees that were in
armed of "national "national tion. from layers. focusing on and that is, autumn 1979 had been campaign was in Kurdistan. state.
rifts Q: How big a victory were the Iraqis striking for, overthrowing the regime outright, establishing a protectorate over the oil producing areas where there is a historic Arab majority? A: There are documents indicating that there was an agreement between the rightists to set up a "provisional govern- offered the "a truce" in ment." It is possible that the rightists misled the Iraqis about the situation in Iran; Iraqi Army. They would have had to give a totally false picture of it for anyone to think that the regime could be overthrown in that way. To overthrow the government militarily from Iraq would be an enor- schools, mous undertaking, involving a long march across desert and mountains. There is no way the Iraqi government could have contemplated that. The U.S. warned th Iraqis against attempting to take the oil fields. And in point of fact, throughout
La seriou the war they never made attempt to seize them or put them out
By its nature, the Iraqie regime could not attempt to mobilize the Khuzistan the regime's Arabs; that would have represented as big a danger to it as to Khomeini. In fact, they waged a purely military campaign, and as a result the Arabs were driven from their homes and alienated. The Arabs were also the victims of spoliation and atrocities at the hands of the Iraqis.
On the other hand, there was a real danger that in conditions where demoralization was already spreading among the masses, the human and material sacrifices imposed by the war would further weaken the will of the masses to resist and thereby open the way for a more consolidation of the bourgeois Q: What were the political results of the A: The immediate results tended to confirm the Iraqis' perspective. The reactionary officers in jail were freed to reorganize the Iranian army. A committee was set up immediately to negotiate a settlethe conflict over the U.s. hostages (which ended in the Algiers agreement that signed away over half of nian foreian The details of this agreement have never been made public in Iran.). Approaches started being made internationally to get arms from anyone willing to sell and this eventually included Israel, from which at least two large sales are fairly well documented).
Strikes had previously been banned But now they were dealt with by armed intervention inside the factory. To help the war effort, workers were forced to "step up production," which meant working sometimes up to 15 hours a day, and to give part of their pay (on the average three days pay per month). The workers were also obliged to accept militarization of the factories by armed Islamic Societies (which now had a good cover for their reactionary role in the factories).
were the dematic ains of the soldiers
code of discipline was reestablished in the armed forces.
Under the pretext of the war, the camagainst the Kurdish people was stepped up. The regime claimed that "the Kurds are basically serving the war aims
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(mobilization) committees were set up in many neighborhoods to enroll the volunteers and canalize this sentiment. The committees were then put under the authority of the pasdars and used to provide cannon fodder for mass suicidal
The regime managed to keep the mass mobilizations from getting out of control by two means. First, the war zone was cleared of civilians. Military bases were set up in the middle of populous towns.
No efforts were defense shelters. And food shortages were allowed to continue, despite the massive support of the entire Iranian people for
In Ahwaz, the central storehouse of ammunition was placed in the centre of town. One night it exploded. The next day, at least a third of the population was in flight.
Ine depopulated towns were put under tight control of the pasdars and independent mobilizations were
In the first months of the war, at least twenty Mujahedeen supporters and 12 leftists, and many more Arabs were executed in the war zone as "armed saboteurs." In fact, they had been fighting the Iraqi army. Even independent medical aid was
The Mujahedeen and Fedayen medical tents in the area were attacked by the pasdars and the staff was put in jail. Moreover, these groups had played a key role in the defense of Khorramshahr.
The second reason the government succeeded in getting a firm grip on the situation is that the major groups and parties to the left played into its hands. The Tudeh Party and the Fedayeen (Majority) took a line indistinguishable from that of the regime, calling on the masses to work harder, demand less and to help the government to organize its
The Mujahedeen also, who had called for independent mobilizations beginning, entered into an alliance with Bani Sadr who was trying to use the war to strengthen his faction in the ruling apparatus (based on the army, the technocrats, and a section of the clergy) as an alternative to the IRP. This alliance required dropindependent Bani Sadr was against that.
made a mistake similar to those who thought it was necessary to support Khomeini in order to oppose the Iraqis.
Bani Sadr tried to base himself on the rising demands for democratic rights, the mass reaction against the demagogy and antidemocratic attitudes of the mullahs and the IRP.
It was to that sentiment that Bani Sadr owed his overwhelming victory in the presidential election. He appeared to represent the popular will, on the basis of an election that was less rigged than the parliamentary elections, in which the TRP was able to control the polls and thus assure that its people got in.
the presidential election was not that free either, since "nonIslamic" candidates were banned, but by comparison it smelt like a rose.
The Mujahedeen, who were influenced by Maoism and bourgeois populism at their origin, therefore decided that Bani Sadr represented the democratic bouralternative. In fact, he was just as deterto stamp out the basis of real democracy in the conditions of the revolutionary crisis in Iran, the independent mobilization of the masses.
Mujahedeen used the governpretext for withdrawing from involve throw all their weight behind Bani Sadr's solution (a palace coup).
Khomeini's regime gradually succeeded in consolidating its power through the IRP dominated parliament, the vastly strengthened and an IRP government. Linked to the so-called mass committees, which had become instruments of repression - the Imam's Committees, Reconstruction Crusade (Jihad and the Baseej Khomeini government started preparing
La showdown "liberal" faction, having already crushed Q: What effect did this have on the attitude of the masses to the war? A: From that point on, coming about six months after the outbreak of the war, larger and larger sections of the masses began to regard the government's war effort as simply a maneuver to consolidate the power of the IRP and crush the revolution. This did not mean that they want to see the Iraqi army defeated. It meant only they realized that the government was crushing the mass and thereby sabotaging the war effort and therefore not fighting the
In this phase, only the government was saying "the central issue facing us is the war with the infidel Saddam." The masses were already mobilizing in all the major cities around democratic demands and a program of social reforms.
In the absence of a powerful revolutionary organization, could very easily be strangled by Bani Sadr, who was trying to improve the position of his own faction within the ruling
The next three months were basically taken up by the regime's preparing for the overthrow of Bani Sadr and the containment of the mass movement against repression and for social justice. In this period, the demagogy about the "panIslamic" aims of the war was stepped up. Fantastically exaggerated reports of mass revolts against the Saddam regime were constantly trumpeted in the totally controlled press and media.
In many cities, the vastly increased forces of the state apparatus were being used openly to intensify repression. Mujahedeen members were being attacked and killed on the streets. There were more than a hundred known cases in northern Iran alone. Purges of militants in the factories were intensified. In Teheran alone, over 1,500 workers were either arrested or dismissed.
The campaign against the Kurdish people reached genocidal proportions, with bombardments of the villages and forced evacuation of the population from the strategically important regions (e.g. Saghez and Baneh areas).
Those political groups who had refused to fight for independent mobilization of the masses and which had helped to strengthen the instruments of the mullahs' repression by providing them with a left cover now found themselves forced into the position of actively aiding the
Fedayeen-Majority and Tudeh Party members were involved in the Islamic Socities, which were spying on the militant workers and reporting them to the early June 1981, the Khomeini faction was ready to move. Bani Sadr, seeing the handwriting on the wall, issued a call for a referendum so that the people could show who they supported, him or the IRP-dominated parliament. not, however, call for any mass mobilization to back this up. And he was quickly deposed as chief of the armed forces and
Demonstrations in support of Bani were mainly organized by the Mujahedeen, were brutally crushed. A rally in front of the parliament building in Teheran was machine gunned. On that occasion alone, over 170 people were killed. A quick deal was struck with the leaders of the army, who were considered Bani Sadr supporters. As it happened, they died in a suspicious airplane crash a
The Mujahedeen's response to this wave of terror was to adopt the tactic of "armed struggle." In practice, this meant assassinating leaders. They did not call for, or try to build, mobilizations and strikes, although they were by this time a mass organization capable of calling hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in their own name. The growing mass opposition to Khomeini was polarized mainly by
In fact, their "armed struggle" was the outcome of their class-collaborationist political line. They thought weakening the pro-Khomeini faction, the way would be opened for the "more progressive" liberal faction to come to power in collusion with the army, and that such alternative would then be supported by the masses. Their bourgeois friends in the government would not, of course, have approved of general strikes and mass mobilizations.
This tactic simply played into the hands of the regime. The masses were further demoralized and demobilized. The forces of repression were unleashed with savage ferocity. The day after the explosion at the IRP headquarters, at
The Iranian government, however, insisted on stepping up the war and talking in terms of setting up an Islamic Republic in Iraq and of a pan-Islamic revolution throughout the region. There were certain contradictions in the line, with some of the military commanders talking about going into Iraq only far enough to assure that Iranian cities could not be shelled from Iraqi positions. Such vacillations were ended by the Imam himself immediately after the Israeli invasion
Large numbers of people volunteered to go to Lebanon and defend the Palestinians. The government feared that this could upset its own reactionary designs. Khomeini declared that in fact the invasion of Lebanon was "an imperialist conspiracy to divert attention from the Iranian victories" in the war with Saddam. He declared that "the forces of Islam are prepared to go to Lebanon but only through Baghdad."
The regime's motivations are not difficult to understand. The end of the war would produce an explosive political situation in Iran. Furthermore, the rainy season will soon begin, making militions impossible on southern front. The cold weather in the mountains would have a similar effect in the government could maintain a phoney war for several
If the war ended, the war refugees would have to return to Khuzistan, and a new nationwide movement for social and economic reforms would begin. Secondly, it would be difficult for the government to justify maintaining the military instruments forged in this war the hugely inflated corps of pasdars, and all the Iranian youth, Thirdly, the Iranian government looked to a Shiite uprising in Iraq linked to the advance of the Iranian army as a good all its political and social
For these reasons, the Iranian regime has embarked on a dangerous course developed. The which can only bring greater material and human losses and therefore a deeper poliVictories tical crisis sooner or later for it itself, a course which has the effect of increasing the threat of imperialist intervention in the entire region, including in Iran itself.
This is because the war is dividing the oppressed• peoples of the region in the face of imperialism and because the Iranian advance is seen by the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people as a threat to a comparatively their national independence, to the gains of their national revolution, and to the the Arab people. It is reconsolidating the reactionary Baathist regime and providing a justification for the passivity of the Arab regimes in the of the imperialist attacks in
Moreover, in circumstances when the Khomeini regime is being regarded with disillusion by a growing majority of the Iranian masses, the military defeat that is likely if the war is pursued could precipithe war ends. tate a radical shift in the balance of forces in favor of imperialism and its most subservient local agents.
That is, defeat of the Iranian army followed by mass demoralization could provide favorable conditions for the old counterrevolutionary forces of capitalism in Iran. Khomeini's "Islamic" counterrevolution is thus only preparing the ground for a final crushing of the Iranian revolution that would involve the destruction of his own regime.
The extent of the repression, which no one can deny is massive, shows the real state of the mass movement and the real balance of forces in the country.
Effective democratic and trade-union rights are the result of a favorable relationship of forces for the proletariat and the masses. who mistake the demagogy of the regime for mass radicalization is that they leave politics out of the equation in calculating the balance of forces. In order to fight effectively, the masses have to have some leadership that really represents their examples of the collapse of very powerful mass movements when these decisive
For example, in Italy, some local Communist Party leaderships built up mass insurrectionary movements during the war, thinking that this was the real line of Stalin. When Moscow turned against them the movements they led, although these included hundreds of thousands of conscious revolutionary fighters.
I have described how the development of a mass political leadership was diverted and crushed. Those who now maintain, against overwhelming evidence, that the mass movement is continuing to go forward are obliged in fact to try to present Khomeini and the IRP as a kind of revolutionary leadership, albeit with contradictions. That has a certain logic, but it is political lunacy. Q: In this situation, what should revoluA: We must call for an immediate end to this war and put forward a program of social and econmic demands representing the interests and the deeply felt needs of the toiling and oppressed masses
We have to call on the masses to resist in every way possible this regime of hangmen and deceivers, to return to the traditions and the experience of the mass movement that overthrew the shah, which this government in no way represents. It is the gravedigger of that move* The core of the Kurdish nation in Iran belong to the Sunni sect of Islam. Those who are Shiites are border peoples that generally stand in a more fluid position relative to the Persian state and culture, or else assimilated middle-class layers in the centers of Persian administration - IV.
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----- photo credits and running heads -----
So,
The war in Lebanon