Thomas Foster answers six vital questions about what kind of society is Iran—and why Israel and the West want to destroy it
Israel attacked the consulate of Iran in Damascus, Syria, on 1 April
SOCIALIST WORKER
Friday 19 April 2024
What is the nature of the regime?
The current Iranian state emerged after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the hated Shah and his Western-backed regime.
It is a capitalist state with a ruling class dominated by a conservative Islamic clergy that follows the Shia version of Islam. Iran is a junior imperialist power but strives to become the major force in the region.
The clergy has its own version of religious law, which the state enforces strictly. The Iranian state embodies reactionary ideas and policies towards women’s rights and LGBT+ people.
The state controls a large part of the economy and dominates large-scale industries, media, communications, transport and many other sectors. And it owns the oil industry, which makes up around 40 percent of its total revenue.
Its ruling class has the same interests as all capitalist classes—growing its own economic and political power, while preserving its existing privileges.
This means it is locked into imperialist competition with other states in the region—including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
And this competition affects how Iran acts. It backs resistance groups that align with its Shia ideology, including the Houthis in Yemen—in part due to Iran’s antagonism with Sunni Saudi Arabia. It backs Hezbollah in Lebanon, in part due to its antagonism with Israel.
And it backs the Assad regime in Syria that is fighting the Saudi-backed Isis group and the remaining forces of the revolution of 2011.
Iran has tried to counter US power in the region by befriending both Russia and China. China is Iran’s largest trading partner and buys some 90 percent of Iran’s oil.
Is Iran a dictatorship?
Iran is an authoritarian regime where a religious clergy rules with few democratic constraints.
But it is far from the monolith that the Western media generally says it is. It has competing political factions that exist within the state.
Sometimes those factions reflect ruptures in the ruling class and create political crises, and openings for others that want a different type of society.
Movements demanding more freedom and democratic rights emerge often and have sometimes fused with workers’ unions, the women’s movement and groups demanding national and religious rights.
But the state has so far been able to repress all such upsurges.
The power of the clerics is enshrined in Iran’s supreme leader and the Guardian Council, a 12‑person group made up of religious experts and lawyers.
The supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has religious authority that flows into political power. He sets and implements policies, commands the Iranian army and can declare war.
As supreme leader, he hires and fires all military and police chiefs, the leader of the courts and the head of the state-owned media.
The supreme leader also has control over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the part of the military charged with defending Iran.
The Guardian Council approves and can disqualify candidates in local, parliamentary, presidential elections and has veto power over any law passed by parliament.
Half of its members are appointed by the supreme leader and he can dismiss any member of the council.
Throughout its existence, the Guardian Council has helped conservatives by disqualifying reformist candidates and vetoing reformist laws.
Beneath these bodies sits the president, who is elected and serves as head of government and selects ministers, and parliament, which has 290 elected members.
Parliament does debate and vote on laws. And there are competing factions—reformists, moderates and conservatives, and within each there are several groups.
Reformists demand that social restrictions are eased and want political reforms. They propose a more moderate version of Islam and closer relations with Western imperialism.
Conservatives want an even more strict version of Islam and want the state to remain hostile to the West.
But the trend since 1979 shows conservative factions growing in power. The reformists’ warmth towards the West, combined with the possibility of war, has seriously weakened them.
What are the recent protest movements in Iran?
Iran’s government has faced multiple waves of popular rebellion in recent years, most recently in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022-23, and protest waves in 2019 and 2017-2018.
The recent women’s movement began as a protest at the morality police after it murdered Masha Amini, a young woman it said had worn her hijab incorrectly.
Two million people participated in huge protests from September 2022 to spring 2023. Young people took to the streets and campuses, defying the state crackdown.
The protests developed into a movement demanding fundamental change—and the overthrow of the current Iranian state.
There was another protest wave in 2019 after the government tried to end fuel subsidies. Prices jumped up and this led to a revolt in dozens of cities, with demonstrations, sit-ins and strikes.
National protests against rising inflation erupted between December 2017 and January 2018.
These upsurges had workers’ economic demands as the driving force. Yet they flowed into political opposition to the supreme leader.
But all ended unsuccessfully with the state able to crush them. Part of the problem was that the protests, including those that involved some groups of workers, failed to become the majority.
On top of this, the protests had to contend with the “support” of Western states that tried to manipulate them for their own ends.
Why does Israel hate Iran?
Israel is desperate to smash Iran because both sides are competing for military, political and economic power across the region.
Israel wants to stop the West from “normalising” relations and doing deals that try to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead, it wants the West to join it in a war that would reduce its rival to rubble.
By contrast, Iran presents itself as a force that can stand up to the bullies—including Israel.
It wears its support for Palestinian liberation as a badge of honour, framing it as a fight for Islam against Zionism.
After the 1979 revolution, Iran cut off all relations with Israel. It said Israel was an illegitimate state in occupied Palestine. Iran stopped allowing Israeli citizens into Iran and banned all Iranians from travelling to Israel.
The Israeli embassy in Iranian capital, Tehran, was transformed into an embassy for Palestinians.
The focus of Israel’s fear is that Iran develops a nuclear weapons programme that can rival its own.
Currently Israel is the only regional power with nuclear weapons, providing it with a huge military advantage.
That competition means they are embroiled in a long “shadow war” of attacks on each other’s interests.
Israel has carried out sabotage and cyber-attacks against Iran’s nuclear power and military facilities, while Iran has carried out drone strikes on Israeli oil tankers and launched its own cyber-attacks.
Should Iran attack Israel?
Iran has every right to retaliate against Israeli attacks—including the bombing of its embassy in Syria, and later bombings of its territory.
Even David Cameron, the British foreign secretary, admitted that if a British embassy was struck by missiles, the British state “would take very strong action”.
But the current strike and counter-strike exchanges between Israel and Iran risk becoming a major regional war.
And that would be a catastrophe for hundreds of millions of people. Such a war is no route to Palestinian liberation.
To truly win Palestinian freedom we need to break from the logic of imperialism. The route for this is revolt against Zionism and dictatorship by ordinary people from below, across the whole of the Middle East.
It is workers and the poor who have the collective power to transform society. Mass workers’ revolt would make unworkable Israel’s role as a watchdog for US imperialism. And it would be a challenge to ruling classes across the entire region.
How did the current regime emerge?
In 1979, the Iranian people overthrew a brutal US-backed monarchy, inflicting a huge blow to US imperialism in the region.
The revolution comprised many forces, including workers’ unions, nationalists and the left, but was eventually diverted by Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic clergy.
He opposed workers’ power and more moderate elements of the Islamic movement, jailing and torturing opponents.
Prior to the revolution, Iran was ruled by the Shah, a monarch put in power in 1954 by a US and British-backed coup in 1953—which overthrew Iran’s popular government that was nationalising the oil industry.
The Shah pushed through a programme of capitalist development that alienated sections of the traditional religious establishment and millions of the poor. There was huge inequality and oppression of national minorities.
From the summer of 1977 onwards, there were significant protests and strikes against the Shah that grew in size and frequency.
In October 1978, workers went on a national general strike. Strike committees, called shoras, were set up to organise and coordinate activity—a sign that the movement had become revolutionary.
In December, huge protests of over six million people—in a country of then 37 million—demanded the end of the Shah. Workers took over cities and towns with shoras being set up across the country.
On 16 January 1979, the Shah fled into exile. Throughout this period, Ruhollah Khomeini, who was the most prominent religious leader and outspoken critic of the Shah, had cultivated a huge base of support. On 1 February, he declared himself head of state.
But the religious clergy wasn’t in complete control of the revolution as there was an intense struggle to decide the type of society to replace the Shah’s dictatorship.
Many among the capitalist class joined forces with the clerical establishment to work together against the left. Khomeni saw the shoras as a threat to the clergy’s power and moved to re-establish state control.
The religious clergy used repression to consolidate its power, organising gangs to attack the left and enforce “morality” against women who refused to wear the veil. Khomeini was established supreme leader of Iran and the result was the capitalist theocracy we see today.
The current Iranian state emerged after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the hated Shah and his Western-backed regime.
It is a capitalist state with a ruling class dominated by a conservative Islamic clergy that follows the Shia version of Islam. Iran is a junior imperialist power but strives to become the major force in the region.
The clergy has its own version of religious law, which the state enforces strictly. The Iranian state embodies reactionary ideas and policies towards women’s rights and LGBT+ people.
The state controls a large part of the economy and dominates large-scale industries, media, communications, transport and many other sectors. And it owns the oil industry, which makes up around 40 percent of its total revenue.
Its ruling class has the same interests as all capitalist classes—growing its own economic and political power, while preserving its existing privileges.
This means it is locked into imperialist competition with other states in the region—including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
And this competition affects how Iran acts. It backs resistance groups that align with its Shia ideology, including the Houthis in Yemen—in part due to Iran’s antagonism with Sunni Saudi Arabia. It backs Hezbollah in Lebanon, in part due to its antagonism with Israel.
And it backs the Assad regime in Syria that is fighting the Saudi-backed Isis group and the remaining forces of the revolution of 2011.
Iran has tried to counter US power in the region by befriending both Russia and China. China is Iran’s largest trading partner and buys some 90 percent of Iran’s oil.
Is Iran a dictatorship?
Iran is an authoritarian regime where a religious clergy rules with few democratic constraints.
But it is far from the monolith that the Western media generally says it is. It has competing political factions that exist within the state.
Sometimes those factions reflect ruptures in the ruling class and create political crises, and openings for others that want a different type of society.
Movements demanding more freedom and democratic rights emerge often and have sometimes fused with workers’ unions, the women’s movement and groups demanding national and religious rights.
But the state has so far been able to repress all such upsurges.
The power of the clerics is enshrined in Iran’s supreme leader and the Guardian Council, a 12‑person group made up of religious experts and lawyers.
The supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has religious authority that flows into political power. He sets and implements policies, commands the Iranian army and can declare war.
As supreme leader, he hires and fires all military and police chiefs, the leader of the courts and the head of the state-owned media.
The supreme leader also has control over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the part of the military charged with defending Iran.
The Guardian Council approves and can disqualify candidates in local, parliamentary, presidential elections and has veto power over any law passed by parliament.
Half of its members are appointed by the supreme leader and he can dismiss any member of the council.
Throughout its existence, the Guardian Council has helped conservatives by disqualifying reformist candidates and vetoing reformist laws.
Beneath these bodies sits the president, who is elected and serves as head of government and selects ministers, and parliament, which has 290 elected members.
Parliament does debate and vote on laws. And there are competing factions—reformists, moderates and conservatives, and within each there are several groups.
Reformists demand that social restrictions are eased and want political reforms. They propose a more moderate version of Islam and closer relations with Western imperialism.
Conservatives want an even more strict version of Islam and want the state to remain hostile to the West.
But the trend since 1979 shows conservative factions growing in power. The reformists’ warmth towards the West, combined with the possibility of war, has seriously weakened them.
What are the recent protest movements in Iran?
Iran’s government has faced multiple waves of popular rebellion in recent years, most recently in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022-23, and protest waves in 2019 and 2017-2018.
The recent women’s movement began as a protest at the morality police after it murdered Masha Amini, a young woman it said had worn her hijab incorrectly.
Two million people participated in huge protests from September 2022 to spring 2023. Young people took to the streets and campuses, defying the state crackdown.
The protests developed into a movement demanding fundamental change—and the overthrow of the current Iranian state.
There was another protest wave in 2019 after the government tried to end fuel subsidies. Prices jumped up and this led to a revolt in dozens of cities, with demonstrations, sit-ins and strikes.
National protests against rising inflation erupted between December 2017 and January 2018.
These upsurges had workers’ economic demands as the driving force. Yet they flowed into political opposition to the supreme leader.
But all ended unsuccessfully with the state able to crush them. Part of the problem was that the protests, including those that involved some groups of workers, failed to become the majority.
On top of this, the protests had to contend with the “support” of Western states that tried to manipulate them for their own ends.
Why does Israel hate Iran?
Israel is desperate to smash Iran because both sides are competing for military, political and economic power across the region.
Israel wants to stop the West from “normalising” relations and doing deals that try to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead, it wants the West to join it in a war that would reduce its rival to rubble.
By contrast, Iran presents itself as a force that can stand up to the bullies—including Israel.
It wears its support for Palestinian liberation as a badge of honour, framing it as a fight for Islam against Zionism.
After the 1979 revolution, Iran cut off all relations with Israel. It said Israel was an illegitimate state in occupied Palestine. Iran stopped allowing Israeli citizens into Iran and banned all Iranians from travelling to Israel.
The Israeli embassy in Iranian capital, Tehran, was transformed into an embassy for Palestinians.
The focus of Israel’s fear is that Iran develops a nuclear weapons programme that can rival its own.
Currently Israel is the only regional power with nuclear weapons, providing it with a huge military advantage.
That competition means they are embroiled in a long “shadow war” of attacks on each other’s interests.
Israel has carried out sabotage and cyber-attacks against Iran’s nuclear power and military facilities, while Iran has carried out drone strikes on Israeli oil tankers and launched its own cyber-attacks.
Should Iran attack Israel?
Iran has every right to retaliate against Israeli attacks—including the bombing of its embassy in Syria, and later bombings of its territory.
Even David Cameron, the British foreign secretary, admitted that if a British embassy was struck by missiles, the British state “would take very strong action”.
But the current strike and counter-strike exchanges between Israel and Iran risk becoming a major regional war.
And that would be a catastrophe for hundreds of millions of people. Such a war is no route to Palestinian liberation.
To truly win Palestinian freedom we need to break from the logic of imperialism. The route for this is revolt against Zionism and dictatorship by ordinary people from below, across the whole of the Middle East.
It is workers and the poor who have the collective power to transform society. Mass workers’ revolt would make unworkable Israel’s role as a watchdog for US imperialism. And it would be a challenge to ruling classes across the entire region.
How did the current regime emerge?
In 1979, the Iranian people overthrew a brutal US-backed monarchy, inflicting a huge blow to US imperialism in the region.
The revolution comprised many forces, including workers’ unions, nationalists and the left, but was eventually diverted by Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic clergy.
He opposed workers’ power and more moderate elements of the Islamic movement, jailing and torturing opponents.
Prior to the revolution, Iran was ruled by the Shah, a monarch put in power in 1954 by a US and British-backed coup in 1953—which overthrew Iran’s popular government that was nationalising the oil industry.
The Shah pushed through a programme of capitalist development that alienated sections of the traditional religious establishment and millions of the poor. There was huge inequality and oppression of national minorities.
From the summer of 1977 onwards, there were significant protests and strikes against the Shah that grew in size and frequency.
In October 1978, workers went on a national general strike. Strike committees, called shoras, were set up to organise and coordinate activity—a sign that the movement had become revolutionary.
In December, huge protests of over six million people—in a country of then 37 million—demanded the end of the Shah. Workers took over cities and towns with shoras being set up across the country.
On 16 January 1979, the Shah fled into exile. Throughout this period, Ruhollah Khomeini, who was the most prominent religious leader and outspoken critic of the Shah, had cultivated a huge base of support. On 1 February, he declared himself head of state.
But the religious clergy wasn’t in complete control of the revolution as there was an intense struggle to decide the type of society to replace the Shah’s dictatorship.
Many among the capitalist class joined forces with the clerical establishment to work together against the left. Khomeni saw the shoras as a threat to the clergy’s power and moved to re-establish state control.
The religious clergy used repression to consolidate its power, organising gangs to attack the left and enforce “morality” against women who refused to wear the veil. Khomeini was established supreme leader of Iran and the result was the capitalist theocracy we see today.
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