3610. Women, Life, Liberty: A Protest Promising a Revolution to End All Oppression and Exploitation

By Kamran Nayeri, October 20, 2022

A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini during a demonstration in support
 of Mahsa Aminiin Tehran on September 22. Photo by Ozan KOS /AFP) 

The song Baraye (For) composed by the singer Shervin Hajipour has been described as "the anthem" of the "Women, Life, Liberty" protests in Iran. Hajipour wrote the lyrics using a collection of tweets by the protesters. Shortly after the release of Baraye, he was arrested. However, he has been released on bail.  As such, the lyrics offer a random sample of what motivates some of the protesters. To keep the authenticity of these, the following is my literal English translation of the lyric, which sacrifices it musical and poetic forms.

Baraye (For)

For the sake of dancing in the street

For the fear felt in the moment of kissing

For my sister, your sister, our sisters

For changing the rotten minds

For shame, for pennilessness

For the yearning for an ordinary life

For the sake of the children that mine the garbage and their dreams

For this government-run economy 

For this polluted air 

For Vali-Asr street and its dying trees

For Piruz, the cheetah cub and his imminent extinction

For the banned innocent dogs

For nonstop weeping

For imagining the repeat of this moment

For a laughing face

For the students, for the future

For this compulsory paradise 

For the imprisonment of educated intellects

For the Afghani children

For all these never repeated fors

For all the hollow slogans 

For the collapse of the chaffy houses 

For tranquillity

For the sun after the endless night

For tranquilizers and insomnia

For men, country, prosperity

For that girl who wished to be a boy

For women, life, liberty

For liberty

The protests

The death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman in the custody of the Islamic Republic morality police in Tehran on September 16, 2022, has ignited ongoing protests. With a population of 86.3 million and a median age of 32, street protests have been mainly organized and attended by young people, including many young women. Some college campuses and high school students have joined, especially women and girls. Women's protests have included the symbolic removal of the 42-year-old compulsory headscarves. Some women have burned their headscarves, and some, in a symbolic act, have cut pieces of their hair in public protests. There has been growing mass support for the protests, including a growing number of solidarity labor strikes including in the oil and gas, petrochemical, and steel industries. The Islamic Republic has been losing support even among the religious sectors of society, as was in full display in the  October 13 security forces attack on Shahed High School in Ardabil, Azerbaijan. The school is part of the network run by the Shaheed (Martyr) Foundation. These schools are dedicated to the students who are typically children of those who died or were critically wounded in the Iran -Iraq war. Video recordings of the students' protest show them wearing the full black chador typical of practicing Muslim women. Officials had tried to force the students to sing in a pro-government show, "Salam Farmandeh," a pledge of allegiance to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Instead, a group of students chanted, "Death to the Dictator!" Nineteen students were arrested, and ten were injured. One student was killed.

Energized by the protests in Iran, solidarity rallies and marches have been organized in many cities worldwide by expatriate Iranians. The protests in Iran have also won the solidarity of many non-Iranians worldwide, especially women. Very creative solidarity art and music developed in Iran and elsewhere have been posted and shared on social media.

The Islamic Republic does not seem to be able to stop the protests, and the young protesters promise not to return to passivity. It is a matter of time before broader layers of Iranians take to the streets. When millions mobilize in the streets, and a mass general strike happens, especially in critical industries like oil and gas, the days of the theocratic capitalist rule in Iran are numbered. The strategic question is: what will replace it? 

The current protests reject the Islamic Republic regime in its totality. Some commentators see the present demonstrations in continuity with earlier ones going back to the Green Movement in 2009. However, the Green Movement gave political support to two presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, of the reformist wing of the Islamic Republic. 

Other commentators have called these protests a revolution. That is an overstatement. It is true that a fast-growing section of the population is being mobilized to support these young fighters, including an unfolding wave of solidarity labor strikes. However, there has not been any mass street protests to challenge the regime and a  nationwide general strike, not to mention publicly organized grassroots movements of the crucial sectors of the population. Street protests in Tehran have been limited to after-business hours as daily life seems to go on.  

The 1979 revolution

While every revolution is unique, it is helpful to consider the 1979 revolution when Iran had a population of 36 million (for a political summary of the lessons of the 1979 revolution, see Nayeri and Nassab 2006). A convenient way to mark the beginning of the revolution is the February 1978 demonstration of a few hundred thousand in Tabriz, Azerbaijan. It was then followed with some regularity mass demonstrations in other cities. By the summer of 1978, these were supported by a general strike of workers, including government office employees.  Workplace strike committees were formed. On December 10 and 11, 1978, under martial law conditions, as many as 17 million Iranians took to the streets in many cities, including the most populous, as the oil workers staged a general strike. In neighborhoods, local committees were formed to distribute heating and cooking fuel that oil workers made sure to get to the public but denied to the government.

In combination, these divided the conscript ranks of the Shah’s army and demoralized its officers rendering martial law ineffective. The Shah was forced to flee the country on January 16 after setting up a caretaker cabinet with Shahpour Bakhtiar, a nationalist, as its prime minister. The February 1979 insurrection was the final blow to the American-installed and supported dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi regime as the youth and sections of the army resisted an attempted military coup by the high brass.  In three days, insurrections destroyed all repressive organs of the Shah’s regime across the country, beginning in Tehran on February 11.   

 

It is helpful to recall the fatal weaknesses of the 1979 revolution. The central slogan of "Death to the Shah" united Iranians of all political persuasions against the regime. However, there was little discussion among the revolutionary masses and even in the socialist and labor movement about what kind of society we wanted to build after the overthrow of the Shah’s regime. 

Although the 1979 revolution provided us with a surprisingly rich set of self-organization and self-mobilization of workers, oppressed nationalities, peasants, neighborhoods, and students, the idea of the bottom-up direct democracy as a form of government that would act on the immediate and long-term needs of the working people did not get much attention. 

Instead, the masses rallied around existing opposition forces. The charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini, with a history of opposition to the Shah's regime and the support of a network of clergy and mosques, became the acknowledged leader of the revolution. As the left was heavily influenced by the Stalinist ideology of the two-stage revolution, it did precious little to dispel the illusion in Khomeini and offer an alternative. Instead, the main Stalinist current, Tudeh Party, with the most experience and infrastructure, actually spread this illusion. Thus, most of the left identified Ayatollah Khomeini as the representative of the "national bourgeoisie," who they argued should lead the anti-imperialist bourgeois-democratic revolution. In the interest of "unity", even the non-Stalinist left ignored that Khomeini opposed the Shah from a reactionary position: his opposition to the extension of the right to vote to women and land reform.  His “anti-imperialism” was because of his pan-Shiism, not the international solidarity of the working people and anti-capitalism. Thus, the principle of self-organization and self-mobilization of the working people was undermined by the left as even the non-Stalinist currents still believed that the future of the revolution would depend on their vanguard party to lead the masses, ignoring the creative potential of self-organized and self-mobilized shoras movement (which undoubtedly had weaknesses). Even leftist currents that aimed to be independent of the Islamic Republic substituted themselves for the actual mass movement. Some turned to "armed struggle" against the regime despite mass illusion in Khomeini. Today, we must acknowledge these errors and make the lessons of 1979 a basis for our work to develop a politically independent and self-reliant mass movement of the youth and working people. 

There is also a key difference today compared to 1979.  In the past four decades, the world has become aware of existential ecological crises: catastrophic clime change, the Sixth Extinction, recurrent pandemics, and the nuclear holocaust. Regionally, there would be an unfolding crisis of freshwater scarcity as governments compete to make clouds rain in “their country” by seeding them, a questionable technology. Within 20 years, freshwater would be rationed in Iran. Dust storms, air pollution, and over-populated heated cities are now a norm in Iran. Much of the Middle East, including large sections of southern Iran, will become uninhabitable (Alaaldin, 2022). The future of the Iranian people depends on rapid response and effective responses to these ecological crises.  As we know from 50 years of no action by the capitalist world governments, especially in key polluting countries including Iran.

It is also imperative to critically review the history of the world revolution, beginning with the Russian revolution. (Nayeri, 2022)

Women, Life, Liberty

The slogan “Women, Life, Liberty” offers the political maturity of the current movement compared to the 1979 revolution. Not only it places the oppression of women in Iran front and center, but it also provides a framework to think about the kind of society we need to build after overcoming the current regime.  When Ayatollah Khomeini declared on March 7, 1979, less than a month after the overthrow of the Shah's regime and the day before International Women’s day on March 8, that women should wear hijab to enter government offices, it provoked thousands of women and many men to protest for three days. After a planned rally in front of Tehran University, a majority decided to march to Freedom Square. Some, mostly men, quickly created a defensive chain around the marchers as the newly organized Hezbollah goons attacked the marchers with sticks, chains, and knives.  Despite a heroic effort by the marchers to proceed to the end, the crowd was dispersed well before reaching Azadi Square. There were also protest rallies of a similar size, one at the prime minister's office. But the millions who overthrew the Shah’s regime did not join us in the street to protest the beginning of what came to be compulsory hijab in Iran.  What is worse, just three weeks later, on 30 and 31 March, 98.2% of eligible citizens, according to official results, voted for the Islamic Republic.  There was no mass protest against the undemocratic referendum, which posed an artificially polar choice: the Islamic Republic or monarchy.  Nobody knew what the Islamic Republic was supposed to look like, as its constitution was drafted by an Assembly of Experts in Islamic jurisprudence between August 3 and October 4 when it was approved. 

The central slogan of the current protest has its origin in the Kurdish women's movement in the Middle East in the 2000s as ژن، ژیان، ئازادی  (pronounced Jin, Jiyan, Azadî; Women, Life, Liberty). It was adopted in the Iranian Kurdistan in response to Mahsa Amini's death and was quickly adopted in its Farsi translation (زن زندگی ٱزادی, pronounced “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi”) nationwide.  It has been also translated into other languages and chanted worldwide. The theoretical framework is Abdullah Öcalan's concept of Jineology, a form of radical feminism, to achieve gender equality in a future independent democratic Kurdistan.  

Born in 1949, Öcalan is a founding member of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). He has been a political prisoner there since 1999. In prison, Öcalan shed his Stalinist ideology in prison after studying social theorists, including Murray Bookchin, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Hannah Arendt. By 2004, he advocated a "democratic con-federalism” for an independent Kurdistan based on a system of municipal assemblies fashioned after Bookchin's The Ecology of Freedom: the emergence and dissolution of hierarchy (1982). 

Critical of the Marxist mode of the production-centered theory of history, Bookchin proposed a more nuanced social analysis: 

"My use of the word hierarchy in the subtitle of this work is meant to be provocative. There is a strong theoretical need to contrast hierarchy with the more widespread use of the words class and State; careless use of these terms can produce a dangerous simplification of social reality. To use the words hierarchy, class, and State interchangeably, as many social theorists do, is insidious and obscurantist. This practice, in the name of a "classless" or "libertarian" society, could easily conceal the existence of hierarchical relationships and a hierarchical sensibility, both of which – even in the absence of economic exploitation or political coercion – would serve to perpetuate unfreedom." (Bookchin 1982, p. 3)

Jineology

Öcalan describes jineology as follows:

"The extent to which society can be thoroughly transformed is determined by the extent of the transformation attained by women. Similarly, the level of woman's freedom and equality determines the freedom and equality of all sections of society. . . . For a democratic nation, woman's freedom is of great importance too, as a liberated woman constitutes a liberated society. A liberated society, in turn, constitutes a democratic nation. Moreover, the need to reverse the role of man is of revolutionary importance." (cited in Düzgün, 2016)

During the Syrian civil war, The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, was established in 2012. Its supporters state that it is a secular polity organized with direct democracy relying on jineology, anarchism, and libertarian socialist ideology. Thus, the idea of the centrality of women's liberation in human emancipation has been welcome in the century-old Kurdish struggle for self-determination in the Middle East.  

The Russian socialist revolution

Historically, the Marxist class struggle view of politics has been compromised by class-collaborationist Social Democracy and Stalinism.  There are two exceptions, the Russian socialist revolution of 1917 and the Cuban revolution of 1959.  I will briefly discuss their contributions to the historical task of women's liberation. 

The February 1917 revolution that toppled the Tsarist autocracy and culminated in the October 1917 socialist revolution was initiated by women workers striking against the privations of World War I on International Working Women's Day. The provisional government that took power after February 1917 made Russia the first major country to give women the right to vote. The Bolshevik Party that helped lead the socialist revolution included prominent women leaders like Inessa Armand (1874-1920), Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952), Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939), and Aleksandra Artyukhina (1889–1969). Among the first decrees of the Bolshevik government were measures aimed at guaranteeing equality of the sexes and abolishing the centuries-old enslavement of women to their husbands and fathers. 

In October 1918, Soviet Russia liberalized divorce and abortion laws, decriminalized homosexuality, permitted cohabitation, and ushered in many reforms that made women more equal to men before the law (Goldman, 1993). In 1919, the Communist Party program included the following to advance women's rights, 

"The task of the party at the present moment is mainly to carry on ideological and educational work for the purpose of finally stamping out all traces of the former inequality and prejudices, especially among the backward strata of the proletariat and the peasantry. Not satisfied with the formal equality of women, the party strives to free women from the material burden of the obsolete domestic economy by replacing this with the house-communes, public dining halls, central laundries, nurseries, etc. (The Communist Party, 1919)

These and many other gains of the working people were lost as the revolution degenerated and the counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucratic caste came to power in the 1920s. 

The Russian revolution led by the Bolshevik Party was unique. Except for Cuba, all other revolutions whose leaders claimed to pursue socialism were led by Stalinist parties that did not support women's rights and even suppressed political, democratic, and personal freedoms.  

The Cuban revolution

The Cuban revolution of 1959 was led by the July 26 Movement, a revolutionary current seeking political independence for Cuba and supporting the Cuban working people based on Latin American revolutionary nationalist heritage (Castro Ruz, 1953).  Women played a significant role in it, at least 10% of the Rebel Army fighters were women, and some held leadership positions. (Klouzal, 2008, p. 97) Several women were involved in the assault on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953, which initiated the uprising against the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. It also helped found the July 26 Movement. These women included Haydée Santamaría(1923 – 1980), Vilma Espín (1930– 2007), Melba Hernández (1921 – 2014), and Celia Sánchez (1920-1980), who were leaders of the revolution. In a speech in Havana after the revolution's victory, Fidel Castro proclaimed: "When a people have men who fight and women who can fight, that people are invincible." (Murray, 1979)

Before the 1959 revolution, women's social role in Cuba was defied by the patriarchal notions of domesticity, and they had minimal access to educational or professional opportunities. The 1959 revolution provided women with free access to education and professional career opportunities. Universal education, health care, access to child care centers, and the right to safe abortion on demand have worked in combination for Cuban women to live fuller lives. 

Unlike the Bolsheviks, however, the July 26 Movement was not trained in socialist theory and history. The Cuban leadership has not encouraged self-organization and self-mobilization of the working people, including women. The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) was established in 1960 with Vilma Espín as its president and has been closely tied to the Communist Party established in 1965 and the government. Thus, the Cuban leadership has proved insensitive to some non-class forms of hierarchy and oppression. 

In the 1960s and 1970s, many homosexuals in Cuba were fired, imprisoned, or sent to "re-education camps" (Arguelles & Rich, 1984; Cuba-Solidarity.org.uk, no date). It took a fight by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Cubans and their supporters to correct this homophobic policy of the Cuban government rooted. In 2010, the eighty-four-year-old Fidel Castro took some responsibility for these policies (BBC News, 2010). Mariela Castro Espín (born 1962), the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana, the National Commission for Comprehensive Attention to Transsexual People, and an activist for LGBT rights in Cuba, played an important role in helping their mobilization and in public education. 

On September 25, 2022, in a referendum, Cubans overwhelmingly voted in favor of a family law legalizing same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption. The new law also promotes equal sharing of domestic rights and responsibilities between men and women. (Aljazeera, September 26, 2022)

The revolution to end all forms of oppression and exploitation

It is a common mistake among socialists that Marx's concept of socialism is to end the exploitation of the working class. Marx's lifetime commitment to the working class was because he viewed it as the universal class, the social agency to emancipate humanity as it liberates itself from the system of wage slavery. Marx's preoccupation has always been human emancipation, emancipation from alienation from nature, and social alienation. 

Historically and theoretically, alienation precedes exploitation because to exploit something or someone, it must be first alienated. In his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Engels explains how these three particular forms of alienation emerged in civilization. However, given the state of knowledge at the time, Engels did not and could not discuss the transition from hunter-gatherers to early farmers that replaced ecocentrism of the former with anthropocentrism of the latter as a manifestation of alienation from nature which laid the groundwork for the development of social differentiation and forms of social alienation, including private property, patriarchy, and the State. 

Bookchin’s broadening of the analytical attention from the Marxian focus on classes and modes of production to various forms of hierarchy brings into focus non-class forms of alienation, oppression, and exploitation.  

Nonetheless, both Marxian and anarchist theories remained anthropocentric in their design as they focused on pathological social relations. Invariably, they abstract from the natural world of which humanity is a part and, without it, cannot exist. Human emancipation, including women's liberation, cannot be attained unless alienation from nature is also overcome. Human emancipation, including women’s liberation, will require de-alienation from nature by a return to ecocentrism while shedding all traces of anthropocentrism (Nayeri, 2021; 2013). Instead of the Marxian and anarchist theories focusing on social relations, it is necessary to consider the matrix of ecological social relations historically and trans-historically. For 2.5 million years, our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers with an ecocentric worldview. They saw themselves as inseparable from the rest of nature and considered other species as kin and persons. With the rise of farming about 10,000 years ago, which required systematic domestication of plants and animals and domination and control over nature, a new worldview, anthropocentrism, emerged and systematically replaced ecocentrism.  Social alienation, as reflected in social stratification, followed when early farmers turned a sustained economic surplus. The “Women, Life, Liberty” protests require ridding society of anthropocentrism. Thus, women’s liberation, which is correctly seen as vital for a good society in Öcalan’s account itself, will require transcending the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization in the direction of Ecocentric Socialism. 

Ecocentric Socialism is based on animistic ecological materialism (for comparison with Marx’s and Engels’s historical materialism, see Nayeri, 2021, Table 1). It views the question of agency as the interrelationship of animate and inanimate beings in an ecosystem. Everything in nature, including human society, has agency only in its interconnection and interaction with all others. Everything has an intrinsic value. This view rejects all hierarchies in nature and in society. If liberty and the pursuit of happiness are humanity’s rights, they must also be extended to all others in nature. Thus, human emancipation, women’s liberation, and animal liberation are co-equal and are necessary for each other. No human society will ever be free unless all forms of systematic domination, control, and management of nature are eradicated.  

Ecocentric Socialism proposes, among others (Nayeri, 2021, Section 4), four planks: unconditional love for nature and Mother Earth, dismantling all power relations in society and in its relationship with the rest of nature, voluntary simplicity, and a culture of being and loving.  "Women, Life, Liberty," if understood as in Shervin Hajipour's lyrics based on a random set of protesters’ tweets, suggests an ongoing consideration among the youthful protesters of the same themes. They oppose a society with an authoritarian government saddled with corruption, national chauvinism, poverty, ongoing social repression and stress, homophobia, feral and outcast dogs and cats, and species extinction. They celebrate sisterhood, love, individual and sexual freedom, human rights, and solidarity with Afghan immigrants. In this spirit, the movement should also repudiate all forms of brutality, including against those who have brutalized the people of Iran for 43 years. We must live and act with the values we want to see in the society we want to build as we try to overcome the theocratic anthropocentric capitalist Islamic Republic. 

In their power of imagination, courage, self-sacrifice, and defiance, I rest my trust and hope for a revolution to end all oppression and exploitation.

References:

Alaaldin, Ranj. “Climate change may devastate the Middle East. Here’s how governments should tackle it.” March 14,2022. 

Aljazeera. "Cuba Overwhelmingly Approves Same-Sex Marriage in Referendum." September 26, 2022. 

Arguelles, Lourdes, and B. Ruby Rich. "Homosexuality, Homophobia, and Revolution: Notes toward an understanding of the Cuban Lesbian and Gay Male Experience, Part I." 1984. 

BBC. "Fidel Castro Takes Blame for Persecution of Cuban Gays." August 31, 2010. 

Bookchin, Murray. The Ecology of Freedom: the emergence and dissolution of hierarchy. 1982.

Castro Ruz, Fidel. History Will Absolve Me. 1953. 

Cuba-Solidarity.org.uk. "Gay and Lesbian Rights in Cuba." No date. 

Düzgün, Mera L. "Jineology: The Kurdish Women's Movement." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. July 2016. 

Engels, Frederick. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. 1884. 

Goldman, Wendy Z. Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936. Cambridge University Press. 1993.

Klouzal, Linda. Women and Rebel Communities in the Cuban Insurgent Movement, 1952–1959. 2008. p. 97.

Murray, Nicola. "Socialism and Feminism: Women and the Cuban Revolution, Part I". Feminist Review (2): 57–73. 1979. 

Ocalan, Abdullah. "Democratic Modernity: Era of Woman's Revolution." In Liberating Life: Woman's Revolution. Neuss: International Initiative Edition with Mesopotamian Publishers. 2013.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Political Program, 1919. 

Murray, Nicola. "Socialism and Feminism: Women and the Cuban Revolution, Part I". Feminist Review (2): 57–73. 1979.

Klouzal, Linda. Women and Rebel Communities in the Cuban Insurgent Movement, 1952–1959. 2008. p. 97. 

Nayeri, Kamran, and Alireza Nassab. “The Rise and Fall of the 1979 Iranian Revolution: Its Lessons for Today.” 2006.

————————-. "Economics, Socialism, and Ecology: A Critical Outline, Part 2," 2013

-------------------."The Case for Ecocentric Socialism." 2021. 

————————-. “Socialism in the 21st Century: Why It Is Needed and Some of Its Salient Features." 2022. 

Peña, Susana. ""Obvious Gays" and the State Gaze: Cuban Gay Visibility and U.S. Immigration Policy during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift." Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 16, Number 3, July 2007, pp. 482–514.

2792. Tehran Bus Workers & Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Workers Defend Iran's Protestors

By Tehran Bus Workers Union and Haft-Tapeh Sugar Cane Workers Union, January 5, 2018

The Haft Tapeh sugarcane workers, who have a long history of struggle, have called for strikes and protests on Sunday 7 January, with the slogan “Bread, jobs, freedom."

Bus workers’ syndicate of Tehran and sugarcane workers’ syndicate of Haft Tapeh have issued a joint statement on the recent protest movement in Iran, stating that protesting masses have poured into streets because they are fed up with poverty, injustice and repression.

The text of this joint statement, which was published on the bus workers’ syndicate’s website and both unions’ Telegram page, on January 5, 2018, is as follows:

Do not act violently against the discontented people

Today’s protests by workers and the deprived people is the result of injustice!

For years they were told that our wages cannot even minimally support our lives, but our voices were not heard. Even the meager minimum wages, which are five times below the poverty line, are not paid for months. Workers’ job security was destroyed through extensive privatization, sub-contracting, temporary job contracts and blank work contracts, which have been practiced continuously by all administrations. Financial resources which were supposed to be utilized for job creation instead became tools for hoarding money for a few particular groups, and their misguided policies only increased the level of unemployment. The accelerated spread of poverty, cardboard sleeping, and child labor and garbage scavenging to get fed became prevalent.  The health insurance is inadequate for solving peoples’ and workers’ health issues. Embezzlement and the theft of public properties became rampant. Following the increase in the costs of public services, such as utilities and gas, prices were increased in all other spheres as well. The poor people’s back were broken by the implementation of “targeted subsidies”: While each year a fixed amount was paid in subsidies, prices for everything were increased significantly.

Workers’ and teachers’ just protests and strikes were met with beating, expulsion, flogging and incarceration. The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, Syndicate of Workers of Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Company, and all other syndicates and independent workers organizations, such as teachers’ independent organizations, which only represent and defend the rights of workers and teachers were not only denied any recognition but also were violently suppressed and their representatives were incarcerated and caught in the legal system. Even the articles from the constitution which recognizes people’s rights to protest and organize independent trade union organizations for the pursuit of their demands have continually been violated.

All workers and deprived people have experienced the bitter taste of these widespread injustices. A violent repression must not be a response to the protests by the discontented populations.

The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company

Syndicate of Workers of Haft Tapeh Sugarcane Company

1959. Heads They Win, Tails We Lose: On Iran Nuclear Agreement

By Kamran Nayeri, August 2, 2015

This was a nuclear industry advertisement with the slogan: "Nuclear Energy, Today's Answer." 

There has been much written about the Iran nuclear agreement signed in Vienna on July 14. Everything I have read, and I have read many from all sides, is mostly from an “international relations” perspective; their analysis focuses on which states will be winners or losers and how power relations among states may change in the Middle East if  the agreement is ratified in the U.S. and in Iran (Security Council has already ratified it). Further, the negotiating parties have stated that the agreement makes the Middle East and the world safer.  That is far from the truth. 

Nuclear technology for energy or for weapons is inherently and extremely dangerous to people and the planet as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011 and American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 have clearly shown.  The progress toward a healthier, safer and better world requires elimination of all nuclear weapons and nuclear power.  While it is true that this agreement if adhered to may postpone military confrontation between U.S. and its allies and Iran, it is not true that working people in Iran, United States and elsewhere are safer and should lend their support to it. In fact, none of the participating governments in the negotiations represent the best interest of their people or the planet. 

To understand the nuclear agreement reached between the UN Security Council permanent members and Germany (5+1) and Iran we must recall who the negotiating parties represented and how the agreement was reached.

The Nuclear Club

According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute there are nine countries in the world today with nuclear weapons. In order of the year of first nuclear test and number of their current weapons they are: United States (1945, currently has 7,260 nuclear weapons), Russia (1949, 7,500), United Kingdom (1952, 215), France (1960, 300), China (1964, 260), India (1974, 90-110), Pakistan (1998, 100-120), Israel (no firm date available, 80), and North Korea (2006, 6-8).   Furthermore, the top four members of the Nuclear Club have thousands of these weapons deployed for use: U. S. (2,080 deployed weapons), Russia (1,780), U. K.  (150) and France (290).  Needless to say, even if a small fraction of these weapons are used the entire world will be annihilated. 

Israel’s nuclear program is important in considering Iranian nuclear ambitions given the threat Israel has posed to the region. At a colonial-settler expansionist Jewish State at perpetual war with the indigenous peoples of the Middle East, it long has possessed nuclear weapons.  Yet, like its policy of colonialism and war it has never been held accountable by the Security Council and the United States for its refusal to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or for its nuclear weapons. 

According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israel began pursuit of nuclear weapons right after its establishment in 1948. It began search for uranium in 1949 and Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) was founded in 1952. On October 3, 1957, France and Israel signed an agreement to build a 24 MWt reactor (although the cooling systems and waste facilities were designed to handle three times that power) and, in protocols that were not committed to paper, a chemical reprocessing plant. This complex was constructed in secret, and outside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection regime.  In 1968, the CIA issued a report about Israel’s successful production of nuclear weapons. Although United States was aware of Israel’s nuclear ambitions and activities it turned a blind eye allowing its strategic ally in the Middle East to join the Nuclear Club outside the purview of the IAEA.

Advantages of membership in the Nuclear Club

Of course, there is significant advantage in belonging to the Nuclear Club and a disadvantage not to belonging to it.  For instance, in her 2008 bid to become the Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2008 Hillary Clinton threatened Iran with nuclear obliteration (The Guardian, April 22, 2008). Such dangerously bellicose demagogy was possible because the U.S. has nuclear weapons and Iran does not.  International relations in the capitalist world are power relations in which military might matters and possession of nuclear weapons offer a definite edge as the history of nuclear weapons proliferation shows.

United States developed the first atomic weapons during World War II with cooperation from the United Kingdom and Canada as part of the Manhattan Project. It tested the first nuclear weapon in 1945 (“Trinity”).   The U. S. then used atomic bombs against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing and wounding an estimated 150,000  and 75,000 respectively.  In 1952, the U.S. tested the first hydrogen bomb ("Ivy Mike") and a deployable weapon in 1954 ("Castle Bravo").  Using nuclear weapons in Japan has been “defended” as a decision to end the war quickly.  However, it is also a fact that United States used its possession of nuclear weapons as a strategic edge against the Soviet Union in the Cold War which initiated the nuclear arms race. 

Those in the Nuclear Club have a strong incentive to bar other states from obtaining nuclear arms: the fewer states in the Nuclear Club the more non-nuclear states who are militarily at gross disadvantage.  Thus, South Africa after apartheid as well as former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan were persuaded to give up their nuclear weapons. 

Thus, the 5+1 negotiators with Iran were not working to make the world safer from nuclear weapons but to maintain their own nuclear edge, in particular the nuclear edge of the colonial-settler Zionist regime in the Middle East.  In fact, the United States is currently undertaking a three-decade one trillion dollar program to update its nuclear arsenal. (William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms,” The New York Times, September 21, 2014)  The raucous debate between the Israeli government and its Republican and Democratic backers and the Obama administration is in large part about the best way to ensure Israeli’s nuclear edge in the Middle East and to contain Islamic Republic’s influence in the region.  Of course, it is also about the U.S.'s own strategic interests. 

The Iranian revolution of 1979

To understand what and who the Islamic Republic represents it is necessary to recall the Iranian revolution of February 1979, what it represented and what happened to it.  The Iranian revolution was the largest urban mass uprising since the 1917 Russian revolution. It changed that strategic relation of forces in the Middle East to the detriment of imperialism. In 1953, the Shah’s regime had been imposed by the CIA coup that overthrew the democratically elected nationalist government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The revolution overthrew imperialism’s regional gendarme, an ally of the colonial-settler state of Israel, and a supporter of South African Apartheid. It dissolved the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), a regional anti-Soviet military pact.

No political party or individual led the February insurrection that overthrow the Shah’s regime. In the year leading up to it grassroots organizations took shape in the neighborhoods, workplaces, high schools and universities, and among peasants and oppressed nationalities, and eventually in the armed forces, posing a challenge to the Shah’s power structure. Workers began to exert control over workplaces. Peasant moved to take the land they had tiled for centuries; closely tied to this oppressed nationalities began to revive their cultural heritage and exercise regional autonomy in Kurdistan and Turkmen Sahra. Universities became centers of political discourse. Neighborhoods were organized through popular committees to distribute scarce fuel and food. Political parties, including the banned socialist groups, began to function increasingly openly. Oil workers staged a nationwide strike that paralyzed the regime. Finally, as the discipline in the armed forces began to crumble and the Royal Guard attacked Homafaran’s (an officers rank in Shah’s air force) barracks who had gone to the side of the revolution in Tehran, the population armed itself and overthrew the monarchy in three days of insurrections across the country.

It was entirely possible for Iranians to inaugurate the first workers and peasant government in the Middle East and open the road to socialism. Instead Ayatollah Khomeini, who had opposed the Shah’s capitalist modernist reforms in 1963, including woman suffrage, and was subsequently arrested and exiled to Iraq, captured the moment and established himself as the spokesperson for the revolution. By 1983, Khomeini had used populist demagogy and ruthless repression to suppress all independent mass organizations and practically all political parties to consolidate a theocratic capitalist Islamic Republic regime. Thus, the Islamic Republic offers a historically reactionary response to imperialism in Iran and in the Middle East. (For an outline of this history see Nayeri and Nasab, “The Rise and Fall of the 1979 Iranian Revolution:  Its Lessons for Today,” 2006)

Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions

The Shah’s regime was among more than a dozen states that have attempted to join the Nuclear Club but gave it up for various reasons. (See, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 2011, Figure 5-22).” 

The Iranian nuclear program began as part of President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program launched in 1953.  The first three reactors built under this program were for its close allies in the region: Israel, Iran and Pakistan. As part of its domestic and regional ambitions the Islamic Republic continued Shah’s nuclear program. It currently possesses several research sites, two uranium mines, a research reactor, and uranium processing facilities that include three known uranium enrichment plants. Also, Iran's first nuclear power plant that was started by the Shah’s regime in the 1970s, Bushehr I reactor, was completed with major assistance of Russian government agency Rosatom and officially opened in September 2011. Iran has announced that it is working on a new 360 MW nuclear power plant to be located in Darkhovin. Islamic Republic has also indicated that it will seek more medium-sized nuclear power plants and uranium mines in the future. 

American and Western claim that the Islamic Republic has been pursuing building a nuclear weapons has never been built on facts.  Iran has signed treaties repudiating the possession of weapons of mass destruction including the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  Even the 2007 U. S. National Intelligence Estimate assessed that Iran had ended all "nuclear weapon design and weaponization work" in 2003.  In 2012, U.S. intelligence agencies reported that Iran was pursuing research that could enable it to produce nuclear weapons, but was not attempting to do so.  Thus, the nuclear sanctions regime impose on Iran should be seen as part of the long campaign to overthrow the Islamic Republic that began in 1979 to impose a regime friendly to the West.  

For its own domestic and regional interests, the Israeli regime has declared the Iranian nuclear program an “existential threat” and together with the Bush administration demanded that it should be dismantled entirely.   Realizing that the Iranian scientists and engineers have already mastered the entire nuclear cycle and that a military option to eradicate the Islamic Republic nuclear program was not feasible and risked wider war in the Middle East, Obama administration intensified the sanctions regime while opening up negotiations with the Islamic Republic.  According to the U.S. State Department: 

“Acting both through the United Nations Security Council and regional or national authorities, the United States, the member states of the European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, and others have put in place a strong, inter-locking matrix of sanctions measures relating to Iran's nuclear, missile, energy, shipping, transportation, and financial sectors.”  

The social and economic effects of sanctions have been severe. Even the war mongering George W. Bush’s ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, described the EU sanctions, in particular, as "tough, even brutal.” Impact of the recent sanctions have been particularly harsh for ordinary Iranians as the rial was devalued by more than 80% placing many imported products including some food items and domestically made products with imported materials or parts outside the reach of most consumers. Inflation and unemployment skyrocketed, stagflation set in. Although medicine and medical equipments are not sanctioned, they have become hard to obtain resulting in much suffering and some death. 

The July 14 agreement between 5+1 and the Islamic Republic reflects the balance of power between Iran and imperialism, headed by the United States.  America’s pyrrhic victory in the Gulf wars and subsequent rise and unravelling of the Arab Spring have resulted in region-wide instability where extremist Islamic organizations like Al-Quada and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that routinely use terror have gained grounds.  Meanwhile, the influence of the Islamic Republic has increased in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza Strip.  The Islamic Republic has been an ascending force in the region whose interests has coincided with those of the U.S. when Washington invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and now that both regimes are engaged in the fight against ISIS.  At the same time, a majority in the Islamic Republic regime realize that their immediate interest to dismantle the sanctions regime and pursue economic development as well as their strategic regional ambitions are best served in reaching an understanding with the United States.  Thus, the Iran nuclear agreement is a win-win for American imperialism and its allies and the clerical capitalist Islamic Republic.  However, it would be a mistake to suppose that the agreement will stop future wars—conflicts can arise over implementation and the balance of power can change in the future making Iran again vulnerable.  Nor would the agreement make the Middle East and the world safer from nuclear “accidents” or nuclear wars.

For a nuclear free Middle East, for a nuclear free world

Most Iranians welcomed the new of the agreement and some celebrated it in the streets.  They are relieved that the threat of an American attack is lessened for the foreseeable future and hope that gradual easing of the sanctions regime will improve their daily lives. They also welcome the prospects of a better relations with the West.  The fact that Iranian scientists and engineers have mastered the nuclear cycle is a source of national pride.  The Iranian socialist groups and the incipient environmentalist movement have been silent about the dangers posed by the Islamic Republic nuclear program while also opposing imperialist threats, sanctions and attempts to impinge upon Iranian sovereignty. There has been little discussion about, let alone making demands for, a transition to clean renewable energy instead of relaying on fossil fuels and nuclear power in Iran.* 

These are in part due to the defeat of the 1979 revolution at the hands of the Islamic Republic regime that has resulted in mass demoralization of the older generation and mass disorientation of the generation that followed.  Still, Iranian working people are relatively in better position to chart a road forward than all other countries of the Middle East, save perhaps Turkey.  This too is due to the relatively further economic and social development and the potential of learning the lessons of the 1979 revolution when power resided in the hands of the working people, albeit for a short time.  Remembering these lessons are important not only for the working people of Iran but also throughout the region.  Had the Egyptian revolutionaries learned the lessons of the rise and fall of the Iranian revolution it would have been unlikely that Mubarakism could have returned to Egypt with a coup. The Iranian revolution affirmed that society and economy function because of us the working people and can be changed to serve the wellbeing of humanity and the planet if we self-organize to wield it ourselves directly.  In fact, during the revolution grassroots movements began to tackle problems that required solutions that required transcending capitalism before they were crushed by the Islamic Republic. However, the nuclear issue was not part of our discussions then. The revival of the Shah’s nuclear program by the Islamic Republic and the planetary crisis make it imperative to add to our demands:  “For a Nuclear Free Iran!; For a Nuclear Free Middle East!; For a Nuclear Free World!”

* Postscript: Mihan (Motherland), a Farsi language bimonthly e-magazine published abroad, devoted its July-August issue to "The Experience of the Nuclear File: Industry, Negotiations, Conclusion." Of the eighteen contributors only one, Isa Saharkhiz, an Islamic Republic reformer, notes as an aside dangers posed by the nuclear industry and the need for Iran to move to clean renewables. Only one, Farzaneh Roostaee, another reformist journalist, took notice of the hypocrisy of the U.S. and its allies who claim to be working towards nuclear non-proliferation. The contributors mostly ranged in their political perspectives from Islamic Republic reformists to reformist socialists.  For a sample of non-reformist socialist views  see the statement of the Communist Party of Iran and the statement of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran. Both argue that the agreement represents a defeat for the Islamic Republic, neither make criticize it for its continuation Shah's nuclear program as intently hazardous to people and the environment. KN. August 4, 2014. 

References:
Broad, William J. and David E. Sanger. "U.S. Rampin Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Weapons," The New York Times, September 21, 2014. 
MacAskill, Ewen. "'Obliteration' Threat to Iran in Case of Nuclear Attack," The Guardian, April 22, 2008.
Mihan. "The Experience of the Nuclear File: Industry, Negotiation, Conclusion." July 2015.
Nayeri, Kamran and Alireza Nasab. "The Rise and Fall of the 1979 Iranian Revolution: Its Lessons for Today," April, 2006. 
Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Penguin Books, 2011.