With this post our Archive Unlocked series becomes our Old Mole newsletter. The goal is the same: we republish documents from the revolutionary socialist press that have fallen out of circulation. This is one more on the Fourth International and Iran, following our reprint of André Duret’s 1983 report and the essay “Obvious to Its Victims”.
Old Mole is a Red Mole section with its own mailing, and it arrives switched off by default: if you’re newly subscribed to Red Mole, these articles won’t reach you until you turn it on.
→ Click your avatar, top right, and choose Manage subscription.
→ Scroll down to the Notifications section.
→ Find the line Old Mole — Receive emails for new posts in Old Mole and set the toggle to green. If it’s grey, you get nothing.
Introduction: Nine days
Nine days. That is how long it took one of the Fourth International’s smaller and more distant sections to say what its own centre would take six months, and the American SWP would never manage, to say.
On 13 July 1982 the Iranian army and the Revolutionary Guards crossed the border and drove toward Basra, and a war of defence became a war of conquest. On 22 July, the Political Bureau of the Japanese Revolutionary Communist League1 — the International’s section in a country about as far from the Shatt al-Arab as the map allows — put its name to a text whose title is already the whole argument: “Against the War by the Khomeini-IRP Regime Against Iraq.”
Read it and you find, in cramped translated English in an internal bulletin, most of what the International’s official report would reach that winter and everything the SWP’s press spent the decade denying. It holds the two halves of the question at once and refuses to drop either: “While we defended Iran from the reactionary Iraqi war, we are opposed to the war by the Khomeini-IRP regime against Iraq.” The section had defended Iran when Iraq invaded in 1980 — it says so plainly — and it turned against the war the moment Khomeini’s army became the invader, because the class logic that justified the first position forbade the second. That is the whole of the matter the International circled for years.
It is not only a war line. The document works out the class character of the regime — “a colonial bourgeois nationalist bonapartism,” reached independently and in the very weeks André Duret was drafting the same conclusion for the United Secretariat, and years before Salah Jaber would put it in International Viewpoint. It reads the offensive war exactly as the counter-revolution’s instrument — a way for a regime “whose class basis is extremely weak socially” to “tighten its bourgeois nationalist control over the masses.” And where the defencists offered the Iranian masses a war to win, the Japanese section offered something harder and truer: “the anti-imperialist unity of Arab and Iranian workers and peasants,” a call across the front line to the Iraqi workers and their government for a common peace. That is the fraternisation position, in 1982, from Tokyo.
We reprint it, not to canonise it. The same document that gets the war right ends its demands by calling on the Iranian government to “develop its political and economic cooperation with the Soviet Union and other workers states” — the reflex of an age that could not quite imagine an anti-imperialism that did not, in the last instance, lean on Moscow. The clearest head in the room still carried the period’s watermark, and getting the war question right did not inoculate anyone against campism; the two sit on the same page. That is worth seeing too.
But the war question was the one that cost a million lives, and on it a small section writing in the summer of 1982 was right, and early — early enough that its argument then sank without trace into a June 1983 discussion bulletin and stayed there for more than forty years. It on the Marxists Internet Archive, but not in . As far as we can tell it has never been online. Here it is.
Against the War by the Khomeini-IRP Regime Against Iraq — For the Anti-Imperialist Unity of Arab and Iranian Workers and Peasants
Political Bureau of the Central Committee, Japan Revolutionary Communist League (Japanese Section of the Fourth International) — 22 July 1982
Editorial note. This document was circulated to the sections of the Fourth International in the International Internal Discussion Bulletin (published by the Socialist Workers Party, USA), Vol. XIX, No. 3, June 1983, pp. 3–5, as part of the discussion for the Twelfth World Congress. It is not held by the Marxists Internet Archive and does not appear to have been online. The text below is a fresh transcription from the printed bulletin; the translation’s non-standard English is the original’s and has been left as printed.
The Iraqi armed forces, which had invaded Iran since September 1980, withdrew totally from Iran in last June, after the successful military counter-offences of the Iranian armed forces in March and April this year. However, on July 13, the joint armed forces of the Iranian Army and the Revolutionary Guards invaded Iraq and started a war against Iraq. While we defended Iran from the reactionary Iraqi war, we are opposed to the war by the Khomeini-IRP regime against Iraq.
We were opposed to the war by the Iraqi Ba’ath party regime under Saddam Hussein against Iran and took a position to defend Iran from the Iraqi reactionary military invasion, from the class point of view to defend the revolution of the Iranian workers and peasants who had overthrown the neo-colonial Shah regime straightly supported by U.S. imperialism. From the same class point of view to defend and advance the Iranian workers and peasants revolution and to defend the anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist struggle of the Arab workers and peasants and their class struggles, we are opposed to the Iranian Khomeini-IRP regime’s war against Iraq.
The current Iranian war against Iraq is dictated by the bourgeois nationalist interests of the Khomeini-IRP regime, and it is absolutely irrelevant to the class and international interests of the Iranian workers and peasants. The Khomeini-IRP regime’s war against Iraq is opposed to the task to develop the joint international struggle of Arab and Iranian workers and peasants against international imperialism and Zionist Israel; it divides the Arab masses and the Iranian masses.
Class nature of the Khomeini-IRP regime
The Khomeini-IRP regime is a regime of the Shi’ite Islamic Mullahs’ political rule, as an intermediate colonial bourgeois regime established through the workers-peasants overthrow of the neo-colonial Shah regime directly supported by U.S. imperialism. The Shi’ite religious organization and the Mullahs are the political axis of the Islamic Republican Party; the IRP is the governing party of the Iranian state; and the Revolutionary Guards are formed as the political-police military organization under the IRP, separately from the Iranian Army. The IRP’s most direct class bases are the urban Bazar merchants and various layers of urban petty-bourgeoisie, and those class bases are extremely heterogeneous and very much weak socially.
With the Shi’ite Islamic religious organization as its axis, holding its own military organization of the Revolutionary Guards, with the Islam as the regime’s official ideology, the Khomeini-IRP regime exhibits clear features of a colonial bourgeois nationalist bonapartism.
As a regime established through the mass-uprising overthrow of the neo-colonial Shah regime straightly allied with U.S. imperialism, the Khomeini-IRP regime is opposed to international imperialism and its client neo-colonial regimes, such as the Saudi monarchy and the Gulf states, the Jordanian monarchy, the Egyptian regime of Sadat and Mubarak, and the Morrocan monarchy, and, in this context, the Khomeini-IRP regime has to rely on the anti-imperialist spontaneity of the Iranian workers and peasants to a certain degree. At the same time, as an essentially colonial-bourgeois regime, the Khomeini-IRP regime is definitely opposed to the autonomous development of workers struggles and their efforts to gain the class independence, and the workers movement to organize the urban poor and to ally with the poor peasants and the national minorities; the regime has been violently repressive against all those movements and struggles.
Under the Khomeini-IRP regime, the Mudjahedeen represented an empirical process for the class independence among Shi’ite workers. Hence the Mudjahedeen forces were violently repressed by the Khomeini-IRP regime and its Revolutionary guards.
So far as it is opposed to international imperialism and the reactionary neo-colonial Arab regimes, the Khomeini-IRP regime has to seek its footing among the anti-imperialist spontaneity of Iranian workers and peasants. However, as an intermediate colonial-bourgeois nationalist regime, it is opposed to the autonomous class development of workers-peasants struggles violently. Precisely in this context, the Shi’ite Islam under name of the “Islamic Revolution” is playing a role as the ideology of the Iranian colonial-bourgeois nationalism, and the IRP’s Revolutionary Guards are playing a role to repress the elements for the class independence among the Iranian workers violently and ruthlessly. Also due to its position of colonial-bourgeois nationalism, the Khomeini-IRP regime is opposed to the demand of autonomy by the Kurds and other national minorities and their right of national self-determination.
The Khomeini-IRP regime controls the bourgeois Iranian state and the governmental income from the crude oil. The economic orientation of the Khomeini-IRP regime is a state-capitalist one based on the colonial-bourgeois nationalism.
Iraq’s reactionary war against Iran
We were opposed to the Iraqi Ba’ath Party regime’s war against Iran and defended Iran.
In September 1980, the Iraqi Ba’athist regime started its war against Iran, when the latter was in the midst of the revolution which had overthrown the Shah regime straightly dependent on U.S. imperialism. Saddam Hussein’s regime conducted with the various political, military and financial supports from the Saudi monarchy, the Gulf states, the Jordanian monarchy and Sadat-Mubarak’s Egypt. The war by the Iraqi Ba’athist regime against Iran was a reactionary war.
First, the Iraqi war had its territorial aim; the Ba’athist regime attempted to force a revision of the border agreement, concluded between Iran and Iraq during the Shah period, in favor of the latter by the war. In this context, the Iraqi war against Iran was dictated by the narrow bourgeois nationalist interests of the Ba’athist regime, and it was a reactionary war, alien to the class interests of both the Arab workers and peasants and the Iranian workers and peasants.
From the class point of view of the Arab and Iranian workers and peasants, the border question between Iran and Iraq is to be solved on the basis of truly democratic and mutual cooperation, only through the victory of workers and peasants permanent revolution in Iran and Iraq. Needless to say, we do not defend the border agreement forced by the Shah regime of Iran on the Iraqi Ba’athist regime. Therefore, we were opposed to the Khomeini-IRP regime’s position to defend the border agreement concluded by the Shah. From the view-point of international class interests, we are opposed to any bourgeois nationalist division between the Arab masses and the Iranian masses on the question of the current border.
Second, the Iraqi Ba’athist regime’s war against Iran was a war to aim a political blow against the Iranian revolution of workers and peasants at its transition, being opposed to the workers and peasants revolution, which had overthrown the neo-colonial Shah regime straightly allied with U.S. imperialism, and to the Khomeini-IRP regime which represented the revolutionary gain intermediately as a nationalist colonial-bourgeois regime. Precisely in this context, the Iraqi Ba’athist regime’s war against Iran was supported by the Saudi monarchy and Gulf states, which were afraid of the Iranian revolution of workers and peasants, and the Jordanian monarchy and Sadat-Mubarak’s Egypt. The Iraqi Ba’athist war against Iran was a reactionary war to serve the interests of the Saudi monarchy and Gulf states and the interests of international imperialism in this region.
Hence we took a position to defend Iran from the reactionary war by Iraq, from the view-point of defending the Iranian revolution of workers and peasants and its class advance. Our position to defend Iran was not for defending the Iran-Iraq border agreement concluded by the Shah. We are opposed to the bourgeois nationalist Iran-Iraq conflict itself on their border question.
Relying on the Saudi Monarchy’s and the Gulf states’ political fear of the Iranian Revolution, the Iraqi Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein tried to play a role of reactionary guard against the revolution of Iranian workers and peasants and its class advance and to appear as a reactionary defence-dike for the pro-imperialist Arab regimes in the area. In the 1970s, after the death of Nasser, there was a general process of progressively deepening crises of the Arab bourgeois nationalist regimes and their reactionary evolutions, as was exemplified by the case of Egypt under Sadat, and the Iraqi Ba’athist regime as an Arab bourgeois nationalist regime was not the exception. With the reactionary war against Iran, the Iraqi Ba’athist regime under Saddam Hussein developed its political accommodation with the pro-imperialist Saudi monarchy and Gulf states, and began to seek a new political conciliation with U.S. imperialism, let its international relation with the Soviet Union be thrown into a critical situation.
The Iraqi Ba’athist regime had been one of the so-called “hardliner” Arab states against Zionist Israel. However, Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran made the Middle East situation favorable for Israel, and the war played a role to increase the political weight of the Saudi monarchy on the Arab side in regard to the Palestine question. Thus, the Iraqi Ba’athist regime’s war against Iran constituted a treacherous betrayal against the Palestine liberation struggle, and, also in this context, the Iraqi war served the interests of international imperialism, Zionist Israel and the pro-imperialist Arab reactionary regimes.
Class nature of the current Iranian war against Iraq
The Iranian armed forces under the Khomeini-IRP regime were successful in their military counter-offensives against the invading Iraqi armed forces in March and April this year. In June, the Iraqi armed forces retreated to the Iraqi side of the old border. Confronted with the Iranian counter-attacks, the reactionary war by the Iraqi Ba’athist regime under Saddam Hussein was defeated and came to an end as a total failure.
However, on July 13, the joint military forces of the Iranian Army and the Revolutionary Guards under the Khomeini-IRP regime started its war against Iraq. The joint military forces are currently concentrating their attacks toward the Iraqi second largest city of Basra.
Khomeini, the IRP government, the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Army issued various statements on the Iranian war-aim: the Iraqi armed forces retreated behind the border, but they were bombing the Iranian territory across the border, and the Iraqi bombing had to be stopped forcefully; the war-compensation money has to be taken from Iraq forcefully, it is reported that the amount should be more than $100 billion; the war is to give the Iranian retaliatory punishment to the Iraqi Ba’athist regime under Saddam Hussein; it is a “holy war” to overthrow the Ba’ath-party regime under Saddam Hussein and to establish a new Islamic regime in Iraq; it is a war to clear the way for joining the Palestine and Lebanese war against Zionist Israel.
Although the press reports are very much limited in this regard, it seems that the Khomeini-IRP regime is not definitely unified on the concrete war-aim against Iraq. It seems that the Iranian war-aim is extremely opportunistic and fluid. However, judging from the current concentration of the Iranian military attacks toward Basra and the latest statements made by some IRP-government ministers, the aim of the Khomeini-IRP regime’s war against Iraq may be summarized as the following two points. First, the Iranian war-aim is to deepen the political crisis of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath-party regime, as a political retaliation to the Iraqi regime. Second, the Khomeini-IRP regime has waged its war to force the Iraqi regime to pay the compensation.
Hence, the current Iranian war against Iraq and the war aim are dictated by the Iranian bourgeois nationalist interests of the Khomeini-IRP regime, and the war is alien to the class interests of the Iranian workers and peasants. The Iranian workers and peasants do not have their class interests in the war to give a political retaliation to Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath-party regime and to force the latter to pay the war compensation. Contrary to the Iranian bourgeois nationalist interests of the Khomeini-IRP regime, the class interests of the Iranian workers and peasants lie in making a consistent call to the Iraqi workers and peasants and the government for establishment of a peace between Iran and Iraq and an active international mutual cooperation to recover from the heavy war-damages.
Independent of the Khomeini-IRP regime as an intermediate colonial-bourgeois nationalist regime, and from the position to defend the revolution of Iranian workers and peasants, we defended Iran from the war by the Iraqi Ba’athist regime under Saddam Hussein. However, through the war with Iraq, the Khomeini-IRP regime deepened its compromise with the Iranian bourgeois army which had been built up under the Shah regime, and it strengthened the bourgeois and Shi’ite Islamic ideological control over the masses and carried out ruthless and violent repressions especially against the urban masses and the Kurdish autonomy movement. Now, with the war against Iraq, the Khomeini-IRP regime, whose class basis is extremely weak socially, is attempting to repress any elements of autonomous class development of the workers and peasants struggles further more and to tighten its bourgeois nationalist control over the masses increasingly by the Shi’ite Islamic ideology. The Iranian workers struggle for their own class independence from the intermediate colonial-bourgeois nationalist regime is impossible without opposing the bourgeois nationalist war by the Khomeini-IRP regime against Iraq.
For anti-imperialist unity of the Iranian and Arab workers and peasants
In the defense war against Iraq, the Khomeini-IRP regime relied on the Iranian workers and peasants in a very much limited way, repressing those masses; it did not rely on the Soviet Union and other workers states actively, and it utilized even Zionist Israel for getting some military materials. Despite this, we kept our position to defend Iran from the Iraqi war. The Khomeini-IRP regime has sent a certain military force to Syria-Lebanon against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. However, the most decisive fact is that the Khomeini-IRP regime started its war against Iraq at the very moment when the PLO and the Palestine liberation struggle were in the crucial situation under the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
The Iranian war against Iraq is playing an extremely reactionary role to disperse the Arab regimes in front of Zionist Israel, at the very moment when the Iraqi Ba’ath-party regime and various Arab regimes should be mobilized as fully as possible in defence of Lebanon and the Palestine liberation struggle. The Iranian war against Iraq is to drive Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath-party regime more and more toward the Saudi monarchy and Gulf states, and toward international imperialism. The current Iranian war is definitely opposed to the anti-imperialist interests of the Palestine liberation struggle, the Arab workers and peasants, and the revolution of Iranian workers and peasants.
Let the Iranian government withdraw the Iranian Army and the Revolutionary Guards and call the Iraqi workers and peasants and the government for formation of a common front against Zionist Israel and imperialism.
Against the Iranian demand of the war compensation from Iraq. For Iran-Iraq mutual cooperation to recover from the war damages. The fund should be drawn from international imperialism and from the Saudi monarchy and Gulf states.
Against the Iraqi Ba’ath-party regime’s conciliation with the reactionary Arab regimes and international imperialism. Against U.S. and other imperialist intervention in the Arab world. Against U.S.-French dispatch of troops to Beirut.
Freedom for the Iranian workers and peasants movement. Stop the Revolutionary Guards’ repression against the workers and peasants movement. Autonomy and the right of national self-determination for the Kurds and other national minorities.
Let the Iranian government develop its political and economic cooperation with the Soviet Union and other workers states.
See also, in this series: André Duret, “The Iranian Revolution Four Years After the February 1979 Insurrection”, the United Secretariat’s own 1983 balance-sheet; and the introductory essay “Obvious to Its Victims.”
Footnotes
The name is a trap for the unwary. After the 1963 split of the original Nihon Kakumeiteki Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei, three distinct — and violently hostile — organisations carried “Japan Revolutionary Communist League” in their formal English titles: the National Committee (Chūkaku-ha, the “Central Core Faction”); the Revolutionary Marxist Faction (Kakumaru-ha); and the United Secretariat’s Japanese section, the group here, which had used the “Fourth International Japan Section” designation since 1965 and became the organisation generally abbreviated JRCL only after its post-1991 reorganisation. The bare phrase is insufficient to tell them apart; this document’s byline carries the disambiguating qualifier, “(Japanese Section of the Fourth International).” Contemporary Japanese usage sidestepped the ambiguity by naming the factions directly — Chūkaku-ha, Kakumaru-ha, or Daiyon Intā.