Four Years After the Iranian Revolution
André Duret's report in January 1983 to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International
In our Archive Unlocked series we republish documents from the revolutionary socialist press that have fallen out of circulation, alongside a longer discussion of its significance. This one recovers a lost text: the first half of the Fourth International’s 1983 balance-sheet on Iran, which until now existed nowhere online.
Introduction
Presented to the United Secretariat in January 1983 and published that March, André Duret’s report already dates the clerical counter-revolution to “the very beginning.” It says the Khomeini leadership “made clear its intention to structure the mass movement from top to bottom”; it puts the “first general assaults on democratic rights” — on women, the press, the Kurds, the independent shoras — in 1979; it reads the premier Bazargan as a discarded cabinet and the clergy as an estate ruling “a bourgeois state apparatus,” with Khomeini operating “like a Bonaparte.” Four years on, in other words, the balance-sheet was substantially right, and substantially what a reader today would want it to say.
Duret’s synthesis — that these facts added up to a victorious reactionary regime and not the birth-pangs of a living revolution — was available but bitterly contested, resisted hardest by the “anti-imperialism” of the US SWP that swallowed the internal class struggle whole. And the sense that it was all somehow foreordained is the one part that was never obvious, because it was never true: the outcome was fought over, in the streets and in the fields, in the workplaces and universities, and the fighting is the reason the answer took as long as it did.
The report below is a piece of that fight, caught at the moment the argument turned. Read it against the women of 8 March, and judge for yourself how much of it could have been written in 1979 — and how much only the four years cost in blood had made sayable.
The Iranian Revolution Four Years After the February 1979 Insurrection
by André Duret · International Viewpoint no. 27, 31 March 1983
Editorial note. This is the first part of a report presented in January 1983 to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, whose general line the United Secretariat approved; the concluding part appeared in International Viewpoint no. 28. IV27 is currently missing from every digital archive of the magazine — the online run jumps from 26 to 28 — and the text below is a fresh transcription from a paper copy, made for this reprint. One sentence from the original page 17, damaged by a crease, has been lightly reconstructed.Four years ago the Iranian masses overthrew the Shah’s dictatorship. Washington lost one of its lynch-pins in the Middle East. Its system of control over a region of strategical importance for its interests was disrupted. Since then, American imperialism has constantly tried to re-establish and re-organise its positions in the area. The initial impact of the Iranian revolution on the masses throughout the region was considerable. The conservative regimes allied to the United States immediately started showing signs of worry. The revolutionary groundswell had rocked imperialism. But the later setbacks inflicted on the mass movement by the Khomeini leadership weakened the anti-imperialist thrust and undermined the anti-capitalist dynamic of the revolution that began in 1979.
From the crisis of the Pahlavi regime to the insurrection
The February 1979 insurrection was the culmination of a prolonged crisis, in which three forces were at work: 1) Pressure for “reforms” exerted by factions of the new bourgeoisie tied to the Pahlavi dynasty; 2) Opposition to the imperial regime by the traditional bourgeoisie, which linked itself to the Shi’ite clergy; 3) The upsurge of a powerful mass movement which began in 1976–77.
Firstly, in the mid-seventies sectors of the new bourgeoisie came out for reforms to adjust the system of political rule and state structures to the needs of a capitalist economy that was undergoing significant development. Such demands were taken up within the state apparatus itself and by a faction of the official “Rastakhiz” party. The Janshia Amouzegar government team represented an attempt by the Shah to respond to this “reformist movement”. Certain forces in the Mossadeghist National Front looked favourably on these developments.
Beginning in the early sixties, a current of opposition to the imperial regime had emerged and consolidated in and around broad layers of the traditional bourgeoisie, which had found themselves excluded from the new sectors of capitalist accumulation (in production, international trade, and commerce). Through their direct hold over the state apparatus and the resources at their disposal, the imperial regime and the bourgeoisie it nurtured had made these new sectors for investment their private preserve.
Bazargan (Movement for the Liberation of Iran) and other currents grouped in the National Front were the spokespersons for the bourgeois layers that were frozen out of the new profit possibilities. The petty bourgeoisie fell in behind these opposition elements. Bazargan’s party developed close ties with the Shi’ite clergy, since, from 1963 on, parts of the Shi’ite hierarchy entered into conflict with the regime. Finally, under the impact of the 1975–76 economic crisis, there was the beginning of the powerful upsurge of the oppressed and exploited masses. In the course of the revolutionary upsurge the Shi’ite hierarchy, in collaboration with Bazargan, took the political leadership of these diverse currents of the developing opposition. Inside the state apparatus itself, including the army, sections broke away to rally to this alternative leadership. This partially explains why certain parts of the Shah’s regime’s institutions remained intact after the insurrection.
Various social layers and classes came together in this anti-dictatorial battle. As early as summer 1976, clashes took place between the army and thousands of “shantytown” dwellers in south Tehran. This area was inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people forced out of the rural zones as a result of the Shah’s “White Revolution”. The army destroyed those make-shift homes which had been built outside the zones specifically reserved for these people uprooted by the Pahlavi dictatorship. At the same time the first strike movement was getting underway (1976–77). Repression was fierce. In the wake of these mobilisations, protest actions were launched by poets, writers and lawyers. These actions focused on the defence of democratic rights. Student struggles went into an upturn. A general strike developed in the universities in Autumn 1976. With the approval of Carter — who had just been elected president — the Shah ordered violent repression against this movement. The mobilisations became stalled.
It was at that moment that a new stage in the conflict between the Shi’ite hierarchy and the imperial regime began. After the campaign launched in 1977 against Khomeini by the government-controlled press, demonstrations were organised in Qom and then at Tabriz, where an uprising took place. The government tried to crush this movement with vicious repression. In fact it triggered off a cycle of commemorations (40 days mourning) for the victims of the repression, which was to set the “tempo” for the rise of the mass movement. The Shi’ite clergy offered its facilities and its powerful organisation to the demonstrators. It sought to win hegemony over the protest movement. Substantial sectors of the traditional bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie rallied to this new leadership of the opposition to the Shah. The involvement of the plebeian masses in the struggle grew steadily. On September 8, (”Black Friday”), the Shah’s repressive forces killed hundreds of demonstrators. The antagonism between the regime and the masses rose to a higher level. Some factions of the clergy inclined towards compromise, and sought negotiations with the prime minister, Sharif Emami. However, the power of the movement and its convergence with strikes by the workers made a compromise virtually impossible. Economic demands and political demands were more and more becoming combined. Strike committees began to emerge in the factories. The entry of the working class into direct battle against the Shah lent a new force to this social and political confrontation. From October 1978, a general strike was on the agenda. This became a central element in relaunching the offensive against the Pahlavi regime.
However, mass street mobilisations remained under the organisation of the clergy and their allies in the Bazaar. Workers entered the conflict after the mass movement had already been structured under the aegis of the Shi’ite clergy. Furthermore, the weakness, not to say the non-existence of working-class organisations, which was the result of years of repression, left the field open for the clergy to structure the mobilisations (in this theology students played a significant role). Moscow and Peking’s diplomacy toward the Shah helped considerably to deepen the discredit of the Tudeh Party (the CP) and to increase the people’s reservations towards organisations claiming to be communist. This political factor worked to the advantage of the Khomeini leadership.
In November/December 1978, the confrontations became increasingly violent. The masses moved into a direct offensive against the regime. From exile, Ayatollah Khomeini called on demonstrators to win the soldiers to their side. Now it was the turn of the peasants, who flocked to the towns to join in the struggle against the dictatorship.
Under the pressure of the masses and Khomeini’s intransigence all the new attempts made by members of the clergy such as Shariat Madari to work out a compromise with figures like Amini or Bakhtiar (who was named prime minister in January) came to nought. Khomeini backed the general strike and rejected any compromise.
Behind the Khomeini leadership was a social bloc including the following components: the traditional bourgeoisie (with its various factions, the big and medium-sized Bazaar merchants, and the small manufacturers); a large petty-bourgeoisie (shopkeepers, small and middle artisans), which had a long tradition of organisation (in guilds and corporations); and the workers and the plebeian masses (who were called the mostazafin, “the disinherited”). Among these poor masses were hundreds of thousands of recently arrived migrants from the countryside, a semi-proletariat severely hit by the crisis of the building industry, whose previous growth had offered them opportunities for finding temporary jobs. A lumpen proletarian layer also took part in this struggle. For many of these uprooted people, the religious organisation that existed in the shantytowns offered a substitute for the village community structures and provided a network of social aid (charity). The clergy’s denunciation of the affluent living of the “nouveau riche” layers (taghootis) of the imperial regime found a ready audience among these layers of the popular mass, which were on the receiving end of repeated attacks by the repressive forces and were beset with all sorts of problems.
Rich merchants financed the mobilisations. Shopkeepers sold their goods at low prices to the impoverished masses. The mosques became the main organising centre for the fight against the dictatorship. In fact, the masses used the channels of expression that the Pahlavi dictatorship had not been able to destroy. This consolidated the hold of the Khomeini leadership over the mass movement, especially since he had become known as an opponent of the Shah from a long way back. Indeed, as early as 1963, he declared his hostility to measures associated with the “White Revolution”, which undermined the regional bases of the Shi’ite clergy and the traditional local power structures to which it was traditionally linked. Khomeini’s opposition was based on this conservative point of view. Nonetheless, the terrible consequences of the “White Revolution” for whole layers of the people built an audience for Khomeini’s positions. Finally, even though he supported the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953, he unfailingly denounced imperialism’s influence and the Westernisation in Iran. These denunciations touched a deep chord in the popular classes.
Strikes by workers played an important role in destroying the monarchy. They helped to paralyse the nerve centres of the economy (i.e., oil). They gave an added thrust to the power of the people’s mobilisations. But the working class did not assume the role of the organisational and political vanguard of the anti-dictatorial struggle on a national scale. Organisations such as the Mojahedeen of the People or the Fedayeen of the People had been decimated by the repression. Moreover, given the weaknesses of their political line and programme, they were not really able to offer a political perspective of their own, and still less to serve as an organising force. Thus, it was to prove very difficult for a process of political differentiation to develop within the social bloc grouped behind Khomeini and thus for the proletariat to assert itself and bring its weight to bear.
In January 1979, a Council of the Revolution was set up. It included Bani Sadr, Bazargan, Yazdi, Ghotbzadeh, and religious dignitaries such as Beheshti, Motahari, Rafsanjani, and Bahonar (all former theology students of Khomeini) and Khomeini himself. Its composition remained secret for a long time.
During the general strikes, committees (komitehs) mushroomed in the neighbourhoods. After August 1978, fourteen komiteh “centres” (which later became known as Imam’s Committees) were set up in Tehran to try to control the movement. They were presided over by Madhavi Kani. Identical structures were set up in other towns. Madhavi Kani, freed from prison along with other mullahs by the Shah, made no secret of his intention of fighting the left’s influence in the mass movement. The komiteh centres set up under his direction were effective instruments for taking over the mass bodies in the neighbourhoods.
Under the body blows of the demonstrations, after the Shah’s departure and Khomeini’s triumphal arrival, the dynasty’s apparatus of domination (army, patronage system and state bureaucracy) began to break up. Khomeini nominated Bazargan as the “real” prime minister, and a situation of “dual power” between Bakhtiar and the representative of the Council of the Revolution was established. At the beginning of February, the Council of the Revolution opened negotiations with the high command of the imperial army — a fraction of which showed a willingness to collaborate with the emerging power. However, on February 9, a mass-based military response was organised against the attacks on a “Homofars” unit (air-force technicians) by the Imperial Guard. The Mojahedeen and Fedayeen, together with the Homofars, initiated the 10/11 February insurrection. The masses immediately took part in the military action. Prisons and barracks were attacked. Agents of the SAVAK (the Shah’s secret police, which had been set up with CIA aid) were hunted. The imperial army began to disintegrate.
At the beginning the Khomeini leadership was opposed to the insurrection. It backed it once the uprising was underway in order to avoid being out-flanked. The Army General Staff, notably General Gharabaghi, observed a sort of neutrality. Khomeini issued appeals designed to hold back attacks against the army and to preserve at least parts of it.
Confronted with this revolutionary explosion, the Khomeini leadership showed it had three main concerns. First of all it sought to avoid violent disintegration of the Shah’s state apparatus. Not that it wanted to maintain the army as such. But it feared the mass movement would get irretrievably out of hand if there were no structures able to control it. It immediately appointed a government from the top. The masses did not have the right to choose!
However, the Khomeini leadership was not yet ready to take power directly itself. The bodies and institutions on which it could base itself were not yet consolidated. Moreover, there were important differences within the Shi’ite hierarchy itself about the needs for clerical involvement in political life. Therefore, the Khomeini leadership set up the Bazargan government, over which it maintained close supervision. Then it moved ruthlessly to assume control of all the komitehs. Slowly the komitehs were centralised under its control. Uncontrollable komitehs were dissolved. The Central Military Council, a body parachuted in at the beginning of the insurrection, had the objective of disarming the masses. A good part of the militants who were to form the backbone of the future pasdar army were recruited from the komitehs.
Thus, from the very beginning the Khomeini leadership made clear its intention to structure the mass movement from top to bottom. One aspect of this political line was seen right away with the attacks on the press, which, as in all revolutions, reflected the ferment of ideas and all sorts of initiatives by every section of society. Finally, on February 18 the Khomeini leadership began putting heavy emphasis on the need to restore production and therefore to re-establish order in the factories.
Right from the beginning of the revolution, given the whole approach of the Khomeini leadership, it was the central task of revolutionaries to fight for the independence of the mass movement. That was essential to reinforce the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist thrust of the revolution.
The upsurge of the mass struggle and Khomeini’s response (1979)
A) The working class in struggle
For the first time in decades the working class was able to freely develop its own instruments for struggle. Trade unions revived in the traditional industries (textiles, leather, printing). Many shoras (councils) emerged, developing out of the strike committees. The working class was relatively “new”. It was in a very great part the product of the rural exodus of the preceding fifteen years. The majority worked for small-scale firms or in the building industry. Its strongest and most militant contingents were in the big centres of oil and gas production, steel making, and in the car assembly plants. The repression of the Pahlavi regime prevented the workers from building their own organisations. Therefore, the trade-union experience of the working class was limited, and its political experience even more so. Nevertheless, during the insurrectionary upsurge, it gained an awareness of its power and organisational capacities.
During 1979 and the beginning of 1980, strikes developed, despite the threats of government representatives and religious leaders. Workers demands focussed on: the 40-hour week, equal working week for civil/public workers and other workers; re-opening of factories closed by their exiled owners and the takeover of abandoned factories; the election of the heads of nationalised companies and not their designation by the state; the re-instatement of workers sacked for their activity against the dictatorship; the repeal of Article 33 of the labour relations law; the payment of back pay, salary increases; demands associated with various workers control initiatives; the removal of former agents of the dictatorship.
The nationalisations in industry in June and July 1979 immediately posed the problem of the relationship between the directors nominated by the government and the shoras. The pre-eminent authority of the directors was confirmed by the regime. Various shora coordinating committees were set up: in the oil industry of Khuzistan, in the steel industry (among production workers at Ahwaz and administrative workers in Tehran), in small and medium-sized industries in Gilan, in the building industry of South Tehran. A coordinating committee of the Gostaresh workplace shoras (Organisation for the Development and Modernisation of Iranian Industry, grouping the modern companies developed with the aid of the imperial regime) was set up and organised demonstrations. A centre for the councils of East and West Tehran was established. The first signs appeared of the working class winning organisational independence.
There was (and is) large-scale unemployment. Its level rose remorselessly. At the beginning of 1980, the Central Bank estimated the number of unemployed at 3 million (a third of the economically active population in the modern sector of the economy). Consequently the unemployed began to mobilise in many industrial centres. In Tehran, Amol, Broojerd, Hamadan, Kerman and Masjed Soleiman they organised sit-in actions. Official buildings were occupied on many occasions. There were numerous clashes with the pasdars: at Isfahan in April 1979, in Masjed Soleiman in October 1979 and in Broojerd in January 1980. In the latter towns the population massively supported the unemployed, and the governor had to decamp.
In response to this upsurge, the government offered a loan of 1,000 tomans for six months to the unemployed (the minimum monthly salary was then 1,100 tomans). This “loan” had to be paid back when the unemployed worker found a job. About 350,000 jobless “benefited” from such aid. The weakness of the organised workers movement, the lack of a leadership, prevented a convergence between the unemployed movement and workers in jobs. Furthermore, in a large number of nationalised workplaces workers not only got wage increases but, despite economic stagnation, they got paid regularly at the end of each month (the Central Bank was keeping the nationalised companies afloat). These factors, along with the repressive action of the pasdars, explain the collapse of the unemployed movement in 1980.
In this period the Fedayeen, Peykar and Mojahedeen won a certain base in the working class. The Tudeh Party also had some influence, but less than it had in the state apparatus and above all in the administration of the nationalised sector. To counteract workers activity, the regime adopted legislation in May 1979 restricting trade-union action. The anti-working class laws from the Shah’s era continued to be used — including the one on “communist activity” in the workplaces. Khomeini announced: “Those who incite the workers to continue to strike are guilty of treason”.
The attack against the independent shoras was not long in coming. Coordinating committees of Islamic shoras linked to the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) were organised to stop the coordination of independent shoras, which was the strategic key to winning working-class independence. Obviously this crackdown did not proceed without running into certain difficulties. Some Islamic shoras were members of the Polytechnic School Coordinating Committee (June 1979). IRP representatives, Doctor Peyman’s Movement of Muslim Fighters (which published the Ommat newspaper and held “socialistic” Islamic positions) and the Mojahedeen were included in the leadership of this Coordinating Committee. The pressure of the workers struggles meant that the shoras often tended to escape the authorities’ control. For the IRP it rapidly appeared that controlling the shoras required setting up a coordinating committee more directly under its command. This was done at the beginning of 1980, with the takeover of the Workers House. “Domesticating” the shoras was not a linear process. This is shown by conflicts that arose in Tabriz, Ahwaz and Tehran between workers and representatives of the new regime over the independent activity of the shoras.
The whole policy of the Khomeini leadership — corresponding to its overall ideological orientation — was designed to block the development of an independent workers movement with its own structures, press, freedom of discussion and debate and with an ideology of its own out of line with Khomeini’s doctrine of Velayete Faghih, the rule of the supreme expert in Islamic law.
B) The peasants and the revolution
In the months following the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime, peasant struggles developed. However, there was no overall, unified movement. One major reason for this is the diversity of the conditions in which the peasants live. They are scattered in 70,000 villages. There are different farming systems in different parts of the country. The importance of large estates varies considerably from place to place. The effects of the Shah’s agrarian reform were different in different areas. Some areas had a more militant tradition, such as the provinces of Gilan and Mazanderan along the Caspian coast. Moreover, in Gilan and Mazanderan, a considerable amount of land had been grabbed by the Imperial family and their cronies. In addition, peasant struggles were often interlinked with the struggles for national liberation, as in parts of Kurdistan. This was true also in the Turkoman region, where there were many absentee landlords and large estates.
In hundreds of villages, peasants occupied the land. The bulk of the police deserted their posts for fear of peasant reprisals. Lack of land was strongly felt by the great majority of peasants. The pressure on them to emigrate to the towns was a concrete demonstration of this. This peasant movement was not at all stimulated by the Shi’ite clergy. Furthermore the mullahs only had a permanent presence in some 5,000 villages. From a sociological point of view, they were closely linked to sectors of the medium and big landowners, who were the only ones able to finance religious activities and pay the religious tax (Khoms). In Fars province, the peasant mobilisations began at the start of 1980. The land occupation movement was largely spontaneous. To be sure young peasants, recent migrants to the towns and won over to the revolution, returned to their villages and initiated or supported such occupations. In certain cases, the pasdars called in to “rescue” the landowner sided with the peasants.
However, the Khomeini leadership and the government were opposed to land occupations. Pasdar units from the towns sided with the landowners, and, occasionally, helped local strongmen linked to the new regime to take over land. Peasants were expelled from the occupied lands, as was the case in the Kermanshah region. Clashes were particularly sharp in Kurdistan and the Turkoman region. In Ourumieh and Nagadeh (Kurdistan), the big landowners attacked the villages and took back the land. In May 1979, the government gave the Piranshar region landowners arms to carry out their battle against the poor peasants. In the Turkoman region, pasdar units, mainly Persians, attacked peasant committees and tried to chase them off occupied land. In these regions, the landowners and the new regime used two political arguments to justify their actions: 1) these movements challenged the unity of Iran, 2) went against “Islamic order” which guarantees private property rights.
In various regions, under the protection of the pasdars and the local clergy, a layer of “kulaks” formed, who had profited from the redistribution of the land. In other regions, according to “Islamic principles”, tenant farming was replaced by share cropping.
One of the paradoxical effects of the revolution was to accentuate the movement of the peasants to the towns. Not only were they now able to move more easily but above all they were attracted by the demagogic promises of the new regime (the massive aid that the “disinherited” were supposed to be receiving). Thus, during the first year of the revolution, more than a million and a half people from the rural zones flocked to Tehran. Repressive measures were taken against the street vendors — whose numbers had multiplied due to this influx of people.
To respond to the open crisis in the countryside, a land reform law was prepared at the end of 1979. The Council of the Revolution adopted this law. A sector of the mullahs opposed it (for example the Ayatollah Golpayegani). They focused their criticisms on two articles of the law concerning the division of the land of the big landowners. This showed the common interests of the latter and the landowning clergy. According to them, the land reform law was “contrary” to Islamic principles. The Council of the Revolution then suspended it. Its presentation to parliament was put off to 1981. Faced with the needs of the rural masses, the leading circles of the Islamic Republic opted for the following measures: setting up committees composed of mullahs, landowners, pasdars, and peasants, in opposition to the village councils, in whose formation the poor peasants had played the dominant role; and repression and legal constraints to combat the radicalisation of the struggle by the poor peasants against the landowners and the middle men.
C) The resistance of the national minorities
The struggle of the national minorities was a part of the impetuous revolutionary upsurge at the beginning of 1979. The Kurds of Iran — more than 5 million strong and mainly of the Sunnite branch of Islam — have been in the forefront of this struggle. They have a strong fighting tradition and experienced nationalist cadres forged in struggle. Neither the pasdar corps nor the komitehs could be set up in Kurdistan. The Islamic regime therefore had no instrument for structuring and controlling the masses.
Already on February 19, Kurdish nationalist movement representatives presented their demands to the provisional government. On March 1, Sheikh Sayed Ezzedin Housseini, Kurdish religious and national leader, declared that the demand for autonomy did not involve separation from Iran. He stressed the desire of the Kurdish people to participate in the revolution, but also its determination to struggle for the right of self-determination. The response of the Bazargan government — in concert with the Khomeini leadership — was clear: autonomy was rejected. This orientation was confirmed in the first draft of the Constitution which began to circulate in June 1979. The mobilisation of the Kurds broadened against this chauvinist policy of the central government. On June 26, the KDPI issued an open letter to Khomeini asking him why the government gave its support to the “aghas who had supported the Shah to the last”. In July and August 1979, military attacks on the Kurdish population and its fighters (peshmergas) greatly intensified. Khomeini on many occasions denounced the Kurds as “communists, supported by foreign countries and enemies of the revolution”. On August 18, the KDPI was banned. Khomeini made himself Commander in Chief of the army, and all-out war was declared against the Kurds in August/September 1979. Baneh and Sanandaj were bombed. The army occupied Mahabad.
This offensive coincided with the first general assaults on democratic rights: measures on the status of women, threats against revolutionary organisations and closure of their public offices, the press law, and the banning of the newspaper Ayandegan. Khalkhali ordered young Kurdish fighters (peshmergas) executed. There were mass protest demonstrations in Sanandaj and Mahabad. The capacity of the Kurdish people to stand up to the attacks of the central government was confirmed. Kurdistan became the Achilles heel of the new regime.
Bazargan gave the following reasons as an explanation for Khomeini’s war against the Kurds: 1. to teach a lesson to all the national minorities; 2. “to shore up the morale and restore the backbone of a demoralised army”; 3. to keep the left organisations from making Kurdistan their sanctuary. (The Guardian, September 10, 1979.) The Kurds mounted a very effective military resistance. The regime’s troops were gradually forced to pull back. The peshmergas had inflicted a defeat on the Tehran government.
A tendency for growing mobilisations of national minorities was seen everywhere. Political and cultural organisations emerged in Khuzistan. They came together in the “Arab Cultural and Political Organisation”, one of whose leaders was Sheikh Mohammed Taher Shobeir Khagani. The Arabs (more than 3 millions) demanded control over local government, the right to revive their national culture, the teaching of Arabic to their children in school, an end to job discrimination, and a more equal share out of the oil revenues. The pasdars were quickly sent in to repress this movement in Khorammshahr and Ahwaz. Arrests and executions followed. In stages, between May 30 and June 4, a state of emergency was declared in this region. Shi’ite leaders accused the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by George Habash of supporting this movement. The PLO, which had opened an office in Ahwaz, had to defend itself also against these accusations.
In the Turkoman region, where since 1963 the royal family had taken the big estates, the Turkoman peasants occupied the land. They burnt the big landowners’ mansions. Peasant trade unions grew rapidly. Peasant shoras were elected in many villages. The peasants were supported by the Fedayeen. From May to September in the Gombad region the pasdars and the army attacked the peasants. Several peasant shora leaders were executed. The central regime was not simply opposed to the land occupations (some of which, to be sure, were organised by local landowners who wanted to “take back” land from the royal family). It wanted to bring to heel a minority that was expressing its opposition to the Islamic Republican regime (shown by its boycott of the referendum). The Fedayeen, who did not have a correct understanding of the national question, were incapable of giving perspectives to this struggle or of consolidating it.
In the Azerbaijan region, in December 1979 and January 1980, a series of demonstrations occurred. One of their central slogans was autonomy for Azerbaijan. This movement became intertwined with the conflict between Ayatollah Shariat Madari and Khomeini. The Azerbaijani Ayatollah was strongly opposed to a constitution that gave all power to Khomeini. The Muslim People’s Republican Party led by Abdolhassan Rostamkhani backed Shariat Madari. The latter used this movement as a lever in negotiating with Khomeini and as a means of building up his base in the region, which is strategic for access to Kurdistan. There were violent clashes, particularly since each camp had its own armed forces. On December 10, Bani Sadr was obliged to recognise “the reality of the national problem.” He opened negotiations in order to disorient the protest movement. Finally, a combination of repression, promises, and the domination of a traditional bourgeois leadership led this movement for national rights into an impasse. But it remains a thorn in the side of the Islamic Republic.
From the beginning, repression was the only response of the new regime to the legitimate demands of the oppressed national minorities, because the regime had very little possibility for coopting such movements into the institutions it established (i.e., the komitehs and pasdaran).
D) Students
Students were often in the vanguard of the struggle against the Shah. After February 1979, the universities became centres of free ideological and political debate. The religious currents linked to Khomeini had an influence on the campuses. But the universities were the strongholds of organisations such as the Mojahedeen and the Fedayeen. The clergy reacted against this free flowering of ideas and against the growing strength of organisations that opposed the dominant ideology and in particular sought to link up with the social and economic struggles of the toiling masses in order to carry the revolution forward.
Across the spectrum of the regime, from Bazargan to Khomeini, agreement existed on the need for suppressing the left in the universities. But there was a difference over the future of higher education. Those sectors linked to the modern capitalist bourgeoisie were concerned that the universities continue to carry out their function of training the technical, scientific and administrative “specialists” needed to assure the proper operation of the state apparatus and the economy. The Shi’ite clergy, on the other hand, considered it necessary to “Islamise” the universities, to carry out a “cultural revolution”. This battle over the future of the universities was part and parcel of the struggle for control of the state apparatus between the bourgeois-clerical factions.
A brief analysis of the struggles of the main social forces shows that from the beginning of the revolution the Khomeini leadership followed a two-sided strategy in order to impose its domination on the mass movement. Where it was easier to establish its control, it used selective repression, tactical retreats, economic concessions, demagogy, and so on in order to structure the mass movement as a transmission belt. Where such methods were not effective, above all in the case of the national minorities, it resorted to repression on a massive scale. Thus, on August 30, 1979, Khomeini told the Kurds: “We are going to bury you if you do not get out of the way”. The strength of the mass movement and the profound crisis of the state apparatus, however, allowed the workers, peasants and national minorities in the early stages to win a series of gains (wages, land, cheap loans for house building etc.) and means for waging struggle (shoras, village committees, arming of the Kurds, possibilities of increased activity by the left organisations). The defence of these gains was to prove decisive for the future development of the revolution.
From the first referendum to the embassy occupation
From February 1979, the first objective of bourgeois factions who had supported (more or less) the struggle against the Pahlavi dynasty was to achieve a return to calm, “normalisation” and economic recovery. To block the popular movement, which was broader than that of previous revolutions, they were ready to make all sorts of alliances. But the difference from the past was that the traditional political forces representing the bourgeoisie (National Front, Liberation Movement) found themselves subordinated to the clergy. The relationship of forces that underlay the alliance between the mullahs, the Bazaar, the liberal professions and a part of the state bureaucracy inherited from the monarchy favoured the clergy, who benefited from Khomeini’s prestige. The majority faction of the clergy in the Council of the Revolution needed time to set up a powerful political party (IRP) and administrative, military and legal structures. These were to be used either to curb the old administrative apparatus, which Khomeini and his supporters basically mistrusted, or to replace it. But the essential thing was above all from the beginning to not leave an opening for the masses and their organisations.
From the first days of the revolution sharp antagonisms grew between Bazargan, his government personnel and the Shi’ite dignitaries. The alliance between Bazargan and Khomeini could only be temporary. Bazargan did not want the clergy in the state apparatus. Nor did he want to see a growth of “revolutionary bodies” (the komitehs, pasdars, Revolutionary Tribunals) closely controlled by the clergy, which tended to replace the normal mechanisms of the bourgeois state. These bodies were to facilitate the hegemony of the Shi’ite clergy and its allies. They were to become the focus of a continual struggle between the various clerical factions that were at one another’s throats.
Bazargan and his supporters were essentially seeking to rationalise Iranian capitalist development, to reinforce the positions of bourgeois sectors through enlarging the internal market. If Bazargan accepted the nationalisations of the banks (practically all bankrupt) and the insurance companies (in June/July 1979), he was not a keen supporter of the nationalisation of industry. Nevertheless this was decided by the Council of the Revolution. The majority of the factories had big debts to the banks, very much bigger than their assets. These measures were essentially aimed against the recently formed big bourgeoisie that grew up in association with the Shah’s regime, which had largely fled the country. However, the bourgeois sectors that identified with the Bazargan government were afraid of the dynamic that could be unleashed by these measures, coming in the context of a mass movement still in full upsurge. Furthermore the Bazaar feared foreign trade would pass under state control, and that one of its major sources of revenue would partially disappear. Finally, the prime minister of the provisional government set up by Khomeini made sure not to modify relations between Iran and the imperialist powers, which regarded him and what remained of the old state apparatus as their trump card.
Khomeini immediately proposed a referendum in March 1979. The choice offered to the masses was: the monarchy or the Islamic Republic. Abstentions were very high in Kurdistan and the Turkoman region. The vote in favour of the Islamic Republic certainly won a very large majority — for the masses it was in fact a way of confirming their rejection of the Shah’s dictatorship and their desire for change — but the Khomeini leadership proclaimed that 99% of the electorate had voted in favour of the new regime.
For Khomeini the referendum was a way to avoid calling a real constituent assembly, although he had formally promised one. In August an assembly of 75 experts started its sessions, while the first wave of repression was in full swing. The mullahs ruled the roost there, holding 90% of the seats. A sharp battle over the question of power broke out between the supporters of Khomeini and Bazargan. It focused on the proposed clause in the constitution making the faghih (Khomeini) the supreme authority. At the beginning of December 1979, the Constitution was approved by another referendum. The objective of all these measures was to legitimise the Islamic Republican regime, to consolidate a legal framework within which the new institutions of the Islamic revolution could develop.
But then many elements came into contradiction with these projects of stabilisation. First, the victory of the Kurdish fighters forced the regime to retreat, upsetting its plans for stabilisation and reorganisation. This marked the opening of a period in October/November 1979 in which the repressive campaign became stalled. The mass movement in the factories and the neighbourhoods surged forward again. Secondly, conflicts grew between the circles that were seeking to stabilise the situation by means of a formula, such as that represented by Bazargan, on the one hand, and factions of the Shi’ite clergy, on the other.
It is within this context that the occupation of the American Embassy in November 1979 has to be seen. It was organised by the pasdars along with a faction of the “Students following the Imam’s line”. As soon as the occupation started, Khomeini spoke of the “Second Revolution”. By that he did not mean a leap forward in the development of workers self-organisation or the carrying out of a series of concrete anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist measures. No. He wanted in fact to emphasise that the embassy occupation should lead to the consolidation of the Islamic Republican regime and a regaining of political authority by the leading circles of the Shi’ite hierarchy.
From the beginning, the embassy occupation was seen by a large sector of the toiling masses as the conclusion of the process of overthrowing of the Shah and a definitive break with American imperialism — which they correctly identified with the ferocious Pahlavi dictatorship. The resignation, two days after the occupation, by Bazargan, who appeared linked to imperialist interests, strengthened this political conviction among the masses. In addition, Bazargan could also be made a scapegoat for all of Khomeini’s policy.
The embassy occupation and the seizure of the hostages triggered off a popular mobilisation. But the masses involved were offered only very vague objectives. And, on occasions, this movement was even counterposed to the perspectives opened up by workers struggles that were taking place at that time. So it did not become focused around a concrete social and economic programme that could offer real prospects for breaking the Iranian economy’s subordination to imperialism. The demonstrations in front of the American embassy, which expressed deepgoing anti-imperialist feelings of the people, were channelled and they were kept from converging with the shoras movement in the factories (which was still on the upswing and raising more and more radical demands). Thus, this movement could not develop to the point of providing an alternative to Khomeini. In fact, the demonstrations ended up strengthening the political hold of the Khomeini leadership, which made use of an anti-imperialist demagogy — which, of course, is hardly a new phenomenon in the history of the colonial revolution.
Most of the left political forces fell into the trap laid by Khomeini. Some declared that the whole thing was simply a manoeuvre, and limited themselves to denouncing the operation. Thus, they failed to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the radicalisation and to seek to give it a different direction by offering perspectives linked to the workplaces, working-class demands, and organising the masses. Others separated the anti-imperialist struggle from the fight against the ruling class and the Islamic Republican regime. Thereby, they elevated the anti-imperialist struggle above the real course of the class struggle in Iran. It is also true that the forces of the IRP or those linked to Khomeini’s party made it rather difficult for the revolutionary organisations to operate. They progressively suppressed all independent propaganda directed at the masses. In this climate, in which an alarm was raised about the dangers of an imperialist attack, propaganda opposing the proposed constitution was banned during the referendum campaign period. This Constitution established the power of the faghih (the supreme expert in Islamic law). It placed ultimate authority in his hands, giving him a right of veto on all questions. He could, for example, replace the President of the Republic elected by universal suffrage. The 12-member Council of Guardians can suspend any parliamentary decision, if it judges that it does not conform to Islamic law.
Forces such as the Tudeh Party (a pro-Soviet Communist Party) argued that the “imperialist threat” was so great as to justify silence about a Constitution that was, to be sure, open to question. Furthermore, despite all the regime’s efforts, this second referendum was extensively boycotted among the national minorities. Figures came out much later — during one of the unnumerable conflicts within the leading circles of the Islamic Republic — confirming that not more than 9 million people voted in this election.
Bazargan’s resignation reinforced the IRP’s positions. Its five founders — Beheshti, Mossavi Ardebili, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Khamenei and Bahonar — then formed the majority that transformed itself de facto into the government. All this paved the way for future presidential and parliamentary elections. Khomeini himself unambiguously spelt this out to Bani Sadr in the following way: “The seizure of the hostages has today unified the people; opponents do not dare to act, and we can get the Constitution approved without difficulty. We can proceed to presidential and parliamentary elections. When all that is done, we can let the hostages go.”
In January 1980 Mojahedeen offices were again attacked. Their spokesperson Massud Rajavi was banned from standing for president. Khomeini and Bani Sadr recommended these measures against the Mojahedeen, who rejected the Constitution and were not in favour of repression against national minorities. At the same time, clashes resumed in Kurdistan. In April 1980 a new large-scale offensive was launched against the Kurdish people. Attacks on the democratic rights of the masses were stepped up at the end of the spring. In April the universities were closed down on the pretext of launching an “Islamic cultural revolution”.
American imperialism swiftly took advantage of the occupation to start an hysterical campaign against the Iranian revolution and to prepare an eventual military intervention in the region. It seized this pretext to freeze Iranian assets in the United States, a project which it had in fact envisaged since February 1979. Iranian oil imports to the USA were suspended. The EEC European powers came round — with some delay — to support the blockade decreed in April 1980. The effects on Iran were twofold: on the one side the cost of imports increased; on the other, the revenue from exports decreased. A secondary consequence was a diversification of Iran’s commercial partners — increased trade with Sweden, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, South Korea, Brazil, Pakistan, Turkey, India and East European countries.
In April 1980 Carter organised the unsuccessful Tabas mission. The regime saw this commando operation as directly linked to a much bigger counterrevolutionary plan for Iran. This plan supposedly involved sectors of the army and the opposition linked to Bakhtiar. As a response to this, the leadership of the Islamic Republic struck out against a layer of officers left over from the Shah’s regime and consolidated the pasdar army, which was destined to serve as the mailed fist of the new regime.
The Embassy occupation and seizure of hostages ended in January 1981. Caught in the vise of the Iraqi counterrevolutionary military offensive, which begun in September 1980, and the imperialist blockade, the leadership of the Islamic Republic came to an agreement with the United States. The result was to leave billions of dollars belonging to the Iranian people in the hands of the American imperialists — without getting anything in exchange (such as arms, spare parts). The agreement, signed in Algiers by Nabavi, was seen by broad sectors as a failure or a capitulation. Fred Halliday commented: “The terms of the agreement which resulted in the release of the hostages represents a considerable defeat for Iran: the immediate payment of the debts contracted with American banks represented an unprecedented concession in the history of modern revolution”. (Merip Reports, March/April 1982.)
The IRP consolidates its domination
A) The January 1980 presidential elections, the provisions for which were laid down in the newly adopted Constitution, resulted in a landslide victory for Bani Sadr. He got 78% of the vote. One of the reasons for this success was undeniably the image he tried to project of being the defender of certain democratic rights. The consciousness of the masses was developing toward a break with the clergy. Khomeini kept himself aloof from these elections, fearing to associate himself with a losing candidate, which also helped Bani Sadr. The IRP candidate was heavily defeated.
Bani Sadr’s election to the presidency of the Republic, however, rather rapidly caused growing friction inside the leading circles. This arose over the key question for the Shi’ite hierarchy: the problem of maintaining and controlling “power apparatuses”, one inherited from the old regime, the other represented by the “revolutionary organisations”. Apart from his differences on that, Bani Sadr consistently indicated his agreement with the IRP leaders’ calls for cracking down on the Kurds, leftists and workers.
The elections to the new parliament (Majlis) in March and May 1980 gave the Council of the Revolution leaders and the IRP the opportunity to counterbalance the results of the Presidential elections. The IRP won hands down. In both rounds, it mobilised the “revolutionary organisations” (the komitehs and pasdars) to back up its campaign. Under the direction of Rafsanjani, the departments of the Ministry of the Interior laid the groundwork for the IRP victory. Moreover, this time Khomeini lined up with the Islamic Republican Party. Fraud was very widespread. In whole regions, including Kurdistan, candidates opposed to, or independent of the IRP, had their registration invalidated. Only 28% of the electoral roll participated in the second round. The IRP established its grip on the parliament. It took over the Council of Guardians and the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, as well as the mass media. It consolidated its bases. All of this deepened the crisis with Bani Sadr and his allies. The situation blew up when the IRP parliament designated Ali Rajai prime minister. Bani Sadr opposed his candidacy. Members of parliament opposed to the IRP were ousted from the chamber.
This conflict was not merely one of government institutions. It reflected a deeper social conflict that had some similarity with the one that led to Bazargan’s resignation. A sector of the Bazaar and the bourgeoisie (essentially, the manufacturers and big merchants), which were not ready to link up with forces nostalgic for the previous regime, sought at any cost a political solution that would lead to stabilisation. They saw Bani Sadr as a possible representative of their interests, even if they did not have the same sort of links with him as they did with Bazargan. These capitalist sectors opposed the policies of the top clergy on three levels. Firstly, they baulked at a bigger role for the clergy in the government and in political and economic life in general. Secondly, they considered that the clergy’s lack of any coherent plan for the economy would result in an economic crisis that would deal direct blows to the interests of sectors of the Bazaar. Thirdly, they feared the approach of a section of the clergy that, in order to strengthen its own position, was propagating a populist, “hate the rich” ideology. Aligned behind the IRP, on the other hand, were the Bazaar traders, the middlemen between the market and the rural areas and the traditional petty bourgeoisie.
This antagonism between the IRP leadership and Bani Sadr, which ended in the defeat of the latter in June 1981, was not therefore between the camp of the workers and their allies on one side and the bourgeoisie on the other. The conflict was really over problems that had to do with how to reconsolidate a capitalist state. The interests of the toiling masses did not lie with one camp or the other, even though the Khomeini leadership identified itself with mass mobilisations and the “revolutionary organisations”. These considerations, however, do not justify revolutionary socialists refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the democratic demands raised by sections of the poor masses that backed Bani Sadr.
The new institutions of the regime
The “revolutionary institutions” (the nahads), a product of revolutionary upsurge and prop of the new regime, were rocked by surges of the mass movement. They became the target of drives by the regime to “purify” them and housebreak them. Occasionally, members of the komitehs, or the pasdars, would intervene in a workplace or in a rural region and not play the role expected of them by the bosses or landowners. They would take sides with the workers and the peasants or, more simply, impose their will on the contending camps. Initially the nahads were supposed to move against the agents of the old regime. But they rapidly began to carry out actions against new opponents of the Islamic Republic. They organised interventions against sectors that first rallied to Bazargan and then to Bani Sadr, against members of old bourgeois nationalist formations inside the state apparatus. Often they exceeded their authority and provoked reactions, even among the clergy.
These institutions have also had the task, as clearly pointed out by Khomeini, Beheshti and Rafsanjani, of “combating the influence of the left” (systematically equated to the counter-revolution) and “maintaining order in the workplaces”.
Initially, the komitehs were not a centralised and homogeneous force. Various positions were expressed within them. But they were subordinated to the basic decisions of the faghih. After various “reorganisations” by Madhavi Kani from March 1979 on, they became financially supported by the state. In addition to direct subsidies, they make money from the distribution of basic necessities in the neighbourhoods (after the imposition of rationing due to the war). Their links with the IRP regime were to grow steadily closer. They also had a police role. These activities were to strengthen the hand of those within the komitehs who wanted to use these bodies as a means for direct financial/material gain (that is, corruption).
The corps of pasdars was placed under the leadership of the Council of the Revolution. It was then still relatively small. Control of the pasdars was to be the object of fierce struggles inside the leading circles of the Islamic Republic. Numerous disagreements arose over defining their role and relationship to the regular army. For nearly three years, neither the government, nor even the Council of the Revolution, could get a firm grip on this institution, which was, however, vital for the power of the new regime. It was the pasdars that were encharged with the carrying out of the Islamic regime’s major repressive operations against the national minorities, the left organisations and workers struggles. In turn, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mosavi-Ardabili, then Khamenei of the IRP were encharged with maintaining liaison between the IRP leadership and the pasdars commanders. Finally, a direct link was established between these commanders and Khomeini. This new military institution of the Islamic Republic was put under the command of a pasdar council. The pasdars are funded by the state, as well as having their own sources of finance. The pasdars corps has a command structure in each important town and province. Inside the pasdars, the Mojahedeen of the Islamic Revolution, a secret reactionary fundamentalist organisation, is in charge of the secret “police work”. A law was passed by parliament after the beginning of the war that gave recruitment to the pasdars a higher priority than recruitment to the army. The pasdars totally controlled the Baseej (mobilisation committees) set up after the war broke out with Iraq. They are also present in the main factories.
The revolutionary tribunals set up in the wake of February 1979 went after the representatives of the previous regime who opposed the IRP but the Shah’s repressive apparatus was not systematically dismantled. Many SAVAK personnel were spared. No few of these collaborated with the new regime to hunt out left-wing militants. Later these tribunals were centralised and placed under the authority of the central Tehran court and the public prosecutors office (based in Evin prison). Revolutionary tribunals exist in the main towns. They are responsible for ensuring the application of “Islamic law”. The judges are chosen by the religious hierarchy. There is no check on them. The tribunals have their own military units and closely collaborate with the komitehs and the pasdars. Like the pasdars and the komitehs, the revolutionary tribunals did not for very long limit themselves to going after collaborators of the Pahlavi dictatorship. They were to strike against advocates of socialism and Marxism, who supported the revolution but not the “Islamic revolution”. The tribunals applied the precepts of Khomeini: “Iran will try to bring religion to the savage beasts that have attacked it. If it does not manage to do this, it will imprison them; in other words it will purge them. That is what all the prophets have done since the creation”. (Keyhan, January 14, 1982.) There are no rights of legal defence. Interpretation of Islamic law is extremely “flexible”, and the most arbitrary sentences are handed out.
The Foundation for the Humble (Mostafazeen) is a key mechanism of the Islamic Republican regime. It confiscated the assets of the upper layers of the old regime. It, therefore, possesses a minor economic empire, both in goods and property (factories, restaurants, hotels and cinemas). It is under the strict control of the IRP. It holds very large funds that enable the IRP to dish out material advantages to its supporters. It has, thus, been able to build a substantial patronage network. The scandals and corruption connected with this institution have been decried on many occasions, including by official representatives of the Islamic regime. It has never published detailed financial accounts.
The Crusade for Reconstruction (Jehad Sazendegi) has its field of activity mainly in the countryside. Thousands of youth involved themselves in this campaign, and they really did want to help the poor rural regions and carry forward the revolution. Rather rapidly, the IRP took it over. Recruitment was carried out through the mosques or the Islamic Associations in the schools. It has been given a role in carrying out the schemes of the Ministry of Planning in the rural areas. Members of the Crusade receive wages. As an institution, it is also funded out of the state budget. It serves above all as an instrument for building the IRP’s influence in the countryside. For example, members of the Crusade collaborate with the police forces in Kurdistan.
The Islamic Associations (Anjomanhaye Eslami) were set up to counterbalance the weight of the shoras in the factories. The regime sought to take the shoras in hand. But the Islamic Associations represented a more direct transmission belt, one more firmly tied to the IRP. Their purpose was to serve as organs of the IRP in the workplaces and to combat all forces based on the workers movement, although in some cases they momentarily slipped out of the role that had been assigned to them. In fact, Islamic Associations have been formed in the army, government apparatus, schools, hospitals... They ensure an IRP presence in all layers of society. The Office of the Monkerat (literally, “Sin”, that which “Must Not Be Done”) is encharged with monitoring the good conduct of citizens, and serves to complement the role of the Islamic Associations. This Office of “Sin” has its own tribunals and police.
All these diverse Islamic and revolutionary institutions are not “ideological associations”. They are directly connected to the Shi’ite hierarchy and the faghih. They are designed to guarantee the domination of the IRP and a significant part of the clergy over a bourgeois state apparatus. This is what fundamentally determines their nature and functions. Their large budgets are made possible, among other things, by the state’s revenue from oil. The presence of radicalised and anti-imperialist youth in some of them does not change this reality. These institutions and organisations form a whole system that has provided the foundation for building and consolidating the Islamic regime, based on a combination of “public assistance” and repression.
The IRP — towards a one-party system
The IRP has an “association” of thugs, the hezbollahis. They call themselves members of the Party of God (Hezbollah). The IRP was not able to take the initiative for repression directly. So, in an underhanded way it organised the hezbollahis. Ayat, a former member of the Iranian Party of Toilers, a right-wing group that supported the 1953 coup, was given charge of organising these goons. Armed with clubs and other weapons, the hezbollahis were assigned the job of subduing the various oppositions to the official party. Because of its “plebeian” social composition (including a lot of lumpen), this group gave the appearance of “emerging from the people”. Thus, it had a certain cover of “popular legitimacy” for its exactions. After Bani Sadr was eliminated, the IRP extended official recognition to the “association”. It also became a battleground of factional struggles within the clergy.
The Islamic Republican Party holds all the strings that link the various “revolutionary organisations”. Khomeini operates like a Bonaparte, throwing his weight this way and that in the factional struggles within the IRP. He is the cornerstone of a system of political domination by a significant faction of the Shi’ite hierarchy. At the same time, the concentration of power in his hands and the preponderant role he plays are the expression of the precariousness of the IRP regime.
To justify an opportunist policy towards the new regime, organisations such as the Tudeh Party or the Fedayeen-Majority talk about “major” differences between the various factions of the IRP. Some of these they define as progressive, “revolutionary” and “anti-imperialist”. Others, they say, are reactionary and anti-communist. The first, according to them, represent the leadership of the so-called anti-imperialist phase of the revolution and of “non-capitalist road of development” and are therefore deserving of support.
Differences do, of course, exist. The Hojatieh group, for instance, is one of the most openly conservative. It is violently opposed to the land reform, as well as to nationalisation of foreign trade. It is virulently anti-socialist, anti-communist and anti-Marxist. It has a very strong influence in the legal apparatus and the new political police, the SAVAMA. One of the leaders of the Hojatieh group, Falsafi, who was involved in the August 1953 coup against Mossadegh, has said that it is necessary to collaborate with former Savakis in combating the left. Another faction, the “Imam’s Line”, tends to indulge in populist demagogy denouncing the “rich” (the mostakbars, the “high and mighty”), which has been a frequently recurring theme in the Islamic nationalist movement.
The Hojatieh faction in the clergy bases itself on, and favours, capitalist sectors, merchants and local strongmen who have been quick to take advantage of the openings created by the revolution to climb the social scale. It is, therefore, opposed to growing state intervention in the economy. It is not happy about Khomeini’s appealing to the people in order to resolve differences within the clergy and to maintain his direct relationship with the masses. As the Hojatieh group sees it, this only retards the necessary social and economic stabilisation. This group favours more direct links with imperialism. It is also hostile to Khomeini’s claim to be the representative of the Twelfth Imam (the “Hidden Imam”, the “Lord of Time”, that is the messiah). Although this opposition is formally based on religious orthodoxy, its practical importance is that it denies that Khomeini has a right to absolute power or that he has the divine authority to establish justice and happiness on the earth, and, therefore, to meet the demands of the masses for reforms.
The “Followers of the Imam’s Line”, on the other hand, stress organising the masses and building up a system of mass transmission belts. This involves some populist measures and a role for a public sector in reorganising the power system. However, they show no less zeal than the Hojatieh faction in repressing all sorts of opponents of the regime — the old monarchist circles; bourgeois sectors disappointed with the results of the Islamic revolution; forces identifying with socialism or the workers movement, or even the advocates of a petty-bourgeois “socialistic”, populist version of Islam (as represented by the leftish Islamic theologian Shariati, one of the sources of inspiration for the Mojahedeen of the People). The anti-imperialist professions of the Imam’s Line group have served above all as a means for manipulating the mass movement. Over and above all the differences between them, all the currents in the regime are firmly opposed to any serious attack on private property, the market economy, or the capitalist state. They have also all opposed the extension of democratic rights and development of a strong and independent workers movement.
The IRP includes the section of the religious hierarchy involved in political activity. (A large part of the clergy refuses to get involved directly in state affairs and politics.) The IRP also serves as a liaison with local dignitaries and representatives of the Bazaar, which is one of the social bases of the regime. And this is over and above the social and economic empire the Shi’ite sect itself possesses. Some elements in the Bazaar are enjoying monopolies granted them by the authorities and have stepped into the openings left by their exiled or “purged” competitors. In this unstable market economy, fortunes are being won and lost rapidly.
Indeed, about 10% of the working population — in large part, plebeian or impoverished petty bourgeoisie — are directly or indirectly linked to institutions on which the new regime is based. This represents a mass social base for the Khomeini regime, which can also rely on a not inconsiderable part of the personnel of the state apparatus, both the “renewed” and the not so renewed.
The present pre-eminent position of the clergy is the result of the weakness of both the bourgeoisie and the working class. The bourgeoisie has lost its modernist wing, linked to the Shah, which was amputated by the February 1979 revolution. The traditional bourgeoisie, for its part, has not had structured political parties. It played only a marginal role in the anti-dictatorial struggle. The economic stagnation since 1979, as well as the activity of the masses, did not help it any to revive after the fall of the Shah. The working class, savagely repressed by the Shah, and suffering from a long series of betrayals by the Tudeh Party, had no solid organisations or political traditions of its own. The workers movement did not get a long enough democratic interlude to organise itself and win the political and organisational independence necessary for it to step forward as a contender for power.
The clergy as an institution has real economic, social and organisational power that has been built up over the course of centuries. It has played a role in the history of Iran, and it has had numerous links with the state. For special historical reasons, it has now come to the front of the political stage for the first time.
Here the first part of André Duret’s report ends. The concluding part — “The Crisis of the Iranian Revolution” — appeared in International Viewpoint no. 28, and takes the story on from the crushing of Bani-Sadr and the Mojahedeen in June 1981, through the Iran–Iraq war, to the tasks it set revolutionaries in 1983.