Over the past year there has been an unprecedented upsurge of the Iranian masses against the brutal police state of Shah Reza Pahlavi, embracing wider and wider layers of the toiling massesstudents, oppressed nationalities, peasants, the urban poor, and women. In the past two months, the working class has brought to bear its great power in a massive strike wave.
The workers have combined their own economic demands with political opposition to the hated regime. Once again we see the process of the working class in a semicolonial country tending to take the lead of all the toiling masses in their struggle for democracy and a better life, and the tendency for this struggle to grow into a socialist revolution against capitalism and imperialist domination.
Washington has tried to portray this mighty upsurge, one of the most powerful, sustained, and heroic of recent times, as a religious, conservative response to the “liberalization” policies of the shah. Nothing could be further from the truth. This great elemental movement is directed against twenty-five years of repression at the hands of one of the world’s most brutal police regimes; against imperialist backing of this regime and imperialist economic exploitation; against the harsh suppression of the oppressed nationalities, which comprise the majority of the population; and against the economic and social policies of the shah that are grinding down the toilers of the city and countryside.
U.S. imperialism installed the present regime in a ClA-sponsored coup in 1953. Washington has armed it to the teeth and trained the hated SAVAK torturers. Now Washington and other imperialist powers have rushed to the shah’s support, backing his use of massive repression as he clings to his throne. The shah’s regime plays a key role in the counterrevolutionary plans of imperialism in the whole region, and the stakes are high for it.
The bureaucrats of the Kremlin and Peking have also come to the shah’s aid in his time of need, utilizing the occasion of the tyrant’s birthday in October to publicly avow their support. “Chairman” Hua even paid the shah a friendly visit this summer while his troopers were gunning down demonstrators in the streets. Shortly thereafter, the shah’s sister was given a warm welcome in Moscow. Once again the policy 1354 of “peaceful coexistence” stands exposed for the counterrevolutionary policy that it is.
At the same time, even from its own narrow nationalist viewpoint, Moscow has been compelled to warn against any moves by Washington to intervene directly militarily into the situation to save the tottering monarch, given the fact that Iran borders on the Soviet Union. Carter has indeed sent up trial balloons hinting at such intervention. The dangers that any direct imperialist intervention would have are clear—it could lead to world war, given the strategic importance of the country. In early November, the shah began to NEWS play his last card, an attempt to crush the upsurge by military might. But this will be easier said than done. The masses have shown tremendous courage. The protests continue in many cities. No section of the masses has as yet been defeated. The showdown battles are yet to come.
The Fourth International calls on the international workers movement and all supporters of democratic rights to solidarize with the struggles of the toiling masses of Iran against the shah and his regime, to demand that Washington and the other imperialist powers cease all aid to that regime, and to remain vigilant against any attempt by the imperialists to intervene.