On September 16, 22 year old Mahsa Amini was arrested and beaten by the police in Tehran, Iran. Two days later she died while still in police custody. Masses of people are on the streets protesting the murder and the poor condition of the working class in Iran. The U.S. bosses are seizing on the protests to undermine the Iranian rulers. Unless the working class in Iran rejects the U.S. as well as Iranian bosses and fights for workers power and communist revolution these demonstrations will end up being mis-lead into a dead end of support for U.S. imperialism.
Mahsa was arrested for improperly wearing her hijab, a common occurrence in Iran, whose ruling class has secured its power by mobilizing millions of workers around a form of Islam based on using fundamentalism to terrorize people who oppose the ruling class. In response to Mahsa’s killing, many thousands of people have taken to the streets in protest. At the forefront of the demonstrations have been young women who have expanded the protests beyond the murder of Mahsa to protest the deteriorating economic conditions of the working class in Iran.
U.S. liberal fascists try to co-opt antisexist fightback
Thousands of brave workers and students, with women in the lead are fighting these sexist attacks on women in Iran and to have a decent life. At the same time the U.S. ruling class is once again cynically exploiting the anger of workers in Iran for their own interests. The likely U.S. participation in the demonstrations and the acceptance of U.S. support by the leaders of the opposition movement in Iran will insure that workers in Iran are left in a bad place, still under the thumb of ruthless exploiters, regardless of how the current uprising plays out.
Since the U.S. puppet and mass murderer, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown in 1979, the U.S. bosses have been funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to opposition groups in Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 7/9/2007) with the hopes of overthrowing the current Iranian ruling class and inserting a pro-U.S. group of bosses.
The U.S. is less concerned with what kind of government rules Iran than ensuring that it supports U.S. imperialism. Their funding efforts have ranged from the heirs of the former Shah to pseudo left-wing Kurdish militias. Even among the Iranian opposition many fear the U.S. is willing to install a new Shah type dictator (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 7/9/2007). What has been consistent is the devastation to workers in Iran caught between the dueling butchers in Tehran and D.C. For example, in 1981 the U.S. encouraged and financed both sides in the deadly Iran – Iraq war which resulted in hundreds of thousands dead on both sides. Since then the U.S. has encouraged and financed several mass protest movements in Iran, most recently the 2009 demonstrations known as the Green Revolution. In 2009 the U.S. used the protests to weaken the Iranian government during negotiations of the first Iran-U.S. nuclear deal. Once the deal was signed the U.S. support for the protests evaporated as then President Obama refused to sanction the Iranian government after it started killing protesters (CNN, 10/9/2012).
Unity with capitalists is deadly for our class
The demonstrations in Iran are an example of the bravery and power of the working class, along with the failed strategy of siding with one set of bosses or another. These battles can become either schools for communism, a way for the working class to learn how to beat the bosses and run society or the struggles can lead to a dead end and cynicism. We see this around the world over and over again. We must use every battle against the bosses to build a working class communist led movement for revolution. This power and our future as the working class will continue to lead to dead ends as long as we side with some group of capitalists. We must reject siding with any bosses. When the working-class sides with the bosses at best we get temporary reforms that are taken away once the bosses are able to. At worst we end up being killed when the bosses turn on us or we are used to fight against other workers in bosses’ wars. The liberation of the working class will only happen through the fight for communist revolution.
