http://socialism.com/fs-article/in-iran-popular-revolt-grows-against-state-corruption-us-sanctions-and-war/
IRAN
Popular revolt grows against state corruption, US sanctions, and war
Monica Hill
|October 2018
December 30, 2017 — Despite the danger, a crowd gathers to protest the
high cost of living in Tehran. PHOTO: Stringer, Anadolu Agency
Bread, jobs, freedom! Capitalist mullahs, give us our money back! These
angry slogans have blasted over the airways and highways throughout Iran
for the last several months. Iranians are fed up with poverty and
corruption, repression by a military theocracy, and war-making in the
Middle East. Its diverse peoples are 87 percent literate, connected
through global social media, and in open revolt.
Eight months ago, the largest uprising since the 1979 Iranian Revolution
exploded in nearly 100 cities and towns. The Islamic Republic’s police
forces attacked demonstrators, killing 25 and arresting nearly 5,000. On
International Women’s Day, hundreds of women were arrested and jailed,
and four were killed. But radicalized working people, students, women,
and farmers are still resisting government forces, still demanding
freedom for political prisoners. They are in desperate need of
international solidarity against the Iranian dictatorship as well as
U.S. sanctions and threats of war.
Poverty and corruption breed discontent. Iranians have a great deal to
protest. Of the country’s 82 million people, the majority are under the
age of 40. Ninety percent of the labor force lives under the poverty
line. The unemployment rate is 61 percent and homeless people sleep in
empty graves. The minimum wage is about $13 per day, when enforced, and
workers are often unpaid for months.
In just a year, Iran’s currency — the rial — has lost 80 percent of its
value, eliminating what little savings ordinary people have. The 200
percent inflation makes life’s very necessities unbuyable. Ninety-seven
percent of the country faces water and electricity shortages. Property
prices in Tehran have risen 41 percent and rents 51 percent.
Outrage at government corruption is also a prime mover of the protests.
Billions of dollars are siphoned out of the budget each year to
unaccountable, tax-exempt foundations controlled by the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s de facto military. The Alliance
of Middle Eastern Socialists reports that these foundations “hold more
than 80 percent of the economy. In 2013, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah
Khamenei, controlled 95 billion dollars [worth] … of shares in virtually
every sector of the economy.” Massive amounts go to war expenditures in
Syria, Lebanon, Gaza (for Hamas), and Yemen. Not to mention billions
stolen and embezzled by “connected” banks and businesses.
Rebellion persists. In the months before the December-January uprising —
and since then — teachers, nurses, mine and oil workers, civil servants,
government employees, retirees, manufacturers, bus and truck drivers,
sugar cane and steel workers have all demonstrated and gone on strike.
Illegal, independent unions, such as the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Workers
and Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association, organized a good many of these
strikes.
Protests and strikes continue to erupt, especially in numerous smaller
cities where repression is not as efficient. Women have a high level of
employment in Iran and often take part in labor strikes. They also
continue to fight wearing the required hijab (headscarf). Today they
have more support from male activists and unionists than in the 1979
insurrection. Hundreds of women have been arrested this year for
publicly removing their hijabs. Still, protesters leap onto utility
boxes, wave their hijabs, and then disappear before the cops can get to
them. Seattle bus driver Mohammed Bazargan sees hope for his home
country in this rebellion: “Once the women taste of real freedom,
there’s no stopping them. And that’s the foundation for toppling the
Iranian state.”
These strikes and protests are a political leap from the Green Movement
uprising in 2008. Government right-wing hardliners and reformist
moderates have been discredited. An Iranian exile compares the anger
with the United States: “It’s just like Americans’ outrage at both the
Republicans and the Democrats.”
U.S. sanctions and war threats. Economic sanctions are by definition war
on the civilian population. Imposed by the U.S. and Europe, they have
been a primary cause of Iran’s economic woes for decades, even before
the nuclear deal made under the Obama administration. Sanctions wipe out
jobs and limit imports of food and medicine, causing starvation,
disease, and death among the most vulnerable, especially women and children.
President Trump inflicted new sanctions in early August that put nearly
half a million jobs in Iran’s auto parts industry at risk; two million
pistachio industry workers are likely to lose their jobs too. On orders
from the USA, foreign car companies and many other giant industries are
leaving Iran. The bans effective on November 5 of this year target all
foreign transactions of Iran’s Central Bank. This is aimed at strangling
Iran’s pivotal oil trade.
The Trump administration is also threatening a military war against
Iran. But there is little stomach in the U.S. for fighting foreign wars
against a well-armed opponent, so this seems an unlikely choice.
Starving Iranians into submission, while trying to maintain a more and
more unstable peace in the oil-rich Middle East, is the cowardly, but
better, option for U.S. imperialism.
Fake anti-imperialism. Some leftists, especially Stalinists and other
reformists, support the Iranian regime. They consider it
“anti-imperialist” because of its anti-U.S. rhetoric. But Iran and its
many capitalist competitors in the Middle East are not anti-imperialist;
they are regional sub-imperialists, practiced at stifling any mass
democratic protest — be it in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey,
or Egypt. They compete among themselves while making tactical alliances
with U.S. and European imperialism.
The anti-imperialist characterization of the Iranian and Syrian
dictatorships has severely undermined efforts to build an international
anti-war, solidarity movement with popular rebellions. Without support
for the beleaguered peoples of these capitalist regimes, their struggles
are a thousand times more difficult. If we in the U.S. want to help our
sisters and brothers in the Middle East, we must take on the task of
building a radical, antiwar movement here in the United States, the
heart of imperialism.
In solidarity with dissidents fighting Iran’s military theocracy!
For a revolutionary movement against sanctions and war!
To listen to this and other articles from this issue, click here.
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Featured
In Iran, popular revolt grows against state corruption, US sanctions,
and war
In Iran, popular revolt grows against state corruption, US sanctions,
and war
In solidarity with dissidents fighting Iran’s repressive theocracy!
Monica Hill
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