https://themilitant.com/2020/01/18/protests-spread-as-iran-rulers-admit-they-lied-shot-down-plane/
Protests spread as Iran rulers admit they lied, shot down plane
article
BY TERRY EVANS
Vol. 84/No. 3
January 27, 2020
Thousands of working people, students and others joined protests in at
least a dozen cities across Iran as outrage mounted over the
government’s attempted
cover-up of their missile attack that brought down a Ukrainian passenger
aircraft in which all 176 people on board died. The slaughter reignited
widespread
protests that erupted in 2017 and again last November in some 100 towns
and cities.
Protesters demanded the resignation of regime leaders, and gave voice to
opposition by working people to the Iranian rulers’ military
interventions across
the Middle East and their repercussions on people’s lives.
For years the Iranian rulers have pressed workers, farmers and
immigrants to serve in their army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps, and paramilitary
forces they organize, seeking to extend their sway through intervention
in the conflicts taking place in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. The
deadly
and destructive consequences of these wars falls overwhelmingly on the
working class.
For three days the government lied about the Revolutionary Guard’s
shooting down of the Ukrainian International Airlines Boeing aircraft
after it took
off from Tehran bound for Kyiv and then Canada Jan. 8. Officials denied
responsibility, insisting the flight had suffered mechanical problems.
Lost in
the missile attack were 82 Iranians and 63 Canadians, many students
studying abroad or holding joint citizenship.
Protests began at Amir Kabir University in Tehran at a vigil organized
for 16 students killed in the missile strike. Actions spread to other
colleges there,
to Tehran’s Azadi Square and to Esfahan, Rasht, Yazd, Kerman, Shiraz,
Hamedan, Boroujerd and other cities.
Protesters demand ousting of gov’t
Protesters in Tehran chanted, “Death to liars” and “Death to the
dictator,” referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. They demanded the
Iranian Revolutionary
Guard — a central pillar of the regime’s rule at home and whose Quds
Force has led its intervention abroad — “let go of the country.” The
Quds Force was
formerly led by Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. military
drone strike Jan. 2.
Others chanted, “The game is over” for both “reformists” and
“principlists” — popular names for the two wings of the bourgeois
clerical regime that have
ruled the country since leading a counterrevolution in the early 1980s.
The regime pushed back gains won by working people in the 1979 Iranian
Revolution
that overthrew the U.S.-backed rule of the shah, established workers
councils — called shoras — in factories and oil refineries across the
country, and
fueled struggles by farmers, oppressed nationalities and women.
The anti-government protests came just days after authorities claimed
the country had been unified behind the regime during funeral
processions for Soleimani,
and then showed their disdain for ordinary people when they did nothing
to prevent more than 50 mourners from getting killed in a stampede.
After evidence was posted to social media from videos taken by people
who saw the plane plummet after being hit, the regime refused to allow
Boeing, the
Ukrainians or anyone else to get access to the plane’s black boxes. Then
there were photos of what appeared to be efforts by the government to
steamroll
away the remains of the plane’s wreckage.
More video that surfaced Jan. 14 confirmed U.S. officials’ claims that
the Revolutionary Guard fired not one but two missiles to down the plane.
Finally Iranian officials admitted they had “accidentally” shot the
plane down, confusing it with a guided missile. Major Gen. Hossein
Salami, the most
senior commander of the Revolutionary Guard, issued a public apology and
was summoned to a closed session of parliament Jan. 12.
“Why insist on lying for a few days?” asked Gholamreza Haydari, a member
of parliament from Tehran. “We need to go after the highest chain of
command responsible
for this.”
A few other members of parliament also spoke out against the moral
bankruptcy of the cover-up. In an effort to mollify the growing protests
and pin blame
on rivals in the regime, President Hassan Rouhani urged the courts to
arrest and punish those responsible for downing the plane.
Some protesters in Tehran denounced Soleimani, who had helped organize
the Iranian capitalist rulers’ military forces that crushed the
anti-government
protests in November, when at least 300 people were killed and over
1,000 arrested.
In Mahshahr, a largely Arab cities in the country’s southwest,
Revolutionary Guard forces surrounded and gunned down fleeing protesters
in a marsh where
they sought refuge during the November protests.
Washington out now!
But none of Tehran’s counterrevolutionary actions at home or in the
region excuse the U.S. imperialist intervention in Iraq and across the
Middle East.
Seeking to use the weight of their massive military machine to deter
further attacks from Tehran, the U.S. rulers have increased their
ground, naval and
air forces in the region to over 80,000 troops.
And they’ve continued to tighten stifling sanctions that fall most
sharply on Iran’s working people. President Donald Trump announced
further punitive
measures Jan. 10, including sanctions on Iran’s trade in metals,
construction, manufacturing, textiles and mining. The governments of
France, Germany and
the U.K. took the first steps to reimpose sanctions on Iran Jan. 14,
saying Tehran had violated the 2015 nuclear pact that Washington pulled
out of in
2018.
“The Socialist Workers Party calls for the immediate, unconditional and
total withdrawal of all U.S. troops, bases, weaponry and armaments from
Iraq, Syria
and the region,” Naomi Craine, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from
Illinois, said in a statement Jan. 10 available on the Militant’s website. “
U.S. hands off Iran!
”
New waves of anti-government protests have also broken out in Iraq, with
thousands in the streets Jan. 10. The protests are fueled by a lack of
political
rights, jobs and basic services, and widespread anger at the deadly
impact of Tehran’s intervention in the country.
“We have all seen and felt what this government has done,” Ahmed
al-Rikabi told Al Jazeera in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. “They have done it
with Iranian
help, they did it with Qassem Soleimani too.” At least 500 people have
been killed by pro-government forces and Tehran-organized militias
attempting to
drive fear into the workers and young people who’ve been in the streets
since October.
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