https://themilitant.com/2020/01/25/solidarity-with-protests-by-workers-students-in-iran/
Solidarity with protests by workers, students in Iran!
Actions hit Tehran’s lies, wars across region
article
BY TERRY EVANS
Vol. 84/No. 4
February 3, 2020
Demonstration at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran Jan. 13, part
of growing protests over recent years against government’s wars,
economic crisis
and attacks on political rights. figure
Demonstration at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran Jan. 13, part
of growing protests over recent years against government’s wars,
economic crisis
and attacks on political rights.
Demonstration at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran Jan. 13, part
of growing protests over recent years against government’s wars,
economic crisis
and attacks on political rights. figure end
Thousands of working people and youth have taken part in protests
against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard shooting down a Ukrainian
passenger aircraft
Jan. 8 — killing all 176 passengers — after the government sought to
cover it up and then confessed the truth.
The depth of the anti-government sentiment has forced the reactionary
clerical regime to withhold the kind of brutal repression it used to
quell widespread
protests last November. Those actions also targeted the capitalist
rulers’ military interventions abroad and the toll they have taken on
working people.
So far the cops have only arrested some 30 people from these demonstrations.
The Iranian rulers fear the new round of protests will grow. Similar
demonstrations in both Iraq and Lebanon are also demanding the fall of
their governments
and protesting against Tehran’s interference there.
These actions deserve the support of working people worldwide.
Protests against the Iranian rulers’ cover-up spread to at least a dozen
cities and towns over four days through Jan. 14. When the mother of one
of those
killed in the plane went to collect her child’s body, she insisted the
Iranian national flag be taken off the coffin, outraged at the
government’s lies.
Protesters across the country have made a point of leaving their faces
uncovered, ready to stand up and be counted. Prominent performers,
athletes and
a number of opposition politicians in parliament have condemned the
officials’ deceit, saying it robbed the government of any moral standing.
Students at Amir Kabir University in Tehran, where protests began,
issued a statement Jan. 19 condemning “the ruling order” whose “sole
response to every
crisis is repression.”
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded by trying to shore up
support for the regime, calling for “national unity,” praising the
Revolutionary
Guard and claiming the Quds Force, which spearheads the rulers’ military
interventions abroad, was simply “a humanitarian organization.”
The Iranian rulers have recruited and organized militias to fight
alongside the Quds Force and extend the counterrevolutionary regime’s
reach in Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere. These units turned the tide of
Syria’s civil war in favor of the dictatorial Bashar al-Assad regime;
dealt blows
to the Iraqi Kurds’ struggle for national rights; and are unleashing
murderous assaults on anti-government protests in predominantly Shiite
southern Iraq
today.
Under the banner of defending Shiite Islam, Tehran’s military
interventions are aimed at expanding its sway and dealing blows to rival
capitalist powers
in the region. These extend abroad the counterrevolution carried out at
home in the 1980s to push back gains by working people during the 1979
Iranian
Revolution.
That uprising was not a religious jihad, as it is painted by both the
U.S. rulers and Tehran, but a struggle of millions who fought
tenaciously to oust
the U.S.-backed shah, setting up workers councils in the factories and
fields as they fought to advance their interests.
The new bourgeois government successfully pushed working people back and
stabilized their rule, but were never able to crush the working class.
Protests continue in Iraq, Lebanon
Tehran has worked relentlessly to expand its influence over the
government in Iraq — the only predominantly Arab country with a Shiite
majority — organizing
tens of thousands into Iranian-led militias there.
Since October hundreds of thousands of working people have joined street
protests for an end to Tehran’s intervention, for direct elections,
jobs, and
an end to constant shortages of water and electricity.
Five anti-government demonstrators were killed by security forces in
three cities Jan. 20, when protest organizers increased actions days
after parliament
rejected the adoption of a new electoral law. Many of the killings have
been carried out by militia members.
After the parliament passed a nonbinding resolution calling for U.S.
troops to leave, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for demonstrations
Jan. 24 to
press the government to act on the motion. Kurdish news agency Rudaw
interviewed a number of anti-government protesters, who said they would
not join Sadr’s
action. Abdul-Rahman in Karbala said he would participate, but only in
order to call for both “the expulsion of U.S. troops and the
Iranian-backed militias.”
Hezbollah, an armed group allied with the Iranian rulers, has used the
sectarian political system imposed on the people of Lebanon by
imperialist powers
in 1990 to gain influence and backing for its military operations. Mass
protests over the last few months have opposed Tehran’s interference and
called
for the fall of the government. Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned last
October, but rival capitalist forces, including Hezbollah, can’t agree
on a new
government.
“We realized the ones who destroyed the country can’t fix it,” laid-off
truck driver Raed al-Arja told the New York Times at an anti-government
protest
in Beirut Jan. 18. Conditions for working people continue to deteriorate
with prices on some goods rising by as much as 40% in recent months.
More than 300 people were injured when riot cops fired rubber bullets
and tear gas at the demonstrators.
“The more they step up their violence, the more people’s strength and
determination grows,” housewife Rezzan Barraj, at a Jan. 19 protest,
told Reuters.
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