As part of their push to secure their plunder of the Mideast and their strategic bases in the region, the U.S. rulers aim to crush the gains and legacy of the Iranian revolution. Through a popular insurrection led by oil and other workers in 1979, Iran’s toilers overthrew the brutal regime of the shah--installed by the CIA in a 1953 coup--until then a pillar of imperialist domination in a region that straddles the Middle East and South Asia.

Working people around the world should oppose this drive toward a new war of conquest.

A military offensive against Iran won’t be the cakewalk for Washington that its march on Baghdad was. Because of their revolutionary victory and the blows they dealt imperialism two decades ago, workers and farmers in Iran are in a much stronger position to fight a U.S.-led assault. The same is true of the north Korean workers state, which is also in Washington’s crosshairs.

In the weeks since the disintegration of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, the government in Tehran and pro-Iranian forces inside Iraq have taken the initiative in the protests against the imperialist occupation. They have presented themselves as a voice for the widespread opposition to the U.S. and British presence, especially among Shiites in the south.

As in 1979, the absence of a revolutionary working-class leadership capable of organizing a struggle for power has opened the way for Islamic clerics to play a prominent role today in Iraq. The dominance of these bourgeois political figures, who call for the formation of an "Islamic republic" as they speak out against the occupation, gives a warped character to the leadership of the popular masses who resist imperialism.

Not only in Iraq and Iran but throughout the Mideast, anti-imperialist-minded workers and farmers have no leadership that represents their interests. In that political vacuum, bourgeois nationalist organizations waving an Islamic banner have assumed a prominent role, from Algeria to Lebanon. In the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for example, Hamas has gained increasing authority as the Palestine Liberation Organization has become bourgeoisified over the past two decades, moving further and further away from its roots as a revolutionary nationalist organization that earlier led the struggle for a democratic, secular Palestine.

The historic betrayals of working people by Stalinism bear an important responsibility for the leadership challenges facing the toilers of the Mideast. Articles in recent issues of the Militant have described the way the pro-Moscow Communist Parties in both Iran and Iraq carried out a course of class collaboration, handing the leadership of the fight for national liberation to capitalist forces.

The 1979 Iranian revolution was betrayed, but the toilers have not been crushed and Tehran has been unable to stamp out the gains workers and farmers made in overthrowing the shah. Divisions exist today among the capitalist rulers in Iran, as well as among other like-minded political forces in the region. This situation means that class-conscious workers have space to function and discuss world politics with fellow toilers.

Today, millions of working people throughout the Middle East are discussing how to oppose imperialist designs on the region and defend their class interests, as Washington, London, Paris, and other imperialist powers drive toward more assaults in the region and, ultimately, toward war with each other.

In these struggles, the place for working people in this country is by the side of our fellow workers and farmers in Iran, as well as in every other country targeted by Washington and its competitors.

All imperialist troops out of the Mideast!

End the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq!

U.S. hands off Iran!
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. gov’t steps up drive toward war with Iran  
 
 
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