Vol. 73/No. 26      July 13, 2009

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered a halt to protest demonstrations that erupted after the government announced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been reelected. The Guardian Council, a group of clerics and lawyers who supervise elections and vet new laws, certified Ahmadinejad’s reelection June 29 and will swear him in by early August. In a June 22 statement, the Pasdaran, the country’s main military power, threatened “decisive and revolutionary confrontations” with those still taking to the streets in protest actions.

Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of the presidential election with 63 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former prime minister of Iran in the 1980s. Mousavi, who has not been seen publicly since June 18, has challenged the results and demanded a new vote.

The protests highlight the erosion of the 30-year control of the government by wealthy clerics, who consolidated capitalist rule to halt the advance of the workers and peasants after the February 1979 revolution overthrew the shah, a firm U.S. ally. Political space is opening up today for working people, women, and oppressed nationalities to press their demands.

The election also shows the deepening divisions within the Iranian capitalist class over how to best advance its interests in the face of imperialist pressures and the impact of the world capitalist economic crisis.

Ayatollah Khamenei was a commander of the Pasdaran before becoming president and then supreme leader. Ahmadinejad served with the Pasdaran during the eight-year war in the 1980s to repulse an imperialist-backed attack by the Iraqi government against the Iranian revolution.

During that war, the Iranian regime sacrificed the lives of a generation of youth who were sent to clear Iraqi minefields by walking across them. One million Iranian workers and peasants were killed during the war, which the clerics took advantage of to consolidate their control over the capitalist government.

The Pasdaran have since branched out into lucrative economic investments, securing government contracts in agriculture and oil sectors, construction, and in automobile manufacturing. With the election of Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2005, they began occupying leading cabinet and ambassadorial positions in his administration. Today, more than one-third of Iran’s parliament consists of Pasdaran members.

Women have been playing a prominent role in the protests and have been participating alongside men fighting cop assaults. Despite Khamenei’s cease-and-desist order, thousands of protesters took to the streets June 20 in Tehran, the capital, standing up to police armed with batons, tear gas, and water cannon. Iranian Press TV reported 457 people were arrested. Government reports say 20 have been killed since the protests began. Demonstrators who had been beaten and injured were arrested and detained when they sought medical treatment in hospitals, reported the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

Some took to their rooftops in Tehran chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) in defiance of the police attacks.

Students rallied that day outside the capital at a university in the southern city of Shiraz. A video on the Internet shows women fighting police baton attacks.

In another development, the British government announced June 18 that $1.64 billion of Iranian assets are frozen in the United Kingdom as part of United Nations sanctions aimed at halting Tehran’s nuclear program. In a speech at Friday prayers June 19 Khamenei singled out the British government as the “the most evil” of Iran’s enemies. Soon after, London and Tehran both expelled two of each other’s diplomats.

After initially saying he had “deep concern” about the post election violence, President Barack Obama said June 23 that he was “appalled and outraged” at the response of the Iranian government to the protests. With legislators calling for tougher sanctions against Iran, the House of Representatives voted 405-1 for a nonbinding resolution denouncing the crackdown. The Senate unanimously passed a similar resolution.  
 
 
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