Butcher Shah faces 40-day deadline

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ment agitation which began in Iran in the autumn of 1977 last week reached a new height.

In all the main cities there were large demonstrations against the Shah's dictatorship, put down with the usual brutality but with increasing hesitancy and panic by the security police and armed Last week the demonstrations began in the religious city of Qom, spread to other provincial cities and eventually to the capital Teheran.

The government sent in armoured cars, tanks, armed police and troops.

Reports say that over demonstrators were killed and 'dozens injured.

These new events come 40 days (the traditional Muslim The Shah period of mourning) after the March massacre in Yazd, which themselves came 40 days after similar events in Tabriz, and (40 days before that) in Qom when hundreds were murdered.

The regime seems unable to control this mounting cycle of opposition.

Each round seems to be more widespread and to involve more militant actions by the demonstrators.

Last week cinemas and banks were set on fire, buses and cars burned in the streets and barricades were built against the Shah's attacks.

Conservative

The demonstrators included students, workers and religious supporters of the exiled Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollam Khomeini whose son was murdered by supporters of the Shah last October.

Khomeini, conservative religious nationalist now in Iraq, is still the major figure in the anti- government agitation.

He wants to overthrow the autocratic regime and establish an Islamic theocracy, an Islamic state.

He is as virulently anti-communist as the Shah. In a recent interview he said:

"There has never been an alliance between the Muslim population struggling against the Shah and the communist elements, extremist or not.

"I have always emphasised in my statements that the Muslim people must remain homogeneous in the struggle and forbid all organised collaboration with communist elements.

"We will not collaborate with Marxists even to overthrow the Shah. I have ordered my faithful not to do so... if the communists came to power, they would establish a dictatorial regime contrary to the spirit of Islam".

But the active opposition is by no means confined to this reactionary religious group.

New social and political forces seem to be drawn in with each new wave of demonstrations.

The regime is alarmed. Last week the Shah cancelled all public engagements and put off a state visit to the Stalinist regime in Bulgaria.

Crumbling

He now has another 40 days at the most to think of some way of building up his crumbling political defences.

It is certainly not armaments the Shah is short of.

His is one of the most heavily armed regimes in the world.

And for that he must largely thank his cynical friends in the British "Labour" government who have been responsible for selling this dictat with which he Iranian people.

Soviet aid

He has also received military and other help from both the USA and the Soviet Union.

But British arms salesmen above all seem to regard the Shah as their favourite customer. The British government chose this week of butchery to sign a new long-term deal for the supply to the Iranian defence ministry.

The labour movement must implement an immediate ban on all further arms sales and gifts and other forms of material support to the Shah's dictatorship.

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