Carter, Kremlin Swing Behind Ran Puppet

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In the southern Iranian city of Shiraz last week demonstrators set fire to the headquarters of the hated secret police, SAVAK.

They were showing their contempt for the "promise" of the Shan's new Prime Minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, that SAVAK was to be replaced by "a modern security police"

The events of Shiraz also show new signs of the way in which the masses are establishing their own authority in the cities of Iran.

Agents killed

There are growing reports of killings of known SAVAK agents. And in the oilfields and refineries, despite numerous reports of "agreements" with the bourgeois or religious opposition leaders to raise output, the workers are still refusing •to produce more than a fraction of Iran's oil needs.

Despite the likely approval of the Bakhtiar government by the fake "parliament" and the Shah's forthcoming "holiday" capitalist and imperialist authority has continued to weaken.

Despite the verbal concessions made by Bakhtiar to Islam and anti-imperialism, the masses in the streets are more insistently than ever calling "Down with the Shah! Down with Bakhtiar!"

Both imperialism and Stalinism have rapidly changed their verbal positions on Iran in the last Week.

Reactionary

The Carter administration has welcomed (and perhaps made) the Shah's decision 1o leave the country and has given full backing to Bakhtiar's reactionary regime as the best short-term hope against revolution.

Carter has publicly warned the Iranian military not to stage a coup for the moment.

The Soviet Union has continued to follow the imperialists.

Having all last year condemned the mass upsurge as "reactionary', ', Isvestia has (since the US backing for the Shah was modified) discovered that in Iran there is "a popular movement for freedom, democracy and national independence"

Moscow, too, is implicitly backing Bakhtiar.

Both imperialist and Stalinist Bakhtiar leaders are looking on in horror, and for the moment relatively powerless, as "stability" collapses in Iran.

The US has dismantled and removed some of its most sensitive military and espionage equipment in Iran and has been giving new public displays of support "for King Khaled of Saudi Arabia and the Shahprotected Gulf Sheiks who tremble before the rise of the Iranian masses.

While power continues to shift towards the ranian workers, peasants and students, they will not be able to exercise it more than fleetingly without the construction of a revolutionary leadership.

The consequences of the absence of a revolutionary programme and leadership will become rapidly more apparent as the would-be bourgeois and religious leaders of the opposition to the Shah prepare to try to divert and usurp the power of the masses to prevent it from destroying capitalism in Iran.

Carter with Khaled The Ayatollah Khomeini has appointed (still secret) "Islamic government" of which he would not be a member but the main power in the background.

He has hinted that he will return to Iran within the next few days, probably intending to coincide with the departure of the Shah.

At the same time the bourgeois National Front leader Sanjabi has declared himself ready to form the first postShah government.

These divisions among the opportunist misleaders both emphasise the need and create the opportunity for the building of a revolutionary leadership.

Such a party must be based on a programme of demands for full democratic rights, the destruction of the Shah's tyranny and the dissolution of his armed forces and secret police, the formation of workers, peasants, students and anti-Shah soldiers' committees which could form the basis of a workers' and peasants' government in Iran.

And in the imperialist countries like Britain the fight must be stepped up for union-organised blacking of arms and other supplies to the dictatorship.

The Shah's army, which is undoubted y preparing political coup and a bloodbath at the nght moment, is still supplied with the physical means to carry it out by the US and by Labour traitors in Europe like Helmut Schmidt, Callaghan, Owen, Mulley, and Judd. They should be thrown out of office.