Who Can Govern Iran?

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"Two governments cannot be tolerated". • So said Iran's prime minister Bakhtiar, referring to the returned Ayatollah's Revolutionary Council".

But the situation in Iran shows more and more that at present there is not even one government-at least not one with any effective authority over the masses.

Bakhtiar's government itself is little more than a cipher. Most of his ministers have in fact been unable to enter their ministries for days because the doors are barred by demonstrators.

What power remains to the bourgeois state resides in the army which is itself showing numerous signs of weakness.

Its bloody but unsuccessful efforts to break up demon.strations before the Ayatollah Khomeini's return last week provoked new outbursts of mutinies by officers as well as rank and file soldiers.

Soldiers sent to fire, on the crowds joined them-taking their arms with them-and these demonstrations saw the masses using arms home-made and captured). for first time the large scale.

As Khomeini returned the army virtually withdrew from the streets for three days.

Despite a thundering declaration that martial law would be restored when the permitted three days were up, the army has stil not dared send a soldier back to the streets 48 hours after that deadline.

Perhaps the most ominous developments of all for the army are the threats to its supplies.

Prevented: from getting petrol by the continuing control of the oil installations by the workers, they have been keeping their vehicles going on supplies flown in directly from the United States.

No bullets Then last week the workers in the government arsenals came out on apparently indefinite strike.

In the demonstrations they came onto the streets shouting the slogan: 'We refuse to make the bullets i which kill our brothers"

As the bourgeoisie's and army's authority crumbles, power now increasingly resides with the often unorganised masses in the streets, or with the religious authorities or in many factories with hastily organised and as yet uncoordinated committees of strikers.

The demand for the formation of Soviet-type workers' peasants' and soldiers' councils to take up the reins of power in an organised way now becomes the key to defending the gains already won, to preventing them degenerating into a chaos which could only benefit the army and the imperialists, and to taking forward the struggle at the political level in order to head off the: betrayals being prepared by the religious leaders.

Meanwhile, the Ayatollah Khomeini hangs fire-and prays.

He has not drawn any strength from the hardening determination of the masses.

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constantly postponed plans to declare his ''Islamic