Masses Resist Khomeni's Driveto Dictatorship

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Who will rule Iran? The answer to that historic quesdecided in a vast social upheaval.

Workers are attempting to defend and extend the gains they have made; every kind of opportunist politician trying to gain a political foothold; and the Islamic and bourgeois figures who have placed themselves at the head of the movement are now unleashing a wave of barbaric reaction in the name of "Islamic revolution" • The dominant figure of Islamic reaction remains the Ayatollah Khomeini, "Democracy"

He is in effect Head of State and patron of the Bazargan government which he has lambasted for its taste for "democracy and luxury" • Last week Khomeini issued a demagogic political appeal:

*1 only have one or two years to live: I call on you to keep up the struggle to establish a just Islamic republic.

We will not use the expression "democratic" which is a western word, we will simply say Islamic republic for we don't accept me western system.

... I call on those who favour it to come towards Islam, faith in which has destroyed the old regime.

In the referendum I will vote for my part for the Islamic republic."

Some of the Khomeini Committees (many but not all of which the Ayatollan appears to control), are implementing a violent wave of repression of any forces organising for a "No' vote in the proposed referendum on March 30.

Meanwhile, although some of these committees still continue to round up and execute members of the Shah's tyranny, their forces have become increasingly tied up in a murderous and reactionarv camand Islam sation purification AnnI VUI Mass upheavals toppled the Shah This involves savage attacks on women who refuse to accept Khomeini's directive to wear the traditional veil.

Thousands of women, however, in Tehran and Qom (sometimes protected by male leftwing students) have four times in the last five days joined huge demonstrations against the reactionary directive, shouting slogans such as "Down with the Khomeini dictatorship!"

The repressjon is scope and violence.

Girls have been physically prevented from using sports facilities because of the "indecency" of their dress.

shops have been prevented from selling contraceptive pills.

But the most savage attacks so far seem to have been reserved for homosexuals and alleged rapists, dozens of whom nave been seized and shot dead by the Khomeini Committees.

The Bazargan cabinet, largely composed of capitalist politicians from the National Front, undoubtedly fears that this wave of black reaction and the resistance to it will be a threat to the re-establishment of a stable capitalist regime.

They have timidly attempted to tone down the reactionary voice of the Islamic rules.

The Health Minister, for instance, has claimed that birth control and Isiam are not completely inconsistent with each other.

But at the same time as toning down the socially reactionary tone of the Islamic zealots, they, like Khomeini, have unleashed torrents of abuse against "Marxists", virtually inviting the Islamic masses to exterminate them.

•The fact remains that the government still has very little control over the situation.

Bazargan (who last week was on the point of resignation) bitterly complained at the weekend that "this country. is ruled by revolutionary committees.' Workers' committees He was reterring not only to the Khomeini Committees but also to many other armed factory and neighbourhood committees set up either by the "Marxist-Leninist" or Islamic auerrillas or in some cases hv U rva groups of workers independent lof the main political formations.

These main guerrilla groups have been showing more clearly than ever the treacherous role they are destined to play in Iran.

At the beginning of last week the guerrillas, along with the Stalinist Tudeh party supported a million-strong rally in honour of the former bourgeois Premier Mossadeq who was overthrown by the Shah's CIA-backed coup in 1953.

Bourgeois democratic The rally was organised by the recently established National Democratic Front (NDF), led by Mossadeq's grandson Matine Daftary and a small group of bourgeois politicians who have recently left the National Front.

The bourgeois democratic programme of the NDF includes:

"abolition of discrimination against women; abolition of laws limiting the rights of citizens; rights for the nations of Iran; total abolition of censorship; abolition of economic oppression.* A split in the Islamie camn seemed to be indicated by the speech at the demonstration given by Ayatollah Kachani, who, adopting a "progressive" tone, declared that women should wear the veil "not literally but figuratively"!

The two guerrilla groups announced their support for Bazargan's capitalist government-provided it didn't repeat the errors made by Mossadeq in 1953.

Disintegrated

But what Bazargan is doing, however, is conducting a desperate struggle to recreate a bourgeois state apparatus in circumstances where the army and police have disintegrated and real power has been assumed by various forms of armed committees of the masses.

All of these committeesthose that are protecting the gains made by the oppressed masses and those that are being turned into instruments of an intolerant, barbarous and savage religious dictatorship-are a mortal threat to the central So are the mass mobilisations of women, of left wing students and of the oppressed nationalities lin particular the Kurds, who have staged massive armed demonstrations in favour of autonomy).

The Bazargan government of self-proclaimed democrats, still dependent on Khomeini for their power, is fighting a battle to curb and destroy the power and democratic rights of the oppressed masses in Iran.

In this situation the working class and its allies cannot trust the Tudeh party and the "left wing" guerrillas who compromise with the "progressive" sections of the bourgeoisie and the Islamic hierarchy.

Oppressed

It needs a leadership based on an independent programme for the working class and other oppressed classes and groups; which organisationally and politically defends the gains already secured, and which will fiaht to extend them in the struggle for a workers' and peasants government and for WULsocialism in Iran.

*For full democrat in Iran!

*Release all political prisoners not linked to the Shah's tyranny!

*End the murders of and attacks on socialists, women, homosexuals!

*For womens' and gay rights!

*For workers', ', peasants' and soldiers' committees and militias completely independent of Khomeini and the bourgeoisie!

*For national self-determinaand Baluthi Peoples, Azerbijani ana balucn geosies!

*Down with the KhomeiniBazargan regime! For free elections to a Constituent Assembly!

*Expropriation of the oil industry and its operation under workers' management!

*Revoke all international debts incurred by the Shah!

*For complete dissolution of the repressive bourgeois state apparatus!

*For trial and punishment by workers' • peasants' and soldiers' courts of all agents of the Shah's tyranny!

Bazargan

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INTERNATIONALItalian workers demonstrate

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