[From ayatollahs into conflict and these disputes have…]

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From ayatollahs into conflict and these disputes have undoubted-. ly given a spurious boost to Shariat-Madari's present standing with the opposition movement in Azerbaijan.

Khomeini's 'Revolutionary Council' has responded with, considerable alarm to this sudden development among the largest of the oppressed nations within the borders of Iran.

While the imprisoned demonstrators have been released, no less a figure than failed prime minister Bazargan has been despatched to negotiate on the demands which have now been extended to include some form of autonomy for the region!

WITH AN international campaign still under way for the release of 14 socialists from the Iranian HKS (section of the United Secretariat), two of those imprisoned have been released.

According to Intercontinental Press Mohammed Poorkahvaz was released from Karoun prison in Ahwaz on November 22, and Kia Mahdari on 27 November.

The fight for the release of the remaining 12 must now be taken up with renewed vigour by the workers' movement.

Alongside this repetition of the trips made by Khomeini's diplomats to Kurdistan, there have been attempts to regain control by more direct methods.

A force of Khomeini supporters seized back the radio station over the weekend, only to be ousted in turn apparently by troops declaring their allegiance to Shariat-Madari.

As this mass struggle has opened up in Azerbaijan, there is every indication that the truce in Kurdistan will be succeeded by a renewed offensive from the nationalists against the armed forces of the state.

With all these mounting problems Khomeini has still failed to move towards a resolution of the crisis flowing from the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran.

The students in occupation have demonstrated their at least partial independence from Khomeini and posed the obvious question of how far they are holding the hostages against the US government and how much they aré demanding at the same time from the 'Revolutionary Council' itself.

The international confrontation with Carter's administration has now forced the US imperialists to display signs of concession on the central question of the Shah's extradition, which open up the road to a compromise.

Kennedy

Kennedy's opportunist denunciation of the crimes and brutality of the Shah has been followed by Bizezinski's statements denying any opposition to trying the Shah in some international forum'-so long as the hostages are released first.

These moves are obviously linked (through United Nations chief Waldheim's hints of some "new initiative") to the statements by Qotzbadeh that if the Shah moves out of the US, the Iranian authorities would • be Demonstrators outside the US embassy content with the return of his fortune to Iran and some international trial.

This scenario depends on the agreement of some third party to act as host, and the US imperialists are scarcely enthusiastic about the offers received so far for the Shah-from Sadat, and the Lebanese fascist militia in their statelet along the Gode Israeli border.

While these manoeuvres continue, the battles on the economic front roll steadily on-to the exclusive advantage of finance lawyers who are constantly putting forward new writs and appeals in every conceivable direction.

But the resolution of the clearly show that Khomeini's regime has only a very short space of time in which to make fundamental changes of direction before it collapses under the pressure from all sides.

The fate of the US agents held hostage in the embassy will be determined within this process and not by wheelings and dealings inside the UN or legal wrangles in the courts of the bourgeoisie.

But the central question remains, as it has done from the beginning of the mass agitation against the Shah's tyranny: what programme can resolve the Iranian crisis, and what force can fight to Implement that Lo that, there is only one answer: it is only the working class of Iran, led by a Trotskyist party fighting for the international programme of socialist revolution which can rescue all the oppressed masses of Iran from the threats of world imperjalism and the counter-revolutionary power of religious and bourgeois reaction.

*Seize all the banks and major capitalist holdings. No compensation-for workers' management and a planned socialist economy.

*Build workers militias and factory committees. For soviets to replace the committee and tribunals of Islamic reaction.

*Against unemploymentfor a massive programme of public works.

*Against national oppression -for the rights of self-determination of the Kurds and all other oppressed nations:

*Against sexual oppressionfull democratic rights for all women and homosexual men.

*For' proletarian internationalism-every possible assistance to the international struggles against imperialism.

a workers and peasants government in Irank.

tion agains thimperialism alu reaction!

*US workers fight for Shah to be sent back! nt