Khomeini struggles to retain power

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Convulsions are gripping every stretch of Iran as Khomeini's reactionary regime still struggles to keep a grip on state power.

The violent conflicts in Tabriz have given the most dramatic examples of this continuing crisis of the Islamic Republic' Hostility between the followers of Khomeini and the supporters of the Ayatollah Shariat-Madari has now reached a stage of virtual warfare in the capital city of Azerbaijan.

Dozens have been killed, and hundreds more injured in battles over the radio station and between rival demonstrations over the last two weeks.

Shariat-Madari's followers may now raise the slogan of 'Death to Khomeini' , but their opposition does not represent a progressive alternative to the reaction and repression of the present unstable government in Tehran.

The democratic content of this movement has been firmly sealed by its leaders within the narrow borders of bourgeois democratic ideals and parliamentarianism.

This offers Iranian workers and peasants. no way out of their present conditions of oppression and exploitation, and in reality the political options canvassed by ShariatMadari's Muslim People's Republican Party have no existence inside Iran today.

The Azerbaijani Ayatollah is himself under house arrest in Qom, where his supporters have also been engaged in clashes with forces loyal to his fellow citizen Khomeini.

This antagonism now seems to have spread to Tehran itself, where there are also signs of a falling-off of personal support for Khomeini even in the mass demonstrations boosting the 'Islamic Republic'.

A combination of ill-health and political despair has driven Khomeini into a fortnight's retreat before the presidential elections of 25 January.

In his absence, the 'Revolutionary Council! and its ministers continue to act with indecision and frequently at cross-purposes: one day presidential candidate Beni-Sadr announces the imminent nationalisation of foreign trade, only to be firmly contradicted the next by his colleagues, and so on.

Alongside this administrative charade, the occupation of the US embassy continues to throw every political figure into confusion and vacillation.

Now the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has introduced a new disturbance into the growing chaos.

Crowds possessed by religious hysteria may chant With God's help, we shall wipe out the Soviets' but the religious leaders and their aides can feel only too acutely the renewed threats now posed to their independence by an imperialist invasion to counteract the advance of the Soviet bureaucracy.

Against this background, the 'Revolutionary Council' has to face the problems of renewed hostility in Kurdistan, further violence in Baluchistan and Isfahan, sabotage in oil- producing Khuzestan, and growing list of obstacles to precarious authority.

But Khomeini's government can. still be thankful that it has not yet faced any organised opposition from its real historic enemy, the working class, whose strength was crucial in the overthrow of the Shah.

Denied leadership

Deprived of a political leadership from conscious revolutionary forces, the Iranian proletariat has not come forward to defend its independent class interests against Islamic reaction and threats of imperialist restoration.

But this time of grace for Khomeini must be nearing its bloody end.

The Iranian economy is in a state of havoc: the disruption brought about in the struggles against the Shah and worsened by the subsequent actions of the imperialists has been compounded by the economic "policies' lif they deserve the name) of the 'Revolutionary There are now 3,000,000 unemployed and the figure is rising rapidly day by day.

It is no wonder that Khomeini should retire to Qom for a break. Amid his prayers and fasting, the Ayatollah may be able to pass some time invoking the wrath of Allah on those leaders who succeed him.

For the question is no longer whether Khomeini can establish his dictatorship, but what combination of rival and opposition forces will strip him of the last vestiges of authority:

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SOCLALIST PRESS, Wednesday 16 Januar; 1980 MEDITERRANEAN SEA SYRIA LAFGHANICHAD SUDAN ARABIAN BAY OF Reprinted unchanged from SP112, August 1978