Imperialist Hands Off Iran!

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• solidarity. imperialist country to act firmly Yet Carter's efforts to stoke to block any military or econincreased oil production is a up a chauvinist frenzy in the US omic offensive against Iran.

Imperialist knees will be knockirıg like castanets as European ministers sit down in Luxemburg this week to discuss further moves alongside President Carter against the Iranian regime.

At stake is far more than the freeing of the 53 US hostages whose: continued detention has becorne the symbolic focal point of conflict between the anti-imperialist movement .. in Iran and the US, Japanese and European capitalists.

Strategists not only in Europe but even in the US fear that overhasty or excessive m'oves to bring the Khomeini regime to heel could produce a long-term disruption of the already tense and unstable Ibalance of forces in the Gulf and Middle East region.

Disintegration

In the US, top Carter advisor Brezezinski has warned that the complete isolation of Iran could lead -under the growing pressure of struggles by national minorities in Kurdistan, Baluchistan, Khuzestan, Turkestan and Azerbaijan-to a disintegration of Iran as a single state as created and preserved by imperialism.

This fear is accentuated by the evident failure of newly-elected President Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr to carry through his projected strengthening of the power of central government in Iran.

: It was on Bani-Sadr that Carter had pinned his main hopes of achieving both a resolution of the hostage crisis, and of re-establishing economic and political links that have been disrupted in the turbulent events since the fall of the Shah Febraury 1979.

But despite his election by a staggering 80% vote in the prestdential elections, Bani-Sadr has proved utterly incapable of commanding the support of the Iranian masses for his reactionary plans-and thus unable to confront the students who continue to hold the hostages.

Elbow room

Now, after hanging back on action for nearly three months to allow Bani-Sadr the elbow room to bring the confrontation to an end, Carter has been forced to recognise his failure, and has been driven to his latest desperate measures.

He knows of course that his economic and diplomatic measures are hopelessly puny: this is why he is forced publicly to twist the arms of his European "allies" in a bid to press gang them into solidarity action while increasingly hinting at possible military action.

The European imperialists are reluctant to get involved because tactically they assess the situation with rather more objectivity than a US President in election year.

They recognise the danger that sanctions will drive the Iranian regime towards the Soviet Union' and Eastern Europe: already there is talk of new oil contracts along these lines.

Contracts

At the same time France and Italy are frightened of losing major contracts in Iran, as are the Japanese.

However, it seems likely that the EEC leaders will come up with some kind of package of economic and political measures against Iran-if only in an US warships in the Gulf attempt to prevent Carter using military measures.

Such an outright imperialist attack on Iran-whether through a US naval blockade or the mining of Iranian ports-would create huge pressures on other Gulf states at present aligned with imperialism to fall in hehind Iran's anneal for Islamic LILLIA 4ґґEven Saudi Arabia, whose

Carter

major reason why the imperialists can hope to weather further sanctions on Iran, could be driven to oppose such a US intervention, which would raise embarassing parallels with the Soviet move against Afghanistan.

Chauvinist

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