Brezhnev's offer they can't

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Workers Socialist League, BM Box 5277, London WC1V 6XX, Printed by Post Office. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the W the latest moves of imperialist and Stalinist leaders alike is the unresolved political crisis in Iran.

In the wake of Carter's abortive military adventure, little reference is being made to the hostage issue. Instead, the real dilemma confronting the imperialists has come to the fore: how to restore stability and imperialist authority over Iran and the Gulf states?

The problem is underlined by the dismal failure of Iranian President Bani-Sadr to secure a majority in the Majlis (Parliamentary) elections, showing that little remains of his sweeping majority in the January presidential election.

State apparatus

Bani-Sadr's decline is obviously related to his attempts to reinforce the central state apparatus, crush the struggles of national minorities, and, by returning the US hosPublished by Folrose Ltd for the Registered as a newspaper at the tages, to rebuild the damaged links with imperialism.

It is also linked to his evident lack of any programme to answer the crushing material problems of Iran's workers or peasants, and the obvious mounting economic chaos over which he is presiding-as oil revendes dwindle, leaving Budget estimates high and dry.

Further evidence of BaniSadr's inpotence was offered when last weekend a gang of volunteers •led by Ayatollah Khalkhali defied the President, and began the demolition of the marbled tomb of the Shah's • Brezhnev father Reza Khan.

They declared that BaniSadr's hostility was less of a problem to them than the strength of the tomb's reinforced concrete walls!

As Common Market countries prepare to make their -in most cases token-contribution to the US sanctions against Iran, the tear in the minds of the imperialists must be that under internal and external pressure the Iranian central government will crack, and the state itself fragment into its original component parts.

This fear is also in the fore front of Kremlin thinking. Increasingly the Stalinist leaders fear the eruption of revolutionary struggles on their very doorstep: struggles which the imperialist powers could not contain, but which would call for prompt military repression if they are not to spread.

Any move by Soviet armies into Iran to crush such struggles could trigger an all-out confrontation with the imperialists. An arrangement is therefore seen as vital to provide adequate means of stabilising the situation in Iran, to preserve the balance of class forces on which both the imperialists and the Stalinists depend.

Talks

This is why last week Brezhnev took the lead in proposing two initiatives to the imperialists: talks on a non-interference pact between the Afghan puppet regime and neighbouring states, and a "world peace conference"

Brezhnev's move has caught the imperialists on the hop. While the Carter regime remains locked in its Cold War stance, other imperialist leaders-such as Britain's Lord Carringtonare more ready to face up to the political realities of the Middle East.

Offering to help

Carrington recognises that nothing will now persuade the Kremlin leaders to hand back Afghanistan: but he recognises also that they are offering to help stabilise Iran, Pakistan and neighbouring states, in which they have no desire to see revolutionary struggles.

There are also signs that the Pakistani regime, daunted by the Soviet military machine on its borders and by the evident weakness of imperialism in the region, is preparing to accomodate to the Kremlin and to effectively recognise the Afghan regime.

In South East Asia, also, the pro-imperialist regimes of the ASEAN alliance are being dropped demands for the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops and declared itself ready to recognise the puppet Heng Samrin regime.

In exchange it is proposed the Vietnamese should simply cut back its military forces in Kampuchea, and guarantee not to invervene into Thailand.

The growing political and economic crisis of imperialism, and the obvious military strength of the Stalinist regimes are thus creating conditions in which the imperialists are offered two choices: to proceed along a path of confrontation, with the danger of world war; or to take up the Kremlin offer of renewed collaboration to stem revolutionary struggles.

Either way, the prime victims of such manoeuvres are the workers and peasants of the world-whose only way forward is through the struggle for the defeat of imperialism and Stalinism through the building of revolutionary, Trotskyist parties.