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Title: The Opening in Iran Author: Ken Knabb Date: 12 March 1979 Language: en Topics: Iran, revolution Source: Retrieved on 25th February 2021 from http://www.bopsecrets.org/PS/iran.htm
The uprising in Iran is the most beautiful event since the Hungarian
revolution of 1956. It has shaken all the ruling powers of the world and
exposed their collusion. The Arab regimes are as alarmed as Israel. The
Chinese bureaucracy was caught with its pants down: it supported the
Shah and denounced his opposition (thus continuing the policy of Mao and
Chou, who praised him for his “anti-imperialism”). As for the Russian
bureaucracy, far from “stirring up trouble” in Iran, it has always aimed
at maintaining a stable, highly policed regime there, as elsewhere on
its borders, so as to prevent any contagion of rebellion from spreading
to its own people. It has sold arms to the Shah and turned fugitive
Iranian radicals over to SAVAK. Only when his downfall seemed likely did
it cautiously begin hedging its bets. The saber rattling between Russia
and the U.S. was strictly for the benefit of the spectators. American
ambassador William Sullivan admitted: “We ran Laos, but in Iran, which
is tremendously important to us, there’s not much we, or anyone else,
can do. Ironically all the major powers — the U.S., Britain, France,
China and the Soviet Union — are alarmed by what’s going on in Iran.”
(New York Times, 13 November 1978.)
The possibility that the mass insurgence might overflow bureaucratic or
priestly mediation — this is what lies behind all the powers’ horror of
“chaos” or a “power vacuum” in Iran. The Iranian movement is not
essentially a religious one; the partial margin of immunity granted
religious expression simply provided an opening and a rallying point for
it. Women who previously wore the veil as a symbol of defiance to the
Shah are now defying Khomeini by refusing to wear it; his emissaries
have had to report to him that the oil workers “do not respect
religion”; and the momentum and contagion of the movement has already
pushed even many of the religious to go beyond his dictates. The
destruction of banks, stores and cinemas is not a reaction against
“modernization” or “Westernization,” it is the same kind of reaction
against alienation that is found in modern revolts in the West, from
Watts to Gdansk.
The clergy, the bourgeoisie and the army all had, and still have,
obvious contradictions with each other. But none could do without the
other two. In spite of his intransigent rhetoric, Khomeini was
negotiating behind the scenes and, like the National Front, had long
taken care to keep the army as intact as possible, warning his followers
against provoking it. Finally radical elements initiated the final
battle without him and forced his hand. The army, on the verge of
breaking up, had to give in to his government as the last hope for
stemming the popular insurgence.
As in Portugal in the wake of the fall of the fascist regime, the
political untenability of outside intervention plus the weakness and
contradictions of the internal ruling forces in Iran may for a while
leave spaces for partially free social experimentation. The strikers who
have gone back to work only on their own terms; the people who have
taken over and run their own towns, “answering only to themselves” —
these represent potential dual-power situations that have not been
brought completely under control. In spite of Khomeini’s appeals,
hundreds of thousands of arms seized by guerrilla groups or distributed
among the people have not yet been turned in. And the autonomist
movements of the Kurds, the Baluchis and the Azerbaijans are seizing
their opportunity and may spread the insurgence to the already
crisis-ridden bordering countries where overlapping sectors of those
peoples live.
The rulers and commentators pretend to see in any radical action the
work of communists or other leftists. In reality the Iranian “communist”
party — the Tudeh Party — has long been discredited for its reformism
and servility to Russian foreign policy. Though virtually wiped out by
the Shah’s police, it has nevertheless praised his “revolution from
above” while denouncing the mass uprisings of 1963 and 1978. Recently it
has called for a coalition government to work for the “normalization of
the economy” and “put an end to the present crisis as quickly as
possible.”
As for the guerrilla groups and militant students, though largely
disillusioned with the various “communist” regimes, they imitate the
hierarchical organization and manipulative practice that led to those
state-capitalist bureaucracies. Sixty years of Leninist-Stalinist
counterrevolution have taught them nothing. They add to the ideological
pollution with their wooden language and lower the consciousness of the
“hard-working, patriotic workers” (who are thus applauded precisely for
their alienation) with their chorus of “correct leadership,”
“progressive clergy,” “people’s army,” “workers’ states,” and other such
self-contradictions. But who struggles for the real power of the
soviets?
A “popular” government cannot defend the revolution because it has to
defend itself from the revolution. But once it has disarmed and
demoralized the people, who can defend it from the reaction? Mossadeq
set the stage for the CIA coup by using the army against strikers and
demonstrators; Ben Bella set the stage for Boumédienne, who destroyed
the pockets of self-management in Algeria; Allende (with the support of
Castro) set the stage for Pinochet by attacking the workers and peasants
who had armed themselves and seized factories and land.
The fundamental question in Iran is not which combination of forces will
hold the state, but whether the workers will affirm themselves
autonomously against it. If they don’t speak for themselves the
bureaucrats will speak for them. If they don’t communicate their
experiences and analyses (by seizing printing equipment or radio
stations, for example) the mass media will continue to block out or
falsify them. The only way to defend the revolution is to extend it.
Even if it is defeated there will be that much more to undo. A reformist
or bureaucratic movement will scarcely interest workers who already live
in reformist or bureaucratic societies. Only a movement that strikes
radically at the global system will strike a chord among them, win their
support in resisting intervention, and inspire them to parallel revolt.
“The next revolutions can find aid in the world only by attacking the
world in its totality” (Situationist International).
Each time people begin to make their own history they rediscover the
highest moments of the repressed attempts of the past. A revolt like
that in Iran is an opening, it cuts through the organized confusion and
enforced passivity and poses questions in concrete terms. It’s the
social moment of truth.