From a Leftist perspective, Aijaz Ahmad succinctly concluded, “Khomeini’s takeover was one of those rare conjunctures in which the revolution and the counter-revolution were condensed in the same moment…It was a decisive retreat of the Left from the Middle East and the rise to ideological hegemony of Islamic fundamentalism in that whole region- the history-as -tragedy-and-as-farce.”
The collapse of socialism that started in Afghanistan culminated in the fall of the Comecon countries. Perestroika not only destroyed the Soviet Union but also an entire civilisation as it turned into global perestroika. Gorbachev’s racist dream of ‘our common European home’ was shattered along with the social organisation that kept the Soviet Union at par with the US. What happened in Iraq in 1991 was the repetition of the barbarism of Mongol history. Capitalism, as embraced by Gorbachev, didn’t lead to progress but to barbarism.
Iran’s material conditions and cultural heritage, necessary to build socialism, were destroyed by the Shah. After the coup staged against Mossadegh, an elected premier by the CIA and M16, a virtually ‘colonised’ Iran remained an agrarian and oil-exporting country under the umbrella of Anglo-American companies. In the absence of industrialisation, the revolution was hijacked by the peasantry. The outcome was not the Tudeh party but the rule of the Ayatollahs. The Left was crushed. Revolutionaries like Ehsan Tabari– a founding member and theorist of the Tudeh Party-were tortured and forced to renounce Marxism. Bani Sadar, the first president under Khomeini, was forced to flee the country.
Yet the Iranian bourgeoisie failed to please the US. Iran faced a decade-long war against Saddam’s Iraq and survived under stifling US sanctions.
Despite sanctions, Iran has managed to make progress in building its military-industrial complex and has delivered a rude shock to Israeli aggression in the Twelve-day War. Had Trump not intervened, Israel would have suffered a lethal blow. The present uprising against the Iranian ruling class mimics the colour revolutions sponsored by the Soros Foundation.
The US- Israeli nexus doesn’t want to contain Iran, considering it the last bulwark against Eretz Israel; they’re looking for its balkanisation. A country comprising many ethnicities-Kurdish, Arab, Azeri and Baluchi- imperialism seeks to divide Iran into as many countries as it did the former Yugoslavia, if not more. The economic, cultural and linguistic alienation created by the Shah and continued by the present government has boosted the secessionist tendencies among them.
We condemn the capitalist system, but finding the reactionary forces striving to balkanise Iran, the Left needs to think rationally
The way the clergy crushed the Communist Party and forced its leaders to renounce socialism was dreadful. The reaction of communists against the Iranian hierarchy is genuine but irrational. No social order comes to an end unless it exhausts all possibilities of developing the productive forces. Marx decisively stated, “new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.”
Euphoria in a part of the Left on the Iranian uprising is a kind of infantile disorder alluded to by Lenin. Even in the absence of the Left amid burgeoning imperialism, a part of the Left is wishing for some change, hence shouting its objective despair in the same vein as the extreme right. Marx once said, “We don’t present ourselves to the world as doctrinaires with a new principle; here is the truth. Down on your knees….We don’t say the world to cease your struggle, they are futile, we will give you real marching orders. We only show the world why it struggles in this fashion, and knowledge of itself is something the world must acquire, even if it doesn’t want it.”
This is the knowledge we want to share with those opposing the Iranian government at a critical juncture. The liberals are rejecting the ‘mullahs” of Iran while refusing to see an apartheid borderless state created in the name of Judaism. They aren’t blind or naïve, but their hypocrisy has gone mad- with a method in it.
At this juncture of history, when the media is jumping on the snapping fingers of US imperialism, one misses the likes of John Pilger and Robert Fisk. Despite all odds, they never hesitated to speak the truth. In 2012, when the Western media was counting the days of Assad, Fisk categorically stated. “Assad isn’t going anywhere.” Today, we can say confidently and defiantly that the Ayatollahs are not going anywhere. We condemn the capitalist system, but finding the reactionary forces striving to balkanise Iran, the Left needs to think rationally. Something bigger than a revolt is at stake.
(Concluded)
The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. His Latest Work: “God’s Republic Making & Unmaking of Israel & Pakistan” is available in Pakistan & on Amazon.com. He can be reached at saulatnagi @hotmail.com