The insurrection that toppled US-run monarchy in Iran

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The US war drive against Iran requires us to challenge the claim that
Iran today is in the grip of crazed Islamic reaction. This is not
merely an exaggeration, but a straight-up imperialist lie. In
Afghanistan, the Taliban (and even more the current occupation regime)
reflected the disintegration and devastating defeat of the potentially
deepgoing revolution that had opened in 1978.  (Just to put myself on
the record, I believe the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979
turned played a central role in turning the setbacks that the
revolution was experiencing at the time into a historical catastrophe
for the people of Afghanistan.)

In Iran, though there have been big setbacks to the progressive thrust
of the revolution and waves of severe repression (many of them carried
out under the banner of Islam), no counterrevolution of comparable
depth has taken place.  In fact, the masses have been thrown back much
less than they had been in Iraq by the counterrevolution against the
democratic revolution that had opened in 1958, a counterrevolution
that was basically carried out under the auspices of the secular Baath
Party.

This article summarizes the events of the 1979 popular insurrection
that toppled the shah and (given the leadership) led to the
establishment of the Islamic republic. The Socialist Workers Party
(probably in part because it had recruited a layer of Iranians who
were deeply connected to the revolutionary process, and had no rigid
prejudices about the role that the mosques and the religious hierarchy
had played in the revolt)  had a better sense of the importance of the
revolution than most of the US left at the time -- sorry, folks, that
is just a fact, not a mere opinion. As a result, they actually had a
reporter on the scene in the midst of the insurrection.  This was
Cindy Jaquith, an outstanding revolutionary journalist who had a
perceptive eye as well as a good ear (which Leon Trotsky said was more
important for a revolutionist than a good tongue).

Ma'mud Shirvani's summary, which I submit here from a recent issue of
the Militant, is pretty good but it is no substitute for going back to
Jaquith's reports from the scene.







   Vol. 67/No. 15           May 5, 2003


How Iranian workers and peasants
other threw U.S.-backed shah
in 1979 revolutionary insurrection
(Last of three articles)

BY MA?MUD SHIRVANI
The first article in this series described the decades of
revolutionary
struggle in Iran to rid the country of the despotic monarchy and
domination
by its imperialist backers, primarily Washington and London. Last week
?s
article explained that it took a quarter of a century after the
CIA-organized
military coup in 1953, which put Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi back in
power, for the Iranian working class and its allies to recover from
that
counterrevolutionary blow and mount a new struggle to topple the
monarchy. Next to Israel, the shah stood as the most important pillar
of
U.S. imperialism in the region. That article described how the
declaration
of martial law by the shah on Sept. 7, 1978, and his "Bloody Friday"
massacre the day after, sparked successive waves of strikes and street
protests. This week, we examine the final chapter of the popular
revolution
that overthrew the shah.

Rise of popular councils, shoras
As strikes became general, various forms of neighborhood councils
arose
in the cities. Those in working-class districts were the best
organized.
Mainly centered in the mosques, they handled distribution of food and
fuel,
defended the neighborhood against attacks by the regime?s thugs,
attended
to the families of those killed or maimed in the antigovernment
demonstrations, and helped build new protest actions.

In Mashhad, a city of one million in the east near the Afghanistan
border,
the outraged population was able to drive the shah?s army out of the
city in
bloody clashes. In the Kurdish city of Sanandaj in the west, defense
guards
were created as the army was pushed out.

?Only thing shah controls is military?
Before the year was over, people in a number of provinces,
particularly in
Azerbaijan and two provinces on the Caspian Sea, Gilan, and
Mazandaran, had taken over some of the towns. Popular organs called
shoras (councils) started blossoming. In Sari and Amol on the Caspian,
a
solidarity council was formed that was composed of representatives of
27
industrial groups and crafts, as well as teachers, traders, and civil
servants.

Washington secretly placed inside Iran U.S. general Robert E. Huyser,
supreme NATO commander in Europe, to organize a military coup to
keep the monarchy in power, as the imperialists had done in 1953. "As
best I could make out, the only thing the government had control of
was
the military and its installations," Huyser wrote in his memoirs,
Mission to
Tehran, assessing the situation two days after he arrived.

By the end of 1978, the shah had exhausted all possibilities for
breaking
the strikes and crushing the mass movement. He had shuffled his
cabinets
going back and forth between hard and soft lackeys, freeing some
political
prisoners, and imprisoning some of his most trusted henchmen, ex-prime
ministers, and heads of SAVAK to appease the masses. At other times he
acted tough and unleashed his generals to intensify the violence
against the
masses. None of this worked.

Finally, under the pressure of events and the strong urging of
Washington,
he was forced to reach out to the liberal bourgeois opposition. He
appointed Shahpur Bakhtiar, a former member of the National Front, a
political grouping founded by Dr. Mohammad Mossa-degh in 1949, as
prime minister and prepared to flee from the country.

Bakhtiar was immediately denounced by Khomeini, who was then living in
exile in Paris.

The Islamic clerical hierarchy, and especially those forces around
Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, were looked to by the masses as a new leadership.
As
a result of the Stalinist betrayals and defeats suffered by the
working class
during the second Iranian revolution (see first article in this
series), and due
to the intensity of political repression under the shah, especially
against
toilers, there were no working-class organizations that could take the
lead
in this third revolution.

On January 3, the rubber stamp majles (parliament) formally approved
Bakhtiar?s appointment as prime minister. General Huyser arrived in
Tehran a day later. Huyser immediately got to work with a number of
the
shah?s top generals to convince them to work with Bakhtiar, a former
opposition figure, in order to save the army, and to even contemplate
what
up to then was the "unthinkable": to start negotiations with
representatives
of Khomeini and the "mullahs," whom the shah and his generals in the
military had always looked down upon.

?Everything but the fuel?
Washington?s immediate goal was to break the strikes militarily. "We
had
the ammunition, the transport, the tanks--everything we needed, except
fuel," Huyser wrote. The oil workers were not allowing fuel deliveries
to
the army. Huyser tried to use the class divisions within the
revolutionary
movement as a lever to push for his goals. He kept impressing upon the
generals "that if we could contact the religious leaders we might
enlist their
support on this issue."

As the shah?s generals procrastinated, on January 11 Huyser asked
Washington to direct a fuel tanker, which was in nearby waters at the
time,
to be unloaded for the army?s use. The response was slow. "We had
already started on the propaganda, with leaflets on the streets,"
Huyser
said in frustration. "But if we were going to take actions on any of
the
[coup] plans which required tanks and vehicles, then we would need a
new
source of diesel fuel and motor gasoline."

The propaganda and the leaflets that Huyser mentions refer to their
efforts
to organize a political base for the counterrevolution, and gain
support
among layers of the middle class who directly benefited from the shah?
s
rule. They wanted to start a "pro-Constitution" movement, which could
operate in the streets--as the CIA-organized thugs had done during the
1953 coup--with a facade of democracy. For decades the monarchy and
its imperialist paymasters had trampled upon the constitution that the
first
Iranian revolution had brought into being. Now they were invoking it
to
masquerade a counterrevolution.

During those days, one would come across armed thugs riding in open
trucks around cities beating up isolated protesters and attacking
universities. The "Pro-Constitution" movement succeeded in holding a
pro-Bakhtiar demonstration of 50,000 in Tehran January 25. It was
their
first and last action.

Finally, when the oil tanker chartered by the U.S. Department of
Defense
arrived in Iranian waters at the end of January, the oil workers
refused to
turn it over to the army. Huyser reported to U.S. secretary of defense
Harold Brown that the oil workers had demanded that it be a "gift from
the
Iranian military to the people of Iran, and of course we couldn't?t
[do that]."
General Huyser left the country shortly after--mission failed.

The shah fled the country January 16, supposedly on an "extended
vacation." Millions throughout Iran celebrated the victory in
jubilation. Then
millions from across the country converged on Tehran to welcome
Khomeini on February 1. Upon his arrival, Khomeini declared Bakhtiar?s
government illegal and said he would appoint a legitimate cabinet.

Shortly afterwards, Khomeini appointed Mehdi Bazargan, who had been
one of his representatives in the country, to head up a provisional
revolutionary government. Bazargan was a popular bourgeois nationalist
figure who had collaborated with Mossadegh and had been the first
director of the nationalized oil industry in 1951.

Bazargan along with some other leaders of the bourgeoisie, including
clerics, had been at odds with workers because they were opposed to
independent political action by the workers and organized to "call off
those
strikes which jeopardized the work of the main industries involved in
the
production of peoples? urgent needs, those threatening the country?s
survival." In fact by January 30 they had succeeded in persuading
workers
in some 118 factories to go back to work. However, in early January
when Bazargan went to the oil fields to try to get domestic production
resumed, he was booed by the striking workers. "They do not respect
religion," he complained. But it had been workers? intransigence in
preventing the military from gaining access to the oil they needed for
a
coup that had saved the revolution. Huyser, in his account quoted
earlier,
inadvertently confirms this assessment.

While negotiations for a peaceful transfer of power to the provisional
government dragged on at the top, the working class and peasant youth
in
the army were being won over to the revolution. In the urban areas
demonstrators were fraternizing with the soldiers and raising the
slogan,
"Brother soldier, why kill brothers?" Women participated in mass
demonstrations, often leading the fraternization efforts. They threw
flowers
over to soldiers in army trucks or placed them in their gun barrels
and
called on them to join the people in revolt.

Airmen mutiny
No one in the Khomeini leadership called for an insurrection. Mounting
class tensions, however, burst into the open the evening of Friday,
February 9. That?s when the elite Royal Guard of the shah tried to
crush a
mutiny by pro-Khomeini homafars, air force technicians and cadets, at
the
Doshan Tappeh Air Force Base in Tehran.

The Militant carried an eyewitness report of what followed by its Iran
correspondent, Cindy Jaquith, who was part of a team of revolutionary
socialist journalists in the country at the time. "At midnight on
February 9,
the silence of the curfew in southeast Tehran was suddenly broken by
cries
of ?Allah Akbar?," Jaquith wrote, "coming from Doshan Tappeh air base.
The airmen were appealing to everyone living in the surrounding area
to
help repel the Royal Guard invasion.

"The air base had been alerted that guardsmen were rolling down from
north of Tehran. The airmen began to organize defense. The ranks
elected
new officers to lead the battle. Arms were distributed. As the cries
of help
reached residents of the area, there was a massive display of
revolutionary
solidarity. Thousands poured out of their homes in defiance of the
curfew
and rushed to the air base. There they helped the airmen construct
barricades."

By the next day, the entire city had begun to organize. Young people
who
had served as marshals in the recent demonstrations began taking
control
of the streets, as well as members of some of the underground
guerrilla
organizations. In a desperate move to get people off the streets and
isolate
the airmen, the military announced at 2 p.m. on February 9 that a
curfew
would begin at 4:30 p.m. that day. While some clerical leaders made
public statements urging people to heed the curfew, shortly before the
4:30
p.m. deadline Khomeini called on people to defy the curfew set by an
"illegal government" and protect the airmen.

The masses immediately poured into the streets. In the working-class
district of southern Tehran practically the entire population came
out. "That
night, people began occupying police stations, taking weapons and
files,"
Jaquith reported. The next day, at 2 p.m., "the radio announced that
the
army high command stated it would no longer resist people."

Soldiers opened the barracks in the city and the population took up
arms.
The uprising in Tehran rapidly spread to the entire country. The
monarchy
was toppled.

While the insurrection was going on, General Huyser was called to a
telephone conference and asked by the U.S. under secretary of defense
if
he would be willing to go back to Tehran and lead a military takeover.
Huyser stated in his memoirs that he agreed with some conditions,
including Washington sending him 10,000 of its best troops, and
providing
him with "undivided national support."

"There was a long pause," Huyser wrote, "so I answered the question
for
them."

The U.S. rulers knew that the Iranian toilers would fight back
tenaciously in
the event of a U.S. military assault, and will push forth to establish
a
government of workers and farmers, as toilers in Vietnam had done
earlier.

In a January 17 news conference, U.S. president James Carter had
stated,
"Certainly we have no desire, nor ability, to intrude massive forces
into
Iran..... We tried this once in Vietnam. It didn?t work well."