Iraq-Iran war: the forging of the Islamic Republic Seeing an opportunity, on 22 September 1980 Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. The Iranian military had largely dissolved following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic, less than a year old, was far from having consolidated its power. The Islamists faced the grueling task of rebuilding the Iranian bourgeois state, as power remained effectively in the streets. It was the entry of the workers, through the general strike of the autumn of 1978, that transformed middle-class bazaar and student protests into a real revolution. The workers formed neighbourhood and factory shuras (soviets), they demanded higher wages, and in some instances took over their factories. They fought so that the tyranny of the bosses – who were closely aligned with Pahlavi during the revolution – would never return. But the complete failure of the communists to present any clear alternative, against the backdrop of growing repression, allowed the revolution to be hijacked by the Islamists led by Ayatollah Khomeini. While the revolution itself had involved communists, including the Stalinist Tudeh Party, communist guerrillas such as Fadaiyan-e-Khalq, ‘Islamic-Marxists’ Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), and secular nationalists such as the National Front, the Islamists did everything to isolate the communists and the left. Khomeini began to use the clergy to hijack many of the neighbourhood shuras, which were transformed into ‘Islamic Revolution Committees’ around local mosques. These later formed the foundations for the Islamist paramilitary organisations. At this point, Khomeini was bolstered by western imperialism, which preferred him to the communists. The US had even negotiated the neutrality of remnants of the Pahlavi army prior to the victory of the revolution.
https://marxist.com/iraq-iran-war-the-forging-of-the-islamic-republic.htmBrazil’s Left After LulaThe geopolitical uncertainty has upped the ante of what was already set to be a deeply contentious race this October between Lula’s broad coalition of moderates and leftists and the far-right challenger, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the forty-four-year-old son of the imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro. Much will be written about the campaign in the months ahead, but a c
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.