With the uprising in Iran continuing to unfold, we interviewed Zhaleh Sahand, an independent Iranian Trotskyist, ex- political prisoner, and retired educator, now living abroad, to contribute to our understanding of the process and help build international solidarity. The interview was conducted through email, what follows is the response sent by Zhaleh to our questions.
In order to be able to precisely answer your questions, I must pinpoint some thoughts on the state of the ongoing political situation and what the socialists had to target on the battleground in Iran to meet the delightful victories that we now own.
So, I strongly believe that if the Iranian Islamic regime could go back in time before murdering Mahsa, and continue its oppressive existence all over again, they would dearly embrace other tactics to prevent her murder. The killing of Mahsa in their custody has fueled the most intriguing and consistent episode of public unrest since what we experienced in 2018, the years after that in the people’ nationwide wave of protests, and throughout the history of dissident movement and upheavals in the Iranian Islamic regime.
The unfortunate and unforgettable murder of Mahsa and the decency of her youth were the most emotional factors in the mighty confrontation of the Iranian people with the regime – regardless of age or social status.
The Iranian peoples’ anger with the Islamic regime comes from a long-lived history of oppression, especially for the women of the country. Women have always been treated as second-class citizens, with the swords of Damocles hanging over their heads: subjected to the most barbaric, violent, despotic, and unbenevolent Shariah laws in all aspects of their lives; from lack of control over their bodies to the prejudices they face in employment arena and marital laws.
I will emphasize some characteristic elements that have slowed the steps needed to bring the brutal Islamic regime to its knees. With each passing day, people are now getting closer to the goals socialist have aimed to achieve. The shortcomings were:
1-Historically the democratic rights of our women were always overshadowed by the ungendered and general demands for freedom, social openness, economic prosperity, and equality of wealth for all workers and toilers, despite what was propagated and suggested about women for assuming their direct class role in politics by revolutionary socialists in socialist classics.
2-The Iranian workers movement began its opposition to the Iranian regime organically, shortly after the establishment of the regime with no hesitations or breaks. However, the workers movement as a whole, has mostly centered its demands on overall economic concerns-for the absence of freedom of speech, and the regime’s extreme use of fascistic and oppressive forces was so brutal, to securitize for themselves, a wider horizon in fighting the reactionary superstructures in Iran, when the lack of full class consciousness of their lower layers, understanding of the socialist theories, and their ramifications on the objectivity of the social realities in Iran, were objectively limiting their political scopes.
3-For years, the colorful and multifaceted movement of the Iranian women was organized mostly through their own efforts. Our society was still entangled, half strangled, in its own sentiments, objective reality, and cultural traditions, and was struggling to understand and internalize the pain and sufferings that gender apartheid and double exploitation was bringing to women and ultimately to the people entirely.
4-It took time for our people to overcome their difficulties with our cultural features and to be able to fight its blind spots, its double standards, and its dangers for the psychological and socioeconomic wellness of the country as a whole. It took time for the people to fully find the courage to stand before a regime that is reactionary to the bone and on the offense against whatever that challenges its stronghold.
In these contexts, the answers to your questions are:
1-The protests that have shaken Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody are still going strong after several weeks. How do you analyze this process? What are its main characteristics and at what moment is it now?
As Engels explains, in research, principles are the ending results and not what we start with. Principles can be affirmed only with one condition; if they confirm the objective world as is. So, we are now seeing that our women’s movement is ready to take its task to the higher stages. For our women as a force, in a society marked with diverse cultural, political, and economic aspirations, to be able to assume their historical tasks and to radicalize our movement, had to find their own place and their own tasks themselves – not simply accept what was chosen for them. They are in a better place, and they do not go even one inch back from what is theirs now.
Apriorism is not and never was an answer to a radical movement. People are in this moment on the streets of Iran, because our women showed that they can firmly stand up for themselves in practice. The socialist movement in Iran needed to see that our women can indeed fight for themselves, with men supporting them by their side. Our working class and the radical movement are seeing now the political power portrayed by our women and men on full display. This is a turning point in the history of our dissident movement, making the present realities different from our past experiences.
The characteristics of our movement at this stage, are:
1-A close partnership between our men and women is organically developing, seeing each other not as separate entities with different needs, but a partner in their mutual aspirations, a partner in their political investments, and a partner in the process of fully understanding the sexual apartheid of the Islamic regime attempting to suffocate our women’s pursuit of freedom and equality.
2-Students and young people under the age of 30 are 60 percent of Iran’s total population of 86,456,245. These students and young people, women, and men, are a driving motor of the current movement — as in all previous, smaller-scale protests. Other age groups are still hesitant to join the protests in big numbers, due to the safety risks involved. However, there is no doubt that they are in spirit with their sons and daughters on the streets of Iran and politically are their partners in silence.
3-These students are coming from diverse classes and strata, mostly as the working class’s sons and daughters. In their aspirations, though, a desire for justice and the establishment of a democratic republic is clearly apparent.
4-Primary and secondary school students were never an organic part of the student protests that took place in Iran before. Now, they go on strike in their schools when possible, joining the protests on the streets, and are developing an inseparable partnership with adult university students as the days go by. The movement has faced the murder of 32 school students, brutally gunned down by the Iranian ‘security thugs in different cities since the start of the protests.
5-The chanted slogans in protests which are consciously and precisely formulated, have radical hues, and target both the deposed Royal family (which has some supporters in Iran and want the monarchy to return) and the Islamic regime as a whole. The slogans have targeted the whole system and not just the compulsory Hijab – which is just one element of the whole picture; regime change from below.
6-The protests look autonomous, with radically formulated slogans. They are spontaneously taking place in different streets and neighborhoods rather than being concentrated in specific centralized locations as before.
7-The protests are taking place every day, with people appearing on the streets at a larger scale on some days and at a smaller scale on other days, to recuperate. Protests look fluid and moving, and, as all the evidence suggests, unstoppable. They can be either on the offensive or on the defensive, depending on the situation and on the scale of the regime’s violence.
2-In the last decade there have been several cycles of protest and mobilization in Iran. Are there elements of continuity between those processes and the current one? Is there something different now?
The dissident movement in Iran from its first day was a working-class movement; fighting to establish independent unions, fighting inflation, fighting the decline in real wages, fighting to obtain permanent, rather than temporary job contracts, fighting wage arrears, fighting the lack of job safety, and fighting to reinstate those workers fired for simply voicing concerns or having union affiliations.
From the year following the 1979 revolution, the element of continuity in the protests that have taken place is centered on the deprivation of all rights and on the naked political oppression inflicted upon our society. That oppression targets other layers of our society with better economic conditions, but lacking freedom of speech, press, and assembly as a whole; this makes them partners of the working-class in our political upheavals.
Next to all these, our women who are suffering from a double standard as the result of the sexualization of their civil rights are forced then to put more efforts on fighting the Islamic regime’s system of gender apartheid. This system is strangling them with the lack of freedom of choice, compulsory Hijab, and the reactionary-to-the-bone shariah laws that has put the lives of our women in agony for 44 years.
What is making the present phase of our movement different from before, is the radicalization of the slogans chanted on the streets, targeting the whole system, and not a part of it. The subjective necessity is finding its own way towards mingling with the objective economic miseries that the Iranian population as a whole are going through. This is a marriage, a prerequisite for the radicalization of any movement that sets a socialist or at least a democratic revolution as its perspective. What is new now, is our women not on the defensive but on the offensive, showing that they are ready, to fight tooth and nail for their rights.
3-We have seen the brutal repression deployed by the regime. What other strategies has the regime adopted to try to stop the protests?
Though our movement at the present time appears to be autonomous and leaderless, its slogans are very controlled, suggesting that it is leading towards some sorts of organization from within. According to an internal plan of action that was disclosed at the beginning of protests around 4 weeks ago, one of the tactics that the Islamic regime developed was to knock down the protests from within, by sending their plainclothes agents to join protests and change the nature of the slogans and thus discredit the integrity of the movement. These regime agents would chant slogans in support of the deposed royal family (which has some supporters in Iran but will never be able to turn back the clock or have the slightest chance to play a role in the future of the Iranian politics). Their goal was to cause fractures in the solidity of the just rage of the protestors and prevent radicals from joining the protests in large numbers.
That tactic has failed, and we did not in the slightest face any chants in support of the monarchy in the protests that have taken place since 4 weeks ago. Indeed, one of the most chanted slogans on the streets of Iran, is “No to dictator, be it king, mullah, or a leader” meaning Khamenei).
The other tactic regime adopted was to try and find ways to center the protests in a small number of locations. This would enable them to systematically suppress a protest easily by dispatching their security thugs to the designated streets. That tactic also failed, as our protests take place in different locations and neighborhoods now, contributing to the regime’s confusion, exhaustion, and disorganization.
The regime is both on the offensive and defensive at this time but are not able to crack down on the movement as easily as before. This time, our people have more confidence in the power of their collective determination and in our women as a dynamic motor of the movement.
As Marx has indicated, “women’s position in society could be used as a measure of the development of society as a whole.” The movement not only is targeting the fascistic super structure of the regime but its whole entity, chanting “The target is the system itself, and this is the last message.” The Islamic regime is fully aware of these steamy sentiments; this is a decisive moment for us, the socialists, to inject bigger doses of radical demands and slogans and, as our next step, to call for the establishment of the workers and local councils.
4-What social and political forces intervene in the movement? What role does the working class, and its organizations have? Have organizations for the coordination of the struggle emerged? What organized forces of the socialist left are there?
Our movement is very diverse. Iran, with its population of 86,456,245 as of today, is home to seven ethnic minorities that are among the most marginalized and exploited populations: Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and others. The presence of political oppression, economic devastation, and poverty has always had an uglier face in the provinces of these ethnic minorities, both in the Shah’s and in the Islamic regime. These, the most deprived working-class masses, have always been the backbones of our dissident working-class movement in Iran. The protestors chanted “Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Lors, are together.”
Along with our ethnic minorities, people’s movement contains Iran’s different class of people and strata with their different aspirations for politics and for their movement. However, it is mostly led by the sons and the daughters of our working-class masses and is inspired and hegemonized by those working-class ideals as its centralized driving forces – forces with more coherent thoughts, demands, and consistency.
Our petty bourgeoisie, as always, has its own inconsistencies, political doubts, and hesitations on what they long for; in all of the world revolutions for democracy and socialism, they have always displayed these characteristics. However, their inconsistencies are not preventing them from joining our movement, and they are, and have been, in the processions on the streets of Iran. The petty bourgeoisie know that they cannot long stand idle in between and know that they as well will be crushed by capitalism- if they do not shoulder responsibilities for a better future.
I strongly believe that protesters are mostly the daughters and the sons of our working class on the streets of Iran. This is very different from what we see in the protests taking place abroad, where some carry the loyalist flags shaking in their hands and must be outnumbered by the active presence of socialists all across the world.
From the year following the 1979 revolution, the periodic presence of our working class on the streets of Iran, some with class consciousness and the rest more or less carrying out the class-driven demands of the conscious – has been the guiding force behind all the protests that have taken place. This has shown us the balance of power required to move forward.
The working class and their unions have always issued statements of solidarity, in support of protests that have taken place by different groups of people and shouldered them as individuals in acts of solidarity.
The key to winning the overthrow of any despotic capitalist regime, including the Islamic regime in our case, is in the hands of our working class. Teacher strikes in Iran have always played a vital role in our movements with their radical demands and protests as well. Workers’ unions began striking two weeks ago. If they go further, that can throw off the Islamic regime’s balance and bring it to its knees, moving closer to uprooting its fundamentals with workers’ mighty power.
We all know that the working class, with all its might and strikes, joins the revolutionary movements, when the objective manifestations and the mental readiness of the population and movement to destroy the capitalist system is ready. The working class commits its total strength to a phenomenon that can guarantee the destruction of capitalism.
With this in mind, and amid the arrests of hundreds of workers, our petrochemical workers in Asalouyeh, in the southern oil-rich province of Bushehr, and at the Abadan Refinery have been on strike since last Monday, October 10th. On October 18th, the Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Mill Labour Syndicate announced that their workers have also joined the strikes; they have urged other unions and workers to join the strikes.
The Abadan fuel tanker drivers started their strike on October 19. “Workers of several phases of South Pars Gas-Condensate field, Bushehr Petrochemical Company and Hengam Petrochemical Company–both of which operate at Asalouyeh Complex — Abadan Petrochemical company and refinery, Mahshahr’s refinery and Pipe Mill Plant, as well as Neyriz Ghadir Steel Complex off the coasts of the Persian Gulf have been on strikes in solidarity with the protests across Iran.”
The organizing council of contract oil workers issued its second statement, giving an ultimatum that if their arrested colleagues are not released immediately, and if the regime’s repressive special forces are not removed from their workplace, they will broaden their protests and will not remain silent.
The protests are broadening, and new cities are joining as days go by. Socialists, even though they must stay underground, are shoulder-to-shoulder with people nationwide. The need to establish a leading organization of socialists is very essential at this time, but our vanguards are coming from different traditions and schools of thought. To systematically lead the movement for socialism, they must find the best suitable militant platform for the formation of a revolutionary opposition and organization. A group of socialist workers recently announced its existence in Khuzestan.
5-What possible political scenarios do you see for the coming weeks and months? What tasks do you think the revolutionary left has?
Our women are finding their own, independent voices and know that without them, no revolution will ever take place anywhere. We also must understand: “To alter the position of women at the root is possible only if all the conditions of social, family, and domestic existence are altered.” (Trotsky, Women and the Family, p. 45.) So, our women must take to heart that their altered position will only happen, not in a bourgeois democratic revolution, but in a plain, well-formed, anti-authoritarian socialist revolution. This is what they must aim their efforts at.
It is impossible to make some prognosis as to what will take place in the coming weeks and months. As Lenin described: “A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classes”, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peace time”, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the “upper classes” themselves into independent historical action.”
So, with all Lenin has said, we must precisely attempt to deepen the three decisive and determining factors to be able to topple the regime. With all of the evidence, I strongly believe that we will move closer to these three indicators if our masses begin to overcome their fears, believe in themselves and in their backbreaking power, and prove it to the regime with their active presence on the streets in every city. The regime has already started to split from within over their policies, and it will stop the killings only when people are manifesting in the streets in millions.
If for lack of any of the three required factors masses are going to be forced to back up to better fulfill their tasks in another phases, then they still have achieved some of their very essential goals at this point – even if they have to back up to rejuvenate their tactics. Those goals were:
1-People were able to radicalize their movement, and filter its demands, by bringing in the most militant and class-conscious masses on to the streets of Iran, to the extent they could.
2-People were able to estimate the power of the regime in confronting them and to estimate the increasing power of the radicals and masses – in organizing themselves either spontaneously or with a leading underground organization.
3-People were able to raise their voices much louder and capture the attention of the international left and communists, to finally attract their support. (Although we always had, over 44 years, most of the international workers unions standing with us in spirit, with no condescension.) Those who unfortunately did stand idle for years, their lack of support for the socialist movement in Iran, regardless of their intentions – contributed to the capitalist mullahs’ interests and green-lighted the Islamic regime’s unsparing and savage oppression of our dissidents.
6-What can we do internationally to show solidarity and support the struggle of the Iranian people?
Iranian students, who mostly come from a working-class background, the workers, and the toilers themselves have once again shown that they have all the mighty strengths, dignity, and political determinations to inspire the remaining layers of our society to join them in the expulsion of the despotic regime of Iran, when the time comes to determine their own political destiny.
What we want is that all the imperialists, mighty or little, take their hands off Iran. That means the U.S. and its British counterpart: for all the more known crimes they committed against the oppressed people of the world, less known is its notorious support of the Shah; the overthrown of the democratic government of Premier Mohammad Mosaddeq, its covert operations, and ongoing sanctions against people of Iran. That also includes the opposite pole, Russia, and China, which have fueled capitalist Iran and its repressive machine for years.
It is the duty of all progressive forces and global workers’ organizations to defend the genuine aspirations of the working-class movement in Iran, and to oppose destructive interference by powerful capitalist governments around the world and in the region. The tireless struggles of the working class in Iran and the region will only flourish with the extensive and organic international solidarity.
We want the support of politically just-minded people of the world, leftists, and socialists, to help us bring a genuine socialism from below to Iran. We want, in the spirit of international solidarity, the international socialists to coherently stand on our side, fuel blood into our movement, and help the movement find its definite revolutionary hues.
The genuine anti-imperialists must not stand on the side of the hypocritical, bloody-handed Islamic regime, but on our side. This is the only genuine anti-imperialism that will make the working-class revolution possible in Iran. This is the only way to bridge with us, and with the masses of the entire world and in the politically feverish Middle East.