Trump threatens war and punitive tariffs to recapture Iranian resources – just as in 1953, when the CIA overthrew Mossadegh and US corporations immediately seized 40% of the oil, says SEVIM DAGDELEN
AFTER 25 years of dictatorship under the Shah of Iran, the Iranian people finally freed themselves of the shackles of the Pahlavi dynasty in the national democratic revolution of February 11 1979.
While the figurehead for the opposition to the Shah was the exiled Islamic leader Ayotollah Khomenei, the revolution had the support of a broad spectrum of democratic forces, seizing the opportunity to bring democracy to Iran at long last.
Under the shadow of the Western-inspired Iran-Iraq war, which ran from 1980-88, the theocratic elements, which were only one part of the national democratic revolution, tightened their grip on power.
In draconian purges against those who opposed the establishment of an Islamic Republic, they arrested, tortured and exiled key sections of the left, effectively driving underground any opposition to the consolidation of the grip of the theocracy.
The early years of the Islamic Republic set the tone for the ongoing record of the Iranian regime in relation to human and democratic rights in general, and the rights of political and trade union activists in particular.
The Committee for the Defence of Iranian People’s Rights (Codir) welcomes demonstrations across Iran, which have put pressure upon the theocratic dictatorship, but warns against intervention by the United States to force Iran in a particular direction
In the second of two articles, STEVE BISHOP looks at how the 1979 revolution’s aims are obfuscated to create a picture where the monarchists are the opposition to the theocracy, not the burgeoning workers’ and women’s movement on the streets of Iran



