Labour prospects in May elections may be irrevocably damaged by Birmingham Council’s costly refusal to settle the year-long dispute, warns STEVE WRIGHT
OVER recent weeks, Iran has been the scene of widespread protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the so-called “morality police” in Tehran.
The country has seen popular protests in all of its 31 provinces, with protesters demanding basic human and democratic rights, as well as social justice. Protests are now into their ninth week, despite the dictatorship’s recourse to brutal violence.
The Iranian regime has been blindsided by the uprising. Despite its heavy-handed tactics and rhetoric casting all protesters as agents of the US, Britain and their regional allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia, the protests rage on.
MOHAMMAD OMIDVAR, a senior figure in the Tudeh Party of Iran, tells the Morning Star that mass protests are rooted in poverty, corruption and neoliberal rule and warns against monarchist revival and US-engineered regime change
Payam Solhtalab talks to GAWAIN LITTLE, general secretary of Codir, about the connection between the struggle for peace, against banking and economic sanctions, and the threat of a further military attack by the US/Israel axis on Iran
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



