[Marxism] What gives in Iran?

[Louis Proyect]

Counterpunch, December 1, 2007
When Che's Children Went to Iran
Exit on the Left

By REZA FIYOUZAT

What gives in Iran?

In a country rich with resources stolen, misspent incompetently or 
misallocated pathetically, Iranian people's living conditions are so 
dire that between a third and a half of the population live under or 
around the poverty line. Addiction to Class-A drugs, according to 
conservative estimates, affects four to five million people (in a 
country of nearly 70 million), and increases in drug addictions are 
three times the population growth rate.

Iran's infant mortality rates (38.1/1000) are worse than India's (34.6), 
Egypt's (30.1), Honduras' (25.2), and more than twice as bad as 
Jamaica's (15.7), just to mention a few reference points. By contrast, 
Cuba's infant mortality is 6.1/1000, while that of the U.S. is 6.4.

Prostitution, another 'index' of healthfulness of social conditions, is 
rampant, and, in a new survival trend, younger women are finding 
alternative sources of economic relief in presenting themselves in Gulf 
countries such as UAE as 'temporary brides' (or, Siqhe), which is legal 
in Shiite Islam.

Harsh socio-economic conditions in Iran are intertwined with a 
theocratic dictatorship that monopolizes all political realms and all 
public spaces. In this context, it is quite natural that different forms 
of social resistance grow organically within the society, as has been 
the case since the inception of the Islamic Republic regime.

As has historically been the case, one of the more radicalized segments 
of the Iranian society, the university students, especially in Tehran 
universities such as Amirkabir University of Technology and Tehran 
University, have refused to stay quiet about their political demands and 
persist in pursuing social justice and freedom of expression and 
assembly. In a recent display of a spirited fight, Tehran University 
students, at the annual speech given by the country's president at that 
university (this year, on October 8, 2007), started to shout down 
Ahmadinejad, calling him a dictator and yelling slogans such as, "Death 
to the dictator!" Naturally, many students have been imprisoned, and 
perish in Evin and Gohardasht prisons (more information at: 
http://www.polytechnic-free.blogspot.com/).

On the labor front, a bus drivers' union led by a vocal leader, the 
now-imprisoned Mansour Osanlou (see a short bio at: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansour_Osanlou), has been organizing 
Tehran's bus drivers and other transport workers. An international 
campaign has been working to bring about Osanlou's release from prison. 
Interestingly, Tehran's bus drivers' union sent a message of solidarity 
to the transport workers of France who started their strike on 13 
November this year. Goes to show that international working class 
solidarity is not a mere dream from some long-gone prehistoric past. For 
a lot of people, it remains a daily affair.

Women are also organizing along a variety of axes. The daily skirmishes 
with the 'Hejab police' is only the tip of the iceberg of this 
particular struggle. Among the more recent forms of battle is a current 
campaign to collect one million signatures for a petition demanding 
equal legal rights for women and men (for information in English, see: 
http://www.we-change.org/spip.php?article19).

There are also organizing efforts along different lines. As reported by 
Iran Dokht (http://www.irandokht.com/news/readnews.php?newsID=35856), a 
newly formed Association of Mothers for Peace, issued a statement on 
November 4 this year, indicating their opposition to any imperialist 
attacks on the people of Iran, as well as calling for the release of all 
Iranian political prisoners from students and workers to women's rights 
activists, saying, "We, Mothers for Peace, believe that the inexcusable 
arrest and imprisonment of those seeking justice and assaults against 
teachers, university students, nurses, journalists, writers, the clergy, 
and workers, as well as against activists in the women's movement, are 
in fact the kinds of excuses that foreign powers use to attack our 
country or to impose economic sanctions; while claiming to defend human 
rights, the foreign powers' actual goal is the looting of our wealth."

Alongside the internal struggles of the Iranian people, a helpful sort 
of organizing of the international kind is beginning to take shape.

On November 20, 2007, student groups in Cuba and Italy held 
demonstrations to oppose imperialist threats against the people of Iran, 
and also to protest the conditions of the social rights of the Iranian 
people, from individual to civil rights, and from workers' to women's 
rights.

This kind of principled solidarity and active international support is 
the sort that empowers the people in Iran and in the greater Middle 
East. This kind of solidarity also happens to be what American and 
European anti-imperialist and peace activists and organizers need more of.

full: http://www.counterpunch.com/fiyouzat12012007.html