The recent wave of arrests of political and social activists by the brutal regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) comes at a critical time in the country and the world. The cruel sanctions imposed by the Western imperialists on Iran have not lessened even as the country is being hit especially hard by Covid-19. Trump recently issued veiled threats of a bombing raid on Iran. Almost a year ago the US assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, and now there’s the suspicious murder of a leading figure in Iran’s nuclear programme, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The US imperialists have stepped up their military presence in the region, and under the US baton ominous new alliances are being forged between Israel, the Saudis and other reactionary Arab regimes – all of this is further intensifying the pressure on Iran. The danger that these escalating moves could lead to war is very real. And anyone who thinks that the election of Biden is going to change all this needs to wake up, fast – it is the US imperialists’ need to strategically dominate the crucial Middle East region, super-exploit its peoples, and plunder its resources that is driving all this. As global contention continues to intensify, this need will not lessen – on the contrary!
The intensification of the imperialists’ pressure on Iran is interacting with and heating up all the antagonisms and conflicts inside the country. Fierce infighting is taking place within the regime, as different factions contend over how to deal with the escalating threats from outside and inside the country – and this is sure to intensify with the upcoming national elections. The imperialist sanctions are intensifying all of the hardships and misery already being suffered under the reactionary IRI, pushing millions more into poverty and hunger. Sanctions are also blocking essential life-saving medicines, while the country’s moronic theocratic rulers rely on religious incantations to stop a deadly virus. Explosions of protest at these horrors erupt from below over and over again.
In this volatile situation, the defense of Iran’s political prisoners assumes critical importance – these are fighters who have stepped to the front lines of the struggle against oppression, those who have refused to suffer in silence the horrors inflicted on the people by the reactionary regime and imperialism. Defending them is defending the hopes of the oppressed in the country and around the world. And it is crucial to rise to their defense right now – there is great reason to be concerned that the IRI will use the recent moves by the US, Israel and their allies to crack down even harder on dissent and on the political prisoners, under the guise of “national security” and “foreign meddling”.
It is also critical to support these prisoners as part of bringing forward the liberating truth that there is another way forward for the people of Iran, a path to liberation that escapes the clutches of both the theocratic outmoded dinosaurs ruling Iran and the “modern” imperialist equally outmoded dinosaurs ruling the US and the West and dominating the Middle East. Getting this message out when the war drums are beating ever louder and the pressure to “choose sides” is mounting can break through the mental shackles that have people believing that the only choice they have is between suffering under the Mullahs or the imperialists.
But to find and forge this path requires science – no less than it has required science to find a vaccine against the coronavirus. Without a scientific approach, it is impossible to see the necessity, possibility and desirability of an all-out revolution that overthrows the capitalist-imperialist order and ushers in a whole new and radically different world of cooperating humanity, a world freed from the prevalent antagonisms and the shackles of all social divisions and inequalities and the reactionary ideas enforcing these.
This science exists. Bob Avakian has built on Marx’s initial breakthrough to recast communism, producing a new more scientific framework for human emancipation. Avakian’s breakthrough in understanding is critical for any real revolution. And fortunately, there is a force in Iran, the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), that bases itself on BA’s new communism and is fighting to liberate Iran as part of the world revolution. If you really want to put an end to a world where people are thrown into prison for daring to dream of a better world, if you really want to put revolution back on the map and in people’s thinking, you need to engage with the new communism, to come together to study and discuss it, and to help take it out into the world and turn this into an irresistible force. We’re talking about you and your role in making such a radical revolution possible.
Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe)
Check out revcom.us – email: rcmanifestogroup@gmail.com
