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Iran

Our place is at the side of the Iranian people!

Statement by the executive bureau of the Fourth International

Saturday 27 June 2009, by Fourth International

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Since June 13th, after the faked presidential election, millions of Iranian are expressing their anger with cries of “down with the dictatorship”. Their mobilization increases the crisis of the regime. Ferocious repression has already caused hundreds of dead and wounded. Our place is at the side of the Iranian people!

With the announcement of the re-election of Ahmadinejad, the underground war between the various factions in power was transformed into open war. Four candidates had been authorized to participate. Four of the regime’s dignitaries who share responsibility for the bloody balancesheet of the thirty years of the Islamic Republic. But the Supreme Leader [1]and the clan in power designated the winner well before the first round. In a context of strong tensions between factions, crisis and social instability, it was unthinkable that the Guide be repudiated by the people. In the same way, the immense economic and financial interests in the hands of Pasdaran and their desire to take control of important sectors of the economy, controlled by the clan of the former president of the Rafsandjani Republic, made it impossible for Ahmadinejad and his cronies to give up power and its privileges. In this fight to control oil revenue, the wealth of the country and power, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad carried out a true coup d’etat intended to oust their rivals.

For democratic liberties and the claims of working people

Faced with increasing economic difficulties, with unemployment, with which galloping inflation, corruption and nepotism became increasingly unbearable. The determination of the population throw off the suffocating weight of the mullahs’ regime and put an end to the repression against the youth and women who are fighting for their rights, is more and more intertwined with the specific labour demands. The courageous mobilization of the Iranian people accentuates divisions within the regime and weakens it.

The regime responds to the legitimate aspirations of the population by bloody repression, massive arrests, prohibition of journalists and cutting phone networks and Internet. It is a true state of siege that the Islamic Republic is imposing. In Teheran, Bassidjis, the anti-riot troops, and the Pasdaran brigades took possession of the city in order to choke off the dispute. But to no avail. The rejection of the power is deep and the protest movement takes various forms. It is not repression which will extinguish the anger and the determination of the Iranian people!

A new phase of in the struggle

A new phase of struggle is opening in Iran. It is to the women, to the workers and the youth - to all the demonstrators who defy the Islamic Republic while not hesitating to risk their lives - that all our support is given. Spontaneous strikes have erupted in several companies, in Teheran in particular and strike calls are multiplying. The decisive question of the general strike is put, not by Moussavi, who is trying to ride the wave of the dispute, but by the Iranian workers themselves. The arrival of the working class in this movement can give cohesion and the force necessary to overthrow the Islamic Republic and to establish a new democratic and social republic that stands against imperialist and Zionist attacks. The fight for true democratic rights, the right to strike, the right to hold free elections, to constitute free trade unions and political parties as well as the fight for social justice and the equality between women and men must be based on international solidarity. Their fight is ours!

Footnotes

[1Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Kh?mene’i