Iran History Revisited: Part 9

(See parts 1-8 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.

In exchange for the promise by the Shah of Iran’s central government on April 4, 1946 that the Soviet Union would be given an oil concession in the North of Iran, Soviet troops were withdrawn from the northern regions of Iran in May 1946. And on May 1, 1946, 500,000 demonstrators—mainly Tudeh Party members, Iranian trade union members or Tudeh Party sympathizers—also celebrated May Day in Iran and demanded more favorable labor laws, pay raises for Iranian workers and redistribution of Iranian land to Iran’s peasantry.

To block a plot by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to destroy the Iranian oil workers union, a general strike was subsequently called in the Khuzistan region of Iran on July 14, 1946, which was suppressed by the Iranian central government, with heavy casualties for the striking Iranian workers. But on August 1, 1946, the Shah of Iran’s regime allowed a new government coalition cabinet to be formed by a Prime Minister named Ghavam, which included 3 Tudeh Party members. It was estimated at this time that the Tudeh Party now had about 50,000 supporters in Tehran and about 50,000 supporters in the rest of the country.

In September 1946, however, the Shah of Iran regime’s Prime Minister Ghavam encouraged a tribal revolt in the southern Iranian province of Fars which demanded both autonomy and the expulsion of Tudeh Party representatives from the Iranian central government’s cabinet. A new cabinet was then formed by Ghavam that excluded Iranian leftists and, in October 1946 an Iranian right-wing offensive against Iranian leftist activists was launched. In November 1946, for example, a strike by Tudeh Party-sponsored unions was again suppressed and hundreds of Tudeh Party members and Iranian labor union members in the southern part of Iran were arrested. To discourage such independent labor militancy in the future, the Shah of Iran’s regime then also set up its own government-sponsored labor unions, established a Ministry of Labor and finally passed a labor code for Iranian workers. (end of part 9)

Iran History Revisited: Part 8

(See parts 1-7 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.

Between 1942 and 1945, the number of Tudeh Party members in Iran continued to increase along with the Tudeh Party’s political influence. In the 1943-44 Iranian elections, for example, around 20% of all the Iranian votes went to either Tudeh Party candidates or Iranian left-oriented candidates who were part of the left-of-center bloc that the Tudeh Party supported. Of the 120 elected members of the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, 8 were members of the Tudeh Party in 1944. In addition, three elected members were pro-Tudeh Party but not formal Tudeh Party members; and 30 elected members of the Iranian parliament were politically left-of-center. Despite the death of the first Tudeh Party Chairman Eskandari in February 1944, by the time of the Tudeh Party Congress in 1944, the number of Iranians who were Tudeh Party members had jumped to 25,000; and 75% of the Tudeh Party members were recruited from the Iranian working-class.

The majority of the members of the Iranian Parliament in 1945, however, were still right-wing and anti-communist in their political orientation. But fearful of the Tudeh Party’s increasing political influence in Iranian society, the troops of the Shah of Iran’s government were ordered to occupy the Tudeh Party’s headquarters in August 1945 and publication of the Tudeh Party’s newspaper was then prohibited by the Shah’s regime. The Tudeh Party was ordered to also disband its branches in areas of Iran that were outside of Tehran.

When Tudeh Party members in Tehran attempted to protest the regime’s outlawing of their political group by marching in Tehran, the Shah of Iran’s security forces blocked the march. A street fight then broke out between Tudeh Party members and the Iranian police in which a leading Tudeh Party activist, Dr. Freydoun Keshavarz, was beaten up. In response, militant pro-Tudeh Party groups of Iranian workers then occupied towns, factories and railroad junctions in the northern part of Iran that was still occupied by foreign Soviet government troops.

An insurrection then broke out in the Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan region of Iran in September 1945; and, protected by the Soviet troops there, an autonomous Azerbaijan government was set up in November 1945 by leftist Azerbaijan activists that demanded national autonomy within a unified Iran for Azerbaijan and land reform. A regular army was also then formed by the new Azerbaijan government. With the support and protection of the Soviet troops that were occupying the north of Iran, a Kurdistan People’s Republic was also established within Iran in February 1946. (end of part 8)

Iran History Revisited: Part 7

(See parts 1-6 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.

Following its founding in October 1941, Iran’s Tudeh Party members chose Soleiman Mobsen Eskandari as the first chairman of the Tudeh (“Masses of the People”) Party. The Tudeh Party then formed anti-fascist committees in the Soviet-occupied areas of Iran which attempted to turn the Iranian nationalists, who were mostly pro-German, in a more anti-fascist political direction.

Under the Reza Shah Pahlavi regime trade unions had been banned in Iran. But following Reza Shah Pahlavi’s forced abdication, Iranian trade unions once again formed and a Central Council of the Trade Unions of Iran was established. A Tudeh Party journal, Siyassat (“Politics”), also began publishing in November 1941 in Iran.

By the following June, around 6,000 Iranians were now members of the Tudeh Party; and about 80% of all Tudeh Party members had been recruited from the Iranian working class. At the Tudeh Party’s first conference in June 1942, 120 Tudeh Party delegates participated and they voted to make the following demands on the new Iranian regime of Reza Shah Pahlavi’s son, Mohammed Pahlavi (a/k/a the Shah of Iran), which had been set up by UK imperialism following Reza Shah Pahlavi’s September 1941 abdication:

1. formation of a democratic government in Iran;
2. restoration of political liberties and human rights in Iran;
3. abolition of the anti-democratic laws enacted during Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime that prohibited anti-monarchical parties and communist parties in Iran;
4. distribution among Iranian peasants of Iranian state lands and large Iranian landlord holdings; and
5. recognition of Iranian trade unions and collective bargaining rights by the new Shah of Iran’s government.

(end of part 7)

Iran History Revisited: Part 6

(See parts 1-5 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.

In response to growing anti-British mass nationalist pressure in Iran during the 1930s, Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime agreed to annul one of its previously agreed to oil concessions to UK imperialism in Khuzistan on November 27, 1932. Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime then began to pursue a more nationalist policy; and some reforms were also introduced by Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime during the 1930s which Westernized Iranian society somewhat and provided public school educational opportunities for the children of Iran’s middle-class families.

Political repression of Iranian left intellectuals continued, however, during the 1930s by this regime. In April 1937, for example, Dr. Taghi Erani and 52 members of his Donya magazine discussion group were arrested by the Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime and charged with conspiracy to violate the Anti-Communist Act of 1931. At their subsequent November 1938 trial, Erani attacked the constitutionality of the regime’s Anti-Communist Act of 1931 as a violation of the right to freedom of expression. But all 53 defendants were convicted. Ten of the convicted Iranian left defendants were then sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.

The leader of the Donya journal circle, Erani, died in an Iranian prison, however, on February 4, 1940--apparently as a result of deliberate negligence by the Reza Shah Pahlavi regime’s prison hospital authorities. But in September 1941, the other imprisoned left intellectuals of the Donya circle were granted amnesty and released, after Reza Shah Pahlavi’s authoritarian regime--which was seen as too politically supportive of Nazi Germany--was overthrown by a joint military invasion of Iran by the foreign troops of the Soviet and UK governments. The released Donya journal circle prisoners then joined other Iranian leftists in establishing the Tudeh Party in October 1941.

One reason that Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime was pro-Nazi Germany in its politics in early 1941 was that between 1933 and 1941 Nazi Germany had helped this regime modernize and industrialize Iran and had become Iran’s largest trading partner. Between 1929 and 1941, for example, the number of Iranians who were urban workers rather than peasants jumped from 300,000 to 600,000; and the size of Iran’s middle-class and intelligentsia also increased.

Despite Reza Shah Pahlavi’s nationalism and his regime’s pro-Nazi, pro-German political orientation during the late 1930s, in 1933 his government added another 60 years to the term of the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s lucrative oil production concession. In 1935, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s name was also changed to the Anglo Iranian Oil Company when the name of the country was officially changed from “Persia” to “Iran” during that same year. (end of part 6)

Iran History Revisited: Part 5

(See parts 1-4 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.

In 1927 a second congress of the repressed Persian Communist Party [PCP] was held and PCP activists decided to work underground for the following aims in Iran:

1. elimination of Iranian monarchy and rejection of an Iranian “bourgeois” parliamentary republic;
2. national rights for all nationalities within Iran;
3. a new army of workers and peasants for Iran;
4. confiscation of all installations of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in Iran;
5. abolition of foreign concessions in Iran;
6. establishment of agricultural lending banks;
7. surrender of all Iranian religious endowments and Iranian big estates to Iranian peasants;
8. confiscate the property of the Shah of Iran, the Iranian aristocracy and Iranian tribal chieftains; and
9. abolish all debts owned by the Iranian peasants.

The following specific political demands were also made by the Second Congress of the PCP in 1927:

1. full freedom for Iranian labor unions and Iranian political organizations;
2. Iranian government recognition of labor unions;
3. free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the right to strike be established in Iran;
4. collective bargaining and contract rights for labor unions in Iran;
5. establishment of a minimum wage in Iran; and
6. housing be provided for Iranian workers in the oil and fishing industries.

Two years after this 1927 PCP Congress, oil industry workers in the Khuzistan area of Iran went on strike. But by 1931, Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime had formally outlawed even more extensively the PCP and the PCP’s front groups under the June 1931 Anti-Communist Act. So by the end of 1931, around 150 Iranian communist activists were being held in the Reza Shah Pahlavi regime’s prisons. Yet between 1933 and 1937 a discussion group of left intellectuals in Iran, led by Dr. Taghi Erani, was still able to start and publish abroad, in Europe, a theoretical journal, titled Donya (‘Universe”), to promote the democratization of Iranian society. (end of part 5)

Iran History Revisited: Part 4

(See parts 1-3 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.

On July 31, 1920 a National Committee for the Liberation of Persia was set up by the non-communist Jangali leaders and their Persian Communist Party allies, and in mid-August 1920 the revolutionary army of the National Committee for the Liberation of Persia marched on Tehran. The UK imperialist-backed Iranian central government’s army, however, was able to defeat this revolutionary army.

On February 26, 1921, the Soviet government then signed a friendship treaty with the pro-British Iranian central government to withdraw all Soviet troops from northeast Iran by September 21, 1921. Once the Soviet troops were gone, Reza Khan Pahlavi’s Iranian central government then was able to more easily decrease the Persian Communist Party’s political influence in Iran by the end of 1921.

At the end of 1921, however, there were still 10 labor unions or guilds in Iran, with 10,000 members, that represented bakers, printers, telegraph workers, tailors, street cleaners or government employees. The newspaper that expressed the political goals of these Iranian unions, Haqiqat (‘Truth’) promoted the following four demands during the early 1920s:

1. lift martial law in Iran;
2. amnesty for all Iranian political prisoners;
3. confiscate and distribute the lands of those who had abused Iranian peasants’ rights; and
4. distribute Iranian state land among Iranian peasants.

By 1922, worker membership in Iranian trade unions had increased to 15,000, with 12,000 of the unionized Iranian workers living in Tehran. Around 1,000 Iranians were also still members of the Persian Communist Party in 1922. But by 1924 the number of Persian Communist Party members had dropped to 600.

And after Reza Khan--backed by the Iranian landlords, the Iranian Army and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company which ruled southern Iran—became the Iranian monarch in 1925, he then both suppressed the Iranian trade unions and began to outlaw the Persian Communist Party. (end of part 4)

Mark Rudd's `Underground' Book & Imprisoned Columbia SDS Founder David Gilbert's `No Surrender' Book

If Mark Rudd’s autobiographical book about the 1968 Columbia University Student Strike and Weather Underground that Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins firm just published (Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen) interests you, then you might also be interested in checking out David Gilbert’s No Surrender: Writings From An Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner that the anarchist Abraham Guillen Press published in 2004.

In his book, the still-imprisoned Columbia Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] co-founder and former Weather Underground member Gilbert, for example, wrote the following in reference to the Weather Underground Organization [WUO]:

“In a society where every single movie and TV program showed that the FBI `always got their man,’ the Weather Underground eluded capture and sustained armed action for six years…In a world where `legitimate’ governments bombed villages and assassinated activists but decried any armed resistance as `terrorist,’ the WUO carried out more than 20 bombings against government and corporate violence without killing anyone or so much as scratching a civilian.

“…The WUO was not formed as a narrow conspiracy but instead was a focal point within a much broader surge of anti-war militancy, as thousands of military buildings and Bank of America branches were burned to the ground, and as hundreds of thousands of people joined demonstrations that broke government windows, disrupted meetings of bigwigs, and resisted arrest.

“Weather’s exciting breakthroughs coexisted with costly mistakes. The earliest and most visible came during the first six months (late ’69 to early ’70), while we were still aboveground: our sickening and inexcusable glorification of violence, which grievously contradicted the humanist basis for our politics and militancy…To this day, almost all `history’ about the WUO makes the mania of those six months the whole story, without looking at our correcting of that error and the ensuing six years of solid and humane anti-imperialist action…

“Early Weather’s grave sins of commission were glaringly visible. The opposite movement sins of omission, which usually aren’t even noticed, can be even more lethal. The terrible passivity of most of the white Left to the early attacks on the Panthers gave the government a signal that it would not face widespread political costs for proceeding with its full-fledged COINTELPRO campaign, which killed scores and jailed thousands of Black, Native, and Latino activists.

“Weather’s militarism culminated in March 6, 1970, when a frantic bomb-making effort, including anti-personnel weapons, resulted in an accidental explosion in a safehouse (known as the townhouse explosion) that killed three of our own beautiful young comrades…

“…Our middle-class background meant that we did a poor job at outreach to more working-class sectors of youth.

“There were related problems in our internal life…

“To me, a crucial lesson is that activists must consciously grapple with the powerful pull of ego that can lead us to put our own position and leadership above advancing the interests and power of the oppressed…

“Despite these serious weaknesses, six years of impressive successes resulted from what was right about anti-imperialism. Contrary to the spy movie mystifications that are all about sophisticated techniques and technology, our survival underground was based on popular support from radical youth and the anti-war movement. That was the key to solving needs such as ID, money, and safehouses. There were moments when the FBI hunt was breathing down our necks, but popular support meant that information was kept from the state and instead flowed to the guerrillas.

“Our stage of struggle was `armed propaganda,’ with no illusion of yet contending for military power. Instead, the purposes of actions were to (1) draw off some of the repressive heat concentrated on Black, Native, and Latino movements, (2) create a leading political example of white solidarity with national liberation, (3) educate about key political issues, (4) identify the institutions most responsible for oppression, and (5) encourage others to intensify activism despite state repression. We also provided examples of non-armed struggle (e.g. spray painting), pursued dialogue with the above ground movement by writing to and reading responses in radical newspapers, and even created our own underground print shop. We wrote and published the book Prairie Fire, a well-developed statement of the politics of revolutionary anti-imperialism…

“The FBI never broke the WUO, but in 1976-1977 we imploded from our own weaknesses…”