It’s been over two weeks since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died at the hands of the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran’s vicious “morality police.” Mahsa was detained and then reportedly beaten for not correctly covering her hair with her hijab or because her clothes didn’t fit loosely enough. She fell into a coma and died three days later on September 16.
Mahsa’s death struck a deep, deep nerve across Iran—especially in the hearts of Iranian women. As the revcoms’ statement, “THE WOMEN OF IRAN HAVE STOOD UP!. . .” lays out: “For decades, women in Iran have been forced to cover up their bodies and hair with hijabs1 as if their very beings were something to be hidden, confined and controlled… as if they must be ashamed of their very human existence… all on the dictate of Islamic religious authorities.”
Mahsa’s needless, violent death was the last straw and the bone-deep rage of thousands upon thousands of women—and men—across Iran burst forth against the Islamic Republic’s medieval treatment of women and its criminal, oppressive rule.
Mass Protest Continues…
Since Mahsa died there have been basically continual massive, defiant protests—by defiant women—in over 80 cities and towns across Iran. These protests have continued in recent days even in the face of the regime’s intensified and now murderous repression.
“On Thursday night [September, 29], crowds marched in the northwestern city of Sanandaj, in Kurdistan Province, and in Mashhad, a city in the northeast, raising their fists and chanting, ‘Death to the dictator,’” the New York Times reports. “Elsewhere, women marched without hijabs in the southwestern city of Ahvaz and protesters clashed with the authorities in Qum, south of Tehran, and fled bullets fired by security forces in the southeastern city of Kerman, according to videos posted on social media.”2
At Friday prayers, the regime’s religious leaders doubled down on enforcing the mandatory hijab for women, yet women can be seen marching in Tehran bareheaded, or even individually walking through the street, waving their scarves, disrupting traffic, or shopping without hijabs. Some women have publicly cut their hair in defiance of religious mores. And women continue to be a big part of the ongoing protests.
Blood and Rage on the Streets of Baluchestan and Kurdestan
Some of the sharpest battles between the people and the fascist regime have taken place in provinces populated by the oppressed Kurdish and Baluch people,3 where the regime’s repression has always been the harshest.
On Friday, September 30, in the southeast Baluch town of Zahedan, the regime opened fire on a crowd, killing between 19 and 36 people—perhaps more. This was the first mass murder of protesters since the uprising began and it reportedly shocked people across Iran.
Burn the Cage/Free the Birds (a social movement in support of Iran’s political prisoners) reports that one activist wrote, "’In Zahedan, the bodies of martyrs are not accepted by the morgues and the government does not allow the funerals.’ The bodies are in people’s houses. The families of the martyrs have also been arrested or are under pressure from the government. The situation is extremely critical. ‘On the other hand, the streets... are also under the control of the brave Baloch youth,’” who reportedly burned down a police station.
The regime has also lashed out violently in Kurdestan, seizing back the city of Oshnavieh from rebelling Kurds and carrying out a massive bombing campaign across the border in Iraqi Kurdestan. At least 18 people have been killed and 50 injured in these bombings, including women and children.
Nonetheless, Burn the Cage reports there have been recent protests across Kurdestan in at least 24 cities. On Saturday, October 1, a general strike reportedly began in areas of the province.
Live Fire, Beatings, Imprisonment—a Desperate Regime Lashes Out
As soon as Iran’s President Raisi returned to Iran from addressing the United Nations in New York, he condemned the protests as “riots” and warned his government would "deal decisively with those who oppose the country's security and tranquility."
Human rights organizations have reported that at least 76 people have been killed by the regime, and hundreds wounded, with thousands arrested. Iran Human Rights reports, “Most families have been forced to quietly bury their loved ones at night and pressured against holding public funerals. Many families were threatened with legal charges if they publicized their deaths.”
The regime claims to have imprisoned some 1,200 people—a vast understatement given that officials in Gilan province report arresting over 700 people,4 and another 785 have been arrested in just three of Iran’s 31 other provinces. There are reports of protesters being savagely beaten after their arrest.5
The government has also slashed internet access and arrested over 20 journalists, including the one who broke the story of Mahsa’s death. The regime is trying to make it more difficult for Iranians to publicize what’s happening and communicate with each other.
Conditions in Iran’s prisons, always harsh, are now more dangerous and potentially deadly, prisoners and their families warn. “The regime’s security forces are arresting more and more of innocent people. Prisoners’ families and lawyers are reporting horrendous and dangerous conditions inside the regime’s prisons,” Burn the Cage reports.
On Monday, October 3, inmates in the women's section of Tehran’s Evin prison6 are planning a sit-down strike in the prison yard in protest of these potentially deadly conditions. (See, International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoner Now.)
Protests Continue—Students Strike
Protests have reportedly continued on Friday, September 30 and Saturday, October 1, including in the capital Tehran, Karaj and Gohar Dasht to the west, and Iran’s second largest city, Mashad to the east, and many other cities and towns, including the large cities of Isfahan, Rasht and Shiraz. “In Tehran's traditional business district of Bazaar, anti-government protesters chanted ‘We will be killed one by one if we don't unite,’" Reuters reports.7
On the morning of Saturday, October 1, students from dozens of universities, who had held strikes and protests on campus, walked out of campuses and poured into the streets of Tehran and other cities. They were joined by supportive crowds who had gathered outside the university gates. The students had called for a general strike endorsed by dozens of professors who also issued a demand that arrested students be released. In Shiraz, students chanted, “We Fight, We Die.” At Tabriz University in Azerbijan, security forces reportedly raided dormitories and arrested around 30 students.
U.S. Rulers Fish in Troubled Waters: Advancing Imperialist Interests—NOT Iran’s Liberation
The massive uprising in Iran is taking place as the world is roiling with sharp and intensifying contradictions, including the U.S.’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, its escalating contention with China in the Asian Pacific region and beyond, and the reported deadlock—perhaps collapse—of its negotiations with Iran over Iran's program developing its nuclear power industry, with the potential capability to create a nuclear bomb. And going into this period, there was an increasingly closer alignment of Russia and China in lending support to Iran in its conflict with the U.S. All of this heightens the unpredictability of things as every serious political force will try to push on the situation to advance its own interests. This must also be true for those representing the interests of humanity.
In Iran, at this writing, the rulers of Iran’s Islamic Republic appear, from media reports, to be relatively united in their support for a savage crackdown against the ongoing wave of protest and upheaval, even as there are various contradictions among them.8 These will no doubt be impacted in one way or another by the development of this courageous mass upsurge of the Iranian people, which has polarized Iranian society with broad sections of the population—especially women, youth, and minority nationalities—fiercely coming out against the regime, while others continue to support the regime. All this bears close watching.
At the moment, the U.S. imperialists are posturing as friends of the Iranian people. At the United Nations, Biden declared the U.S. stood with “the brave citizens and the brave women of Iran, who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights.”9
In reality, as the revcoms’ statement put it, Biden’s statement is “complete and utter bullshit…. part of the decades-long U.S. attempts to weaken the regime and make Iran, and the whole Mideast, subservient to American needs and designs.”
Right now, the U.S. rulers are maneuvering—in the current world situation and in Iran—to advance their own imperialist interests in a region of strategic importance to them, against a regime in the Islamic Republic they have sharp and ongoing contradictions with. So they see the necessity and the opportunity to take advantage of the Islamic Republic’s potential vulnerability in this situation and are pushing to advance their agenda to the greatest degree possible—including and up to regime change should that opportunity present itself.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brazenly said as much to reporters on September 30: “[W]e’re all in awe of the courage of the women of Iran…. If that leads to a change in government there, we’ll see what happens there… let’s see how that change takes place.”10[Emphasis added]
In the meantime, the U.S. is stepping up pressure on the IRI: last week it imposed sanctions on Iran’s morality police and it encouraged tech companies to activate satellite links and other internet services to aid protesters and circumvent the regime’s internet restrictions. It also penalized Chinese companies who’ve imported Iranian oil and helped keep the regime’s economy afloat, and in Iraqi Kurdestan, U.S. forces shot down an Iranian drone, deeming it “a threat to CENTCOM forces in the area.”11
People must not be taken in by the statements from Biden, Pelosi and other figures in the U.S. ruling class. How much the U.S. actually cares about the people of Iran can be seen from their actions in the past—their overthrow of the nationalist Mossadegh in 1953 who dared to nationalize Iran’s oil; their support of the Shah, with his regime of spying and torture; their connivance in and manipulation of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, where half a million people died; and most recently the brutal sanctions reimposed by Trump and continued by Biden. The U.S. meddling, is as the revcoms’ statement analyzes, “ominous,” because “the U.S. regards Iran as a bone in its throat and will very possibly use not only economic and diplomatic pressure but other forms of intervention, including by working through and with Israel, to subvert the Iranian people’s struggle and restore outright U.S. domination. These imperialists must not be allowed to pervert this struggle to their own reactionary ends.”
“As for [the U.S.] ‘supporting women,’ you need look no further than Saudi Arabia, the stalwart U.S. ally in the Middle East which is just as misogynist and repressive as Iran,” the revcoms’ statement continues. “Indeed, look no further than the U.S. itself, where Biden and the Democrats continually attempt to conciliate with the theocratic, Christian fascist, abortion-outlawing Republican Party.”
U.S. Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism: Two Reactionary Forces That Oppose—and Reinforce—Each Other
There is a framework for analyzing and understanding these complex and rapidly changing developments—and cutting through all the lies and bullshit spewed out by the U.S.—and Iranian—rulers and their lapdog media.
It’s been developed by the revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, Bob Avakian. BA has said:
What we see in contention here with Jihad [Islamic fundamentalism] on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade [increasingly globalized western imperialism] on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these “outmodeds,” you end up strengthening both.
While this is a very important formulation and is crucial to understanding much of the dynamics driving things in the world in this period, at the same time we do have to be clear about which of these “historically outmodeds” has done the greater damage and poses the greater threat to humanity: It is the “historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system,” and in particular the U.S. imperialists.
Instead of proceeding from the interests of either of these reactionary, outmoded forces, people around the world need to proceed from the interests of humanity, and seize on every positive and courageous development such as the current uprising in Iran to fight to bring forward another way to a radically different and much better world. As a beginning, you can find the pathway to doing so in these two documents published at revcom.us:
This statement from the Revcoms:
And the September 23, 2022 Communiqué of the Communist Party of Iran (M.L.M.) www.cpimlm.org: